PHILADELPHIA — Making uniform coatings is a common engineering challenge, and, when working at the nanoscale, even the tiniest cracks or defects can be a big problem. New research from University of Pennsylvania engineers has shown a new way of avoiding such cracks when depositing thin films of nanoparticles.  

Evan Lerner ・October 11, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — The colors of a butterfly’s wings are unusually bright and beautiful and are the result of an unusual trait; the way they reflect light is fundamentally different from how color works most of the time.

Evan Lerner ・October 10, 2012

This weekend, Penn hosted the first Ivy Plus Symposium and workshops for diverse scholars, a national conference designed to encourage exceptional undergraduate students to pursue advanced training in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields. 

Jill DiSanto ・October 8, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine has been added to the list of United Way charities to which individuals in the Philadelphia area may donate as part of a workplace campaign.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・October 2, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — Whether human or baboon, it helps to have friends. For both species, studies have shown that robust social networks lead to better health and longer lives.

Evan Lerner ・October 1, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — We couldn’t live without our immune systems, always tuned to detect and eradicate invading pathogens and particles. But sometimes the immune response goes overboard, triggering autoimmune diseases like lupus, asthma or inflammatory bowel disease.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・September 28, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — A collaboration between researchers at Columbia University and Marija Drndić of the University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a three-year, $1.5 million grant for a project aimed at reducing the cost of genome sequencing.

Evan Lerner ・September 26, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — It’s not every day that a new academic discipline is born. But that’s exactly what happened in 2010, when the Project on Bioethics, Sexuality and Gender Identity — or “Queer Bioethics,” for short — came to life at the University of Pennsylvania.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・September 20, 2012

Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. On Sept. 17, that ancient starlight found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, captured and recorded it for the first time.

Evan Lerner ・September 17, 2012

Having garnered more than 3.5 million viewers, a TED talk featuring Penn Engineering professor Vijay Kumar on the making of flying autonomous robots by Penn’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Lab, has become one of the most watched TED videos to date.

September 13, 2012