Natural Science

It was 3 a.m. at an engineering camp in Houston when insight struck Allison Pearce, now a junior at the University of Pennsylvania.

PHILADELPHIA — Wear is a fact of life. As surfaces rub against one another, they break down and lose their original shape. With less material to start with and functionality that often depends critically on shape and surface structure, wear affects nanoscale objects more strongly than it does their macroscale counterparts.

PHILADELPHIA –- For the third consecutive time, the Brookings Institution has been ranked Think Tank of the Year in the University of Pennsylvania Global Go-To Think Tank Report. The Report, begun in 2006, ranks more than 6,500 institutions worldwide that help bridge the gap between knowledge and public policy. 

PHILADELPHIA — Breaking up is hard to do — and can be detrimental to one’s reproductive fitness, according to a new University of Pennsylvania study.

Focusing on wide-eyed, nocturnal owl monkeys, considered a socially monogamous species, the research reveals that, when an owl monkey pair is severed by an intruding individual, the mate who takes up with a new partner produces fewer offspring than a monkey who sticks with its tried-and-true partner.

PHILADELPHIA — With a new insight into a model of Parkinson’s disease, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine have identified a novel target for mitigating some of the disease’s toll on the brain.

PHILADELPHIA — Last year, a team of University of Pennsylvania physicists showed how to undo the “coffee-ring effect,” a commonplace occurrence when drops of liquid with suspended particles dry, leaving a ring-shaped stain at the drop’s edges. Now the team is exploring how those particles stack up as they reach the drop’s edge, and they discovered that different particles make smoother or rougher deposition profiles at the drop edge depending on their shape.