Science & Technology

Penn Dental Medicine Study Produces Low-cost Drug in Lettuce

Biopharmaceuticals, or drugs that are based on whole proteins, are expensive to make and require refrigeration to store. Insulin, for example, is unaffordable and inaccessible to most of the global population.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Penn Dental Medicine Study Blocks Inflammatory Bone Loss in Gum Disease

Periodontitis, a severe form of gum disease, doesn’t just cause soft-tissue inflammation and bleeding. It also destroys the bone that supports the teeth. If it progresses unchecked, it can lead to tooth loss and is even associated with systemic inflammatory conditions like atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. 

Katherine Unger Baillie

Penn Engineers Design Color-Changing Material That Could Help Diagnose Concussions

The precise link between concussions and debilitating conditions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy is still being explored, but as the name suggests, repeated head injuries are a main culprit. Unfortunately, unlike a broken bone or a torn ligament, concussions are invisible and tricky to diagnose.

Evan Lerner



In the News


Scientific American

Grumpy voters want better stories. Not statistics

In a Q&A, PIK Professor Duncan Watts says that U.S. voters ignored Democratic policy in favor of Republican storytelling.

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WHYY (Philadelphia)

Climate policy under a second Trump presidency

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences discusses how much a president can do or undo when it comes to environmental policy.

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Salon.com

Exxon CEO wants Trump to stay in Paris climate accord

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences voices his concern about the possibility that the U.S. could become a petrostate.

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Interesting Engineering

Superhuman vision lets robots see through walls, smoke with new LiDAR-like eyes

Mingmin Zhao of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and colleagues are using radio signals to allow robots to “see” beyond traditional sensor limits.

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Technical.ly Philly

A sneak peek inside Penn Engineering’s new $137.5M mass timber building

Amy Gutmann Hall aims to be Philadelphia’s next big hub for AI and innovation while setting a new standard for architectural sustainability.

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Associated Press

Amid Earth’s heat records, scientists report another bump upward in annual carbon emissions

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that total carbon emissions including fossil fuel pollution and land use changes such as deforestation are basically flat because land emissions are declining.

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The Wall Street Journal

How can we remove carbon from the air? Here are a few ideas

Jennifer Wilcox of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design says that the carbon-removal potential of forestation can’t always be reliably measured in terms of how much removal and for how long.

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Associated Press

California air regulators approve changes to climate program that could raise gas prices

Danny Cullenward of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design says that many things being credited in California’s new climate program don’t help the climate.

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Times of India

Self shocks turn crystal to glass at ultralow power density: Study

A collaborative study by researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Science has shed new light on amorphization, the transition from a crystalline to a glassy state at the nanoscale.

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The Independent

Climate scientists fear Trump will destroy progress in his second term – and the outcome could be ‘grim’

Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that a second Trump term and the implementation of Project 2025 represents the end of climate action in this decade.

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