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Science & Technology
Penn’s Martin Seligman Honored With Inaugural TANG Prize for Lifetime of Work
Martin Seligman, the director of the Positive Psychology Center and the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences, will be honored with the inaugural
Penn-University of Florida Team Treats Pulmonary Hypertension Through the Leaves of Plants
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Florida have identified a drug that can be used to treat pulmonary hypertension, a disease for which few therapy options exist.
NIH New Innovator Award Goes to Penn Bioengineer for Lung-disease-on-a-chip Research
By Madeleine Stone @themadstone
Penn Vet Students Travel the World to Treat Wildlife
Every morning this past July, Max Emanuel, a veterinary student at the University of Pennsylvania, would get up and drive to work. But Emanuel’s was no run-of-the-mill morning commute.
DNA ‘Bias’ May Keep Some Diseases in Circulation, Penn Biologists Show
It’s an early lesson in genetics: we get half our DNA from Mom, half from Dad. But that straightforward explanation does not account for a process that sometimes occurs when cells divide. Called gene conversion, the copy of a gene from Mom can replace the one from Dad, or vice versa, making the two copies identical.
Penn's New AddLab Boasts 3-D Printers for a 3-D World
Thanks in part to an anonymous $250,000 gift, Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science is opening the AddLab, a new facility that will feature a suite of state-of-the-art 3-D printing tools.
Research From Penn and UCSB Shows How Giant Clams Harness the Sun
Evolution in extreme environments has produced life forms with amazing abilities and traits. Beneath the waves, many creatures sport iridescent structures that rival what materials scientists can make in the laboratory.
As a Citation Laureate, Penn Physicist Charles Kane Contender for Nobel Prize
Charles Kane, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Pennsylvania ’s School of Arts & Sciences, is one of this year’s Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates.
Penn Chemists Observe Key Reaction for Producing ‘Atmosphere’s Detergent’
Earth’s atmosphere is a complicated dance of molecules. The chemical output of plants, animals and human industry rise into the air and pair off in sequences of chemical reactions. Such processes help maintain the atmosphere’s chemical balance; for example, some break down pollutants emitted from the burning of fossil fuels.
Penn-led Study Ties Aging to Oxidative Damage in Mitochondria
As long as humans have been alive, they’ve been seeking ways to extend life just a little longer. So far no one has found the fountain of youth, but researchers have begun to understand how humans age, little by little, offering hope for therapies that may blunt the effects of time on the body.
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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