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Nathi Magubane

Science Writer
  • nathi@upenn.edu
  • (215) 287-8317
  • A portrait of science writer Nathi Magubane
    Articles from Nathi Magubane
    Shifting the climate narrative
    The sky glows yellow and purple after a strong summer storm in Philly.

    On Sept. 12, PBS, WHYY, and the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media are set to gather a group of community leaders, journalists, science communicators, and scientists to explore the role of storytelling in climate change education.

    (Image: iStock / Luke Chen)

    Shifting the climate narrative

    In a Q&A with Penn Today, Michael Mann of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media shares his views on the role of storytelling in the fight against climate change.
    SCALAR: A microchip designed to transform the production of mRNA therapeutics and vaccines
    Silicon wafer with chips lightinhg in neon light.

    Led by Michael Mitchell and David Issadore of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, a team of researchers has developed a platform that could rapidly accelerate the development of mRNA-based lipid nanoparticle vaccines and therapeutics at both the small and large scale, SCALAR.

    (Image: iStock / Anatoly Morozov)

    SCALAR: A microchip designed to transform the production of mRNA therapeutics and vaccines

    Researchers have developed a platform that could rapidly accelerate the development of mRNA-based lipid nanoparticle vaccines and therapeutics at both the small and largescale, SCALAR.
    Could the age of the universe be twice as old as current estimates suggest?
    Thousands of small galaxies appear across this view. Their colors vary. Some are shades of orange, while others are white. Most appear as fuzzy ovals, but a few have distinct spiral arms. In front of the galaxies are several foreground stars. Most appear blue, and the bright stars have diffraction spikes, forming an eight-pointed star shape. There are also many thin, long, orange arcs that curve around the center of the image.

    NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is rich with detail.

    Thousands of galaxies—including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared—have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it.

    Webb’s Near-Infra Red Cam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus—they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.

    (Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)

    Could the age of the universe be twice as old as current estimates suggest?

    Penn Professors Vijay Balasubramanian and Mark Devlin offer a broader understanding of a recent paper’s claim that the universe could be 26.7 billion years old.
    Nudge Cartography: Building a map to navigate behavioral research
    Linnea Gandhi working on a white board

    (On homepage) Gandhi also shares her lessons from industry with the students she teaches in her summer lab course. It equips the students with hands-on experience in applied behavioral science and experimentation, where small teams are paired with external organizations.

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    Nudge Cartography: Building a map to navigate behavioral research

    Ph.D. candidate Linnea Gandhi of the Wharton School and research assistant Anoushka Kiyawat discuss the development of their team’s innovative research tool.
    Leading the charge: new research unveils the future of energy-efficent power delivery
    Digital illustration of lithium ions passing through two-dimensional channels within a crystal structure

    The rapid movement of lithium ions along the 2D vertical channels in the T-Niobium oxide (T-Nb2O5) thin film results in unique property changes and a chase transition. The blue and purple polyhedra show T-Nb2O5 lattices, without and with lithium, respectively. The bright green spheres represent lithium ions.

    (Image: Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics / Patricia Bondia)

    Leading the charge: new research unveils the future of energy-efficent power delivery

    Penn’s Andrew Rappe and collaborators explore high-quality thin films to propel power into the future.
    Euclid Space Telescope launches exciting new possibilities
    Shot of Falcon 9 Rocket launching from Cape Canaveral at Kennedy Space Center

    The European Space Agency’s latest astrophysics mission, Euclid, lifted off on a Space X Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, at 17:12 CEST on 1 July 2023. Euclid has now started its month-long journey to Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, in the opposite direction from the Sun.

    (Image: iStock / Robert Michaud)

    Euclid Space Telescope launches exciting new possibilities

    Professors of physics and astronomy Bhuvnesh Jain, Mark Trodden, and Gary Bernstein discuss the coming research findings from the European Space Agency’s Euclid Space Telescope.
    Nature-inspired designs give rise to stronger, lighter systems
    Wing of a dragonfly close up.

    Masoud Akbarzadeh of the Weitzman School of Design leads a multidisciplinary group of architectural designers, structural engineers, computer scientists, and more in his Polyhedral Structures Laboratory. He explores ways in which polyhedral geometries that frequently occur in nature can be used to make stronger and lighter structures, all while using fewer materials. Akbarzadeh discusses a recent study drawing inspiration from dragonfly wings.

    (Image: iStock / yanikap)

    Nature-inspired designs give rise to stronger, lighter systems

    Weitzman’s Masoud Akbarzadeh discusses a recent multidisciplinary study that draws inspiration from dragonfly wings to redesign a Boeing 777 to be lighter, stronger, and more sustainable.
    Climate change’s impact on extreme weather events
    Conceptual image of a city hit by extreme heatwave

    Michael Mann, Penn’s inaugural Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and collaborators has found that the effects of climate change on the intensity, frequency, and duration of extreme weather events like wildfires, could lead to massive increases in all three.

    (Image: iStock/Marc Bruxelle)

    Climate change’s impact on extreme weather events

    Michael Mann and collaborators investigated the effects of climate change on the intensity, frequency, and duration of extreme weather events like wildfires, and found that “worst-case” scenario could lead to significant increases in all three.

    3 min. read

    Challenges and advances in brain-computer interfaces
    3D neuron system model.

    The concept of a brain-computer interface was first proposed and experimented upon in the 1970s by Jacques Vidal, who demonstrated that humans could control a cursor on a computer screen using their brain waves.

    (iStock /Tatiana Sozonova)

    Challenges and advances in brain-computer interfaces

    Following FDA approval for tech startups to begin human clinical trials for brain-computer interfacing technologies, Penn Today met with Anna Wexler of the Perelman School of Medicine to discuss the promising possibilities and potential pitfalls of neurotechnology.
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