Penn Arts & Sciences in the News

According to research from the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, scheduling time blocks with breaks to complete different tasks can help achieve the goals of a to-do list.

“She appears ready to wield more of the power that she seemed rather reluctant to embrace in her first stay at the White House,” says Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Associate Professor, who curated the exhibition “Every Eye is Upon Me: First Ladies of the United States” at The National Portrait Gallery in 2020. “And yet, she has positioned herself firmly behind that ultra shiny table, keeping a bit of a boundary.” 

A study from Mathew Madhavacheril, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, and graduate student Joshua Kim revealed that the distribution of matter in the cosmos is less clumpy than expected. “What we found was that, for the most part, the story of structure formation is remarkably consistent with the predictions from Einstein’s gravity,” says Madhavacheril. 

Associate Professor of History Brent Cebul argues that President Biden spent too much time on efforts that American workers wouldn’t feel for years. “The time horizon associated with those big pieces of legislation was way out of sync with the exigencies of the presidential election,” Cebul says. 

The year 2024 was the hottest on record, the first to pass a 1.5°C temperature increase. Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science described what we’re seeing now as like watching the end of a dystopian sci-fi film. “We are now reaping what we’ve sown,” he says. 

In an opinion piece, columnist David Brooks references work by Angela Duckworth, Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor, stating that forming character means building strength of the heart, the mind, and the will. 
 

“Speckle” patterns in the heart of tumor cells could reveal how individuals with a common form of kidney cancer—called clear cell renal cell carcinoma—will respond to treatment, according to research from Shelley Berger, Daniel S. Och University Professor, and colleagues. “The search for answers may lead to more personalized treatments,” Berger says. “This discovery offers a new starting point” for this type of cancer. 

Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Political Science, laid out three scenarios for Trump’s campaign trail promises regarding tariffs, deportation, and foreign policy: He will succeed and triumph; he will fail, shift gears, and foster uncertainty; or he will fail yet persist regardless. 

People with damage to certain areas of the brain’s prefrontal cortex are less likely to wait for a reward. That’s according to a recently published Journal of Neuroscience study from Joseph Kable, Jean-Marie Kneeley President’s Distinguished Professor of Psychology. 

“The obstacle isn’t technology,” says Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science. “We have the technological knowhow and infrastructure to decarbonize our economy on the needed timescale.” What’s missing, he says, is the political will to do so. 

“This is the magical thing: It spreads like face cream and grips like sandpaper,” says Douglas Jerolmack, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, about mud that has coated all the balls used in Major League Baseball for decades. In a new study, Jerolmack and colleagues found what they consider to be remarkable mechanical properties of this mud.

Simon Martin, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and a curator at the Penn Museum, comments on the discovery of a previously unknown Maya complex in Mexico. “It is fascinating,” he says. “This demonstrates, to a high degree of confidence, that the landscape was heavily populated everywhere.”