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Science & Technology
A Push From the Mississippi Kept Deepwater Horizon Oil Slick Off Shore, Penn Research Shows
PHILADELPHIA — When the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, 2010, residents feared that their Gulf of Mexico shores would be inundated with oil. And while many wetland habitats and wildlife were oiled during the three-month leak, the environmental damage to coastal Louisiana was less than many expected, in part because much of the crude never made it to the coast.
Penn Astrophysicists Zero In on Gravity Theory
Most people take gravity for granted. But for University of Pennsylvania astrophysicist Bhuvnesh Jain, the nature of gravity is the question of a lifetime.
Penn Vet’s Field Service Tends to the Farms
KENNETT SQUARE — It’s a quaint image: a rural vet in a pick-up truck driving down a country lane to treat a sick cow or horse.
Penn Receives $25 Million Gift to Create Basser Research Center for Inherited Cancers
PHILADELPHIA — A $25 million gift to the University of Pennsylvania from alumni Mindy and Jon Gray will establish a center focused on the treatment and prevention of cancers associated with hereditary BRCA mutations.
Penn’s Steve Fluharty Has a Hand in the “Golden Goose” Awards Highlighting Basic Research
PHILADELPHIA -- Steve Fluharty, the University of Pennsylvania’s senior vice provost for research, is participating in a new congressional program that will highlight federally funded science projects.
Three Penn Faculty Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
PHILADELPHIA — Nancy Bonini, Gideon Dreyfuss and Beatrice H.
Penn Scientists Develop Large-scale Simulation of Human Blood
PHILADELPHIA — Having a virtual copy of a patient’s blood in a computer would be a boon to researchers and doctors. They could examine a simulated heart attack caused by blood clotting in a diseased coronary artery and see if a drug like aspirin would be effective in reducing the size of such a clot.
Penn and Bryn Mawr Sign Agreement to Fast-track Undergrads Into Penn Engineering Master’s Programs
PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania and Bryn Mawr College are launching a new program that will allow undergraduates at Bryn Mawr to gain early admission into a master’s degree program offered by Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. The arrangement effe
Penn Geneticists Identify Genes Linked to Western African Pygmies’ Small Stature
PHILADELPHIA — If Pygmies are known for one trait, it is their short stature: Pygmy men stand just 4’11” on average. But the reason why these groups are so short and neighboring groups are not remains unclear.
Penn Researchers Create First Custom Designed Protein Crystal
PHILADELPHIA -- Protein design is technique that is increasingly valuable to a variety of fields, from biochemistry to therapeutics to materials engineering. University of Pennsylvania chemists have taken this kind of design a step further; using computational methods, they have created the first custom-designed protein crystal.
In the News
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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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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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Pa. environmental, religious and other groups criticize Shapiro plan for ignoring climate change
A study by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design found that Pennsylvania would benefit overall from joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
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