Science & Technology

Islands on the climate front line

Perry World House’s Global Shifts Colloquium looked at how islands can protect their people, build resilient communities, and safeguard their environment in the climate crisis.

Kristen de Groot

Regulating the regulators of the immune system

Research led by School of Veterinary Medicine scientists reveals a new layer of complexity with which the immune system finds a balance between controlling pathogens and protecting healthy tissue.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Revising the lifecycle of an important human parasite

Researchers from Boris Striepen’s lab in the School of Veterinary Medicine tracked Cryptosporidium in real time, creating a new paradigm for how the widespread parasite reproduces in a host.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Lead toxicity risk factors in Philadelphia

Two studies identify factors that correlate with high blood-lead levels in children, pointing to ongoing environmental justice issues that disproportionately fall on children of color and poorer communities in the city.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Discovering new ways to control light

Researchers found a magnetic property in a class of materials that enables light manipulation on the nanoscale, with implications for applications such as information storage and energy harvesting.

From Penn Engineering Today

Talking energy at Penn

Energy Week 2022, hosted by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology, runs April 4-8. It includes student presentations, along with conversations about renewables, energy and the war in Ukraine, and much more.

Michele W. Berger , Lindsey Samahon



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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