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Science & Technology
Penn’s THORwIn Takes Home Gold at RoboCup
The University of Pennsylvania’s robotic soccer team continues its international reign, winning the Robot Soccer World Cup’s AdultSize Humanoid League for the second year in a row.
For Penn’s Timothy Linksvayer, Ants Are a Model of Complex Societies
In small plastic tubs lining the shelves of a basement laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, a million organisms live in complex societies.
A Window Into the Workings of Complex Societies
In small plastic tubs lining the shelves of a basement laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, a million organisms live in complex societies.
Penn Vet Study Shows Immune Cells in the Skin Remember and Defend Against Parasites
Just as the brain forms memories of familiar faces, the immune system remembers pathogens it has encountered in the past. T cells with these memories circulate in the blood stream looking for sites of new infection.
Recent Penn Alum Finds His Calling to Help Others
What began as preparations for a class service trip to China has turned into a possible career path for Nikhil Rajapuram, a May graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
Penn Researchers Discover New Chiral Property of Silicon, With Photonic Applications
By encoding information in photons via their spin, “photonic” computers could be orders of magnitude faster and efficient than their current-day counterparts. Likewise, encoding information in the spin of electrons, rather than just their quantity, could make “spintronic” computers with similar advantages.
Researchers at Penn Develop Scar-like Culture Systems to Understand and Treat Fibrosis
A scar might be a reminder of an accident or surgery, but the fibrous tissue that makes up a scar also forms after a heart attack and arises in solid tumors as well as in chronic diseases such as liver cirrhosis and muscular dystrophy. Implanted medical devices and materials are similarly surrounded by fibrous capsules that impede their function.
Penn Vet Team Shows a Protein Modification Determines Enzyme’s Fate
The human genome encodes roughly 20,000 genes, only a few thousand more than fruit flies. The complexity of the human body, therefore, comes from far more than just the sequence of nucleotides that comprise our DNA, it arises from modifications that occur at the level of gene, RNA and protein.
Imagination Institute at Penn Awards Nearly $3M to Develop ‘Imagination Quotient’
The Imagination Institute, based at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, has announced nearly $3 million worth of grants to researchers at 16 institutions. The grants are aimed at the development of better ways of assessing and promoting imagination and creativity.
Disrupting Cells’ ‘Powerhouses’ Can Lead to Tumor Growth, Penn Study Finds
Cancer cells defy the rules by which normal cells abide. They can divide without cease, invade distant tissues and consume glucose at abnormal rates.
In the News
Associated Press
Here’s why experts don’t think cloud seeding played a role in Dubai’s downpour
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that many people blaming cloud seeding for Dubai storms are climate change deniers trying to divert attention from what’s really happening.
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Big Think
Can we stop AI hallucinations? And do we even want to?
Chris Callison-Burch of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says that auto-regressive generation can make it difficult for language learning models to perform fact-based or symbolic reasoning.
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Salon.com
“Record-shattering” heat wave in Antarctica — yep, climate change is the culprit
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that persistent summer weather extremes like heat waves are becoming more common as people continue to warm the planet with carbon pollution.
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CNET
How the solar eclipse will affect solar panels and the grid
Benjamin Lee of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says that the electrical grid will have to figure out how to match supply and demand during brief windows where the energy source goes away.
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Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Scientists struggle to explain ‘really weird’ spike in world temperatures
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that tendencies to exaggerate climate science in favor of “doomist” narratives helps no one except the fossil fuel industry.
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Vox.com
Spring is here very early. That’s not good
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that plant-flowering, tree-leafing, and egg-hatching are all markers associated with spring that are happening sooner.
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The New York Times
Can your personal medical devices be recycled?
A lab at the School of Engineering and Applied Science led the development of a COVID test made from bacterial cellulose, an organic compound.
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Tampa Bay Times
Could Florida electric bills go up because of a fuel made from manure?
Danny Cullenward of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design says that federal and California state subsidies have led to a gold rush of companies trying to get into the business of renewable natural gas around the country.
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The New York Times
Why don’t we just ban fossil fuels?
Joseph Romm of the School of Arts & Sciences says that stronger action against fossil fuels is essential to save the planet.
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CNBC
Students can soon major in AI at this Ivy League university—it’ll prepare them for ‘jobs that don’t yet exist’
The Raj and Neera Singh Program in Artificial Intelligence at Penn will be the first AI undergraduate engineering major at an Ivy League school, led by George Pappas of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
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