Campus & Community

Among this year’s group of 25 students who gathered at the University of Pennsylvania to take the oath as midshipmen in the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps battalion on Friday, Nov. 7., three are freshman from Penn’s Nursing School.

For University of Pennsylvania senior Cait Breslin, studying abroad in Buenos Aires and in Kolkata has been an important part of her college experience. And she says it is good preparation toward her long-term goal of becoming a physician.

Oncology researchers studying gene mutations in the childhood cancer neuroblastoma are refining their diagnostic tools to predict which patients are more likely to respond to drugs called ALK inhibitors that target such mutations. Removing some of the guesswork in diagnosis and treatment, the researchers say, may lead to more successful outcomes for children with this often-deadly cancer.

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Olaparib, an experimental twice-daily oral cancer drug, produces an overall tumor response rate of 26 percent in several advanced cancers associated with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, according to new research co-led by the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1793, people walking around what is now known as Old City in downtown Philadelphia may have been subject to an unpleasant odor permeating the air. A shipment of coffee beans had been dumped on Water Street between Arch and Race streets, along the Delaware River, and left to rot.

Throughout the month of November, Penn is encouraging faculty, staff, and students not just to recycle their coffee cups, but switch to reusable mugs as part of a campus-wide waste minimization awareness campaign.

On Thursday, Nov. 20, Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, will deliver the 2014 Higginbotham Lecture with a talk titled, “Matters of Race: Brown, Ferguson, and the Unfinished Civil Rights Agenda.”

The rising cost of public pensions threatens the fiscal stability of many American cities, including Philadelphia. As part of local and national efforts to address the problem, the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) has invited experts from across the country to come to Penn on Tuesday, Nov.

Many planners seek to expand major airports in the United States, despite the significant socioeconomic and environmental impacts. In an expansion of the Philadelphia International Airport, for example, city officials must take into account the substantial environmental impact on nearby residents, the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, and the Delaware River.