Science & Technology

PHILADELPHIA –- A new prosthetic accessory worn on the residual limb of a transtibial (below-knee) amputee was awarded the Grand Prize at the Fourth Annual PennVention competition for student inventors at the University of Pennsylvania's Weiss Tech House.

PHILADELPHIA –- The Weiss Tech House, a student-run hub of technological innovation at the University of Pennsylvania, announced today the 11 student inventions that will compete in the fourth annual PennVention competition.

PHILADELPHIA –- The Nanotechnology Institute, or NTI, a consortium of Philadelphia-area research and technology organizations that includes the University of Pennsylvania, has received $3.5 million in funding from the commonwealth’s Pennsylvania Initiative for Nanotechnology.

PHILADELPHIA –- Along an isolated stretch of the eastern shoreline of Greece, a University of Pennsylvania classics professor and his colleagues are unlocking the secrets of a partially submerged “lost” harbor town believed to have been built by the Mycenaeans 3,500 years ago.

  PHILADELPHIA –- The University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science has received the largest single award in the School’s 156-year history to help create the fundamental networks and technologies that will put unmanned machines on the front lines of battle.

PHILADELPHIA -– Tobias Baumgart, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, and Joachim Krieger, assistant professor of mathematics at Penn, have been named Alfred P.

PHILADELPHIA –- The University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science has received a five-year, $7.5 million grant to draw inspiration from biological organisms, including humans, in order to create principles of cooperation to control teams of next-generation, unmanned, robotic vehicles.

PHILADELPHIA -– A team of scientists led by University of Pennsylvania veterinary researchers have identified a gene, TEX11, located on the X chromosome, which when disrupted in mice renders the males sterile and reduces female fecundity. This is the first study of the genetic causes of infertility that links a particular sex chromosome meiosis-specific gene to sterility.

PHILADELPHIA – University of Pennsylvania scientists studying macrophages, the biological cells that spring from white blood cells to eat and destroy foreign or dying cells, have discovered how these “policemen” differentiate between friend and foe. The paper appears as the cover article in the March 10 edition of the Journal of Cell Biology.

PHILADELPHIA -– Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine have identified a protein, ISG15, that inhibits the Ebola virus from budding, the process by which viruses escape from cells and spread to infect neighboring cells.