Science & Technology

A researcher from the University of Pennsylvania has identified a species of dinosaur closely related to Velociraptor, the group of creatures made infamous by the movie "Jurassic Park.” The newly named species likely possessed a keen sense of smell that would have made it a formidable predator.

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone        Decorating the outside of cells like tiny antenna, a diverse community of sugar molecules acts like a telecommunications system, sending and receiving information, recognizing and responding to foreign molecules and neighboring cells.

At the forefront of a field known as “neurocriminology,” Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania has long studied the interplay between biology and environment when it comes to antisocial and criminal behavior.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University presented new preclinical data this week that evaluates the efficacy of a gene therapy treatment for achromatopsia, a rare inherited retinal disease that involves cone cells. The disease affects humans as well as dogs.

Technological limitations have made studying friction on the atomic scale difficult, but researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Merced, have now made advances in that quest on two fronts.

Dorothy Cheney, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and Abraham Nitzan, a chemist who will join Penn’s faculty in July, have been elected members of the National Academy of Scie

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone        (This is the fifth and last in a series of features introducing the inaugural Penn President’s Engagement Prize winners.)  

Partnership offers research and work experience to Penn graduate students

Like a beloved pair of jeans, human DNA accumulates damage over time, and older people’s bodies can’t repair it as well. Many scientists believe a build up of damage can cause cells to enter an irreversible dormant state known as senescence.

The brain is a privileged organ in the body. So vital to life, the brain is protected from alterations elsewhere in the body by a highly regulated gateway known as the blood-brain barrier, which allows only selected molecules to pass through.