Jane Willenbring (professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania) led a team of scientists who recently published their work in the journal Geology showing mountains are not as significant a contributor to the "carbon draw down" effect as was previously thought. Read more here.

Shu Yang, associate professor in MSE and CBE in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Penn led a team of researchers who have found a new way to direct the assembly of liquid crystals by altering the geometry of the molecules on the bottommost layer and thereby producing changes in the patterns of defects on the topmost. These defects could be useful to nanomanufacturing.

As part of Penn's efforts to reach the goals set forth in Penn’s Climate Action Plan, the Green Campus Partnership created the Green Labs @ Penn Guide to provide overall guidelines for lab greening. Read more here.

Research by Robert Carpick and Tevis Jacobs leads to the creation of a nano-tip for thermal processing made entirely of diamond. Read more here.

Nader Engheta, the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and Mario G. Silveirinha discover how to reduce electrons’ effective mass to nearly zero with implications for faster circuits. Read more here.

This will be my farewell letter to you and by the time you read this issue of the Nexus, I will have departed as your ACS GCI Director. Looking back, I am amazed at all we have accomplished together over the last 4.5 years especially since it was done in one of the worst economic times since the Great Depression. Working with our Governing Board, we developed and implemented a new strategy for GCI and drove a new operating model that has done extremely well.

Among American undergraduates, it is a time-honored academic divide: there are liberal-arts students and there are engineers-in-training, and never the twain shall meet—in the lab or lecture hall, at least. Emeritus trustee P. Roy Vagelos C’50 Hon’99 and his wife, Diana, aim to change that arrangement with a new dual-degree program focusing on alternative energy.