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Protecting the planet at Penn
Hands planting a plant.

Protecting the planet at Penn

Earth Day and every day, the University community is at work to make the world a little better. Here are some highlights from those efforts.

Katherine Unger Baillie , Michele W. Berger

How a year in space affects the brain
Astronaut in a space suit on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station.

Astronaut Scott Kelly on his nearly year-long mission on the International Space Station. (Photo: NASA)

How a year in space affects the brain

Penn Medicine’s Mathias Basner discusses the NASA Twins Study, which analyzed astronaut Scott Kelly’s physical and mental health after he spent 340 days in space, and found that Kelly’s performance on a cognitive test battery dropped when he returned to Earth for six months.

Michele W. Berger

Answering big questions by studying small particles
inside the sno+ detector A view inside the SNO detector, a 40-foot acrylic sphere that’s covered with thousands of photodetectors. The facility is located in SNOLAB, a research facility located 2km underground near Sudbury, Canada (Photo credit: SNO+ Collaboration).

Answering big questions by studying small particles

Using electronics designed at Penn, particle physicists study neutrinos, incredibly small and nearly massless subatomic particles, to understand the fundamental nature of the universe.

Erica K. Brockmeier

Record gift from Roy and Diana Vagelos to create new energy science and technology building
Roy and Diana Vagelos

Roy and Diana Vagelos

nocred

Record gift from Roy and Diana Vagelos to create new energy science and technology building

Roy and Diana Vagelos have made a gift of $50 million to Penn Arts & Sciences for a new science center focused on energy science. The gift creating the new energy science and technology building In support of the Power of Penn Arts & Sciences Campaign is the largest in the School’s history.
Unlocking the female bias in lupus
Microscopic images of cells are blue with diffuse splotches of pink on each cell.

Unlocking the female bias in lupus

The majority of lupus patients are female, and new findings from Montserrat Anguera of the School of Veterinary Medicine and colleagues shed light on why. The research suggests that female lupus patients don’t fully silence their second X chromosome in T cells, leading to an immune response gone awry.

Katherine Unger Baillie

A bad bout of flu triggers ‘taste bud cells’ to grow in the lungs
Microscopic images of fluorescent cells show up green against a red and blue background. The green glowing cells are elongated in shape.

The discovery of tuft cells (in green) in mice lungs after flu gives researchers insights into how a bad respiratory infection may set the stage for certain inflammatory conditions, such as asthma. The cells are named for the elongated microvilli which project from their surface. (Image: Courtesy of Andrew Vaughan) 

A bad bout of flu triggers ‘taste bud cells’ to grow in the lungs

The discovery of these seemingly out-of-place sensing cells may lend insight into possibilities for protecting lung function in people who experience severe influenza infections.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Western bias in human genetic studies is ‘both scientifically damaging and unfair’
A large group of people sit on the ground outside, roughly in a circle around a group of presenters in the African landscape.

Including underrepresented groups in genomics studies, as Sarah Tishkoff (addressing participants above) has done through her career of studying African population diversity, is essential to reap the benefits of such studies, according to a new commentary in the journal Cell. (Credit: Tishkoff lab)

Western bias in human genetic studies is ‘both scientifically damaging and unfair’

In a commentary in the journal Cell, PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff and Giorgio Sirugo shine a light on the lack of ethnic diversity represented in genomic studies, and the consequences for health and medicine.

Katherine Unger Baillie , Karen Kreeger

With a second patient free from HIV, what’s next?
stem cell pipette

With a second patient free from HIV, what’s next?

Scientists have succeeded in sending an HIV patient into long-term remission, only the second time such a feat has been documented. Pablo Tebas and Bridgette Brawner discuss what this means for HIV research and for people living with the virus.

Katherine Unger Baillie

How technology is making education more accessible
Amrou Ibrahim zooms in to a text using a CCTV tablet Amrou Ibrahim, assistive technology specialist at the Student Disabilities Services Office, uses a camera-equipped tablet to zoom in on a book.

How technology is making education more accessible

Text-to-speech technology, smart pens, and smart glasses are just some of the assistive technologies that the Office of Student Disabilities Services employ on campus to meet all students’ needs in their learning environments.