Penn volleyball will need every advantage this weekend. And the Palestra just might give one to them. Facing top teams Albany (7-5) and Temple (4-10) in the Sheraton-Penn invitational this weekend the Quakers may have to rely on a little home-court advantage.

Some day soon, city residents taking a stroll along the Delaware River won't be confronted with abandoned, burned-out factories, but with urban parks surrounded by restaurants, rowhomes and shopping instead. At least, that's the plan put forward yesterday by Penn Praxis.

Cornell (1-0, 0-0) at Yale (1-0, 0-0) It's not often that a team can play spoiler in Week 2, but that's the role Cornell may find itself in tomorrow when it pays No. 21 Yale a visit. The Big Red, who crushed Bucknell last weekend, could send the Elis toppling out of the top-25 and simultaneously ruin their home opener if they were to pull off the upset.

No matter how many times you knock them down, they're going to get right back up - and probably score a couple of goals while they're at it. Despite suffering their fair share of bumps and bruises, the Penn women's soccer team has managed to rise above considerable adversity early this season to post a 4-1-1 record.

Penn announced an impressive 20.2 percent return on its endowment investments for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, officials announced yesterday at a Board of Trustees meeting.

When Villanova quarterback Marvin Burroughs graduated last spring, Wildcats fans probably thought they had seen the last of the veteran that carried the offense for three years. But the familiar face has been in the crowd at the home games so far, watching his successor, sophomore quarterback Antwon Young, who has been like a younger brother to him.

Penn's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center held its 25-year anniversary celebration yesterday afternoon, honoring both the center's success and respected director Robert Schoenberg. About 100 students and faculty members mingled and ate hors d'oeuevres in the center's new lounge inside the Carriage House as they celebrated the efforts of one of nation's oldest and most active LGBT centers.

Playboy - naked women, Hugh Hefner and, now, social networking. Playboy U, the new Web site backed by the storied men's magazine of the same name, launched to the public last month, promising parties, fun and - surprisingly - no nudity. The site, which is only open to college students, is much like Facebook, with student profiles that include user-generated photos, videos and blogs.

Mercyhurst Preparatory School, in Erie, Pa., has set up a fund in memory of College sophomore Anne Ryan, who died on Sept. 9 from meningitis. The fund, named the Anne Ryan Mission Fund, will help pay for religious community-service trips to Baltimore, Md.

Avery Lawrence is a College senior from Charlottesville, Va. His e-mail address is lawrence@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Fraternity. The word is derived from frater, Latin for brother. In broad terms, it means a collection of similar people joined together by a shared purpose. Most college students have a hazier definition that typically involves beer, chicks, bros and the occasional ho.

The recently restructured graduate student government is raring to get its constituents more connected to Penn. The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly has emerged from a major organizational makeover and is now eager to promote interdisciplinary cooperation among all 10 graduate schools represented by GAPSA and to spearhead new campus initiatives.

Along with at least 1,000 other scholars, Linguistics professor Mark Liberman is part of a recent trend of professors delving into a new, informal aspect of academia: the blog.

What organizers had intended to be an open discussion forum aimed at dispelling misconceptions surrounding atheism quickly turned into support for atheism itself. The Penn Inquiry & Freethought Forum, a new club aimed at discussing secular opinions and ideas, hosted "Ask a Skeptic" last night in Huntsman Hall, hoping for a balance of religious and non-religious attendees who would foster healthy debate.

A war is being waged on hypocrisy. Statesmen will fall, and political empires will crumble. But the adult entertainment industry will live on. Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, is billing himself as a crusader in the fight for public integrity. In June this year, he ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post, offering up to $1 million cash to anyone who could "provide documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent official.

High-school students who hate the alphabet soup of admissions testing may instead opt to Zinch. Launched in April, Zinch is a Facebook-like Web site that allows students to show prospective schools more than their PSAT and SAT scores. Applicants can create profiles that showcase their accomplishments and extracurricular activities and upload video, images and audio clips.

6-foot-10, 230-pound power forward Andrew Van Nest is seriously considering playing basketball at Penn, according to his father, Jeffrey Van Nest. The Weston, Mass. native, whose mother graduated from the University, has scheduled an official visit to Penn during the weekend of September 29th.