Through
11/26
Science & Technology
New Penn Center Will Investigate the Physics of Cancer Via $10M NIH Grant
Investigators at a new University of Pennsylvania research center will focus on key physical principles that underpin cancer’s development and growth.
Probing the Universe’s ‘Dark’ Secrets
A team of physicists and astronomers from around the globe are on a five-year mission to answer fundamental questions about our universe: Why are galaxies clustered the way they are? Why are they moving apart faster and faster, instead of gravity slowing them down?
First Place Finish for Penn’s Electric Race Car
Penn Electric Racing has taken home top honors at an international competition.
President's Engagement Prize-Winners Launch Social Impact Projects
Though they graduated mere weeks ago, five members of Penn’s Class of 2015 have already begun projects destined to make a profound impact on individuals and communities around the world, with support from the President’s Engagement Prizes.
Penn Research Simplifies Recycling of Rare-earth Magnets
Despite their ubiquity in consumer electronics, rare-earth metals are, as their name suggests, hard to come by. Mining and purifying them is an expensive, labor-intensive and ecologically devastating process.
Penn Researchers Develop a New Type of Gecko-like Gripper
Picking things up and putting them down is a mainstay of any kind of manufacturing, but fingers, human or robotic, are not always best for the task at hand.
Penn Vet Research Confirms a More Accurate Method for Blood Glucose Testing
For diabetics, a quick prick of the finger can give information about their blood glucose levels, guiding them in whether to have a snack or inject a dose of insulin. Point-of-care glucose meters, or glucometers, are also used in the veterinary world to monitor cats and dogs with diabetes or pets hospitalized for other reasons.
Penn: Mom’s Stress Alters Babies’ Gut and Brain through Vaginal Microbiome
Stress during the first trimester of pregnancy alters the population of microbes living in a mother’s vagina. Those changes are passed on to newborns during birth and are associated with differences in their gut microbiome as well as their brain development, according to a new study by University of Pennsylvania researchers.
Penn Researchers Show How Cells Solve Biochemical Challenges as They Get Bigger
By Madeleine Stone @themadstone In any textbook diagram, a group of red blood cells, skin cells or nerve cells will typically be identical in size. But, just as no two people are quite the same height and weight, in a population of real cells there are larger and smaller individuals.
Evolution Is Unpredictable and Irreversible, Penn Biologists Show
Evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould is famous for describing the evolution of humans and other conscious beings as a chance accident of history. If we could go back millions of years and “run the tape of life again,” he mused, evolution would follow a different path.
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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