Science & Technology

The brain has a complex system for keeping track of which direction you are facing as you move about; remembering how to get from one place to another would otherwise be impossible. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have now shown how the brain anchors this mental compass.

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone

Martin Seligman, the director of the Positive Psychology Center and the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences, will be honored with the inaugural

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Florida have identified a drug that can be used to treat pulmonary hypertension, a disease for which few therapy options exist.

Almost anyone who has spent time in a hospital is familiar with the routine checks of blood pressure and oxygen levels that serve as signposts of a patient’s overall health. But these measures only reflect the pulsing of blood through the large vessels, arteries and veins, not the smaller arterioles, venules and capillaries, which directly feed tissues and cells.

By Madeleine Stone @themadstone

Every morning this past July, Max Emanuel, a veterinary student at the University of Pennsylvania, would get up and drive to work. But Emanuel’s was no run-of-the-mill morning commute.

It’s an early lesson in genetics: we get half our DNA from Mom, half from Dad. But that straightforward explanation does not account for a process that sometimes occurs when cells divide. Called gene conversion, the copy of a gene from Mom can replace the one from Dad, or vice versa, making the two copies identical.

Thanks in part to an anonymous $250,000 gift, Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science is opening the AddLab, a new facility that will feature a suite of state-of-the-art 3-D printing tools.

Evolution in extreme environments has produced life forms with amazing abilities and traits. Beneath the waves, many creatures sport iridescent structures that rival what materials scientists can make in the laboratory.