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Science & Technology
‘Computational Sprinting’ could give mobile devices big bursts of speed
The smartphone you have in your pocket or purse is literally hundreds of times more powerful than the room-sized computers that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Hardware design has accelerated exponentially since then, roughly doubling every two years the number of circuits that can fit on a computer chip.
Penn’s Law and Brain Student Group Mines the Intersection of Neuroscience, Society and the Courts
PHILADELPHIA — Neuroscience, with its brain scans and complex molecular pathways, may seem to have little in common with the law — except perhaps a penchant for obscure Latin phrases.
Mayo Clinic, Penn and Partners to Explore New Ways to Predict and Control Seizures
PHILADELPHIA ― Mayo Clinic and partners from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine and College of Pharmacy, the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and NeuroVista Corporation have been awarded $7.5 million grant (U01) from the National
Penn Helps Rethink Smartphone Design With 'Computational Sprinting'
PHILADELPHIA — Computational sprinting is a groundbreaking new approach to smartphone power and cooling that could give users dramatic, brief bursts of computing capability to improve current applications and make new ones possible.
Penn Engineering prof designs cars of the future
Some high-end cars already help drivers parallel park, but it might not be too long before enhanced cars—even ones that drive themselves—are available to the masses. Right now, researchers like Daniel Lee of the School of Engineering and Applied Science are breaking new ground in designing autonomous robots and vehicles.
Penn Researchers Build First Physical “Metatronic” Circuit
PHILADELPHIA -- The technological world of the 21st century owes a tremendous amount to advances in electrical engineering, specifically, the ability to finely control the flow of electrical charges using increasingly small and complicated circuits.
Four Penn Researchers Awarded Sloan Fellowships
PHILADELPHIA — Four University of Pennsylvania faculty members are among this year’s Sloan Fellowship recipients. Since 1955, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has granted yearly fellowships to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them the next generation of scientific leaders.
Penn Researcher Helps Discover and Characterize a 300-Million-Year Old Forest, Preserved Like Pompeii
PHILADELPHIA — Pompeii-like, a 300-million-year-old tropical forest was preserved in ash when a volcano erupted in what is today northern China.
Carnegie Mellon University and Penn Engineering Receive $3.5 Million for Innovative Transportation Research
PITTSBURGH — The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science a $3.5 million grant for the next two years to conduct research and implement technologies for improving the safety and efficiency of transportation.
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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