Natural Science

In 1700, a massive earthquake struck the west coast of North America. Though it was powerful enough to cause a tsunami as far as Japan, a lack of local documentation has made studying this historic event challenging.

The allure of personalized medicine has made new, more efficient ways of sequencing genes a top research priority. One promising technique involves reading DNA bases using changes in electrical current as they are threaded through a nanoscopic hole.

In a unique, interdisciplinary collaboration, the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s Working Dog Center, The School of Arts and Science's Department of Physics and Astronomy, Penn Medicine’s Division of Gynecologic Oncology and the Monell Chemical Senses Center have joined together to study ovarian cancer detection by dogs and e-sensors.

Hurricane Sandy caught the public and policymakers off guard when it hit the United States’ Atlantic Coast last fall. Because much of the storm’s devastation was wrought by flooding in the aftermath, researchers have been paying attention to how climate change and sea-level rise may have played a role in the disaster and how those factors may impact the shoreline in the future.

A research team including members of the Department of Bioengineering in the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science has discovered that drug intervention to reduce intercellular signaling between astrocytes following traumatic brain injury reduces cognitive deficits and damage.

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that children as young as 2 understand basic grammar rules when they first learn to speak and are not simply imitating adults.