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Katherine Unger Baillie
Science News Officer
kbaillie@upenn.edu
Biology
Fine arts professor marries art and science on the Schuylkill River banks
Fine Arts lecturer Deirdre Murphy answered a call for artists for Penn's Ecotopian Toolkit project with a piece based on the migratory patterns of birds on the Schuylkill River, right in her backyard.
Digitized plant collection to answer how living in a megalopolis affects flora
Digital records of the roughly 800,000 plant specimens from five mid-Atlantic states will create a digital herbarium, a database covering 400 years of native flora.
The varying skin colors of Africa: light, dark, and all in between
A team of geneticists led by Sarah Tishkoff, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, has shown that there is a huge amount of variation of skin color within Africa, ranging from skin as light as some Asians to the darkest skin on a global level.
Two faculty members elected to National Academy of Sciences
Shelly Berger and Karen Goldberg are among 84 new members elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors for a scientist.
Shepherding discoveries from the lab to the pharmacy
In a new book, a biochemist, a sociologist, and an economist share insights into how biomedical discoveries become marketable innovations.
Opening the Teach-in by breaking down barriers
The first full day of the Penn Teach-in engaged participants with expert panels on vaccine denial and firearm violence, an "evolutionary walk through time," and a dialogue on the production and dissemination of knowledge.
5.5 million-year-old fossil turtle species sheds light on invasive modern relatives
A University of Pennsylvania paleontologist has described a 5.5 million-year-old fossil species of turtle from eastern Tennessee. It represents a new species of the genus Trachemys, commonly known as sliders, which are frequently kept as pets today.
To accept evolution, start with understanding
Prevailing theories about evolution state that belief in the concept is tied only to a person’s politics, religion or both. But according to new research, whether Americans accept or reject the subject also depends on how well they understand it.
Penn Engineers Make First Full Network Model of the Musculoskeletal System
Network science examines how the actions of a system’s individual parts affect the behavior of the system as a whole. Some commonly studied networks include computer chip components and social media users, but University of Pennsylvania engineers are now applying network science to a much older system: the human body.
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Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News
Scientists Isolate Human Lung Progenitor Cells That Repair Alveolar Damage
Edward E. Morrisey, of the Perelman School of Medicine, has co-authored a paper on lung stem cells in mice and humans, which may lead to the development of new strategies for human lung regeneration.
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The Scientist
Parasitologist, Reprogrammed: A Profile of David Roos
David Roos of the School of Arts and Sciences was profiled for his journey from art major to scientist and for his current work developing EuPathDB, a catalog of “parasites and other pathogens.”
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