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Penn Integrates Knowledge Professors
Testing a novel, community-driven response to heat islands in Philadelphia
Researchers from three University of Pennsylvania schools collaborated with a Hunting Park nonprofit to design, build, and test a prototype of a cooling shelter to place at a bus stop.
University of Pennsylvania launches Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy
The Center will bring together six Schools at Penn with $10 million in support from Knight Foundation and the University.
The mechanics of collaboration
Penn Ph.D. student Xinlan Emily Hu leads a group of budding engineers and social scientists who study communication across teams. The group has developed a new toolkit aimed at helping researchers analyze and measure teamwork.
Study reveals impact of concern about misinformation on Americans’ media consumption habits
In a new study, researchers from the Annenberg School for Communication evaluate whether perceiving misinformation as a threat influences the amount of Americans’ partisan media consumption.
Duncan Watts and CSSLab’s New Media Bias Detector
PIK Professor Duncan Watts and colleagues have developed the Media Bias Detector, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze news articles, examining factors like tone, partisan lean, and fact selection.
Hurricane changed ‘rules of the game’ in monkey society
PIK Professor Michael Platt and collaborators from the University of Exeter find Hurricane Maria transformed a monkey society by changing the pros and cons of their interpersonal relations.
How unflagged, factual content drives vaccine hesitancy
A new paper from computational social scientist Duncan Watts examines how factual, vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook has a greater overall effect than “fake news,” discouraging millions from the COVID-19 shot.
More than two hearts beat as one
PIK Professor Michael Platt and collaborators studied how physiologic measures like cardiac synchrony can guide decision making in groups. Their study found that heart rate synchrony was a much better predictor than standard questionnaire-based surveys.
What predicts human behavior and how to change it
In the largest quantitative synthesis to date, Dolores Albarracín and her team dig through years of research on the science behind behavior change to determine the best ways to promote changes in behavior.
Addressing declining fertility
In a Q&A with Penn Today, Michael Platt talks about the socioeconomic and emotional factors leading to plummeting fertility rates.
In the News
As colleges grapple with AI’s pitfalls, U. of Delaware uses technology to transform faculty lectures into interactive study aides
Penn will be the first Ivy League school to launch a new undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence. PIK Professor Duncan Watts and colleagues built the Media Bias Detector, which uses artificial intelligence to scan news articles for tone and bias.
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Google antitrust ruling may pose $20 billion risk for Apple
PIK Professor Herbert Hovenkamp says companies that have a dominant market position with a product need to avoid the use of exclusive agreements and make sure every agreement gives the buyer free choice to substitute away.
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How the Google antitrust ruling may influence tech competition
PIK Professor Herbert Hovenkamp says that the government’s monopoly case against Google was a convincing narrative.
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Google’s antitrust loss set to reshape search and mobile industries
PIK Professor Herbert Hovenkamp says that the Google antitrust ruling is likely to put an end to Google’s practice of paying to be the default search engine on devices and browsers from companies like Apple and Samsung.
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As Biden ends campaign, focus shifts to health for remainder of his term
PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel says that the presidency is an administration with a team led by the president, not a one-man show.
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How to reverse the alarming trend of health misinformation
Deen Freelon of the Annenberg School for Communication and PIK Professor Dolores Albarracín say that, while there is an audience that’s quite hungry for misinformation of various types, correcting health misinformation won’t change health behavior.
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