The Shapes of Things to Come

Haresh Lalvani Gr’81 believes there’s a universal code for architecture and sculpture—a “morphological genome” that determines the shape of built structures, similar to the way that DNA shapes living things. And he’s well into the process of decoding it.

Our Labs, Our Health?

In Risky Medicine, History and Sociology of Science Professor Robert Aronowitz argues that today’s fixation on diagnosing and managing risk factors rather than treating diseases leads to anxiety and stress, over-diagnosis of conditions and overuse of drugs, and radical treatments that are unnecessary or harmful.

Walking on a Wire

One hundred years after a Penn professor was famously fired for his political views, a campus symposium on academic freedom wrestled with a familiar question: Are universities still homes of free speech and inquiry?

Pulling Weeds

David Casarett used to just say No when his hospice and palliative-care patients asked about using medical marijuana as a treatment or to relieve their symptoms. After researching and writing his new book, Stoned, his answer is “a lot more nuanced.”