Science & Technology

Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. On Sept. 17, that ancient starlight found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, captured and recorded it for the first time.

Having garnered more than 3.5 million viewers, a TED talk featuring Penn Engineering professor Vijay Kumar on the making of flying autonomous robots by Penn’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Lab, has become one of the most watched TED videos to date.

PHILADELPHIA -- Morris Arboretum’s mid-week afternoon series continues this fall with three talks designed to stimulate and enrich, whether you are a gardener or not. The selected speakers will take you beyond the garden, to their world in the arts, humanities, sciences, sustainability, ornithology and travel.

PHILADELPHIA — Dogs with hemangiosarcoma that were treated with a compound derived from the Coriolus versicolor mushroom had the longest survival times ever reported for dogs with the disease. These promising findings offer hope that the compound may one day offer cancer patients — human and canine alike — a viable alternative or complementary treatment to traditional chemotherapies.

PHILADELPHIA — How does one’s experience of an event get translated into a memory that can be accessed months, even years later? A team led by University of Pennsylvania scientists has come closer to answering that question, identifying key molecules that help convert short-term memories into long-term ones.

PHILADELPHIA — Computers may be getting faster every year, but those advances in computer speed could be dwarfed if their 1’s and 0’s were represented by bursts of light, instead of electricity.

WHO:            Dean Denis Kinane, School of Dental Medicine, Dean Afaf Meleis, School of Nursing Dean Emeritus D.

PHILADELPHIA — Ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt’s Nile Delta document the region’s ancient droughts and fires, including a huge drought 4,200 years ago associated with the demise of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, the era known as the pyramid-building time.

PHILADELPHIA — As the world’s accessible oil reserves dwindle, natural gas has become an increasing important energy source. The primary component of natural gas is methane, which has the advantage of releasing less carbon dioxide when it’s burned than do many other hydrocarbon fuels.

PHILADELPHIA  – Charles L. Kane of the University of Pennsylvania is among three who have been awarded the 2012 Dirac Medal and Prize by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics.