For many people with advanced Type 2 diabetes, taking insulin is a regular part of their routine, helping them control their blood sugar by signaling the metabolism of glucose. But recently, researchers have been investigating GLP-1, a peptide that gets activated when people eat, triggering insulin through a more natural pathway.

Ali Sundermier December 6, 2017

Imagine you’re in a restaurant, hungry, anxious and a bit irritable awaiting your food order to arrive at the table. The server exits the kitchen with a tray full of steaming plates and a flood of relief washes over you.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・December 5, 2017

Dentists rely on composite materials to perform restorative procedures, such as filling cavities. Yet these materials, like tooth enamel, can be vulnerable to the growth of plaque, the sticky biofilm that leads to tooth decay.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・December 4, 2017

Whether drinking beer, eating ice cream or washing the dishes, it’s fair to say that many people come across foam on a day-to-day basis. It’s in everything from detergents to beverages to cosmetics. Outside of everyday life, it has applications in areas such as firefighting, isolating toxic materials and distributing chemicals.

Ali Sundermier December 4, 2017

They could make up the shortfall if efforts begun by the Obama Administration — increasing vehicle fuel economy standards and proposing the Clean Power Plan — are not carried out as planned.

Michele W. Berger ・November 30, 2017

While Penn alumnus William Fry was studying abroad in Germany, he came across a common problem in software development.

Ali Sundermier November 29, 2017

In mammals, including humans, the cells that contract the heart muscle and enable it to beat do not regenerate after injury. After a heart attack, there is a dramatic loss of these heart muscle cells and those that survive cannot effectively replicate.

Karen Kreeger, Evan Lerner ・November 29, 2017

Dropping a smartphone on its glass screen, which is made of atoms jammed together with no discernible order, could result in it shattering. Unlike metals and other crystalline materials, glass and many other disordered solids cannot be deformed significantly before failing and, because of their lack of crystalline order, it is difficult to predict which atoms would change during failure.

Evan Lerner, Ali Sundermier ・November 28, 2017

Some paleontologists travel far and wide to seek new fossils — to the desert Southwest of the United States, remote regions of China or the farthest tip of Argentina. University of Pennslyvania student Jack Stack, on the other hand, made his first paleontological discoveries much closer to home.At home, in fact.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・November 28, 2017

Low-frequency rhythms of brain activity, when brain waves move up and down slowly, primarily drive communication between the frontal, temporal and medial temporal lobes.

Michele W. Berger ・November 22, 2017