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Science & Technology
Penn Physicists Honored With 2010 Europhysics Prize
PHILADELPHIA -- Charles Kane and Eugene Mele of the University of Pennsylvania are among five scientists awarded the 2010 Europhysics Prize of the European Physical Society Condensed Matter Division for the theoretical prediction
Sex, Drugs and Moral Goals: A Penn Psychology Study of Reproductive Strategies and Recreational Drug Use
PHILADELPHIA –- Why is there so much disagreement about whether using recreational drugs is morally wrong? A University of Pennsylvania psychology study shows that the debate about drugs might really be about sex.The study compared two competing theories.
University of Pennsylvania Analysis: Contrary to Popular Models, Sugar Is Not Burned by Self-Control Tasks
PHILADELPHIA –- Contradicting a popular model of self-control, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist says the data from a 2007 study argues against the idea that glucose is the resource used to manage self control and that humans rely on this energy source for will power.
Penn Researchers Add Genetic Data to Archaeology and Linguistics to Get Picture of African Population History
PHILADELPHIA –- Genetic researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have combined data from existing archaeological and linguistic studies of Africa with human genetic data to shed light on the demographic history of the continent from which all human activity emerged.
“Grinding Mouth, Wrinkle Eye”: Penn Graduate Student Describes New Species of Plant-Eating Dinosaur
PHILADELPHIA –- A team of paleontologists, including a University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate, has described a new species of dinosaur based upon an incomplete skeleton found in western New Mexico.
University of Pennsylvania and Hong Kong University Physicists Describe the Melting of Colloidal Crystal Films
PHILADELPHIA –- Physicists from the University of Pennsylvania and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have reported an elegant experimental study of the melting behaviors of thin crystalline films, uncovering a variety of interesting differences between thick films of greater than four layers and thinner or single-layer films.
Cellular Workouts Strengthen Endothelial Cells' Grasp
PHILADELPHIA –- University of Pennsylvania bioengineers have demonstrated that the cells that line blood vessels respond to mechanical forces — the microscopic tugging and pulling on cellular structures — by reinforcing and growing their connections, thus creating stronger adhesive interactions between neighboring cells.
Mathematicians Solve 140-Year-Old Boltzmann Equation
PHILADELPHIA –- Two University of Pennsylvania mathematicians have found solutions to a 140-year-old, 7-dimensional equation that were not known to exist for more than a century despite its widespread use in modeling the behavior of gases.
Gene Therapy Success Sets Stage for New Treatments for Inherited Blindness, Penn Veterinary Researchers Say
PHILADELPHIA –- Veterinary vision scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have safely and successfully used a viral vector in targeting a class of photoreceptors of the retina called rods, a critical first step in developing gene therapies for inherited blindness caused by rod degeneration.
Four University of Pennsylvania Professors Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
PHILADELPHIA –- Four University of Pennsylvania faculty members have been named Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. They are among 299 new Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members recognized as leaders in sciences, arts and humanities, business and public affairs.
In the News
Scientific American
Grumpy voters want better stories. Not statistics
In a Q&A, PIK Professor Duncan Watts says that U.S. voters ignored Democratic policy in favor of Republican storytelling.
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WHYY (Philadelphia)
Climate policy under a second Trump presidency
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences discusses how much a president can do or undo when it comes to environmental policy.
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Interesting Engineering
Superhuman vision lets robots see through walls, smoke with new LiDAR-like eyes
Mingmin Zhao of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and colleagues are using radio signals to allow robots to “see” beyond traditional sensor limits.
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Technical.ly Philly
A sneak peek inside Penn Engineering’s new $137.5M mass timber building
Amy Gutmann Hall aims to be Philadelphia’s next big hub for AI and innovation while setting a new standard for architectural sustainability.
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Salon.com
Exxon CEO wants Trump to stay in Paris climate accord
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences voices his concern about the possibility that the U.S. could become a petrostate.
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Associated Press
Amid Earth’s heat records, scientists report another bump upward in annual carbon emissions
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that total carbon emissions including fossil fuel pollution and land use changes such as deforestation are basically flat because land emissions are declining.
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The Wall Street Journal
How can we remove carbon from the air? Here are a few ideas
Jennifer Wilcox of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design says that the carbon-removal potential of forestation can’t always be reliably measured in terms of how much removal and for how long.
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Associated Press
California air regulators approve changes to climate program that could raise gas prices
Danny Cullenward of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the Weitzman School of Design says that many things being credited in California’s new climate program don’t help the climate.
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Times of India
Self shocks turn crystal to glass at ultralow power density: Study
A collaborative study by researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Science has shed new light on amorphization, the transition from a crystalline to a glassy state at the nanoscale.
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Interesting Engineering
U.S. achieves billion-fold power-saving semiconductor tech; could challenge China
A collaborative effort by Ritesh Agarwal of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and colleagues has made phase-change memory more energy efficient and could unlock a future revolution in data storage.
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