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Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences
Clearing the air with biomaterials
Senseable Biomaterials for Healthier Habitats, a project led by assistant professor of architecture Laia Mogas-Soldevila, contributed a lattice installation made from architectural biomaterials to the ICA, acting as an antimicrobial air purifier.
Science and service at Philly’s Paul Robeson High School
Penn students in the Academically Based Community Service course Everyday Neuroscience team up with 10th-graders from Paul Robeson High School.
Through the lens: A digital depiction of dyslexia
Artist-in-residence and visiting scholar Rebecca Kamen has blended AI and art to produce animated illustrations representing how a dyslexic brain interprets information.
Matthew Levendusky and Kathleen Hall Jamieson on democracy amid crises
A new book by a team of scholars—including Matthew Levendusky of the School of Arts & Sciences and the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Kathleen Hall Jamieson—analyzes the crises surrounding the 2020 election and its aftermath.
Whole-genome analysis offers clarity about remains of 36 enslaved Africans in 18th-century Charleston
Building on previous work from the community-initiated Anson Street African Burial Ground project, a team of researchers from Penn led a community-engaged collaborative study that confirmed that the individuals closely align genetically with populations in West and West Central Africa.
Sophia Rosenfeld and Peter Struck discuss 2,800 years of ideas through history
The Penn Arts & Sciences professors discuss editing their new book series, “A Cultural History of Ideas.”
At a southern Iraq site, unearthing the archaeological passing of time
When Holly Pittman and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania and University of Pisa returned to Lagash in the fall of 2022 for a fourth season, they knew they’d find more than ceramic fragments and another kiln.
What fabricated languages can teach us about real ones
Linguist Gareth Roberts of the School of Arts & Sciences uses “alien” languages and interactive games to show how social pressures shape our communication.
Experimental Italian theater comes to the Annenberg Center
In “fedeli d’Amore,” Italian theatre company Teatro delle Albe immerses audiences in the last visions of Dante.
Students compete to help their classmates fall asleep
For their Public Health Communication class, students pitch ideas in a (friendly) “Shark Tank”-style to promote healthy sleep habits on campus.
In the News
Meet the people working on getting us to hate each other less
Matthew Levendusky of the School of Arts & Sciences and the Annenberg Public Policy Center says that heightening a sense of American national identity can reduce polarization and partisanship between opposing political parties.
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Americans flunked this test on online privacy
A survey by Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School for Communication and colleagues finds that most Americans don’t understand how online devices and services track users.
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Fact-checking Biden before the State of the Union
The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org finds that at least five Republican lawmakers, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have already voiced opposition to a proposal that would dismantle the IRS and replace current forms of federal taxation with a 30 percent sales tax.
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Why the debt ceiling fight is the GOP’s Groundhog Day
In an Op-Ed, Dick Polman of the School of Arts & Sciences says that conservative ideologues haven’t learned from past threats about raising the debt ceiling.
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Mississippi banned ‘Sesame Street’ for showing Black and white kids playing
According to Linda Simensky of the School of Arts & Sciences, there was a general feeling among 1960s TV executives that kids would watch anything that looked like it was for kids, leading them to not spend much money on programs.
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