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Understanding the Northeast earthquake
Photograph of a seismograph reading following an earthquake.

Last week people in the Northeast experienced a rare earthquake that registered a magnitude of 4.8. To learn more about the mechanics of earthquakes and this occurrence, Penn Today spoke with David Goldsby of the School of Arts & Sciences and Robert Carpick of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

(Image: iStock/allanswart)

  • Q&A

    • Understanding the Northeast earthquake

    Last week, people in the Northeast experienced a rare earthquake that registered a magnitude of 4.8. Penn Today spoke with David Goldsby of the School of Arts & Sciences and Robert Carpick of the School of Engineering and Applied Science about the event.
    Teaching doglike robots to walk on the moon’s dusty, icy surface
    Close-up of NASA's LASSIE robot, logo in frame.

    Penn researchers are part of a collaborative multidisciplinary effort that’s preparing doglike robots to traverse extraterrestrial landscapes, like those that are analogous to the moon’s surface.

    (Image: Courtesy of Sean Grasso)

    Teaching doglike robots to walk on the moon’s dusty, icy surface

    Researchers from Penn are part of a NASA-funded multidisciplinary collaborative effort that’s teaching robots to navigate the extraterrestrial craters, like the moon and Mars.
    Kathleen Morrison on biodiversity and climate change
    Kathleen Morrison.

    Kathleen Morrison, faculty director of the Environmental Innovations Initiative.

    (Image: Courtesy of the Environmental Innovations Initiative)

    Kathleen Morrison on biodiversity and climate change

    The faculty director of the Environmental Innovations Initiative, her research spans anthropology, archaeology, and paleoecology, involving the study of historic climates and environments, with a focus on South Asia.

    From the Environmental Innovations Initiative

    The soils beneath the solar fields
    Hannah Win takes soil samples at a solar site.

    To take soil samples at the solar site, Hannah Winn wields a bulb planter and mixes samples from across locations, looking at variables such that reflect the biological, chemical, and physical properties of the soil.

    (Image: Courtesy of AES)

    The soils beneath the solar fields

    How do solar farms impact soil health? It’s a question that master’s student Hannah Winn is exploring at the central Pennsylvania site where solar energy production is helping Penn progress toward carbon neutrality.

    Katherine Unger Baillie