11/15
Science & Technology
Bacteria form biofilms like settlers form cities
Bacteria form biofilms like settlers form cities
New research from the School of Dental Medicine gives a satellite-level view of how biofilms grow and expand on a surface.
New minor planets beyond Neptune
New minor planets beyond Neptune
This updated catalog of trans-Neptunian objects and the methods used to find them could aid in future searches for undiscovered planets in the far reaches of the solar system.
Penn’s pioneering mathematicians
Penn’s pioneering mathematicians
Two of the first African Americans to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, Dudley Weldon Woodard and William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor worked on fundamental problems in the field of topology and supported graduate-level math education for minority students.
Helpful interactions can keep societies stable
Helpful interactions can keep societies stable
New work by Erol Akçay of the School of Arts and Sciences and Jimmy Qian, a recent alum, challenges 50-year-old predictions that mutualistic interactions make a community unstable.
Engineers ensure quantum experiments get off to the right start
Engineers ensure quantum experiments get off to the right start
Research from the group of Lee Bassett in the School of Engineering and Applied Science describes a new approach for resetting and validating quantum states to reduce uncertainty in quantum computing experiments.
Scrap metal-powered lights win Y-Prize 2020
Scrap metal-powered lights win Y-Prize 2020
The winning team of this year’s Y-Prize, an invention competition in which entrants are challenged to pitch an innovative business plan for a technology developed at Penn Engineering, Metal Light, proposes technology to provide illumination for houses not connected to electrical grids.
A promising new strategy to help broken bones heal faster
A promising new strategy to help broken bones heal faster
To improve how broken bones heal in people with diabetes, the School of Dental Medicine’s Henry Daniell, Sheri Yang, and colleagues are leading work to develop an affordable oral therapy—grown in plants.
What craigslist can teach us about Web 2.0
What craigslist can teach us about Web 2.0
In a new book, Annenberg’s Jessa Lingel views modern online life through the lens of a site that hasn’t changed much in look or feel since it began 25 years ago.
Demystifying feline behavior
Demystifying feline behavior
Carlo Siracusa and James Serpell of the School of Veterinary Medicine contextualize recent findings in cat behavior science, debunk some cat-related myths, and explain why our kitties are not just “low-maintenance dogs.”
Illuminating interactions between decision-making and the environment
Illuminating interactions between decision-making and the environment
With a unifying model based in game theory, Andrew Tilman, Joshua Plotkin, and Erol Akçay of the School of Arts and Sciences inform dynamics in fields as diverse as ecology and economics.
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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