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What the EPA limits on ‘forever chemicals’ in water mean
A glass of water being poured.

Image: iStock/Byjeng

What the EPA limits on ‘forever chemicals’ in water mean

Brianne Callahan of the Water Center explains the new regulations on PFAS, plus how they might affect consumer water bills, health, and more.

Michele W. Berger

Dedicating time to side gigs for good in the community
Paul Best performs at Penn Museum.

Paul Best performs at a Keepers of the Culture event at the Penn Museum in the fall of 2019.

(Image: Courtesy of Paul Best)

Dedicating time to side gigs for good in the community

The 11th piece in this series highlights a museum educator who also teaches people through an Afrocentric storytelling group, a research coordinator volunteering with an LGBTQ+ band, a nurse collecting children’s books, and a Spanish lecturer picking up trash.
Social ecology and community work in the Galápagos
students studying the galapagos, sitting on waterfront

(On homepage) On a Penn Global Research Institutes outing to Tortuga Bay, students and Penn Global’s Laurie Jensen sit on rocks in a lava field overlooking a hypersaline pool.

(Image: Michael Weisberg)

Social ecology and community work in the Galápagos

Undergraduate and graduate students spent two months on San Cristóbal Island this summer, doing research on antibacterial resistance, vectors of disease, climate change adaptation, and the impact of climate change on mental health.
Searching for resilience in our reefs
Sea anemone larvae and a pipette.

Sea anemone larvae is exposed to various high temperatures, and its growth and development is studied.

(Image: Brooke Sietinsons)

Searching for resilience in our reefs

Some corals survive hotter temperatures better than others. In the lab of biologist Katie Barott, School of Arts & Sciences second-year students Alex Piven and Angela Ye have spent the summer trying to understand why.

From Omnia

How to design across species to increase biodiversity
Two computer generated living materials.

Module growth of engineered living materials.

(Image: Courtesy of Abby Weinstein and Terreform ONE)

How to design across species to increase biodiversity

SNF Paideia Fellow Abigail (Abby) Weinstein participated in a summer internship with Terreform ONE, a nonprofit architecture and design research group.

From the SNF Paideia Program

Celebrating Earth Week at Penn
Purple blooms on the verge of opening, backlit by the sun

While many Earth Week events are intended to inspire or teach, others are available for participants to simply enjoy being in nature.

(Image: Kylie Cooper)

Celebrating Earth Week at Penn

Organized by Penn Sustainability, Earth Week runs April 17-23 and will include dozens of events centered on the themes of environmental justice, climate, and nature-based solutions.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Designing for, and with, forests
From left: Lon Henderson, U.S. Forest Service; Weitzman students Ari Vamos, Vyusti Agarwalla, Jiajing Dai, Caz Gagne, and Oliver Atwood.

Treated fire resilient forest, after thinning and prescribed burning, in the Tahoe National Forest, a project partner with the North Yuba Forest Partnership. From left: Lon Henderson, U.S. Forest Service; Weitzman students Ari Vamos, Vyusti Agarwalla, Jiajing Dai, Caz Gagne, and Oliver Atwood.

(Image: Nicholas Pevzner)

Designing for, and with, forests

Nicholas Pevzner, assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, is leading a landscape architecture studio that focuses on forest management in the American West.

From the Weitzman School of Design

Update of a local tree field guide offers ‘antidote for plant blindness’
A many-trunked tree just blooming in spring sprawls at Morris Arboretum

An icon at Morris Aboretum, a many-trunked katsura tree is among those specimens featured in “Philadelphia Trees.” It was planted in the early 1900s.

(Image: Paul W. Meyer)

Update of a local tree field guide offers ‘antidote for plant blindness’

A new edition of “Philadelphia Trees,” coauthored by former Morris Arboretum director Paul W. Meyer, Catriona Bull Briger, and Edward Sibley Barnard offers tips for identifying tree species and highlights some of the most notable trees in the region, including many on Penn’s campus.

Katherine Unger Baillie

The little-known world of caterpillars
The New Yorker

The little-known world of caterpillars

Dan Janzen of the School of Arts & Sciences explains how the climate crisis has led to catastrophic declines in insect numbers.

From glacier ice, a wealth of scientific data
Two scientists walk on glacier ice near a river and mountains

Jade Hatton and Anna Polášková of the CryoEco Group at Prague’s Charles University, collaborators of the BiCycles Lab, work in Greenland’s Upernavik region.

(Image: Jack Murphy)

From glacier ice, a wealth of scientific data

Biogeochemist Jon Hawkings of the School of Arts & Sciences and his lab study glaciers to understand the cycling of elements through Earth’s waters, soils, and air in its coldest regions, with implications for climate change, ecosystem health, and more.

Katherine Unger Baillie