Eric Furda, Penn's recently appointed dean of admissions, was well known at Columbia for his open, receptive personality and his ability to work in a large team, college-admissions counselors and former coworkers say. Furda's work in Colmbia's undergraduate admissions office - which he led from 1995 to 2004 - focused on increasing the breadth and depth of the university's applicant pool.

New hotels are being planned citywide, a trend experts say is likely to weather recent financial difficulties in the real estate markets. Spurred by the planned expansion of the downtown Convention Center, developers have unveiled plans for several new hotels both in Center City and nearer to Penn's campus.

Club Wizzards, the site of a deadly shooting this past fall, recently reopened under new management as Club Atlantis. In late November, police engaged in a gun battle at Club Wizzards, located at 3801 Chestnut St. After allegedly shooting the disc jockey twice, Larry Sanders, 31, of the 500 block of N.

When Justin Fox was younger, his father - an excellent tennis player - took him onto the court and taught him how to play. The Long Island, N.Y. native has not put down his racquet since, becoming the No. 2 singles player in the country at the ripe age of 16 and winning the National Open at Texas.

For some Penn students, "home" is now a very different place than it once was. Pakistani students who returned to their native country for winter break arrived shortly before former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while leaving a rally for the Pakistan People's Party on Dec.

He's the man who invented Bui's famous "hangover special" - the breakfast combo that brings long lines of Penn students to the food truck on the corner of 38th and Spruce Streets those particularly painful Sunday mornings. "One day I was sitting at home thinking, 'What can I do to satisfy [Penn students]?'" explained the proud combo-creator, who asked to be identified as Bui, Jr.

Like a fisherman dangling a juicy worm, the Saint Joseph's defense allowed Penn to get off anything it wanted from outside the arc. And the Quakers took the bait. On Saturday night, Penn scored 42 points against St. Joe's, and three-point shooting is a good candidate on which to place blame.

The best the Quakers could hope for was probably a moral victory. Even that was well out of reach. Saint Joseph's dominating 82-42 victory over Penn on Saturday raises the prospect of a winless Big 5 season, which would be Penn's first since 2000-01. The Quakers visit Temple on Wednesday for their final non-conference game.

The median household income in the United States in 2006 was $48,201. The sticker price of Penn's tuition is $46,124, or almost 96 percent of what a typical family earns in a year. Of course, these figures misrepresent the situation at Penn, where there are very few typical families.

Daniel Schwartz is a College sophomore from Decatur, Ga. His e-mail address is schwartz@dailypennsylvanian.com.

For the women's swim team, the final score of this weekend's meet against Yale does not tell the whole story. Although the Quakers fell to the Bulldogs 186-114, coach Mike Schnur was more than pleased with the results, calling it the "best meet of the year by far.

For many in the Penn community, yesterday's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday was not simply a day off from classes - it was a chance to reflect on the life of a hero and to live out his message of social justice. From painting with youngsters to cleaning a school to an evening candlelight vigil, the University community celebrated King's 79th birthday with a jam-packed day of tributes and community service.

Have you heard the news? Starting this semester, the Undergraduate Assembly will bring 657 free copies of The New York Times to Penn's campus every weekday. As part of the $21,000 initiative, students can pick up a paper at 18 different locations on campus.

The deadline for On-Campus Recruitment resume submissions is tomorrow, and everyone wants to look good on paper. But a killer resume can only get applicants so far - the recruitment process has made its way to the Web as well. "Employers who recruit at Penn are searching Facebook and they're googling candidates," Director of Career Services Patricia Rose said in an online podcast located on the Career Services Web site.

The men's squash team couldn't have scripted a better way to kick off the new semester. The Quakers played some of their best squash of the season this weekend, knocking off Williams, Amherst and Bowdoin on a demanding road trip that required the team to play three matches in three cities within a 24-hour period.

After almost a year of deliberations on University hiring and admissions practices, the Faculty Senate is still in discussions about requiring prospective professors to self-disclose criminal backgrounds. Three Faculty Senate committees and the Senate tri-chairs are currently drafting proposals on self-disclosure for prospective faculty and considering the implications of such a policy.

Soon, a pricey subscription won't be required to read the latest advances in scientific research. A public-access law signed by President Bush on Dec. 26 makes it mandatory for scientists receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health to put a copy of their peer-reviewed manuscripts in an online NIH archive, pubmedcentral.com, upon acceptance to a publication.