10.21
Education, Business, & Law
Worth a try: anti-bias education in the workplace
Workplaces that address racial bias with anti-bias training have mixed results, but are more inclined than ever to recognize its necessity.
Wrongful convictions reported for 6 percent of crimes
For capital crimes like rape and murder, wrongful convictions happen in about 3 to 5 percent of cases. Such an estimate had proved elusive for the prison population as a whole—until now, thanks to work from Penn criminologists.
Breaking the bank
Economics professor Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde reveals that Bitcoin is not the first private currency in history, and may face regulation in the future.
Science fiction or the future of trucking?
Driverless trucks seem like science fiction, part of a far-off world where robots and humans live and work side by side.
One-fifth of homeless youth are victims of human trafficking
A new study highlights the pipeline from abuse to homelessness to sex trafficking among youth in Philadelphia, D.C., and Phoenix, the largest study to date on human trafficking and teens.
Student startups on view
On Friday, April 27, University students with innovative startups will join with investors for the Penn Wharton Startup Showcase.
The human story of coal’s downturn
A forthcoming report from the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy will offer a range of strategies to directly impact the economic and mental health crisis in coal country.
Three years on: A look at the Penn Wharton China Center
The impact of the Beijing-based center and research fund has been far-reaching on campus and in China.
Tackling blindness with nanotechnology
To tackle blindness caused by open angle glaucoma, Brandon Kao, Rui Jing Jiang, and Adarsh Battu came up with Visiplate, a nanoscale ocular implant that shunts away excess fluid.
Restored Robbins House celebrates collaborative M&T spirit
The 200 or so students in the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology didn’t just need a workspace, they needed a home. And with the newly renovated Robbins House, they got one.
In the News
Philadelphia Inquirer
Trump-friendly Newsmax bundled into Comcast’s Xfinity service
The Annenberg School for Communication’s Victor Pickard discussed conservative news channel Newsmax and its recent deal with Comcast. If Comcast is “feeling the heat from the right, it will make sense to appease some of those critics,” said Pickard.
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CNBC
Dieting is out. That poses a problem for a company named Weight Watchers as it rebrands itself WW
Kevin Volpp of the Wharton School and Perelman School of Medicine offered commentary on the “universal challenge” of dieting. “People generally speaking are much more successful in achieving initial weight loss than maintaining weight loss,” he said.
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Bloomberg
Barbara Kahn discusses the retail revolution (podcast)
Barbara Kahn of the Wharton School was interviewed about changes in the world of retail and marketing. “People talk about [contemporary online shopping] as ‘omnichannel’ but right now it’s just retail. Retail has now become a seamless integration between online and offline,” said Kahn.
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Bloomberg
Sears bankruptcy hits close to home for Trump
Speaking about Sears’ decline, the Wharton School’s Daniel Raff said that expressions of nostalgia for the store, which has long catered to blue-collar Americans, “may well resonate with [Trump’s] core voters.”
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Vanity Fair
Is the Harvey Weinstein criminal case in trouble?
“We’re in a different arena than we were 10 years ago,” said Marci Hamilton of the School of Arts and Sciences, comparing the current moment to the pre-#MeToo era. As prosecutors, “the public and the politics are on your side now…. You can find juries that will convict.”
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