If you’re looking to get festive one more time before finals, we’ve got the perfect place. Philly’s hottest spot this weekend is the Science Festival.
Located on the Outer Drive of Ben Franklin Parkway between 20th and 22nd Streets, this Penn-sponsored event makes science actually fun.
This place has everything: over a hundred exhibitors, outdoor experiments, helicopter tours…and liquid nitrogen ice cream. So come on down this weekend. The whole thing is FREE!
Penn researchers have teamed up with their pals over at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to let you know that talking to yourself is not only totally normal, but also totally healthy, because “self-directed speech” has been shown to stimulate your brain, and particularly, your memory.
“Phew! Thank goodness!” says everyone to themselves.
In other news, talking in third person is still not okay and certainly detrimental to your health.
Some Penn researchers have been making hair-raising discoveries in the realm of baldness of late. We’ve got word that thanks to some Penn scientists, baldness will be cured in the next five years. They’ve identified a protein called PDG2 present in the scalps of balding men that prevents hair from growing.
Luckily, there’s already developed drugs in place that block PDG2. Hit the bald men with some anti-PDG2 cream and baldness is cured! The scientists plan to adapt the PDG2 blocker into a usable form over the next five years and market the product to balding men everywhere. Let’s celebrate the only way we know how!
Researchers at the Wistar Institute have developed a fascinating new therapy that works to suppress– but not cure– the HIV virus, as the Inquirer reports. The study, carried out on 20 patients over a period of 24 weeks, proved successful in that 9 of the patients involved were able to suppress the HIV virus through a combination of interferon, a drug that interferes with HIV and such, and antivirals, drugs that interfere with viruses and such. The conclusion: the researchers believe they can treat HIV without the usual antivirals, which is a big deal!
Let’s try this one more time without the technical jargon: Penn scientists are cool and developed a promising new treatment for the HIV virus! Science is so fashion.
But we’re all going to die anyway, so what’s the problem? It seems like some newfangled study that turned up in this month’s Journal for Applied Psychology indicates that the young and ambitious on the prestigious education-competitive profession track (that’s us!) often die young and unhappy. As HuffPo College reports, the case is even worse for ambitious underachievers, whose consistent poor performance yet high expectations frequently lead to low life satisfaction. This makes us feel sad, but also determined for a better future, so we’ll probably die…next month? Mmmkay.
Mind you, the study was carried out solely on 717 Californians born at the beginning of the last century, and there’s a lot of room for debate over the definitions of “ambitious,” “young,” “selective,” “prestigious,” and “underachiever”; but though the relevance of the findings may only be marginal, the wider implications may still ring true for us. In any case, between this and the 2012 apocalypse, it’s becoming clear that the goddesses are VERY angry with us.
The Green Fund is a pile of cash set aside for projects that will make The Environment pleased with Penn. Money goes to proposals, submitted by any member of the Penn community, that promote sustainability.
TGF recently announced its Fall 2011 batch of prizes, which includes ozone laundry at Pottruck. Ozone laundry? Haha, does the machine go “bleep bleep bloop” and split ozone to clean clothes? Oh, wait.
The fund’s announcement gleefully notes that the projects have already begun to show return on investment. Just in case you thought that the earth was ripping us off.
…and the Med School wins again!
The Philadelphia Business Journal announced today that The Perelman School of Medicine will receive $2.5 million over the next five years to fund the study of lung repair and tissue regeneration. Surprisingly, this gift is only 1.1% of the most recent large contribution to the school, but even the smallest of multi-million dollar gifts helps in the school’s focus on chromatin remodeling factors and microRNA pathways (what?). Keep up the good work, Perelman School!
Beep beep! Angry scientists coming through! As the Scientist reports, the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at Penn is suing a former employee of 12 years, Craig Thompson, for withholding information about founding a biotech firm, Agios Pharmaceuticals. The Abramson Institute claims that Thompson is responsible for stealing their intellectual property, although Thompson claims that he had nothing to hide. So the Abramson Institute is suing him for $1 billion.
What ever happened to “the scientific community” and “not whining about intellectual property when your life revolves around finding the cure for cancer and you’re wasting time and money by filing a lawsuit so just look at the bigger picture, man”?
Well, while we were off having a bitchfit yesterday about the whole Penn/Penn State mix-up, scientists from both schools were actually putting the 150-mile difference aside, and teaming up to teach us all a little something about sleep paralysis.
Sleep paralysis is a condition in which you feel like you are awake, but you are unable to move. Episodes occur in the stages between wakefulness and sleep and can last just a few seconds or up to several minutes. Some individuals can see and hear things (hallucinations), but they are not able to respond physically to them. [It] may occur only a few times during a person’s life, or as often as every night.
The best part of the study is that experts at Penn and Penn State deduced that psychiatric patients and students have a lot in common. It turns out that these two groups are most affected by the condition.
Fall Fest is going down today! From 2 until 9 p.m., Houston’s Hall of Flags will be transformed into a rave of music, free food and disgruntled and hungover students who begrudgingly signed up to volunteer at a booth for a few hours. If you haven’t heard, the staples of Penn’s music scene (Are they staples? Maybe? What do these musicians say about us as a school?) will be there, including Rossman, Slow Dance Chubby and Star Falcon. And then DJ Sega and HOLY FUCK are going to play on College Green, starting a 7! Let’s not forget that Fall Fest is also a chance to get acquainted with some of Penn’s student groups. But let’s be real– some are clearly better others, so that’s why we’ve created this guide to the best and worst of Fall Fest 2011. To the booths!
A+ List
Chemistry Society: The Chem Society will be making liquid nitrogen ice cream! See, guys, science is sexy. And yummy! You go, Chem Society!
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