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Earth and Environmental Science
Studying plants from 400 miles up
Using remote sensing data, senior Paul Lin looked for signals of climate change in the grasslands of the Great Plains.
Penn group wins EPA Campus RainWorks Challenge
The student-led project will reimagine the campus of West Philadelphia’s Andrew Hamilton School, including vegetable gardens, a food forest, and other green stormwater-management tools.
Communicating change in a ‘land of extremes’
In Aurora MacRae-Crerar’s Penn Global Seminar, students are grappling with the impacts of a shifting and unpredictable climate in Mongolia.
‘Pompeii of prehistoric plants’ unlocks evolutionary secret
An international research team, including Hermann Pfefferkorn of the School of Arts & Sciences, has solved the mystery of where 300-million-year-old specimens fit into the plant family tree.
From animals to people and back again
Penn researchers are studying the propensity of SARS-CoV-2 to cross between species, and they are working to protect people, pets, and wildlife from COVID-19 infection.
The outlook for science under the Biden-Harris administration
Penn Today spoke with experts in various areas of science and environmental policy about what they anticipate will shift now that President Biden has assumed the nation’s leadership.
America’s first fossil fuel state
History course looks at Pennsylvania’s role in helping fossil fuel power the making of the modern world.
Climate change doesn’t spare the smallest
Changing conditions have taken a toll on insects in the tropics, according to research by School of Arts & Sciences biologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs. But education and science offer a path forward, they say.
Rare sparrows make guest appearance at Penn
Earlier this year, Penn Medicine epidemiologist Doug Wiebe glimpsed two small all-white birds outside Van Pelt Library that turned out to be albino house sparrows. Their coloration is likely the result of a genetic condition in which a bird’s feathers lack pigment.
Treeswift’s autonomous robots take flight to save forests
From Penn Engineering’s GRASP Lab, Treeswift uses swarms of autonomous, flying robots equipped with LiDAR sensors to monitor, inventory, and map timberland.
In the News
Scientists struggle to explain ‘really weird’ spike in world temperatures
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that tendencies to exaggerate climate science in favor of “doomist” narratives helps no one except the fossil fuel industry.
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Spring is here very early. That’s not good
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that plant-flowering, tree-leafing, and egg-hatching are all markers associated with spring that are happening sooner.
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We don’t have time for climate misinformation
In a co-written Op-Ed, Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that meaningful decarbonization in the U.S. is in jeopardy of being blocked or slowed if a significant portion of the electorate does not accept the basic scientific facts and implications of climate change.
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A famous climate scientist is in court, with big stakes for attacks on science
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences is suing a right-wing author and a policy analyst for defamation against the “hockey stick” climate change graph.
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‘Category 5’ was considered the worst hurricane. There’s something scarier, study says
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that Earth is experiencing a new class of monster storms thanks to the effects of human-caused warming.
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The Doomsday Clock reveals how close we are to total annihilation
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that the Doomsday Clock, while an imperfect metaphor, remains an important rhetorical device to remind people of the tenuousness of their current existence.
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