High Noon in the ‘hood

Penn sociologist Elijah Anderson writes about life at "ground zero," in the inner city's most blighted areas. In this excerpt from his new book, a reformed drug-dealer turned small-businessman attempts to take back a neighborhood corner from his successor in the drug trade.

The Vision Thing

As the National Science Foundation's new director of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Dr. Ruzena Bacsjy—a Penn computer-science professor noted for her work on robotic perception—must get Congress to see its way to creating greater support for basic research in information technology.

The Stock Market Sage

When he was a kid, Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel liked to chart the growth of morning glories in his back yard; now he directs his keen attention to the rise and fall of the stock market.

The Flu of 1918

It started with a cough in the summer of 1918. In the next 120 days, nearly 22 million people around the world would die in one of the worst epidemics in modern times. And Philadelphia was to be the American city with the highest death toll.

Rewriting the Final Chapter

As medicine advances, the choices associated with end-of-life care grow more complex — especially when patients or their families clash with doctors, the state, and occasionally each other, over when to treat and when to let go.