When Barbara Firestone met a child with autism during her freshman year in college, she discovered her true calling. "I was so struck by the fact that I couldn't reach out to him, but more struck by what that experience must have been like for him - to be isolated from the world," Firestone said at an event Friday evening to promote autism awareness, as well as her book, Autism Heroes: Portraits of Families Meeting the Challenge.

Inform yourself. This was the overarching sentiment yesterday evening when Penn Democrats, Penn Forum and Fox Leadership Program sponsored "A Democratic Presidential Primary Forum" in Huntsman Hall. Yesterday's forum gave students a chance to explore the policy views of the three leading Democratic nominees for the 2008 presidential election: John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

A training program at Penn is bringing nurses out of the hospital and onto the crime scene. This week at the Nursing School, 42 professional nurses participated in a 15-year-old training program to learn the information and skills necessary to become a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner.

It's hard to imagine a more appropriate location for last weekend's Ron Paul rally than Independence Mall. The National Constitution Center, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall provided the inspiration for his political beliefs; the nearby U.S. Mint and Federal Reserve branch, he wants to do away with.

Wanted: recipient of a Purple Heart applying to the School of Nursing. No, the description is not from a personal ad. Rather, it's a more specific set of requirements for one of Penn's many endowed undergraduate scholarships, which make up about 15 percent of the $92 million financial-aid grant budget.

In light of Monday's sexual assault and an incident of indecent exposure by an AlliedBarton security guard, the Penn Women's Center hosted an information session on sexual violence yesterday afternoon. A panel of campus safety experts addressed two students about available resources and campus security policy changes.

As Penn continues to discuss changes to its hiring practices, the possibility of a self-disclosure question for faculty has the University treading in uncharted waters.

Thanksgiving may be around the corner, but smokers and their allies weren't going cold turkey at the Great American Smokeout health fair and information expo. Research shows smokers are most successful at kicking the habit when they have positive support, which event organizers hoped to instill in attendees.

It's the end of the line for the Octobus. The University believes that ridership on last month's Octobus trial was too low to merit a permanent service, despite optimism from the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. The 13-seat evening-shuttle service, which ran every 30 to 45 minutes between campus and Center City, attracted up to 80 riders an evening.

After dealing with GREs and job recruiters, students who graduate from Williams College will now have one less post-graduation concern. Williams, one of the top liberal-arts colleges in the country, announced earlier this month that it is replacing all loans with grants for students applying for financial aid.

The University will implement a series of initiatives to supplement security on and around campus, officials announced in an e-mail to the University community late Thursday night. The new measures include additional police overtime hours, increased lighting, new security cameras and three new transit stops on the boundaries of campus.

Do you know what you're uploading? When Penn launched Ruckus at the beginning of last year, the University was aiming to stop students from illegally downloading. But are students actually aware of the dangers of illegal uploading? Not really, officials at the University of Michigan say.

The Graduate and Professional Students Assembly has been working with the University over the past two years to create more on-campus housing for graduate students, but there may not be a point. With a nominal stipend and a more established group of friends, many graduate students say living on campus is simply not worth the convenience of being closer to classes.

Theft Nov. 9 - A male employee reported that a laptop was taken at about 3:45 p.m. from an unsecured office at the McNeil Building, located at 3718 Locust Walk. Nov. 9 - A male student reported that at about 5:30 p.m., an unknown suspect removed his bike, secured with a cable lock, from Huntsman Hall, located at 3730 Spruce St.

The School of Engineering and Applied Science's design department just got $70 million richer. The department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics earned a $70 million design-technology package from the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education organization yesterday morning.

Jonathan Greenblatt wants to change the world, one bottle of water at a time. In his keynote speech for the sixth annual Integrity Week, the co-founder of Ethos Water discussed how his company came to be and its continued mission to provide the world's children with clean drinking water.

With female presidents now comprising half of the Ivy League's leadership, it's getting hard to come out on top. Just look at Penn President Amy Gutmann.