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Photo: Bennett Lee

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Bennett Lee

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PHILADELPHIA, PA–Coatings capable of completely repelling water could raise the bar in the near future.

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……….A new startup, Nelum Sciences, has developed a transparent superhydrophobic coating based on silica nanoparticles to help surfaces repel water as well as other liquid nuisances.

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Photo: Bennett Lee

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Superhydrophobicity, also known as the “lotus effect” gives a water contact angle over 150°. a superhydrophobic coating causes drops of water to bead up and roll right off. In addition, surfaces become self-cleaning, since the rolling droplets can carry with them any dirt or other unwanted particles. The technology was created through research done by Prof. Shu Yang at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently patent-pending.

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Photo: Bennett Lee

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The technology is fun to watch with several demonstrations available on Youtube, including one where drops of water are seen accelerating right off of a pair of safety goggles.

Photo: Bennett Lee

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Prof. Yang sees vast potential in the technology with the potential for it to be applied in everything from car windshields, safety goggles, optical lens, and any other application that needs to quickly repel water to maintain clear sight. Other applications could even include solar panels, which could repel accruing materials that block sunlight and inhibit efficiency.

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Photo: Bennett Lee

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Nelum has gained traction and already acquired an SBIR Phase I grant and is currently in the process of further developing this technology.

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Photo: Bennett Lee

About The Author: Bennett Lee is enrolled in The Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology – The Wharton School | School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Class of 2013 – Copyright 2012
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Editor’s Note: To read more articles by Bennett Lee, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.

Photo: Ryan Feit

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Ryan Feit

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……….Entrepreneurship used to be setting up a large factory. It used to be knocking on doors for months to convince a bank or wealthy investors to provide you millions of dollars before you could operate. But everything we know about entrepreneurship is changing. This is what Entrepreneurship looks like today.

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Photo: Ryan Feit

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Today, all you need to build is a laptop. The computer has replaced the hammer and the Internet has replaced the assembly line. The cost to create has declined exponentially.

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Photo: Ryan Feit

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Only one thing remains constant. It’s all about the team. The right team can operate like a heat-seeking missile, varying its path in a rapidly changing landscape in order to succeed. Nowadays teams are more agile and can work together from across the globe.

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Photo: Ryan Feit

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SeedInvest will change the game. For the first time in history, entrepreneurs don’t need to knock on doors to find and convince the 1% to invest in them. They will be able to pitch millions at once and raise small amounts from lots of people.

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SeedInvest empowers entrepreneurs to raise capital in a way that has never been done before. Convince “The Crowd” and fund your business. Fail and you’ll know your idea wasn’t worthy.

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Photo: Ryan Feit

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For the first time in 80 years, anyone will be able to invest in the new restaurant down the street or the next hot startup. SeedInvest is about the 99%. You don’t need to be rich, you just need a computer. Join us at seedinvest.com.

About The Author: Ryan Feit is enrolled in the MBA program: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

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Editor’s Note: To read more articles by Ryan Feit, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.

Christopher

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Madeleine Shiff

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For this series of portraits, I was influenced both by Diane Arbus’s photographs of so-called “deviant or marginal” individuals, as well as Nan Goldin’s candid style of photography. I admire both of their photographic styles for their abilities to create photographs that are blunt and honest. They also both raise questions about a photograph’s ability to reveal hidden truths.

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Christoper

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My series depicts a man getting ready for a night out, and in the process of transforming himself into a woman. Each photograph is a different step in the process and conveys him methodically putting on makeup and changing his clothes until the transition is complete.

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I chose to explore the boundaries of gender and sexuality through my series. In the process, however, I also learned about the boundaries of photography. Diane Arbus’s work is controversial both for the starkness with which she depicts individuals’ defects, and for the questions it raises about a photographer’s potential exploitation of his or her subjects. My friend Christopher, the subject of this series, has never before dressed in drag. This raises questions about the authenticity of the photographs. Is it enough that Christopher was eager to explore a side of himself that he had always been curious about, or must a photograph always depict reality for it to be credible? Does Christopher’s background really matter? Christopher explained to me that as a gay man he is far more open to exploring his sexuality and femininity than a heterosexual man. His point lends itself to questions about the very nature of the society in which we live. If individuals are born with a range of sexual orientations than why does society impose restrictions in which one must adhere to one of two categories completely. Contemporary debates in American society regarding gay rights, address the core of these questions of societal restrictions on gender identities. I became interested in these issues when I moved to America two years ago. I am Canadian and unlike the United States, gay marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005. Although Canada is by no means perfect, it has provided equal rights for those considered by other countries to be “marginal or deviant.” Nevertheless, it is likely that sexual orientation and gender roles will continue to be explored and debated in both Canada and the United States for the foreseeable future.

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Christopher

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With regards to the question of the authenticity of these images, one might argue that my photographs are inauthentic because Christopher is not a “real” drag queen. However, I do not believe that any photograph can truly be “authentic.” Every photograph demonstrates either the subject or the photographer wishing to portray himself or herself in a certain way. The power of photography to distort reality yet also reveal hidden truths about its subjects is a concept that I find particularly interesting and have explored throughout all of my photography assignments this semester. As Diane Arbus once said, “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

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Christopher

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Christoper

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Madeleine Shiff: Self-Portrait 2012

About The Author: Madeleine Shiff is enrolled in the College of the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2013.

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Editor’s Note: To access additional articles by Madeleine Shiff, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.

Lorena

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Lorena Nicol

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Illocality.

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Erotica intrudes on the illimitable grotesque. The erotic experience is paradoxical, at once infinitely expansive but also divisive. The notion of privacy establishes borders within the erotic moment, as the subject is isolated by subjective perceptual experience that is pervasive. Genuine passion manifests as all-consuming, and thus illimitable.

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Lorena

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True carnal understanding arises internally and from the expression of grotesque (unre?ned) impulses. The erotic moment does not have an isolated locus, but engages the entire self. This includes what is visible to the intruder and what isbeyond the intruder’s experience. The erotic moment acts previous to super-egorestraints that might modulate its primordial traits.

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Lorena

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To this end I propose an image of self-examination – the activity of analysis, the primary purpose of Philo as a space. My composition will showcase an intrusion on a moment of seeking internal understanding. The viewer should understand herself as having interrupted the subject’s concentrated effort to understand the erotic moment by engaging with it. Within the piece, the principle symbolic element will be the juxtaposition between the insistently polite/sterile setting of the Philomathean meeting hall and the blatant engagement with grotesque/unclean subject matter (in this case, literally mud).

Copyright 2012

To Be Continued……….

Photo: Chen Fu 2012

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Chen Fu

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……….Many times I look back to those days and events which have shaped my life most, I see farewells. Born and raised in a very small city in China, I was educated to study hard to struggle my way out of it. So my life was always saying goodbye to those people around me, saying goodbye to my parents, to the girl I love, to my cousin, and to go further and further against the way home.

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Photo: Chen Fu 2012

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The first time was 200 miles from hometown when I was 15. Then 680 miles towards Shanghai, the city never sleeps. Then after 4 years, it was 5000 miles to Romania – where I was even dreaming of becoming a vampire, and finally now here in America, 12000 miles away from home. I heard America is the land of freedom and dreams since I was a little kid. Over the years, I have learned to never look back to those seeing me off when I was walking into the security zones at airports, because I knew anyway I had to leave. All these years I have gotten used to calling home only once a week or month, because I know living with the most important people to me was just not my life. When Google Map told me to kayak across the Pacific Ocean to get back home, I somehow learned that farewells to those I love – had already become a part of my life.

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Photo: Chen Fu

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So recently I decided to walk to University City Station (Penn stop) and take the train to the airport, as many times as I have done with my girlfriend. Those buildings and scenes along the road were always reminders to me – that my time with her was getting shorter and shorter: empty archways; green bicycle lanes; Septa signs, and rusted tracks. What are in those people’s minds? Are they seeing someone off like I did? They are smiling just like I was, but was that also as untrue as mine? I cannot stop wondering.

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Photo: Chen Fu

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What I discovered a bit surprising was that I didn’t see hugs, cries, kisses and tears. Maybe it was just not necessary because they were actually traveling together, or they could be like me, getting used to farewells. I suddenly found that sunshine in the airport was actually quite nice, and I was again standing outside of security. It’s just this time I was all alone.

About The Author: Chen Fu is enrolled in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania. May 2012

Vietnamese Poster

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Toan Nguyen

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In this series, I explored the contrast between the country where I’m originally from, Vietnam and America. There exist two different regimes in each country. Vietnam is a communist regime while America is a capitalist country. Although very different in its governmental and social structure, The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a single-party state. The central role of the Communist Party was reasserted in all organs of government, politics and society. Only political organizations affiliated with or endorsed by the Communist Party are permitted to contest elections. These include the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, worker and trade unionist parties.

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Vietnam

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The authoritative government maintains its power using various methods including propaganda. Propaganda posters can be seen everywhere on the streets of Vietnam. Posters provided one of the few effective means for the Government to communicate directly with the predominantly rural population of the country. The overall theme that many of these posters accentuate, is that Communism is the best form of government and ideology to ever exist. For example, the text in the first image translates “The Party is hope, the Party is intellect”. The symbol of hammer and sickle appear on almost every propaganda poster in Vietnam, representing Communist ideology.

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Vietnamese Soldier

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The solder in the photo stands to guard an army base. The Vietnamese army is occasionally deployed to disperse a gathering crowd. Thus this soldier represents force in the Vietnamese government way of maintaining power.

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Times Square NYC

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The next series of photos were shot in America. The first shot was taken at Times Square in New York. This location is widely known for massive billboards and banners. Times Square thus epitomizes the heart of capitalism, in which the audience is bombarded with advertisements, a form of propaganda. This therefore raises interesting questions of whether or not there is a stark difference between Vietnam and America because one uses propaganda to maintain power, and the other uses it to sell products – yet the method and effect on the populous are pretty much the same.

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Occupy

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The fifth photo was captured during the Occupy Wall Street movement. The OWS protests are against social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. Their slogan “We are the 99%”, addresses the growing income inequality and wealth distribution in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. This movement which this photo captures, questions the effectiveness of capitalism.

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Protestors

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The final photograph in the series depicts two women with their lips sealed. The sign in front of them reads “No Money, No Voice”. This message conveys a lack of freedom of speech and also raises questions of whether there is a difference between communism and capitalism as freedom of speech is absent in both regimes.

About The Author: Toan Nguyen is a freshman enrolled in the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Class of 2015.

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Editor’s Note: To read more articles by Toan Nguyen, go to the search bar at the of the page: enter name and click green icon.

Jennie

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Jennie Shapira

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MISPLACEMENT

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……….For me, eroticism tickles the uncomfortable; it’s the delicate play of contrasting themes, acting perversely to make the viewer experience the combative feelings of ease and unease. It’s the product of a dichotomy between overt sexuality and something that both pushes you back and draws you in. What defines erotic as erotic is precisely this interaction. The concept of seeing only enough to force you to fill in the rest plays strongly with my views of eroticism, allowing a not-fully nude image to sometimes be more sexually driven than one where everything is purely raw.

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Jennie

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As a deeper conversation with the viewer, the creation of a scene which beckons for an accompanying narrative causes the interaction to deepen. In the end, it doesn’t matter if the story is the same as the stories imagined by all the others, nor the story imagined by the subject at the time of creation, as long as it is one that spawns a desire to know the character and know how the depicted situation managed to occur.

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Jennie

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In order to embody these themes and appropriately have them relate to the ‘philo’ environment located at UPenn’s College Hall, I imagined one half of the dynamic play to involve the concept of purity and intellectual soundness. The Philomathean Halls are gilded with knowledge, so a fair counter would be one that’s slightly disturbing and somewhat scandalous, which would eject itself from the ‘ivy-bubble’ as much as possible. To show eroticism, I plan to pose myself in an uncomfortable, tied-up fashion, as if just left in this building, for non-specific torture to ensue. Such would invoke much internal conversation, a discomfort with the image, and a great contrast with the neat, orderly, olden feel of the library.

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Jennie

To Be Continued………..

Photo: Errol Christian

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Errol Christian

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Many times, the most popular photos in sports are the photos taken directly after winning “the big game.” For example, one of the most popular photos in basketball is the shot of Michael Jordan laying on the floor and hugging his newly won championship trophy, while crying as he mourns the recent death of his father. In the Olympics, U.S. citizens will never forget the photo of Michael Phelps sporting around his neck the eight gold medals he won in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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Photo: Errol Christian

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These photos of achievement are what capture the eyes of the masses. However, what often gets overlooked is the hard work and dedication these glorified athletes endured in order to get to the ultimate stage. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell states that true success requires at least 10,000 hours of practice. How many shots do you think Michael Jordan had put up in an empty gym before he became the greatest player of all-time? How many laps do you think Michael Phelps has swum by himself before he became one of the greatest Olympians in history?

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Photo: Errol Christian

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Susan Sontag states “The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different imperatives: beautification, which comes from the fine arts, and truth-telling…” Through photography, audiences are able to appreciate the beauty of Michael Jordan’s celebration and Michael Phelp’s eight gold medals. However, also through photography, it was my aim to capture the truth. The truth through repetitious practice in isolation – with no cheering fans, with no cameras, with no glory.

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Errol Christian: Self-Portrait 2012

About The Author: Errol Christian is enrolled in the MBA program: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

Adachi: March for Trayvon Martin

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Ryun Hobbs

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……….On March 26, The 1,000,000 Hoodie March was held in honor of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old boy shot and killed a month prior on February 26, 2012. There is still much confusion and accusation surrounding his case – such as whether the shooter, George Zimmerman, was chasing after Trayvon, or if there was an altercation. However, some facts are undeniable. There is a 17-year old who is dead and a big reason is because his hoodie made him look “suspicious. Communities of all racial and social groups throughout the nation became enraged at this unjustified murder, demanding that justice be served. This is a series of photos taken before the arrest of George Zimmerman, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Trayvon march.

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I first saw this woman pushing a baby stroller while holding the march poster in the early stages of the procession. Adachi (Adachi.photography@gmail.com) is no stranger to protests, having photographed many of them herself. Her passion for capturing the essence of justice, however, does not stop her from being a caring mother. Both of her children accompanied her as they made a stand together.

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Skittes and Juice

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Some people never are content with sitting back and staying silent. This woman is such a person – she is “armed” with the Skittles and iced tea that Trayvon also possessed at his death, but she is also armed with her voice. Her numerous badges, like military ribbons, flash ceremoniously in the sunlight, making statements about the different inequalities in the world.

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March for Trayvon

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Despite his tough exterior, this man is a peaceful giant. Holding up his sign with extreme ease, he calls for the end of violence and the beginning of peace. “Children are our future,” the sign says, and the image of the shaking hands between cannot help but evoke memories of the late Doctor M. L. King, who had dreamed long ago of a community that rose above racial tension.

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March for Trayvon

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Protesting is almost never a solitary thing. Here, a family expresses their dissatisfaction together, bound to each other not only by their blood but by their mission. It is often easy to forget about murder victims’ families when first learning of the case, but seeing this family and their signs made me wonder how the Martin family Is faring. Condolences go out to them for their loss.

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Love

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As seen in the pictures above, advocates for justice and equality come in all shapes and sizes – spanning multiple ethnic and age differences. After all, we are all a community that must stick together when it is necessary. What keeps everyone together is a bit of anger, a bit of dissatisfaction, and a lot of love – for each other, for the victims, and for what is right.

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R.I.P. Trayvon Martin

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Not everyone’s voice is always heard, but many want to try whatever they can to make their stand as strong as possible. Here, two people sign large canvases of the late Trayvon Martin, which were delivered to his family after the march. Although it may not be a protest sign, it is still a testament to the expectation of receiving equal rights, instead of stereotyped caricatures.

About The Author: Ryun H. Hobbs is a senior enrolled in the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Class of 2012

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Editor’s Note: To read more articles by Ryun Hobbs, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.