Omnia Magazine: Fall/Winter 2016

When Should We Expect the Robot Army?

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Researchers Shatter Our Idea of Glass

FA L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 6

24 Following in Darwin’s Footsteps

DATA ORACLE

THE

Richard Berk uses big data to foresee the future.

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FA L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 6

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THE DATA ORACLE

FOLLOWING IN DARWIN’S FOOTSTEPS

WHEN SHOULD WE EXPECT THE ROBOT ARMY?

Richard Berk uses big data to foresee the future.

By Michele Berger

By Abigail Meisel

Faculty discuss the fact, fiction, and future of AI.

By Susan Ahlborn

EDITOR’S NOTE

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Adventures in Scholarship

FINDINGS Plotting Murder and Paris

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Penn’s Space Program

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Lost but Not Forgotten

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Animal Entrails and Lightbulb Moments

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You’ve Got a Friendly

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Natural Deterrent

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By Blake Cole

DEAN’S COLUMN

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Turning Ideas Into Action

By Steven J. Fluharty

SCHOOL NEWS FACULTY OPINION

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The Earth-Like Planet Right Next Door

By Cullen Blake

CONTENTS

FALL/WINTER 2016

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LIFTOFF

MAPPING THE DIVINE COMEDY

RESEARCHERS SHATTER OUR IDEA OF GLASS

Physicist Mark Devlin and his students harness technology to explore the evolutionary history of the universe.

Compiled by Brooke Sietinsons

By Rebecca Guenard

By Blake Cole

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

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By Blake Cole

(INS)OMNIA

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MOVERS & QUAKERS

Office Artifacts

IN THE CLASSROOM Voter Motivations

Globetrotter: Penn Alum Finds Sports Journalism and Runs With It

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LAST LOOK

By Blake Cole

Chronicling a King’s Farewell

By Sacha Adorno

Penn Ghost Project

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Moonlight Revelry at Dozo Sagami by Kitagawa Utamaro

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EDITOR’S NOTE

OMNIA

ADVENTURES IN SCHOLARSHIP With each new issue we choose a selection of features we feel will best highlight all the exciting initiatives here in Penn Arts and Sciences. It’s both easy and challenging—there is a surplus of topics but only a limited amount of space. In this issue, both our cover story, “The Data Oracle,” and the feature, “When Should We Expect the Robot Army?,” highlight machine learning, a burgeoning field that encompasses a diversity of disciplines. While some may associate machine learning—a type of artificial intelligence where computer programs can teach themselves, and learn from new data—with disciplines like engineering, you’ll find when exploring these features that the contributions of the arts and sciences are vast and invaluable. From Professor of Criminology Richard Berk, who uses big data algorithms to find patterns that can improve forecasting criminal behavior, to Assistant Professor of Philosophy Lisa Miracchi, a theoretical roboticist who is studying what it means to be an intelligent being, intellectual contributions from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities are indispensable to the growth of applications and to our understanding of the potential, and challenges, of fields related to artificial intelligence.

In the pages ahead you’ll follow our scholars on academic adventures around the globe and into the upper atmosphere, as Professor of PhilosOMNIA is published by The School of Arts and Sciences Office of Advancement EDITORIAL OFFICES School of Arts and Sciences University of Pennsylvania 3600 Market Street, Suite 300 Philadelphia, PA 19104-3284 Phone: 215-898-5162 Fax: 215-573-2096 E-mail: omnia-penn@sas.upenn.edu STEVEN J. FLUHARTY Dean, School of Arts and Sciences

ophy Michael Weisberg and Senior Fellow in the Psychology Department Deena Weisberg travel to the Galapagos Islands in “Following in Darwin’s Footsteps,” and physicist Mark Devlin preps for the launch of a balloon-borne telescope to study the evolution of the galaxy in “Liftoff.” Hepburn Professor of Physics Andrea Liu and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Zahra Fakhraai delve into a mystery hiding in plain sight in “Researchers Shatter Our Idea of Glass,” while Ph.D. student in Italian Studies Andrea Gazzoni brings Dante’s travels through the afterlife to stunning digital glory in “Mapping the Divine Comedy.”

As you read through the features, keep an eye out for the below icons, which represent the key components of the Penn Arts & Sciences strategic plan: Foundations and Frontiers w w w. s a s . u p e n n . e d u / s t r a t e g i c - p l a n

Now that the election is over, we invite you to visit the classroom of Political Psychology in “Voter Motivations,” which allowed undergraduates this past semester to wade into the fray and examine the psychological underpinnings of the average voter. And in “Chronicling a King’s Farewell,” alumni filmmaker Erika Frankel rides a wave of critical acclaim with her journey through the final chapter of famed Chef Georges Perrier’s iconic Philadelphia restaurant Le Bec-Fin. So sit back and follow our scholars, students, and alumni through a tour of the exciting, envelope-pushing pursuits that make Penn Arts and Sciences unique.

LORAINE TERRELL Executive Director of Communications BLAKE COLE Editor SUSAN AHLBORN Associate Editor MATTHEW LEAKE Art Director ASHLEY MacDONALD MATTHEW LEAKE Designers

Diversity, Inequality, and Human Well-Being Energy, Sustainability, and Environment Humanities in the Digital Age

Mapping the Mind

Arts and Culture

Global Inquiries

Public Policy and Social Impact Quantitative Explorations of Evolving Systems

—Blake Cole CHANGE OF ADDRESS Alumni: visit QuakerNet, Penn’s online community at www.alumniconnections. com/penn. Non-alumni: e-mail Development and Alumni Records at record@ben. dev.upenn.edu or call 215-898-8136.

The University of Pennsylvania values diversity and seeks talented students, faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds.

The University of Pennsylvania does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, age, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected class status in the administration of its admissions, financial

aid, educational or athletic programs, or other University-administered programs or in its employment practices. Questions or complaints regarding this policy should be directed to the Executive Director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs, Sansom Place East, 3600 Chestnut Street, Suite 228, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6106; or (215) 898-6993 (Voice) or (215) 898-7803 (TDD).

Cover Illustration: Jon Reinfurt

DEAN’S MESSAGE

FALL/WINTER 2016

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TURNING IDEAS INTO ACTION BY

STEVEN J. FLUHARTY

Expanding our impact through policy spheres is another priority of our plan. This includes building on the work of faculty like Emilio Parrado, an immigration expert and professor and chair of sociology. He and his colleagues have partnered with a local grassroots immigrant organization and have put in motion a process to measure and document the immigrant experience of Latinos in South Philadelphia. With funding from the School and the Netter Center, he has also incorporated service learning into a sociology course that exposes researchers and undergraduates to immigrant communities. The School will be expanding engagement like

this through our new Making a Difference in Diverse Communities program, which will support initiatives that engage teams of students and faculty in research and services within various local, national, and even international communities.

Policy research is also being advanced by a new hub in the School’s Fels Institute of Government, called the Fels Policy Research Initiative (FPRI). One of the first activities undertaken by FPRI has been to award seed funding, provided by the School, toward interdisciplinary policyfocused projects. Among these are a project led by Professor and Chair of Criminology Richard Berk, with Cary Coglianese of the Law School, to engage social scientists broadly in discussion of improving government through the new frontiers of machine learning. This conversation, as well as Berk’s own research on applications of big data to problems in criminal justice, have profound policy implications for some of our nation’s most pressing social issues.

In keeping with our commitment to global inquiries, our faculty, students, and centers continue to engage in scholarship and service all over the world. We seek to expand unique opportunities like the summer internships offered through the Center for the Advanced Study of India, which have been placing students in a wide range of organizations in India since 2008 (see p. 60). At the same time, we continue to bring the world to our campus. Just weeks ago, I introduced the President of Mongolia at an event

Candace DiCarlo

President Gutmann’s vision for Penn embraces transforming knowledge that originates here into solutions for pressing needs, locally and globally. This vision is not only shared by the School of Arts and Sciences, it is woven into our strategic plan, Foundations and Frontiers. The urgent need to find more sustainable ways to meet our demand for energy and to reexamine our relationship with the environment; the possibilities that the new frontiers of understanding the mind present for everything from someday halting the progression of neurodegenerative diseases to reversing the brain and behavioral impact of childhood trauma; the imperative to understand and address the harmful consequences of pervasive inequality in our society: these are all areas that we at Penn Arts and Sciences have prioritized, recognizing the potential to maximize our impact on society.

Steven J. Fluharty, Dean and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience

co-sponsored by our Center for East Asian Studies and the newly opened Perry World House. And with the recruitment of key senior scholars including Beth Simmons, the Andrea Mitchell University Professor of Law and Political Science, our faculty strength in international relations is stronger than ever.

The School’s strategic plan is providing a blueprint for all of these initiatives, and more. I for one am looking forward to watching the innovative ideas of our faculty in action, the inspiring initiatives of our students, and the many ways that the impact of Penn Arts and Sciences will be felt in communities locally and globally.

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SCHOOL NEWS

NEW FACULTY AT PENN ARTS AND SCIENCES

Penn Arts and Sciences welcomed 26 new members in 17 departments to its standing faculty for the 2016-2017 academic year. The group includes the 17th and 18th Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professors, Aviv Nevo and Beth Simmons, and a Presidential Distinguished Professor, Nicholas Sambanis.

OMNIA

A pioneer in the use of empirical data to analyze consumer behavior, Nevo is a George A. Weiss and Lydia Bravo Weiss University Professor, with appointments in the Department of Economics in Arts and Sciences and the Department of Marketing in Wharton.

Simmons, a world-renowned authority on international relations and human rights, is an Andrea Mitchell University Professor, with joint faculty appointments in the Law School and the Department of Political Science in Penn Arts and Sciences. Sambanis, also in political science, is among the world’s leading scholars of violent civil wars, secessionist conflicts, and strategies for conflict resolution and peace-building.

Asian Languages and Civilizations; Michael Jones-Correa, Visiting Professor of Political Science; and Kathleen Morrison, Sally and Alvin V. Shoemaker Professor of Anthropology.

Other new senior faculty include Christopher Atwood, Professor of East

Courses like Inescapable Classics: Reimagining Antiquity Through the

FRESHMEN EXPLORE LOCAL ARTS AND CULTURE

Andrea Mitchell University Professor Beth Simmons; George A. Weiss and Lydia Bravo Weiss University Professor Aviv Nevo; Presidential Distinguished Professor Nicholas Sambanis

SCHOOL NEWS

FALL/WINTER 2016

Visual Arts and To A(nime) from Z(en): Japanese Performance and Aesthetics are welcoming Penn freshmen to the museums, galleries, theatres, music venues, and literary hubs of Philadelphia. Sponsored by Penn Arts and Sciences, Penn’s Art and Culture Freshman Seminars are small, discussion-based classes designed to introduce first-year students to the wealth of opportunities available to them both in the city of Philadelphia and through Penn's own academic programs and cultural centers.

Destinations range from familiar Philadelphia attractions like the American Philosophical Society Museum to lesser-known resources like the Colored Girls Museum in Germantown, and the students have lists of places to

visit on their own. Local artists, actors, writers, critics, and curators also come to Penn to lecture, conduct workshops, and participate in discussions, letting students hear from working professionals in the arts. In-class workshops, like a traditional Japanese tea ceremony and kimono workshop, are also part of the programs.

OPENING A DOOR TO GRADUATE EDUCATION

Eight Penn schools joined forces this fall to put on the first Penn Honors Diversity (PHD) symposium, welcoming outstanding undergraduates from the Middle States region—particularly those from underrepresented groups— to learn about the value and availability of a Ph.D.-level education. The visiting students met current graduate students and faculty and presented their own research at a poster session.

Panels ranged from practical advice about job opportunities and how to get into graduate school to topics like “Can I Get a Ph.D. and Still Have a Life?”

The PHD steering committee was led

by Eve Troutt Powell, associate dean for graduate studies and Christo-

Brooke Sietinsons

Professor Ayako Kano of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and her "Anime to Zen" freshman seminar visit the Shofuso Japanese House in Fairmount Park and participate in a tea ceremony.

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SCHOOL NEWS

OMNIA

Alex Schein

Toni Walker, C'20 (left), and Imani Davis, C'20

pher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of History and Africana Studies in Penn Arts and Sciences, and Michael Nusbaum, associate dean for graduate education, director of biomedical graduate studies, and professor of neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine. As a keynote speaker, Larry Gladney, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the associate dean for natural sciences in Penn Arts and Sciences, described his own path to a Ph.D.

CENTER FOR AFRICANA STUDIES PRE-FRESHMEN PROGRAM CELEBRATES 30TH ANNIVERSARY The Center for Africana Studies Summer Institute for Pre-Freshmen—an

intense, weeklong course of study aimed to not only expand students’ intellectual horizons, but also prepare them for life on campus and in the classroom—recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. The program, which is attended by incoming Penn students from diverse backgrounds and intellectual interests boasts a wide range of courses reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of Africana Studies. This past summer’s courses included “A Borderless Caribbean?: The Creole Geographies of Dominica’s Popular Music,” taught by Professor of Music and Africana Studies Timothy Rommen, and “Slaves, Rebels, and Abolitionists in American History,” taught by David Boies Professor of History Kathleen Brown, among others.

SCHOOL NEWS

FALL/WINTER 2016

Camille Charles, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences, professor of sociology, Africana Studies and education, and director of both the Center for Africana Studies and the Summer Institute for Pre-Freshmen, says the Center is incredibly proud not only of the program, but also of the legacy that it represents. “For 30 years, we have helped to prepare incoming freshmen for the rigors of Penn while introducing them to the interdisciplinary field of Africana Studies,” says Charles.

“On a more personal level, we have helped students to foster meaningful relationships with their classmates and the renowned faculty who teach in our program. The Summer Institute provides a unique opportunity for Penn’s incoming students, and this is something that the University should be very proud of.”

Each Science and Race class featured a panel of four to six experts. Discussions were presented through the lenses of anthropology, biology, genetics, sociology, philosophy, and law. Reading materials and other online resources were provided, including materials and age-appropriate teaching tools for use with younger children.

Penn’s Camra media program is developing an accompanying documentary on Science and Race, designed for middle school and older audiences, which will be available in 2017. To learn more about The Public Classroom @ Penn Museum and see the lectures and accompanying materials, visit: www.penn.museum/sites/ pmclassroom/

The College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) has launched a website dedicated to the program’s 20th anniversary, featuring a video of MES faculty and students speaking to the program’s strengths and unique offerings. There is also information about the MES team, a calendar of events, a digital portfolio of student and alumni work, and a series of slideshows covering a wide range of MES-related topics, from “20 Ways You Can Shop Greener and Cleaner” to “20 Employers Where MES Alumni Have Landed.”

Visit the site at: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/mes20

HISTORIAN AND ACTIVIST MARY ENVIRONMENTAL FRANCES BERRY A PUBLIC CLASSSTUDIES HONORED ROOM TO DISMASTERS AT 20 CUSS SCIENCE AND RACE Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. This fall, The Public Classroom @ Penn Museum’s “Science and Race: History, Use and Abuse” brought together more than two dozen internationally recognized experts from diverse backgrounds for a powerful, in-depth exploration of race, science, and justice, in a free series of evening classes geared to audiences ages 14 and above.

The Master of Environmental Studies (MES) recently celebrated its 20th anniversary at Penn. Over the past two decades, MES has championed a multidisciplinary approach to environmental work and research and has trained leaders in the field today. A combination of core sciences, policy knowledge, and hands-on application prepare students to tackle the complex issues facing our natural world.

Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history, was honored with a plenary session at the 2016 meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). The session examined Berry’s prolific record of groundbreaking scholarship and her career as an international civil rights activist, including her time as a member and chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

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SCHOOL NEWS

OMNIA

Johanna Austin

PPEH artists in residence, the Pig Iron Theatre Company presents a new symphonic theater hybrid that offers a meditation on life and planetary cycles, set in a time of rapid ecological and technological changes.

PPEH CONTINUES TO GROW Searches are underway at Penn Arts and Sciences to recruit at least three new tenure-track faculty who combine humanistic studies with environmental themes over the next three years.

These faculty positions will allow the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) to build a curriculum in environmental humanities and

implement a graduate certificate and minor for undergraduates.

In a world of rising waters and temperatures, PPEH’s public programming in 2016-17 focuses on the theme “Float on Warmer Waters.” Two international conferences, a film series, and workshops and performances with artists in residence are among the scheduled events, while PPEH continues to build out collaborations with academic and community partners along the Schuylkill River. “PPEH’s work on campus and beyond recognizes that the environment is no less “in us” than “out there”—i.e., the environment resides in the city no less than

on mountains’ majesty,” says founding director Bethany Wiggin. “PPEH foregrounds the various ways human lives are entangled with the nonhuman.”

These mutual entanglements inform the work by graduate and undergraduate research fellows as well as the new working group of faculty from across the University. “This bridge-building approach to environmental humanities distinguishes PPEH from programs at other universities, and it's allowing us to make significant contributions in academia and beyond,” says Wiggin.

SCHOOL NEWS

FALL/WINTER 2016

lation by mid-century, China faces an eldercare crisis of epic proportions.

FLI TAKES ON ELDERCARE IN CHINA Fox Leadership International (FLI) has launched a five-year research and service project on eldercare in China.

With an elderly population that will be about as large as the entire U.S. popu-

In April, FLI's 30-member China-U.S. Partnerships for Educational Advancement and Cultural Exchange Student and Alumni Steering Society sponsored a forum on eldercare in China that was framed by discussions among Penn's 2,100 presently enrolled Chinese national students. Then in May, FLI partnered with the Penn School of Nursing Science faculty to host a delegation of Chinese leaders working on various aspects of the eldercare crisis. Among other activities, the group visited the School of Nursing-supported Living Independently

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for Elders center in West Philadelphia.

Later in the spring, eight FLI undergraduate and alumni fellows spent six weeks in Suzhou, China, where they studied the topic with diverse academic, business, and government experts and visited facilities in several cities.

FLI Faculty Director and Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society John DiIulio was among the keynote speakers at a conference on China's eldercare crisis at the Penn Wharton China Center in Beijing in September.

This could change

everything.

The career you imagined. The challenge you crave. The professional master’s degrees that put it all within reach.

• Applied Geosciences • Applied Positive Psychology • Chemical Sciences

WWW.UPENN.EDU/PROFESSIONAL

• Environmental Studies • Liberal Arts • Organizational Dynamics

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FINDINGS

OMNIA

PLOTTING MURDER AND PARIS BY

MATT SINGER

A single short story published in 1841 in a Philadelphia-based magazine by a Boston-born writer invented modern French detective fiction. That is but one insight explored in Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France by Andrea Goulet. Edgar Allan Poe’s story, which describes the investigation of a double murder surrounded by strange circumstances, continues to shape the global forms of the crime novel, Goulet says.

But why did Poe—who had not previously visited Paris—choose Paris as the setting for “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” his genre-defining story? “Poe studied the French language and its literature,” notes Goulet, a professor of Romance languages. “The 19th century saw the rise of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines.

And Poe was very aware of the particulars of the popular, sensationalist press in France, which brought the grisly details of domestic crimes to thousands of readers.”

In Legacies, Goulet searches for clues using literary analysis as well as geology, biology, paleontology, archaeology, and cartography. “I’ve always been interested in science in literature,” says Goulet, whose first book was Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction. “Fictional detectives, who are often compared to paleontologists unearthing clues to the past, have an insight that others don’t. They are gifted in rational, science-based deduction but invested in what would seem to be its opposite— the realm of bloody violence that lies below the layers of history.”

Using science as a prism for viewing the specific time and place that gave

rise to detective fiction—19th-century Paris—allows Goulet to track popular crime stories from their origins to the 21st century, where the genre still organizes the way we conceive urban space. During the modernization of Paris undertaken by Napoléon III and Georges-Eugène Haussmann between 1853 and 1870, demolitions unearthed fossilized animal and human bones and other remains of millennia of life.

“Paleontology and geology were coming to the fore, particularly in Paris,” notes Goulet, who is also an active participant in Penn’s Humanities + Urbanism + Design Initiative (HUD), which brings together faculty and students representing varied humanities and design disciplines to think about cities past, present, and future.

“Parisians were fascinated by these discoveries, which revealed a deep and violent national past” that resonated with what Goulet describes as a period of continuous revolutions in France starting in 1789. The history of crime fiction, for Goulet, is fueled by an enduring tension between “political insurrection and domestic drama.”

In the 20th century, a number of detective novels included maps of the fictional scenes of the crime. “Like crime fiction, maps are an attempt to impose rational order on fundamentally violent events and scenes,” says Goulet. “The chaos and trauma of underground crime subverts the rational, ordered, modern city, while conflict aboveground underscores the sociological aspect of crime. And throughout the genre’s modern history—from Poe’s imaginary rue Morgue and Eugène Sue’s serial Mysteries of Paris to today’s Scandinavian crime novels and television shows like The Wire—location continues to matter.”

FALL/WINTER 2016

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FINDINGS

PENN’S SPACE PROGRAM BY

SUSAN AHLBORN

In outer space, big data meets infinite information. How can we measure the expansion of the universe? Can we find gravitational waves that trace back to the Big Bang?

Are there other planets that can sustain life? Now, after years—sometimes decades—of planning and technological development, three major U.S. astrophysics projects will address these questions, and Penn scientists have a major role in all three.

Now under construction in Chile, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will have a 3.5 billion pixel camera to survey and photograph large areas of the sky all night, every night, for 10 years. This “time domain astronomy” will let scientists see the development of the universe over six billion years of its history.

Penn scientists involved in LSST are Gladney; Bhuvnesh Jain, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences; Mike Jarvis, a research scientist in physics and astronomy; Gary Bernstein, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics; and Masao Sako, associate professor of physics and astronomy. Jain led the project’s cosmology effort as a spokesperson for its Dark Energy Science Collaboration, while Jarvis is co-coordinator of its weak gravitational lensing working group.

LSST should start being used in 2019, with science operations beginning in 2022.

Penn is also part of a group awarded a $38.4 million grant by the Simons Foundation to establish an observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert that will investigate cosmic microwave background radiation to study the evolution of the universe.

The cosmic microwave background is the last glow given off by the cooling universe after the Big Bang, and it contains the signature of the primordial gravitational waves that were produced by that event, says Gladney.

Mark Devlin, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and

LSST

“We’re pushing on different forms of technology in ways that haven’t been done before because no one has ever had datasets as large as this,” says Larry Gladney, Penn Arts and Sciences’ Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence, and professor of physics and astronomy. “We’ve only recently understood that we could achieve this.”

An artist's conception of a close-up view of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

Astrophysics, is a specialist in the design and construction of novel telescopes and cryogenic receivers operating at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. “Over decades of time, you can eliminate all other sources of radiation, and what’s left is so sensitive that we can infer the physics occurring a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang,” says Gladney. “This is not science fiction. It’s science literally written in the sky—it’s amazing.”

The third project will send a telescope into space itself, providing a field of view of the sky that is 100 times larger than the images from the Hubble Space Telescope and eliminates interference from the earth’s weather and atmosphere. The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will take advantage of a particular type of supernova that explodes with a nearly fixed amount of energy. Scientists can use this consistency to measure the distance to the supernova and, by measuring the redshift of its radiation, know how far away it should be, based on what we know about the history of the universe. By contrasting these numbers, they can learn more about how the expansion of the universe has been changing.

“The sky is very cluttered. You’re looking through a lot of other stars and galaxies to see the targets, which are billions of light years away,” says Gladney. Bhuvnesh Jain is leading one of the two teams responsible for defining the six-year mission of WFIRST, which will include measuring light from a billion galaxies and performing a survey of the inner Milky Way to discover planets outside our solar system.

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FINDINGS

OMNIA

LOST BUT NOT FORGOTTEN BY

ABIGAIL MEISEL

A mathematician and physicist who translated Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica into French. A British thinker who was admired by the canonical philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. A theoretician who argued that men and women should be considered equal under God. These historic figures number among a little-known group of female philosophers who wrote and disseminated their ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Some of these women were famous in their own time. Others worked in the shadows. But all were nearly lost to history.

Now, the work—and lives—of these formidable women are being rediscovered by a new generation of philosophers, including Karen Detlefsen, associate professor of philosophy and education.

“Some of these women were well known and respected in their own times, and some worked behind the scenes but were still influential,” says Detlefsen, who specializes in early modern philosophy and is co-editor of the book Women and Liberty, 1600 to 1800: Philosophical Essays, a collection of academic studies forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Her rediscovery of female philosophers of this era began when she was researching her thesis. Poring through letters from Leibniz to a fellow philosopher, she came across a sentence that would change the course of her academic life: “My system most closely resembles that of Anne Conway,” he wrote.

“I was stunned to see the name of a woman in his letter,” says Detlefsen. “Conway was an English aristocrat, and, it turns out, an influence on Leibniz. Reading that name bowled me over.”

It was an era when the traditional seats of philosophy, monasteries, and universities—which excluded women and anyone not in the upper classes—were giving way to those not in the educational elite.

“During this time the autodidact gained a lot of currency because the thinking was that the human mind is an independently powerful thing, and you don’t need an authority to figure out great things,” Detlefsen says.

Important female thinkers of this era were almost always women from elite social classes, and many of them held aristocratic titles, such as Lady Anne Conway, who was a viscountess, and the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Margaret Cavendish. Other famous names from this era include English feminist and philosopher Mary Astell, and the Frenchwoman Émilie Du Châtelet.

A friend and collaborator of Voltaire, Du Châtelet was renowned in her day for her brilliance in math and physics, and it was she who first translated Newton’s writing into French. Her work fell into disfavor with the advent of the French Revolution, which brought down the monarchy and aristocracy. During the revolution, Du Châtelet’s son was executed and her work became relegated to obscurity.

“I wouldn’t call these women philosophers ‘feminists’ because that term and a well-worked out understanding of feminism didn’t show up until the 19th century,” Detlefsen says, “but they were astute in capturing the psychological lives of women and were addressing the idea that men and women are fundamentally equals.”

Detlefsen wondered if Conway—who lived and wrote in the mid-17th century—was a one-off example of a woman philosopher of that era.

These women were writing during a time that was “very much the age of the independent thinker,” Detlefsen explains.

Courtesy of Karen Detlefsen

“I wanted to see if there were more, so I started searching for them,” Detlefsen says. “I learned that there were dozens and dozens of female philosophers who lived during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe.”

Karen Detlefsen, associate professor of philosophy and education

FALL/WINTER 2016

FINDINGS

ANIMAL ENTRAILS AND LIGHTBULB MOMENTS BY

SUSAN AHLBORN

Most of us have had a great idea pop up out of nowhere, often when we were not actively thinking about the subject at all—maybe on a walk or after a nap. Or we’ll have a hunch that turns out to be true.

Peter Struck, the Evan C Thompson Professor of Excellence in Teaching in classical studies, believes it was this phenomenon that the ancient Greeks and Romans were expressing through divination—a practice that had them looking at the natural world for answers. He makes the case in his new book Divination and Human Nature: A Cognitive History of Intuition in Classical Antiquity.

Classical society had many paths to divination, and used it to answer questions ranging from the epic—such as whether to go to war—down to small domestic issues. Your dreams were important. You could also consult oracles, who Struck says ranged, “from very expensive, like the oracle at Delphi with its own temple, all the way down to the oracle you’d go to in the marketplaces.”

A third method of divination was through animal sacrifice, which was a routine act of piety then. “If you were a good person you did a lot of sacrifice,” says Struck. “And afterward you could read the entrails of the animal. It was thought that there were messages built into those pieces.”

Beyond these, Struck says almost everything could have been seen as a divine sign, from overheard words to the movement of leaves on trees. “They were looking for what information is built into the universe and how they might gain access to it.”

Classicists have looked at the social role divination played in ancient society: as a way to appeal to an outside authority who had the status of an international or nonpartisan organization—like going to The Hague, says Struck. “It’s a really interesting mode of social communication and a way of building consensus, but that’s not the whole story.”

Others have tended to dismiss divination as superstition, “as if, because you were superstitious, somehow you would decide that the world was coursing with hidden messages,” says Struck. “The one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other.

It’s not a very good explanation, and it misses out on a lot of interesting things we can find out by thinking about it more seriously.”

Then Struck spent a year as a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He worked with cognitive scientists, evolutionary biologists, and experimental psychologists who were studying all the ways human beings think without being consciously aware that they are thinking. He found himself drawing a parallel with the practices of divination.

“I started thinking about divination as an ancient version of some of the things that the scientists were looking at,” Struck says. “I think we as human beings have a certain capacity to know things without consciously directing our attention to thinking about them, and that when that happens it’s mysterious to us.

“What I’m claiming is that when the ancients talked about these moments of insight that they said arrived from divine signs, they were talking about something analogous to what we talk about under the broad rubric of intuition. But they thought, ‘I was looking at that plant or had a dream, so that must have been what did it.’ And just as for us, intuition is a like a placeholder that lets us talk in a polite way about something that, at its core, is pretty mysterious. We still don’t really have a clue as to where that comes from.”

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FINDINGS

YOU’VE GOT A FRIENDLY From the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the status of Asian Americans has been conditioned by U.S. foreign relations. Josephine Park, an associate professor of English, started out to write a book on the portrayal of “the Asian enemy.” But she was surprised by what Asian Americans themselves were writing in the second part of the 20th century.

“The Asian American literature I was reading wasn’t about the demonization of Asians,” she says. “Instead they were saying, ‘Oh, we love America. You know we’re your best friends, right?’ They’ve been in the war, they’ve been tortured. And yet they still wanted to be America’s best friend.”

Whether these sentiments were real or a survival tactic, Park became interested in how the writers were incorporating themselves into U.S. society. Instead of a book about enemies, she wrote Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American Literature.

Most Koreans and Vietnamese who came to America after the war had been allies—known as “friendlies”—of the U.S. in Asia. The term had first been used in New Zealand to de-

OMNIA BY

SUSAN AHLBORN

scribe natives who were working with the empire. “So they are racially marked, and they are compromised from the start,” Park says. “When you’re a friendly, you can’t be a real friend.”

The first Asian American literature after Korea, says Park, tended to be about the experience of the writers, or of people the writers knew. But much of this literature was heavily fictionalized and based on Western models. One of the most successful authors, Richard E. Kim, was a South Korean army officer who got a scholarship to go to Middlebury College, then earned an M.F.A. and eventually taught at the University of Iowa. His book The Martyred opened with an epigram from Camus and made the New York Times bestseller list. “This was someone who was carefully schooled in the new postwar professionalized writing class,” says Park. “He was telling a version of his own experiences on the battlefield. But he’s translating them into a high literary form. It’s not a book about the politics of the war at all; he wants it to be a philosophical meditation.”

While Koreans migrated to America in waves, Vietnamese refugees came in a flood right after the war. Most early Vietnamese American writers focused on the refugee experience. The best-known is Le Ly Hayslip, whose book When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace was made into a film

by Oliver Stone.

A woman from the peasant class with a grade school education, Hayslip told her story in English and addressed it to the American G.I.s. “There is Vietnamese American literature which is more interesting and aesthetically sophisticated,” Park says. “But I went back to her because I thought she was actually doing something really powerful.

She’s taking this kind of Buddhist conception and says, ‘I forgive you, American G.I.s.’ And she also says ‘My story is what I want to tell you because I was at the middle of the war.’ She takes the reins of her own story.”

In both Korea and Vietnam, friendlies justified the fight and were pulled into proxy warfare. Despite the inequality of the relationship, though, Asian American writers drew on it and their experiences to stake their own claim on America.

“I don’t need to police them on their politics,” says Park.

“The protagonists who had been damaged through the encounter with America on the battlefield wanted to use that to their advantage, to make a claim to belong.”

FINDINGS

FALL/WINTER 2016

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NATURAL DETERRENT BY

BLAKE COLE

If you’re looking to relocate and poring over crime statistics, chances are the number of trees in the potential neighborhood isn’t the first variable that to comes to mind. But a new study co-authored by John MacDonald, professor of criminology, suggests that tree cover may actually play a role in violence prevention.

“I came across some literature on the impact of trees on health,” says MacDonald, who is also the Penny and Robert A. Fox Faculty Director of the Fels Institute of Government. “There were a couple studies on crime, but they weren’t always convincing. If I told you that houses with nicer trees around them can have less crime, you might say, that’s probably just because they’re in nicer neighborhoods.”

“I suggested to him that we dig deeper and he loved the idea,” says MacDonald, who has a background in studying how variables in urban settings—like the prevalence of vacant lots—affect crime. “He knew from his work that Cincinnati was a city that had been hit particularly hard by the beetles, so he contacted their local station and they pointed me in the right direction.”

“There are many hypotheses. For instance, if you have trees with canopy on them, they may block visibility into homes, which is a natural deterrent to possible intruders,” says MacDonald. “This theory is given credence by the fact that property crime turned out to have the highest increase when trees were absent.”

Trees also reinforce the environmental health of a neighborhood, improving air quality and increasing the amount of shade for residents— significant given that there have been numerous studies linking an increase in temperature to an increase in violent crime.

“Tree and foliage death creates a sense of blight, which makes any neighborhood—regardless of its economic standing—less desired over time,” says MacDonald. “If we can offer strong proof that planting more trees would reduce crime, and have other health benefits, then it isn’t hard to imagine spending a couple hundred dollars to deter crime while also adding value to the homes.”

Courtesy of John MacDonald

But MacDonald says it’s more complex than that. After reading a paper written by U.S. Forest Service researcher Geoffrey Donovan, which linked neighborhoods where beetles had killed the commonly found ash tree with a higher mortality rate, MacDonald approached him, curious about a potential correlation with crime. The resulting study, “The Association Between Urban Trees and Crime: Evidence from the Spread of the Emerald Ash Borer in Cincinnati,” was published in Landscape and Urban Planning.

In order to correlate tree death and crime, MacDonald studied the coordinates provided to him by the Forestry Service and compared them with crime reports. He found that, across the board, most major categories of crime went up after the beetles had attacked.

MacDonald says the idea holds special promise because it’s non-inflammatory.

“It’s not like we’re sitting here debating people’s Second Amendment rights,” says MacDonald. “I mean, who’s against having decent trees?”

John MacDonald, professor of criminology

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FACULTY OPINION

THE EARTH-LIKE PLANET RIGHT NEXT DOOR

By Cullen Blake

Illustration by Sam Chivers

OMNIA

FACULTY OPINION

FALL/WINTER 2016

Our Milky Way galaxy is home to tens of billions of stars like our Sun. Thanks to extensive surveys using ground-based observatories and NASA space telescopes, we now know that, statistically speaking, most of these stars host planets. To put this in perspective, there may be more planets in the Milky Way than there are trees on planet Earth. This past summer we learned that the closest star to our Sun hosts a planet similar in mass to Earth, a planet with an estimated surface temperature that is just about right for liquid water.

The planet, Proxima Centauri b (not a very creative name, we know), is so close to our solar system that a multi-decade effort to send probes to beam back images of the planet’s surface may be possible. The diminutive star Proxima Centauri is our galactic next-door neighbor, its planet may be the closest thing to an Earth twin yet discovered, and we might be able to (virtually) visit this planet in the next half decade. The discovery of Proxima Centauri b is a planet hunter’s dream come true.

The idea that our solar system is one of the multitudes in the heavens is ancient: Giordano Bruno advocated a similar viewpoint in the late 1500s.

But, until relatively recently, we had no proof that our solar system wasn’t unique. In the two decades since the discovery of the first “exoplanets,” astronomers have discovered thousands more. We have come to understand not just that planets are common, but also that some of these planets are very different in size and composition from the familiar

eight (sorry, Pluto!) orbiting our Sun. Detecting planets that are like Earth—rocky bodies orbiting their host stars in the so-called Habitable Zone, where it is not too hot and not too cold, is a staggering technological challenge. The discovery of Proxima Centauri b by a team led by Dr. Guillem Anglada-Escudé of Queen Mary University in London required a painstaking analysis of more than 15 years of data and a novel take on where galactic prime real estate might be located.

In the absence of a greenhouse effect, the temperature of a planet is determined by the radius and temperature of its host star and the planet-star distance. So, a planet orbiting a big, hot star would have to be far away from the star to maintain a comfortable temperature. Conversely, if the host star were small and cool, then the planet would have to be very close to the star to realize that same temperature. From the point of view of detecting planets, this presents a huge advantage. It is easier to detect planets orbiting small stars and it is easier to detect planets close to their host stars. This small star double whammy is exactly the advantage Anglada-Escudé and collaborators exploited to find Proxima Centauri b. In this case, Proxima Centauri is less than 20 percent of the mass and radius of the Sun, meaning detecting its Earth-mass companion is just within the grasp of our existing technologies.

What would conditions be like on this planet? Could it potentially be

suitable for the type of carbon-based life that we are familiar with? These fascinating questions drive our search for Earth-like planets. Inferring the conditions on the surface of a distant planet is hard, particularly without any direct measurements of the planet’s atmosphere. An advanced alien astronomer peering back at Earth with a sophisticated observatory might detect subtle signs of our vibrant ecosystem—like methane and oxygen in our atmosphere and oceans covering significant portions of Earth’s surface. We are a long way from making these types of measurements of Proxima Centauri b, but a new generation of telescopes, including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s successor, are an important step in that direction.

Eager to learn much more about this planet in their lifetimes, a group of scientists and engineers convened by billionaires Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg is currently working on plans to send a fleet of miniature space probes to Proxima Centauri b.

Together, these “nanocrafts” would beam back data about the planet’s surface. This ambitious project, called Breakthrough Starshot, would take decades—up to 30 years for the miniature craft to reach Proxima Centauri b and almost five years for data to be received back here on Earth. I, for one, think the results will be well worth the wait.

Cullen Blake is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy.

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DATA ORACLE

THE

RICHARD BERK USES BIG DATA TO FORESEE THE FUTURE.

By

ABIGAIL MEISEL

Illustrations by

JON REINFURT

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hould an arrested offender be permitted to post bail?

Should a judge incarcerate a convicted felon or place the individual on probation? Should an inmate seeking a court-authorized parole release be placed under supervision in the community? What kind of security is required so that certain inmates do not pose a danger to themselves, other inmates, or prison staff?

These are just some of the critical questions that decision makers in the criminal justice system—judges, magistrates, parole boards, and prison administrators among them—must make every day. They weigh the facts and make their decisions, often with too little time and incomplete information, which can result in poor outcomes.

Richard Berk wants to increase the chances that these decisions will be more accurate and more fair by applying big data to criminal justice practice. Berk, a professor of criminology, is an international leader in the use of machine learning: he amalgamates very large datasets with hundreds of thousands of observations and many hundreds of variables. Berk uses many different data sources—including records from police departments, courts, prisons, and departments of probation and parole—to provide information about large numbers of offenders.

The data is fed into a computer; then, Berk’s algorithms find relationships and patterns that can “dramatically improve

forecasting the likelihood individuals will engage in criminal behavior,” he says.

He uses standard programming languages that have the basic structure for the algorithms needed and then hand tailors them for each application. He then passes that along to the criminal justice agencies that implement the software on their computers and with their data sets.

Berk, who is also chair of the Department of Criminology and holds an appointment as a professor of statistics in Wharton, describes his approach to creating what he calls “categories of risk” for potential offenders as an “actuarial method to help inform criminal justice decisions, but not to determine those decisions.” He has expounded on his method in many academic papers and his most recent book, Criminal Justice Forecasts of Risk: A Machine Learning Approach.

“There’s no predetermined model,” he says. “We give the information we have to the computer and let an algorithm figure out what the relationships are.”

One predictive relationship, for example, is between the age at which someone commits their first offense and future criminal activity.

“Individuals who start early are predisposed to longer and more violent criminal careers,” Berk says. “The algorithm also confirmed that street crime is a young man’s game that peaks in his late teens and early twenties, after which the risks fall off very rapidly. In contrast, domestic violence offenders can remain high risk into their forties and beyond.”

Berk, collaborating with Professor Susan

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Sorenson, Director of the Ortner Center in the School of Social Policy and Practice, has used machine learning to predict which offenders reported in domestic violence incidents would re-offend. Based on this research, Berk and Sorenson have been working with the Philadelphia Police Department to help improve how domestic violence incidents are documented and processed.

In another research study—conducted with Professor Sorenson, and Geoffrey Barnes, a lecturer at Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology—data were collected on over 28,000 arraignment cases in which offenders in Philadelphia faced domestic violence charges.

The data were analyzed with machine learning to project which offenders posed a significant threat during the time before their charges were officially resolved. Of particular importance were forecasts of violence in which serious injuries would result.

In a paper published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies last March, the researchers posited that using the forecasts could cut in half the number of people rearrested; in other words, the number of offenders arrested again for battering their victims.

“The most important decision in an arraignment is whether to release an offender before his or her next court date,” the article stated. “If magistrates used the methods we have developed and released only offend-

“The algorithm confirmed that street crime is a young man’s game that peaks in his late teens and early twenties ... domestic violence offenders can remain high risk into their forties and beyond.” ers forecasted not to be arrested for domestic violence within two years after an arraignment, as few as 10 percent might be rearrested.”

Berk has also applied machine learning to recidivism for violent

crimes more generally. The Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole is using his software to forecast whether inmates released on parole would be rearrested, especially for crimes of violence. This information helps determine whether pa-

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role will be granted. The pilot project showed a 20 percent reduction in recidivism. Related work for the Philadelphia Adult Probation and Parole Department is currently used to determine the kind of supervision provided for individuals once they are placed back into their communities. One key finding is that a large number of individuals on probation pose almost no risk to public safety and can be minimally supervised. This has led to a more efficient use of supervisory resources.

Jay Wiley

Richard Berk, professor of criminology

In addition to collaborating with criminal justice organizations across the country, Berk helps agencies responsible for child welfare, both in the U.S. and abroad. He is starting a project to develop forecasting software for the State of New South Wales in Australia in order to predict which children whose families are currently receiving social services are at risk of life threatening child abuse. Closer to home, he has consulted with Child Protective Services of the Maryland Department of Human Resources.

Berk frequently collaborates on projects with Penn colleagues across disciplines. “It’s one of the great joys of my work,” he says. “They’re a talented, wonderful bunch. I’m lucky they are all on campus because together we are making real progress that might not happen otherwise.”

In addition to Professor Sorenson, he is working on projects with Aaron Roth, asso-

“Social scientists usually create a theoretical model about the way the world works ... but what is learned depends on how good the theory is. With big data we can, with no apologies, go where the data take us."

ciate professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science; and Michael Kearns, Professor and National Center Chair in the Department of Computer and Information Science, and the founding director of Penn’s Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences; and Cary Coglianese, Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and director of Penn’s Program on Regulation, which specializes in regulatory law.

Last April, Berk and Coglianese won seed funding from Penn’s Fels Policy Research Initiative to launch a pilot effort to examine how machine learning can innovate government policy. The project, called “Optimizing Government: Policy Challenges in the Machine Learning Age,” involves a series of five seminars—one of which was held last spring—that are designed to foster collaboration across Penn and bring leading analysts and government leaders working on policy applications of machine learning to campus.

The conferences will center around the risks and rewards of using machine learning not only in law enforcement, but also in other government agencies, such as those responsible for regulatory decision-making, security and defense, social service delivery, energy management, and economic forecasting, among other areas. There is some urgency to these discussions; as Berk and Coglianese have noted, “Already some government agencies are exploring limited ways to use machine learning in support of a range of governmental responsibilities.”

That there may be challenges associated with introducing these new tools to a variety of policy applications may come as no surprise.

Last July, for example, Bloomberg Media’s website posted a story about machine learning that featured Berk and stated, “Supporters of these tools claim they’ll help solve historical inequities, but their critics say they have the potential to aggravate them, by hiding old prejudices under the veneer of computerized precision."

Berk acknowledged that “underlying issues about race and gender are real, [but] critics assume the goal is perfection, and that’s silly.

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We just need to improve current practice,” he says. Berk notes that judges make decisions “all the time by grouping people together. They look at a person and think, ‘I’ve been on the bench 10 years and I’ve seen lots of offenders, and I know this type.’ They’re estimating risk based on their experience. That’s current benchmark,” he says.

Berk’s goal is for criminal justice decisions to be more accurate and fair, and he is confident that this can be done. He compared machine learning to traditional methods of research in criminology.

“Social scientists usually create a theoretical model about the way the world works and then test that model with data,” Berk explains. “But what is learned depends on how good the theory is,” he added. “Sometimes the theory provides insight, and sometimes it is a straight-

jacket. With big data we can, with no apologies, go where the data take us. Often that is a very good place.”

Fellow social scientist Herbert Smith, a professor in the Department of Sociology and director of the School’s Population Studies Center, agrees. “There is no doubt that big data will have a big influence on how people think about social issues in the future,” he says. “Seeing the future is in part prediction, and this is where it seems to me that big data—the telescoping of scale and the computational revolution that allows us to see connections that we could not see (or imagine) previously—is going to become important in our understanding of social issues.” Given his groundbreaking role in this new wave of social science, Smith notes, “We are fortunate to have Richard Berk at Penn.”

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FOLLOWING in DARWIN’S FOOTSTEPS to TEACH the PUBLIC ABOUT EVOLUTOIN

By Michele Berger

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O

n the isles of the Galapagos, giant tortoises munch on cactus pads and native fruit, then spend hours resting. Thirtypound iguanas—some a pale bubblegum pink, others splotchy yellow and black—bask in the sun.

Blue-footed boobies preen their feathers and show off in a special mating dance surrounded by some of the 13 sparrow-sized finch species there.

These are the creatures Charles Darwin made famous. Many of them live only on these islands, a place today considered one of the world’s key diversity hotspots.

With this as their backdrop, researchers Michael Weisberg, professor and chair of the philosophy department, and Deena Weisberg, a senior fellow in the psychology department, delved into a new and unique project.

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As scientists who study how people learn, they’re creating a documentary series about evolution, the aim of which is to grasp how much people really know about this subject and the best way to teach it. They traveled to the islands in December 2015 to shoot, then spent the next several months splicing together footage into short films about adaptation, variation, and natural selection using three different approaches: traditional documentary, cinema vérité, and a making-of style.

Next, they plan to test the success of each and eventually crown a winner.

“Most science documentaries, if not all science documentaries, are extremely traditional,” says Michael Weisberg, who along with Deena Weisberg co-directs the Penn Laboratory for Understanding Science (PLUS). “One thing we’re curious about is if you make the science documentary look a little more cinematic, if you bring the audience into the scene somehow, could you actually teach science more effectively?”

A 2014 Gallup poll revealed that more than 40 percent of Americans believe in creationism, the idea that 10,000 years ago, God created humans in the form they exist today. Though the number of people who take the opposite view—that humans evolved, and with no help from a higher power—has doubled since 1999, the scientists still didn’t believe the veracity of such a high creationist percentage.

The project began long before the pair landed on the island chain off Ecuador, with a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Using the NSF grant, they partnered with Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center (where both Weisbergs are also affiliated) to build a survey with more point-

Fausto Rodriguez

Cinematographer Brian Christiansen films a giant tortoise on Santa Cruz Island for a PLUS film about tortoise adaptation.

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ed questions, including two ways of accepting evolution with an important role for God. The new questionnaire, posed to a nationally representative sample, yielded only 25 percent creationists.

Simultaneously, the team started contemplating how evolution reaches a broad public and garnered funding from Penn’s Online Learning Initiative. “The idea was, let’s isolate a couple of core evolutionary concepts and experiment with ways of presenting the material,” says Michael Weisberg.

Documentary filmmaking became their chosen method, and the Galapagos, their living laboratory.

“Most science documentaries are extremely traditional ...

If you bring the audience into the scene somehow, could you actually teach science more effectively?”

“Being a set of islands, they’re a really good place for observing creatures that you wouldn’t see anywhere else and to see the ways that the environment can impact how a species changes over time,” Deena Weisberg says. “We went there to try to follow in Charles Darwin’s footsteps.” But before they boarded a plane, they needed to understand what they were after.

Enter Sabrina Elkassas, Kelly Kennedy, and Emlen Metz.

“It was supposed to be the generalized American public, interviews of a randomized sample,” says Kennedy, a senior majoring in psychology with a minor in philosophy. “I was interviewing friends, family members. We were

University Communications

Penn undergraduates Elkassas and Kennedy spent the spring 2015 semester conducting interviews about evolution, overseen by Metz, a fifthyear psychology graduate student.

They talked with Catholic priests and nuns, Muslim community members, and folks in retirement homes—anyone willing to broach the controversial subject.

Deena Weisberg, senior fellow in the psychology department, discusses the PLUS Evolution Documentary project for a teaser trailer.

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“In this country, science and scientists have very high prestige, but a few topics—evolution, climate change, the use of vaccines—continue to be controversial in the public while there is no controversy in the scientific community”

asking specifically about what thoughts the person had on the origins of life, what their beliefs were religiously.”

The research team came away with a broad range of specific answers but one overarching conclusion: “A lot of people have no idea what evolution is,” Metz says.

From there, the two undergraduates spent the summer watching dozens of nature documentaries—any the professors could dig up from the past 30 years—pinpointing the most enlightening parts, noting different themes, clipping scenes to create a database from which to work. They also attempted treatments for each of the documentary styles, plus one for a control film about geological formation of the Galapagos.

In distinguishing the approaches, Michael Weisberg explains, “The traditional documentary style has voiceover narration, it has music, it’s paced rather slowly, it has wide shots. The audience is told exactly what it should be seeing and thinking.”

Vérité filmmaking, developed in 1960s France, inspired the second style, notes Deena Weisberg. “We’re going to make the viewer feel like he or she is actually there in the Galapagos,” she says. “Our guide will be talking directly to the camera as if talking to somebody there having a conversation with him.”

When they discuss the third, the behind-the-scenes style, both researchers get visibly excited. It was prompted, they say, by the popularity of reality television and the after-credits clips in nature docs revealing how filmmakers captured a scene.

“We’re going to use the discussions producers are having with the camera operator and the naturalist guide to actually narrate our film,” says Michael. “If we want people to notice the small differences among organisms, we’re not going to use narration, and we’re not even going have the guide [say it].”

“We actually think that might be one of the most effective ways to convey this material,” he adds.

Soon they’ll know for sure; following completion of all documentaries, the team will assess the success of each using tests developed by Metz and Deena Weisberg, which will be given to viewers before and after screening. They plan to start local, showing the trio of shorts to participants on Penn’s campus. Whenever possible, they’d like to conduct

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in-person interview tests; while more involved, these discussions tend to paint a deeper picture of people’s understanding. Eventually, they’ll release the set online.

The project is somewhere near its midpoint now, driven forward by the excitement of the scientists behind it, the multidisciplinary approach afforded by Penn, and the prospect of making a true difference in the public’s scientific education.

“This is one of the first occasions that I know of where psychology is being used to iteratively test how

good a program is at teaching the content it’s trying to convey,” Deena Weisberg says. “The psychology [will] not only tell us whether people like it, but also whether they’re learning what they’re supposed to learn.”

in the scientific community,” he says. “We really hope that projects like this help us understand where the public is, what blocks their ability to accept scientific knowledge, and how we can intervene in useful ways.”

And if they’re not, the Galapagos team can modify the films, Michael Weisberg says.

For bonus content related to this article, visit: https://omnia.sas.upenn. edu/bonus-content

“In this country, science and scientists have very high prestige, but a few topics—evolution, climate change, the use of vaccines—continue to be controversial in the public while there is no controversy

Courtesy of Michael Weisberg

The tattered remains of the film crew after hiking the Sierra Negra volcano on Isabela Island in the pouring rain.

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WHEN SHOULD WE EXPECT THE ROBOT ARMY? ARTS AND SCIENCES FACULTY ON THE FACT, FICTION, AND FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. BY

SUSAN AHLBORN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

ASHLEY MACKENZIE

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“ N POPULAR CULTURE, THERE’S A PRETTY SIMPLE EQUATION: IF YOU TAKE A MACHINE, GIVE IT A BRAIN, AND GIVE IT A GUN, THE FIRST THING IT WANTS TO DO IS DESTROY HUMANITY,” SAYS MICHAEL HOROWITZ, AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. “I THINK IT SAYS MORE ABOUT HOW WE THINK OF OURSELVES THAN IT DOES ABOUT THE MACHINES.” And though The Terminator or similar science fiction is the first thing that comes to mind for some, artificial intelligence in other forms is already a part of our world. What about a program that can help doctors better understand variations in autism?

Or an algorithm that finds patterns in literature we never would have seen? What if the “killer robot” is a weapon system that can protect military bases and ships from missile attacks?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined in many different ways.

These stretch from machine learning, when computer programs can teach themselves to grow and change as they are exposed to new data, to an as-yet nonexistent true artificial intelligence that can interact with reality and set its own goals.

Concern about new technology didn’t start with AI. “When I hear people say this is the first time in history we are really scared of technology, I ask them to read poetry from the Thirty Years’ War, which went on from 1618 to 1648,” says Heidi Voskuhl, an associate professor of history and sociology of science.

“It’s filled with a despondency that has to do with the wartime technologies of destruction.”

As we navigate the fourth industrial revolution, people are again worried about losing their jobs to machines, about being killed by a machine, about dehumanization. At the same time, no one ever compared the internal combustion engine to a child, as reporter Charlie Rose did with IBM’s Watson during a story on 60 Minutes.

From weapons to language to memory to literature, Penn Arts and Sciences faculty are not only developing new forms and applications for AI, they’re thinking through its implications—for better and worse.

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THE SOULLESS SOLDIER Associate Professor of Political Science Michael Horowitz first became interested in next-generation defense tools during a fellowship year at the Pentagon. The Associate Director of Penn’s Perry World House, Horowitz has written and spoken extensively on military applications of AI. In 2015 he addressed a United Nations assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, dedicated to emerging issues related to autonomous weapons technologies.

When used to describe a weapon, “autonomous” means one that operates independently. The U.S. and 25 other nations now have close-in weapon systems that defend against incoming missiles. These can

be run by a human but have an automatic mode that will detect threats and counterattack if threats are coming in too fast for a human to handle. A person still has to turn it on, however.

Could there ever be a weapons system operated by algorithms that could activate itself?

Not anytime soon, according to Horowitz.

“But it’s already raising questions, one of the largest being, “Is there something inherent about being a person that means a machine should not have the power to decide whether you live or die?”

He also points out that if the goal in war is to win in a way that minimizes casualties and

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THE SOULLESS SOLDIER (CONT'D) suffering, AI might be a way to do that. “If you imagine machines that don’t get tired, don’t get angry, and can responsibly execute commands, it’s also possible to imagine applications of AI that can reduce human suffering in a war, and that’s not a bad thing either. It’s a real dilemma.”

Horowitz predicts that over the next 10 years, we’ll start to see the introduction of more machine autonomy into militaries, but in basic ways like the automation of logistical

processes and more use of autopilot. “A big innovation push for the U.S. military right now surrounds what they call human-machine teaming, which is explicitly about trying to leverage emerging technologies to help people make better decisions,” he says.

“This concept of teaming also has applications well beyond the military context, which makes sense since much of the innovation in AI is happening in the commercial and academic sectors.”

THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN ROBOT Penn Engineering’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception (GRASP) Lab might seem a weird place to find an assistant professor of philosophy. But theoretical roboticist Lisa Miracchi is studying intelligence itself: what it is to be an intelligent being, and how the non-intelligent, non-agential elements that make us up can add up to an intelligent being.

“Unlike the brain, we understand how robots work really well, and that gives us a new perspective on the problem,” she says. The collaboration has motivated her to get more concrete and specific about some of her ideas—and to brush up on her calculus.

Miracchi, who is authoring a chapter in the forthcoming book The New Evil Demon:

New Essays on Knowledge, Justification, and Rationality, thinks that defining AI in computational terms is too simple.

She’s interested in what she calls agency—what it is for a system to have its own goals.

“We can get computers to beat world-class chess players, but we don’t think they’re really intelligent, and why not?” she asks. “The best thing I can come up with is that it doesn’t matter to the computer. It’s a tool accomplishing the goals of its programmers. My dog couldn’t play chess to save his life, but he has his own goals.”

Computational systems operate completely internally, with only the data they are given, and the contents of that data are irrelevant for understanding how they work. Miracchi thinks that humans and other agents have precisely the op-

posite property. “The contents of my mental life are really important for explaining why I do what I do. I think somehow the relationship between the brain, the body, and the environment puts us in certain special kinds of relationships to things in the world.”

In principle, Miracchi sees no reason that an artificial intelligence could not be created, and nothing to indicate that only systems that have neurons can be intelligent. “Maybe we’ll discover that organic systems have special properties that are really important for having consciousness and agency. I don’t think we have any reason to think that’s true yet,” she says, then adds, “It would be really interesting if it wasn’t. I don’t have an agenda as far as that’s concerned.”

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THE MEMORY CHIP With a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Professor of Psychology Michael Kahana is working on a device that could restore memory function in patients with neurological disease or brain injury.

Kahana studies the basic functions of how we store and retrieve memories. Through a unique collaboration with neurosurgeons and neurologists at eight academic medical centers, including the Perelman School of Medicine, Kahana’s team studies memory in patients who have electrodes implanted in their brains as part of the neurosurgical treatment of intractable epilepsy. By monitoring electrical signals recorded from these electrodes as patients play memory games on a bedside computer, the team has been able to identify patterns of brain activity that are indicative of good versus poor memory function.

“Using these signals we can predict when a studied item will be remembered and when it will be forgotten,” Kahana says. “We can also predict when someone is about to correctly remember a previously studied item and when they are about to make a memory error, recalling an item that was not actually studied,” Now his team is exploring whether these biomarkers of good memory function can be used to help restore memory in impaired individuals.

They are doing this using targeted electrical stimulation in small areas within deep brain regions that are important for memory function.

“By examining how electrical stimulation modulates the neural signatures of good memory, we can determine when, where, and how to stimulate the brain to improve function,” says Kahana.

Kahana’s team is collaborating with Medtronic Corporation and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to build next-generation brain stimulator technology and high-density electrodes that will be able to greatly enhance the ability to responsively stimulate the brain to improve function.

Kahana emphasizes that this kind of memory chip is not intended to “give people super memories.” Rather, he hopes to “promote people’s natural abilities so they are at the top of their game most of the time.”

Asked to speculate about whether some kind of technology will ever be able to augment the brain to perform beyond its natural abilities, he compares it with eyeglasses that could make your vision more than perfect. “But given that the brain is such an amazingly tuned device to solve its problems, I think it’s going to be a lot harder to improve on its capabilities than to restore them.”

THE ELECTRONIC EAR One of the challenges facing people diagnosed with autism is difficulties in communication.

It has also become more clear that “autism” is not a single condition that fits easily into a mold. “People use the word ‘spectrum,’ but even that is mis-

leading,” says Mark Liberman, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics.

“It’s really a multidimensional space. And furthermore, it’s a corner, or probably several corners, of a space we all live in.”

Liberman and his team have been working with Penn’s Center for Autism Research to transcribe and digitize the answers given for a section of the Autism Diagnostic Observer Spectrum (ADOS). Looking at

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THE ELECTRONIC EAR (CONT'D) many aspects, including the words used, the rate of speech, and the amount of pausing versus speaking, they found that there was a good deal of differentiation among ASD children and those with other disorders such as ADHD. “We would like to join with other sites to examine several thousand interviews in the hope of really being able to learn something about what the true dimensions underlying this area are,” says Liberman.

The work may eventually also help to develop a shorter and easier way to diagnose the con-

dition and test the effectiveness of treatments.

Linguists at Penn and elsewhere are also working in areas including speech recognition and synthesis, machine translation, and information retrieval from texts. One way it will affect our lives, Liberman believes, is that the automated systems that handle phone calls to many businesses will probably be able to perform as well as humans in five to 10 years.

whose livelihoods were affected by the invention of the power loom,” he says. “Norbert Wiener, who invented the term cybernetics, observed in the 1950s that machine labor is a kind of slave labor, and that people who have to compete with that have to accept in effect the conditions of slave labor. He suggested that if we think about it right, maybe we can find ways to make the transformations in a more humane fashion.”

“There are people whose livelihoods will be affected, just as there were lots of weavers

THE LITERARY CRITIC As chair of the 2016 National Book Award’s fiction committee, James English had his own reading list this year. The John Welsh Centennial Professor of English and his fellow writers and literary scholars started with 400 novels and slowly narrowed them down to the winner. Or they could have just asked a computer which book would win.

“Last year, Andrew Piper at McGill did something nifty,” says English. Piper digitized the shortlisted and winning books for Canada’s Giller Prize from the last 20 years, then ran an algorithm to pick that year’s winner. “The computer basically looks for an outlier, the one that stands out,” says English, faculty director of Penn’s Price Lab for the Digital Humanities. But the computer generated two outliers. English describes the more extreme one as “avant-garde, quite unusual to even be considered”; the other was more traditional. Says English, “Andrew, in his wisdom as a literary scholar, predicted the more traditional book would win. But in fact the book that the machine predicted won the prize.”

For English’s own Contemporary Fiction Database project, his team is working with books since 1960 in two groups: top 10 bestsellers, and books that were shortlisted for or won a major award. They discovered that around the beginning of the ‘80s, the two categories separated along temporal lines.

Most award-considered books since then are set more than 20 years in the past, while 90 percent of bestsellers now take place in the present or future.

Now they’ve created and trained an algorithm to tell when a book is set more than 20 years before its publication. English says, “Historical novels are hard to discover algorithmically, but it turns out to be a very important distinction.”

“The machine can’t explain the patterns it sees, but it is making itself smart about a social process,” he says. “Literature is a very complicated social practice. This is where literary studies converge with a lot of what’s being done in the social sciences working with Twitter data. Rather than making assumptions and building models, we’re letting the machines find what they will based on frequencies, and then tell us what they see.”

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THE DIGITAL MIRROR Worries about inhuman humanoids started long before any actual robots were created. From ancient Greece’s Cadmus turning dragon’s teeth into soldiers to early 20th century media that racialized and sexualized robots, “it’s about power,” says Heidi Voskuhl, an associate professor of history and sociology of science. “But it’s just one manifestation of our fears about technology.”

Voskuhl studies the history of technology from the early modern to the modern period and is the author of Androids in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self, which won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History of the American Philosophical Society. Androids and robots have a particular fascination for us because they look and act like we do, but Voskuhl thinks our identification with technology doesn’t stop there.

“I believe one powerful thing about our psyche is a desire to identify with something outside ourselves. Otherwise we don’t learn from each other, and you never see yourself mirrored. We recognize ourselves in anything.”

We may also identify with technology because we view it as competition. “Speech recognition is very different from an automated loom run by a steam engine,” says Voskuhl. “However, the concern that we’re made obsolete, that is fairly old.”

She points out that, as a democratically governed people, we feel we are not really in charge of where technology is going. “I might even say that technology progresses autonomously and we don’t have input on it, something called technological determinism,” she says. There are now also concerns that some seemingly objective algorithms may be unfair.

“If we get denied a mortgage, it’s probably some algorithm. I think even your zip code goes in there.”

However, Voskuhl warns against jumping to conclusions or settling for quick answers. “People sensationalize because our desire to see something is so strong. But it’s okay to say we don’t know.”

For bonus content related to this article, visit: https:// omnia.sas.upenn.edu/bonus-content

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LIFTOFF Physicist Mark Devlin and his team of students harness cutting-edge technology to comb through the evolutionary history of the universe.

BY

BLAKE COLE

PHOTOS BY

BROOKE SIETINSONS

How far would you go to understand how we got here?

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Clockwise from top left: Aaron Mathews, C'17, and Matthew Riley, ENG'19, testing a motorized xy-stage; oscilloscope reading out a waveform from a Fourier transform spectrometer;

T

he question flashes across the screen in the trailer for the 2011 documentary BLAST!. The camera cuts to Mark Devlin as he oversees the launch of a massive high-altitude balloon against the backdrop of the Antarctic.

It’s a moment Devlin plans to recreate in December 2017 with the fourth launch of BLAST, or Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, a sophisticated telescope that detects submillimeter light from distant star-forming clouds of dust and gas, providing clues to how stars and galaxies were formed. Devlin, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, is not only project lead, but a mentor for a cohort of undergraduate and graduate students working on critical components—everything

Michael Plumb, C'18, ENG'18, assembling a solar panel array with visiting high school student Olin Wei; circuit board and multimeter used for testing temperature sensors.

from navigation electronics to cooling systems—in preparation for BLAST’s upcoming fourth launch.

“BLAST allows our group to study how the universe evolves—how it went from being very chaotic to something which has structure on all scales,” says Devlin.

“From the very first experiment, much of the project was built by undergraduates. It’s a dynamic where the older, more experienced people in the lab expect that part of their job is to bring younger people online and get them the experience they need to conduct research after they leave here.”

Erin Healy, C’12, LPS’17, who was first introduced to the project when she saw Devlin discussing a documentary on the project on the Colbert Report in 2009, spent the summer working on

solar panels. “It's really important that we test the solar panels to make sure that we'll have enough power in flight for the electronics,” says Healy, who, after receiving a bachelor’s degree in classical studies, enrolled in the Liberal and Professional Studies program, and is currently pursuing a post-bac in physics. “We need to know what the angle will be to the Sun, and what the Sun's intensity will be in order to correctly identify how much power we'll need to fly.”

The frames that mount these solar panels were designed by physics major Michael Plumb, C’18, ENG’18. “We needed something that was lightweight, structurally stable, and would hold the solar panels without breaking them or clamping them too hard,” says Plumb.

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Nathan Schor, C'19, Aaron Mathews, C'17, Amarsingh Gawande, C'18, Erin Healy, C'12, LPS'17, and Michael Plumb, C'18, ENG'18, testing the performance of the solar panels on the lawn outside David Rittenhouse Laboratory.

Much of the work on BLAST takes place in the high bay, a large structure on the Penn campus that houses the gondola, the part of the telescope that will be lifted via balloon into space. “I’m working on the electronics of the gondola, which includes the flight computers in charge of the navigation, and the power distribution box, which runs through the solar panels and the batteries to the rest of the components,” says Amarsingh Gawande, C’18, a physics major.

Aaron Mathews, C’17, also a physics major, spent the summer working on the cooling system. “In order to detect the right data from gas clouds, the detectors for the telescope have to be very cool,” says Mathews.

“They're cooled with liquid helium inside of a giant refrigerator essentially. So my project was building a motorized valve that will release the helium from the tank on the telescope's descent back to earth.”

The students say work on the project has helped to shape their views on the potential of collaborative research. “Coming into Penn I had heard it described as a research institution but I never really had a great understanding of what that meant,” says Nathan Schor, C’19, another student researcher on the project. “Now, to me, it means work-

ing with people that are specialists in their field from all across the world and helping to advance our understanding of the universe.”

Plumb calls Devlin a fantastic mentor, commenting that, “He showed us what really goes into a project of this magnitude.”

As BLAST prepares for its next launch, Devlin says the major components—thanks to the help of the students—are just about finished. “In June 2017 we will ship the equipment to NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas,” he says.

“Our whole team will converge there to integrate BLAST with the NASA instrumentation and get it ready to ship. We will arrive in Antarctica near the end of October so that we are ready for a launch in mid- to late December.”

The goal for the 2017 flight is to make measurements of polarized dust emission in star-forming regions of the galaxy. These measurements will help the researchers determine if galactic magnetic fields play a dominant role in suppressing star formation in galaxies.

For bonus content related to this article, visit: https://omnia.sas.upenn.edu/bonus-content

Left to right: Amarsingh Gawande, C'18, Nathan Schor, C'19, Erin Healy, C'12, LPS' 17, Aaron Mathews, C'17, Michael Plumb, C'18, ENG'18, Matthew Riley, ENG'19, and Mark Devlin, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, pictured in front of the gondola of the BLAST telescope at Penn's Experimental Cosmology High Bay Facility.

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MAPPING THE DIVINE COMEDY A Digital Humanities Study in Dante’s Geographical Imagination A PROJECT BY ANDREA GAZZONI, PH.D. CANDIDATE, ITALIAN STUDIES COMPILED BY BROOKE SIETINSONS | DESIGNED BY JASON KILLINGER

Brooke Sietinsons

ANDREA GAZZONI, GR'18

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Considered a classic of world literature, the Divine Comedy by poet of the Late Middle Ages Dante Alighieri recounts the journey of self-styled pilgrim Dante as he travels the otherworldly spaces of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, searching for redemption. But the tale is also an encyclopedia of medieval geography; from small Italian villages to mythological landmarks, the poem is rife with real-world references.

The question is, how did Dante translate this knowledge into his writing, and how can we represent the complexity of his geographical imagination? With the project Mapping the Divine Comedy, Ph.D. candidate Andrea Gazzoni, GR'18, seeks to address such questions using an innovative digital interactive map that acts as a guide for readers.

Developed from June 2015 to May 2016, the project was funded by an Early Incubation Grant from Penn’s Price Lab for Digital Humanities, with Kevin Brownlee, professor of romance languages, serving as co-investigator.

Both didactic and scholarly, the project is an invaluable resource for Dante scholars and students alike— and for anyone simply intrigued by the world of the Divine Comedy.

“Over the last several years, I have had the pleasure of supervising Andrea’s highly innovative and extremely important project,” says Brownlee.

“The computerization of the Divine Comedy’s maps is absolutely unique as a resource in the world of Dante scholarship. It will allow a new and deeper reading of the text.”

Past attempts at interpretive tools have been limited by the static nature of their format, as a traditional map can incorporate only a small amount of features. Digital tools, on the contrary, provide an opportunity to create multilayered dynamic visualizations. After poring over the Divine Comedy, Gazzoni tagged 345 items, for a total of 729 mentions, each accompanied by the quotation from the related passage. The map allows users to visualize and sort places according to a number of literary, cultural, and geographical categories.

Each location is visualized according to distinctive features dependent both on the specificity of the passage in which it appears and on its status in late medieval culture.

The geographical references in the Divine Comedy span a very wide area—from Norway to Ethiopia and Gibraltar to the Urals. On the next two pages we present a detail of Italy, which contains the highest concentration of references, as evidenced on the heat map shown below.

OMNIA

Italy as Seen from the Afterlife

Rimini

REFERENCES: CLASSICAL, MYTHOLOGICAL, VISITED BY DANTE, EXPLICIT, DIRECT SPEECH

AND THE CITY WHOSE FLANK THE SAVIO BATHES, JUST AS IT LIES BETWEEN THE PLAIN AND THE MOUNTAIN, SO LIVES BETWEEN TYRANNY AND LIBERTY.

Polenta Arezzo Romena

Montaperti Siena

Prato Pistoia

Campo a Piceno

Fano Aventino Urbino

Punta del Faro

Ceperano

Gaeta

Tagliacozzo

Palestrina

Roma Monte Soratte

TOSCANA

Caprona Monte San Giuliano

Bulicame Monte Fumaiolo Corneto Pieve al Toppo San Benedetto dell’ Alpe Acquacheta Gaville Monteriggioni Firenze

Cecina Lucca

Explicit

Monte Tambura

Periphrasis

Pietrapana

Visited by Dante

Simile Adjective

Carrara

Mythological

Pisa

Luni

References

Classical

Faenza Prada

PUGLIA

REFERENCES: PERIPHRASIS, DIRECT SPEECH

Direct Speech

Bologna

APPENNINI

CANTO 27 | LINE 52

Locations

ROMAGNA

Cunio Bagnacavallo

INFERNO

CESENA

72 286

Este Padova Mira Oriago

Pietra di Bismantova Lucca Mantova Pietole Verona

Focaro

Cattolica

Verrucchio

Ravenna Venezia

Asciano

Verona

THEY BUILT THEIR CITY OVER THOSE DEAD BONES; AND, AFTER HER WHO FIRST CHOSE THE PLACE, THEY NAMED IT MANTUA WITHOUT ANY OTHER AUGURY.

Bertinoro Arezzo Eremo di Campadoli Santa Flora Campaldino Pratomagno Monte Falterona Campagnatico Siena Talamone Firenze Colle Val d’Este

CANTO 20 | LINE 93

Lavagna

MANTOVA / MANTUA

TOSCANA

Peschiera

Trento

Brescia

Bergamo

Genova

Vercelli Novara

Garda

Mantova Governolo

REGIONS MENTIONED

Bologna Fiesole Este Medicina Padova Imola Faenza Forlí Marcabó Cesena

LOMBARDIA

PIANURA PADANA

Noli

Explicit Periphrasis Adjective Simile Direct Speech

Lerici

LITERARY REFERENCES

Milan

VISITED BY DANTE

Lavagna

Allesandria

Classical Mythological

Chiavari Sestri Levante

CULTURAL REFERENCES

LOMBARDIA

INFERNO, PURGATORY, PARADISE

Senigallia

REFERENCES: VISITED BY DANTE, PERIPHRASIS

I AM THE LIFE OF BONAVENTURA OF BAGNOREGIO, WHO IN MY GREAT DUTIES ALWAYS SUBORDINATED THE LEFT-HAND CARES.

La Verna

REFERENCES: EXPLICIT, DIRECT SPEECH

ROMA / ROME CANTO 32 | LINE 102

Brindisi

PUGLIA

PUNTA DEL FARO CANTO 28 | LINES 49–51 Etna

SICILIA

Benevento

Napoli

APPENNINI

Monte Cacume Anagni

Gubbio

Fano Roma

Monte Carpegna Bolsena

Capo Passero

Punta del Faro

Palermo

REFERENCES: CLASSICAL, MYTHOLOGICAL, VISITED BY DANTE, EXPLICIT, ADJECTIVE, DIRECT SPEECH

CALABRIA

HERE YOU WILL BE BUT BRIEFLY A DWELLER IN THE WOOD; AND WITH ME, WITHOUT END, YOU WILL BE A CITIZEN OF THAT ROME IN WHICH CHRIST IS A ROMAN.

Catona

SICILIA

Montecassino Cassino Aquino Gaeta

Anagni

Longa Roma Acquasparta Monte Subasio Assisi Ostia Perugia Bagnoregio Chiusi Ravenna

Figline Valdarno Acone Aguglione Ferrara Firenze Galluzzo Certaldo Semifonte Signa Montemurlo Modena

Bari

CANTO 12 | LINE 128

PURGATORY MARCHE

WITH OTHER VOICE BY THEN, WITH OTHER FLEECE I SHALL RETURN AS POET, AND AT THE FONT OF MY BAPTISM I SHALL ACCEPT THE WREATH.

BAGNOREGIO TOSCANA

LOMBARDIA

Genova

Forlí

CANTO 25 | LINE 8

Luni

Pavia

Casal Monferrato

Classe

PARADISE

FIRENZE / FLORENCE

Orbisaglia

Gubbio Nocera Monte Catria Fonte Avellana

Treviso

Venezia

Campi Bisenzo Trespiano Vicenza Romano d’Ezzelino Feltre Padova Fiesole

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YOU PUT ME IN MIND OF WHERE AND WHAT PROSERPINA WAS, IN THE TIME WHEN HER MOTHER LOST HER AND SHE THE SPRING. REFERENCES: MYTHOLOGICAL, PERIPHRASIS, SIMILE, DIRECT SPEECH Cosenza

Punta del Faro

Direct Speech

Classical Mythological Visited by Dante

Simile Adjective Periphrasis

Explicit

57 210 Locations

References

55 238 Locations

References

Classical Direct Speech

Mythological Visited by Dante

Simile Adjective Periphrasis

Explicit

OMNIA

From Text to Map to Numbers

UNDERTOOK MAPPING THE “ IDIVINE COMEDY AS A DIGITAL

The amount of data contained in the digital map provided Gazzoni with additional opportunities for visualization. Depicted here are charts that illustrate the distribution of geographical references throughout the 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy as well as the proportion of different types of cultural and literary references.

CULTURAL REFERENCES

HUMANITIES PROJECT MEANT NOT ONLY TO EDUCATE USERS, BUT ALSO TO ENCOURAGE OTHER SCHOLARS TO SEEK UNIQUE, INNOVATIVE WAYS TO EXPLORE NEW APPROACHES AND TOOLS FOR THEIR RESEARCH.

LITERARY REFERENCES

700

INFERNO PURGATORY PARADISE

600

500

400

300

200

– ANDREA GAZZONI, GR'18

VISIT WWW.MAPPINGDANTE.COM, WHERE YOU WILL HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLORE THE DATA DYNAMICALLY.

100

0 ALL MENTIONS

BIBLICAL

CLASSICAL

MYTHOLOGICAL

VISITED BY DANTE

DANTE

ALL MENTIONS BY ADJECTIVE

”

BY DIRECT BY PERIPHRASIS IN A SIMILE SPEECH

NUMBER OF GEOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES IN CANTOS

27

28

29

30

29

31

31

35

20

21

21

25

15

15 13

7

7

4

5

5

6 5 3

1

1

1

1

2

3

3

4

5

10

10 9

5

1

6

7

9

9

10

10

10

10

12

13

13

14

15

16

16

20

01 02 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 01 02 03 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 29 30 31 32

0

INFERNO

PURGATORY

PARADISE

PENN ARTS & SCIENCES CELEBRATES THE OPENING OF PENNOVATION WORKS

The Pennovation Center is a 58,000 squarefoot, three-story facility designed for startup companies, entrepreneurs, and inventors looking to be part of a unique community of innovators. It includes a full service technology incubator, basic wet and dry laboratories, private offices, inventor garages, and a coworking space for up to 200 members, operated by Benjamin’s Desk. It officially opened in September 2016 as the centerpiece of the University of Pennsylvania’s Pennovation Works, a 23-acre development adjacent to the University campus on the southern bank of the Schuylkill River, providing facilities and amenities to bridge intellectual and entrepreneurial initiatives among University researchers, private sector innovators, and start-ups.

Visit pennovation.upenn.edu and follow Pennovation Works on Facebook, @Pennovation on Twitter, and @pennovationctr on Instagram.

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By REBECCA GUEN

AR D

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by the d e ir p s in s p a rh e p ago, Over three millennia s first ben a m u h , s n o ti p ru e ic aftermath of volcan into a it t lp u c s , o rn fe in in an gan to liquefy sand years later, e s e th ll A . s s la g into vessel, and cool it . Hovering s u o ri te s y m t a h w e glass remains som solid, but e b to r a e p p a y a m ss between states, gla ing but. th y n a is it ls a e v re glass the science behind

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“If you look at the structure—how the molecules are arranged in the glass—and you compare it to the liquid, there is almost no difference,” says Andrea Liu, Hepburn Professor of Physics and professor of chemistry.

Zahra Fakhraai, assistant professor of chemistry, explains further. “If you waited far longer than the age of the universe, you would probably discover that glasses are actually dense, incredibly slow liquids.”

The question of how a material exists as a solid when its structure is so disordered is known as the glass problem. The answer affects many aspects of science, but it has been elusive for decades.

Recently, through computational calculations and laboratory experiments, Liu and Fakhraai have both made significant contributions to understanding the intricacies of the glassy state of matter.

When you think of glass, Fakhraai suggests imagining a subway platform at rush hour, jammed with hundreds of people. No one lines up in rows or maintains a fixed personal space. The arrangement is random, disordered with riders locked in place, solid-like, unable to move until the person next to them moves. In contrast, a solid typically forms as a repeated pattern of units, like the laying of bricks to build a wall.

The people in the subway analogy don’t have to stand in just for atoms in a pane of glass. Any liquefied material can be turned into a glass. And most transparent plastics, made from polymers, are classified as glassy.

A key attribute of solids is their ability to remain unchanged: Salt is always salt, and diamonds are forever. Glass can change its properties over time—almost imperceptibly—over millions of years; pine resin turns into amber. The movements of molecules that enable this transformation are part of the challenge facing researchers.

Theoretical physical scientists possess a range of tools they can employ to study a system in equilibrium, but for glasses, which are far from equilibrium, few exist. Experimentally, traditional tools have failed to overcome the impasse. So Liu and Fakhraai are creating new ones.

Fakhraai studies thin films of glass made up of material that Penn undergraduates create in their organic chemistry laboratory class. The organic material is vaporized and then layered onto a surface cooled to a temperature below which the material solidifies into a glass. At this temperature, she determined that the molecules at the surface could move fast enough to maintain equilibrium.

This motion allows denser packings called stable glasses.

Fakhraai deposited thinner and thinner films and found that at about 30 molecules the solidified glass behaves like a liquid. She compares this process to selectively removing people from that subway platform until the remaining riders have enough room to relax.

These stable glasses are important for a number of reasons. First, the stable glasses dispel many theories about molecular interactions. Researchers have believed that molecules only associate with a few of their neighbors, but beyond that the prop-

, r u o h h s u r t a m or f t a l p y a w b u s a e n i g a m i , s s a l g f o , k m n o i d n a r s i t n e m e “When you th g n a r r a e h T . e l p o e p f o s d e r e d v n o u m h o h t t i e w l b d a e n u , e aj mm lik d i l o s , e c a l p n i d ke c o l s r e d i r h t i w d e disorder ” . s e v o m m e h t o t t x e n n o s r e p e h t l i t un

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erties of the molecules forming the bulk are not usually shared by those at the surface. Fakhraai’s results tell us that if the crowd is small enough and cold enough, the influence of a few molecules can extend throughout the group.

The existence of these stable glasses also means that scientists can study a glassy material that behaves like a glass aged millions of years. There has never been an opportunity to do that before.

Fakhraai earned a $1.2 million grant this September from the National Science Foundation based on her findings. The grant provides funding for her and two other Penn colleagues, Robert Riggleman, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Patrick Walsh, Alan MacDiarmid Term Professor of Chemistry, to continue to study the properties of these thin films. They hope to understand how to optimize the films in coating applications on electronic devices, such as enhancing durability or conductivity. In addition, the nanometer scale data from Fakhraai’s group gained a second life as part of a massive collection of information, co-led by Liu, on the mechanics of disordered packed materials.

Fakhraai and Liu are members of the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM) which is part of the NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of Pennsylvania. By pooling the brain power of team members from multiple disciplines, MRSEC participants aim to build a foundation for future technologies by bringing into focus basic materials science problems that have been murky for decades.

“We got a bunch of people at Penn together—theorists and experimentalists—and we looked at a bunch of different glassy systems for disordered solids. These ranged from amorphous carbon and metallic glasses that are made out of atoms, to disordered packings of nanoparticles, to disordered ordered suspensions of colloids, which are at the microscale, to collections of grains on the millimeter scale,” says Liu. The results of that data analysis were recently submitted to the journal Science and reveal a previously unknown, astounding correlation.

“We can now predict when glass is going to break,” says Fakhraai. Meaning Penn researchers discovered that disordered solids have a common inherent trait that determines when the solid will fracture. The trait, known as yield strain, can be used to determine when to expect a defect to form in any disordered solid regardless of its composition. For example, they determined that the strain at which a pane of glass breaks is approximately the same as the strain at which a pile of snow is likely to avalanche.

The team reached this groundbreaking conclusion by applying a structural quantity, called softness, that Liu identified when applying machine learning to the glass transition problem. Liu trained her computers to look for structural features in a model glass that correlate strongly with its dynamics.

“The glass transition is characterized by the dynamics; it is all about dynamics,” says Liu. “The thing that’s been difficult is to find a structural quantity that just depends on how the particles are arranged that correlates at all with the dynamics.”

Softness is that quantity; it is an indication of how likely a particle is to rearrange given its structure.

All of these findings provide points from which researchers can triangulate to map out the glass transition. Liu says that until now the only way to try and understand a glassy solid was to look at an equilibrium liquid, which provided little perspective.

Comprehending glasses and the glass transition is considered one of the greatest challenges in physics. Resolving it could help scientists develop new materials and clarify foggy areas of astrophysics, geophysics, biology, and chemistry.

With so many new tools at their disposal, the researchers are poised to edge science closer to understanding glassy solids. When she reflects on their disordered solids work, Liu focuses first on the close collaboration with her colleagues. “I think one of the things that is really unprecedented about the project is how many people worked on so many different systems towards a common goal. We learned something that we could never have discovered individually.”

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IN THE CLASSROOM

OMNIA

Michele Margolis, assistant professor of political science <

The 2016 presidential election has come to an end and most would agree it was one for the record books. From vitriolic rhetoric and unorthodox debates to a swath of scandals that enveloped each candidate, the election redefined the modern political landscape. This past semester the stars aligned for a group of undergrad students in PSCI 436-301—more affectionately referred to as Political Psychology—as they learned to see past the 24-hour news cycle, the deluge of tweets, and conventional polling in order to analyze the psychological underpinnings of voter motivation.

Students attend a Political Pyschology lecture. >

VOTER MOTIVATIONS Political Psychology course encourages students to challenge easy explanations.

By Blake Cole

Photos by Brooke Sietinsons

“You can’t understand politics without understanding psychology,” says Assistant Professor of Political Science Michele Margolis, the instructor for the course. “We’re not robots who behave completely rationally.

And that’s what this course is about: understanding our own inherent biases, our implicit attitudes, our prejudices, and how the world around us can affect how we interpret new information.”

The class thrives on participation. To facilitate this, students submit discussion topics ahead of each lecture.

The election provided a unique backdrop for examining various political psychology theories. “One question revolved around the prospect theory, which describes a decision-making process driven by an analysis of losses and gains,” Margolis says.

“We asked questions like, ‘Could this theory explain the thought process of Republicans that wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton because they were afraid of the damage a Donald Trump presidency could cause?’ The consensus in this case was yes.”

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IN THE CLASSROOM

Similarly, some students believed that Bernie Sanders was the correct primary candidate choice from an ideological standpoint, but conceded support to Clinton because they considered her more likely to win a general election. “It was a common theme during the election that voters needed to go through some sort of mental gymnastics in order to choose a candidate,” says Margolis. “It’s very difficult to measure whether someone makes a ‘good’ or ‘right’ political decision. Scholars try through various strategies, but the 2016 election represented a case in which this didn’t necessarily occur.”

Another crucial aspect of the course is the students’ final papers. One of the main objectives of the course is to teach students how scientific theory influences the social sciences. “Political science today is quantitative and rigorous,” says Margolis, whose newest book examines political and religious socialization, arguing against established theory that people select in and out of religion based on their political identities. “You’re expected to be able to replicate things, so being able to understand basic scientific information about research, about reading articles, and being able to be really critical of them is essential.”

A lack of political knowledge often impacts voter decisions, Margolis says. Most people tend to receive all their news from a single—often biased—source. This leads to cognitive shortcuts, called heuristics, which enable Americans to act as if they are fully informed, even if they have knowledge gaps. When Gallup polls show trust in government is low, for instance, voters might shift their reliance to other heuristics, like unconventional endorsements.

Iman Charania, C’17, echoes this sentiment. “One of the things I really appreciate about the class is how Professor Margolis highlights the data side of political science,” she says. “Being able to see why and how a study is flawed makes discussions much more interesting because we’re not taking all the research as it’s given to us.” Charania, who has also done work in Penn’s Program for Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORES), says the course has helped her better analyze political polling data. “Being able to understand campaigns from a psychological standpoint provides valuable insight into those results.”

In order to challenge students’ beliefs about their own objectivity, and bolster interactions once in the classroom, Margolis employs a unique tool called implicit association tests, which are designed to expose subconscious ethnic, religious, gender, and other biases. Often these tests have a timed component in order to force an organic reaction from participants. One such test presents a positive and a negative image to the test taker—a flower and a scorpion, for instance. These symbols are then coupled with people of different backgrounds. Test takers are instructed to categorize paired symbols and groups as quickly as possible. Reaction time is much faster if the positive symbol is paired with a group they feel positively toward.

“We are forced to ask ourselves what role do these stereotypes play in the political arena and in the formation of our political behavior,” says Karina Miranda, C’18. “Professor Margolis has a way of making the uncomfortable interesting and the controversial thought-provoking.”

Margolis says many students assume that since they’ve received a top-notch education, they are more likely to make better decisions. “Ultimately it doesn’t matter where you go to college or how smart you are, this is just how humans work,” she says. “It’s like holding a mirror up, and having them think about the world around them and how we often don’t talk about our own biases openly.”

In their papers, students are tasked with designing a survey or experiment in which they need to be very explicit in what they’re testing and what the experimental stimuli are. One student tackled the impact of various emotions on individuals’ political leanings, particularly anxiety versus anger. “Take terrorism, for instance,” Margolis says. “Does being anxious about it versus being scared about it affect how you respond to news reports?” Another paper tested political knowledge recall, a subject particularly relevant in the age of social media. “On one hand you’re getting these little snippets from tweets or your newsfeed, but on the other hand, you’re potentially being exposed to things you wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to,” explains Margolis.

In the end it’s about not falling prey to snap judgments, and maintaining a healthy skepticism about simplistic explanations of complex political scenarios, Margolis says. “When the New York Times claims that this policy caused this, or so-and-so political ad caused this, I want my students to think very carefully about it,” she says. “I encourage them to come up with alternative explanations.

Maybe there’s a reason the people you think are politically crazy think the way they do. This is a skill that transfers to any class at Penn, and to outside the classroom, as well.”

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MOVERS & QUAKERS

Courtesy of Gabriele Marcotti

Gabriele Marcotti, Câ&#x20AC;&#x2122;95

GLOBETROTTER: PENN ALUM FINDS SPORTS JOURNALISM AND RUNS WITH IT

By Blake Cole

OMNIA

FALL/WINTER 2016

MOVERS & QUAKERS

Gabriele Marcotti, C’95, is a European-based sports journalist, sports author, and radio-television presenter who is regularly featured on the ESPN channel and website and in widely read publications like The Times in London. Marcotti, born in Italy and now based in London, grew up in a diverse collection of countries, spanning the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Marcotti is the author of numerous books and speaks multiple languages. We spoke with him about how his time at Penn influenced his international career.

Q: What made you choose Penn for your undergraduate studies? What was your focus?

Q: What led you to transition into broadcasting? Which do you prefer?

I chose Penn not just because it was a great education, but also because it was in a city and it was a big enough school that there would be real diversity. The Daily Pennsylvanian was also a big part of Penn’s appeal as I wanted to become a journalist and I felt the opportunity to work on a paper of such size and quality while studying was invaluable.

I still consider myself primarily a writer and I write regular columns for ESPN.com and The Times in London. But since joining ESPN I’ve done even more television work.

It’s a different experience—television forces you to be concise and clear.

Q: What led you to sports journalism?

Actually, it was a bit of an accident. My dream in college was to become one of those “serious” New Yorker writers with the wood-paneled office and the enormous expense account who could go and spend three months on a story.

Now I realize those jobs probably don’t exist anymore, even at The New Yorker, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be published there. But in the summer of 1996, after I finished grad school, the Olympics were in Atlanta and it seemed a good place to go. I harassed various media outlets for a credential, got in, made lots of contacts, and then one thing led to another.

Q: Did being multilingual open new opportunities for you in your writing career?

Without question, speaking several languages is a huge advantage. I cover mostly soccer, so it was key when I moved to London and began covering the Premier League in 1996. Many foreign players and coaches started coming in. I could speak to them in Italian or Spanish and build relationships that monolingual journalists could not.

Q: You’ve written multiple books, including, The Italian Job: A Journey to the Heart of Two Great Footballing Cultures. What was that process like?

They have mostly been biographies of living people and that’s been a tricky process because you get varying degrees of collaboration from the subject. You don’t want to do a hatchet job and you don’t want a hagiography either.

Most interesting to me—and maybe something that should give us all cause to reflect on more important issues like eyewitness testimony—is how as many as half a dozen people will remember the same exact incident differently.

And not just in minor details either. It’s like Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa.

Q: Have you applied your time at Penn to your career?

Without question. Classes like the ones I took with history professor Alan Charles Kors really challenged me intellectually. The experience at the Daily Pennsylvanian was an excellent precursor to my writing career and I met plenty of talented people. I think most of all the richness and diversity of the entire community continues to inform what I write today, possibly because soccer is such a global (and globalized) sport.

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Courtesy of Erika Frankel

Documentary filmmaker Erika Frankel, C’00, has a body of film and television credits spanning topics like NCAA basketball, the Broadway musical Annie, teenagers and politics, and Woody Allen.

She’s currently riding a wave of critical acclaim—Variety, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and more—for King Georges, her first feature-length documentary. It chronicles the final chapter of Chef Georges Perrier’s iconic Philadelphia restaurant Le Bec-Fin. A native of Philadelphia’s Main Line, Frankel came of age when people from around the world were making the pilgrimage to the city for a Perrier meal, so the film was part personal odyssey for the now New York City-based filmmaker.

Erika Frankel, C’00

CHRONICLING A KING’S FAREWELL

By Sacha Adorno

MOVERS & QUAKERS

FALL/WINTER 2016

Q: You majored in anthropology at Penn. Was your intent to be a visual anthropologist?

In high school, I saw a film about Jane Goodall and wanted to do what she was doing, which was immersing herself in another culture. Then, at Penn, all of the courses that interested me were in the anthropology department or cross-referenced with it. So I chose anthropology as a major. During college, I interned with Charles Guggenheim, the legendary documentary filmmaker. That’s when I realized making documentaries, which uses anthropology, storytelling, and visuals, was really what I wanted to do. So it all came together naturally. I’m basically doing anthropology but with a camera instead of paper.

Q: What sparked your interest in Chef Perrier?

In 2010, I was having lunch with my dad, who told me Le Bec-Fin was closing. The restaurant was such a beacon for Philadelphia for so many years; I thought someone should film its final days. I didn’t know at the beginning whether it would be a short or a feature.

I contacted Georges. He thought about it for a few seconds and said yes. So my crew and I started filming. We initially thought we’d film for a few months to chronicle the closing. But Georges ended up keeping the restaurant open for a few more years. We filmed for three years.

Q: How did Perrier’s decision to stay open affect the story you set out to tell?

I went into filming knowing that I wanted to capture the restaurant and its impact on the food world and on Philadelphia for the history books. To tell Georges’ story to new generations of foodies and celebrity chef fans.

But the longer you film and follow a story, the more the arc becomes apparent. As we followed Georges, we realized the story was less about food than about the passing of time. It’s about legacy and giving way to the next generation, in this case to Georges’ protégé Nicholas Elmi.

Even still, when I watch King Georges, parts of it are gut wrenching—change is part of life but it’s very bittersweet.

And having grown up in Philadelphia, there’s a bit of a personal nostalgia for me, a sense of loss and transition.

Q: What values guide you when choosing a project?

I always look for interesting stories. Like the work I did for NOVA’s ScienceNOW series. One episode was about a computer hacker and the other about a paleoanthropologist.

Or a program I co-produced about the history of comedy. I also worked on a documentary about the disastrous making of the movie Heaven’s Gate. All covered really different topics but were great stories. I feel so lucky to be in a career where I can immerse myself in many subjects.

Q: What’s your favorite part of digging into a story?

That the process is always changing. I worked on the PBS American Masters episode about Joni Mitchell, and in it she talks about her process for writing music. She’s a musician and an artist and she said creating is like crop rotation. She writes music, stops for a while and paints, and then goes back to music. That captures filmmaking for me.

Q: What’s on the horizon?

I'm producing a series of short documentary films about what it's like to be Muslim in America today—poignant and humorous and unexpected profiles of Olympians and comedians and more. I’m also a new mom and having a baby is taking up the rest of my time. But I’m always looking for the next project.

Q: Final, very important question: Did Georges Perrier cook for you?

At first, I felt journalistic integrity and objectivity meant keeping a distance. But then I thought, “That’s ridiculous, we're making a film about his food.” So, yes, he did cook for us. Everything was delicious!

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

FROM COLLEGE HOUSE TO STATE HOUSE By senior year, most college students know how to arrange their schedules for maximum convenience. But Nicolas Garcia organized his classes so he could fly home to Florida on weekends to campaign for a seat in the state House of Representatives.

“I wanted to take what I learned at Penn and bring it back so I could help my community out,” he says. “I hope that is something I accomplished.”

Though he was raised in a “not very political” family, the Arab Spring in 2011 roused Garcia’s interest in politics. At Penn, he was able to take classes with former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, C’65; John DiIulio, Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society, director of the Fox Leadership Program, and the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and John Lapinski, associate professor of political science, director of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies, and director of the elections unit at NBC News.

Garcia also had two Penn in Washington internships that were transformative, during which he worked in the White House. “The people were really, really passionate about doing public service,” says Garcia, “and that rubbed off on me a lot more than I was expecting.”

Out on the campaign trail, Garcia found his work as a leader of the Latino community at Penn and in the Fox Leadership Program also served him well. “You’re talking to people you

OMNIA represent, trying to find out what they want, advocate for them, and find ways to solve their issues.”

Though Garcia was unsuccessful in his bid for office, he says the experience provided its own rewards. “The outcome I'm proudest of is demonstrating to people anyone can make a difference if they're willing to make their voice heard,” says Garcia. “It can be nerve-wracking, but by running I believe I helped to steer the conversation on education reform in the state and energized more young people to be active and even run themselves one day.”

HOW ARE ORGANIZATIONS GREEDY? How does an organization develop complete buy-in from its members?

In order to answer that question, Amanda Barrett Cox, CGS’04, GED’09, GR’18, conducted and published a study about how organizations that make significant physical, emotional, and intellectual demands foster commitment and loyalty from voluntary participants—and as a result, thrive.

In the study, published this past May in Sociological Forum, Cox, joint Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of Education, builds on the Greedy Institution theory posited by noted German-American sociologist Lewis A. Coser, who said an institution is considered “greedy” when its members’ involvement in the organization interfered with their involvement in other social spheres.

The focus of Cox’s study was on an intensive program that prepares low-income students of color to attend elite boarding high schools. Many of

the students continue on to Ivy League and other well-regarded universities.

Cox, who herself taught at a New England boarding school, says, “Some students came from affluent families, while other students seemed to be entering a world they had never known existed. I became interested in that difference, that adjustment—how the kids adapted.”

Cox is currently working on her dissertation, which examines how family foundations approach their work.

MENTAL GPS? THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT As we travel about an environment like a city, we instinctively learn how to get from one location to another and form a “mental map” of our surroundings. How do we do it? And why are some people great navigators while others are frequently disoriented?

“Having to remember where things are in the world is an intriguing problem that most of us face on a daily basis,” says Joshua Julian, GR’22, a doctoral candidate in psychology. Julian conducts research in directional ability alongside Professor of Psychology Russell Epstein, an expert in the cognitive and neural basis of spatial navigation. With the help of Peter Bryan, C’16, a recent Penn graduate, Julian and Epstein have launched a global project to test the spatial abilities of people around the world.

Psychologists can rate someone’s spatial “intelligence” in an assessment called “judgment of relative direction” (JRD), so Epstein, Julian, and Bryan developed an iPhone application called iJRD that will allow people

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across the world to virtually navigate their way through their home city. In the process, they learn about their spatial abilities and can even compare their results to those of other people using the same app.

Knowledge obtained from iJRD will also be critical for guiding research into spatial memory deficits caused by brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. An improved understanding of spatial memory can help advance early detection methods and target therapeutic approaches.

“A diminishment in directional ability can be a red flag,” says Julian. “Ideally our research will one day be applied in a clinical setting to catch Alzheimer’s at its inception.”

Courtesy of Antoinette Zoumanigui

FIGHTING FOR CHILD BEGGARS IN SENEGAL Antoinette Zoumanigui, C’17

Antoinette Zoumanigui, C’17, studies forced child begging in Senegal, working to galvanize change for the young children engaged in it. Her concern for the issue took root when she herself was growing up there. “Children came to my family’s door, and we gave them sugar and rice,” she says. “I really started thinking seriously about what I could do when I was a freshman in 2013 and saw news coverage of a horrible fire that killed nine of the child beggars.”

In response, Zoumanigui founded a nonprofit called Kids of Dakar to support projects that help these Senegalese children. This year, Brill’s International Journal of Children’s Rights published her paper on the subject, putting her work in front of global children’s rights advocates, academics, and policy makers.

The paper was the culmination of research that Zoumanigui began her first year at Penn. In 2015, she received a Hassenfeld Foundation Social Impact Research Grant for fieldwork in Senegal to explore the question. She cites multiple factors that perpetuate forced child begging, including parental motivation, people believing that the giving of alms is good citizenship, and the lack of accountability from government and religious authorities for the abusive nature of the phenomenon. Zoumanigui says that solutions can come only from earnest collaboration and frank and honest conversation among all involved.

Zoumanigui also earned a 2016 Projects for Peace prize, which she will use to develop a health program for street children in Saly Mbour, Senegal.

A HOME AFTER DEATH Being buried among family is a universal desire, but it is also increasingly difficult in an age of global mobility and mass migration. “I started thinking about what happens when you die in a country that’s not your own,” says Osman Balkan, GR’16, a political science doctoral candidate. “This seemed like a good way to get at larger questions affecting immigrants.”

His recent study, “Between Civil Society and the State: Bureaucratic

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Geneva Gondak

Bevan Pearson, C'18 (left), helped document livelihood stories, including ones focused on agriculture, during her internship at Samaj Pragati Sahayog in rural Madhya Pradesh.

Competence and Cultural Mediation Among Muslim Undertakers in Berlin,” helps illuminate the challenges facing Muslim immigrants to Europe and their integration into that society.

The article was published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies last April.

Over the course of a four-month period between 2013 and 2014, Balkan shadowed several Muslim undertakers and conducted 40 interviews with Turkish and Kurdish families, cemetery personnel, religious leaders, government officials, and health-care professionals, among others.

One particular hurdle these immigrants face is the wait time between death and burial, Balkan explains.

Another cultural conflict is that many districts in Germany mandate coffins for burial and Muslims are traditionally buried in a shroud only.

His research helps illuminate the importance of establishing communi-

cation channels between the state and the Muslims who have been streaming into Europe, fleeing war-torn regions in the Middle East. Faced with this new population, leaders will have to update old policies and create new ones.

the classroom through summer internships and research opportunities.

In 2016, 18 undergraduates participated in the internship program and four graduate students participated in the Travel Funds for Research Program.

“On a practical level you have to figure how and where to bury a body,” says Balkan. “But on a deeper level you ask yourselves as a people, ‘Who are we?

Where is home?’”

Aditi Ahuja, C’18; Camilo Toro, C’17; and Thomas Uhler, C ’19, W’19, all interned at the Aravind Eye Hospitals in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Their projects included creating patient education materials, developing patient surveys focused on disease understanding (specifically glaucoma), and quality of life assessments for patients who use ocular prosthetics.

CASI STUDENTS GO BEYOND THE CLASSROOM The Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) provides Penn students a unique opportunity to learn beyond

“My internship truly reaffirmed my passion for healthcare and developing interventions to benefit those who cannot access proper healthcare,” says Toro. “It is now a permanent reference point for me as I continue to pursue a career in medicine.”

Three Arts and Sciences doctoral

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candidates—Baishakh Chakrabarti, Ishani Dasgupta, and Michael Collins, all from the Department of South Asia Studies—participated in CASI’s Travel Funds for Research Program to pursue independent research as it relates to their dissertation topics which include colonial gambling practices, electoral finance, and the intersection of compassion and violence with the democratic ideals of Buddhist spiritual practices. Additionally, three CASI Student Programs alumni are currently in India as Fulbright Fellows: Alexander Hoppe, GR’23; Aardra Rajendran, C’16, ENG’16, and Kendra Carson, C’16.

Read more on the CASI student programs blog: www.casistudentprograms.com.

STUDYING A SALT-LOVING MICROBE

NASA's long search for life on Mars came to a thrilling turning point with the recent discovery of liquid water on the planet. One undergraduate researcher aims to understand how microbial life could thrive in such extreme, even extraterrestrial, environments.

Evan Yang, C’17, a double major in biology and biochemistry, has been working in the lab of Mecky Pohlschröder, a professor of biology, since his freshman year.

“It was clear that Evan had so much enthusiasm for science and that to me is always the key," Pohlschröder says.

Supported by funding from NASA, the Pohlschröder lab investigates proteins that confer stability, facilitate motility, and mediate adherence to surfaces in the single-celled organism Haloferax volcanii. Originally isolated from the Dead Sea, H. volcanii thrives in extremely salty environments and can tolerate high levels of ultraviolet and gamma radiation—conditions that happen to also be found on Mars.

To pinpoint characteristics that could allow microbes to prosper in Mars-like environments, Yang has worked to characterize genes responsible for how H. volcanii move. Recently, he’s identified a diverse set of H. volcanii mutants that have lost the ability to swim, suggesting that a multitude of genes play a role in allowing cells to move toward nutrients and escape from stressful environments.

“Right now,” says Yang, “I’m focusing on a mutant that not only has impaired motility, but also cannot form biofilms, cell aggregates that prokaryotes form to protect them from stressful environments similar to those exhibited on Mars.”

BONUS CONTENT Be sure to visit OMNIA online for multimedia content related to this issue: https:// omnia.sas.upenn.edu/bonus-content

Here, you’ll find podcasts featuring professors from Following in Darwin’s Footsteps (p. 24) and When Should We Expect the Robot Army? (p. 30), as well as video detailing the work of the BLAST team from Liftoff (p. 38). You can subscribe to the OMNIA Podcast series on Apple iTunes to automatically receive downloads of our most recent episodes, as well as previous audio features from Penn Arts and Sciences.

See you online!

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(INS)OMNIA

OFFICE ARTIFACTS DEBORAH A. THOMAS, Professor of Anthropology

Brooke Sietinsons

1) SHEKERE I was living in Bahia, Brazil in 1989-1990, dancing and working with musicians there who were involved in the black arts movement at the time. My friend Cicero was planning to do a shekere workshop, so a few of us took a roadtrip for a few days to the “interior” to find farmers who would give us a bunch of gourds, from which the instruments are made. It was a riot, because they couldn’t figure out why we would want so many of them, since they just use them to carry water. I made this one, choosing the yellow and white for Oshun, the deity representing river water and beauty.

(INS)OMNIA

FALL/WINTER 2016

2) TILE MOSAIC

3) ESTATE MAP

We were touring our film Bad Friday, about state violence against Rastafari. In South Africa and in Johannesburg we stopped at a small market outside the Soweto Museum.

There was a man who did tile mosaics of famous figures in the anti-apartheid struggle and I bought this from him, of Steven Biko.

This is an old estate map of the area in the hills surrounding Kingston, Jamaica, where I did my Ph.D. dissertation research. I got it from the Statistical Institute and would color it in with colored pencils during down time in the evenings sometime. I never finished it, as you can see.

4) SUNGLASSES

5) CARDS

These are my funky sunglasses from the 50th anniversary of independence in Jamaica, summer 2012. I had seen someone in these at one of the arts events I went to, and asked my very social-network savvy friend Annie Paul to see if she could find out where they were available, because I didn’t see them on any vendors’ tables. Within moments after she posted the query on Twitter, I knew where to go!

These are “Cards Against Anthropology,” which a friend of mine made, modeled after “Cards Against Humanity.”

They are designed to encourage students to probe ethics questions that might arise in ethnographic field research, and my TAs played the game in their sections for Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. My favorite answers are “Give a Hug” and “Panic.” The question, “You are doing fieldwork in a location where tuberculosis is common. A child coughs in your face, what do you do?”

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OMNIA

THREE QUESTIONS: THE HAUNTING HOUR FEATURING JUSTIN McDANIEL

Justin McDaniel, associate professor of religious studies, is the coordinator of the Penn Ghost Project, fueled by the shared interest of Penn faculty members who span a wide range of disciplines. Here he weighs in on the ghostly trappings of Halloween, Christmas, and more.

Courtesy of Justin McDaniel

HOW DO GHOSTS INFORM HOLIDAYS LIKE HALLOWEEN AND CHRISTMAS, OR HOLIDAYS IN OTHER CULTURES? IS THERE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN “GOOD” AND “BAD” GHOSTS? Ghosts have long been a part of the lore of Halloween, a day that is associated with the awareness, and in some cases celebration, of the undead and the denizens of the afterlife.

However, ghosts have also been associated with Christmas because of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. In Victorian England, it was a common practice for families to tell ghost stories at Christmas time. Of course, Christmas as celebrated in Europe and the U.S. was originally connected to the “pagan” Winter Solstice celebration and the festival known as Yule. The darkest day of the year was seen by many as a time when the dead would have particularly good access to the living. In all cultures, there have been both protective and menacing ghosts. In Southeast Asia, for example, ghosts are often seen has having the power to heal or protect the living from disease and accidents.

HAVE THESE ASSOCIATIONS LED TO CONTROVERSY WHEN IT COMES TO THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF HOLIDAYS? IN CONTRAST, ARE THEY CENTRAL TO RELIGIONS IN SOME CULTURES?

Yes, there have been protests in the past that pagan rituals associated with Halloween and Christmas were non-Christian and should be abolished. Oliver Cromwell famously banned the celebration of Christmas in the 1600s. Criticisms by preachers of the pagan origins of the Christmas tree, Yule logs, and the figures of Santa Claus and elves have been frequent, but often shortlived. Biblical passages from the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah have been used to specifically criticize Christmas celebrations, and Halloween has been frequently attacked by some Evangelical and Pentecostal groups. Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox groups have also been frequently associated with banning children from the celebration of Halloween, but this condemnation is almost never universal and varies from family to family, community to community.

HAVE LOCAL SITES LIKE THE LAZARETTO QUARANTINE STATION AND EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY ADDED TO THE MYTHOS SURROUNDING LOCAL GHOST STORIES? DO ANY OTHER SITES COME TO MIND FOR GHOST HUNTERS? Some places that abound with ghost stories in Philadelphia include Laurel Hill Cemetery, Mt. Moriah Cemetery, and Fort Mifflin.

Washington Square Park, built over an old cemetery, is often a site of ghost lore, and the First Bank of the U.S. in Philadelphia supposedly is haunted by Alexander Hamilton. Several mansions owned by prominent Philadelphia families like Wistar, Girard, and Meade are explored frequently by ghost hunters, and there have been hundreds of supposed sightings of ghosts at these places.

The Baleroy Mansion in Chestnut Hill is a very popular place for those interested in hauntings.

FALL/WINTER 2016

Showing the interior of an entertainments quarter in late 18th century Japan, Moonlight Revelry at Dozo Sagami (detail) is one of three large-scale paintings attributed to renowned artist Kitagawa Utamaro. Purchased

by Charles Lang Freer in 1903, the painting will be featured in the exhibition, Inventing Utamaro: A Japanese Masterpiece Rediscovered at the Smithsonianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery this April through July. The exhibition,

LAST LOOK

curated by Professor of the History of Art Julie Nelson Davis and Freer and Sackler Senior Curator of Japanese Art James Ulak, brings the painting together with companion works on the themes of snow and flowers held at the Okada Museum of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, respectively, for the first time since 1879.

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