Engineering students interested in research now have an opportunity to look beyond the classroom. The Rachleff Scholars Program, established this fall by a gift from Penn trustee Andrew Rachleff, aims to create a "scholarly community" in the School of Engineering, said Electrical and Systems Engineering professor Jan Van der Spiegel, who is also the director of the program.

McCain McCain wants to expand domestic oil and natural gas exploration and production by lifting restrictions on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and building the necessary infrastructure required to transport the natural gas available there. To reduce our dependency on foreign oil, McCain wants to transform the transportation sector.

Should the City charter be amended to merge the Fairmount Park Commission and the Department of Recreation into a newly created Department of Parks and Recreation? Philadelphia currently has two separate organizations charged with overseeing the city's parks and recreation facilities.

For 60 students, encouraging their peers to vote is more than civic engagement - it's homework. Introduction to American Politics, a Political Science course, is offering four special recitations this semester, in which students are required to participate in Penn Leads the Vote activities in addition to extra coursework.

Frat party tonight? Better bring your ID. This year, fraternities are making a point of throwing significantly more registered parties than usual. Since 2006, the number of registered events during the month of September has more than doubled, according to interim director of the Alcohol and Other Drug Programs Ini

In addition to the traditional gossip, JuicyCampus' forums now include lines of free-verse poetry and portions of Wikipedia articles. One year after the official launch of JuicyCampus.com, college students are still talking about - and criticizing - the controversial anonymous gossip Web site.

College senior Kaarina Romero loves watching television, but rarely turns on a TV. Still, she hasn't missed an episode of Grey's Anatomy this season. Confused? Instead, Romero catches Grey's, Top Model, Heroes and the multitude of other shows she is "obsessed with" on the Internet or on DVR, a digital video recorder.

Tomorrow marks the early-decision deadline for high-school seniors applying to Penn, and for some applicants, the decision may come down to which campus felt 'right.' And when it comes to the people prospective students meet - like their Kite and Key tour guides - race and ethnicity may or may not be a deciding factor in what makes them feel like they belong at a certain school.

Over 120 years of Penn history will soon be available at just the click of a button. The Daily Pennsylvanian and Penn Libraries' Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image are partnering to archive and digitize every edition of the paper, which has been published since 1885.

Penn Police recently arrested a man in connection with several burglaries in the area but is continuing to investigate other similar incidents on and near campus. Burglaries in the Penn patrol zone were up 94 percent for 2008 through the end of September.

Wall Street's crisis, with all its influence, does not seem to be preventing students from going abroad. With rising flight prices - an 8.1-percent increase in the second quarter alone according to the Transportation Department - and the dollar's slide against currencies such as the euro and the pound, students have many things to consider before embarking on that four-month international trek.

Five blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a different kind of intrigue, one worth checking out this Halloween. The Eastern State Penitentiary is the site of Terror Behind the Walls, now into its 18th Halloween season. The 11-acre, 179 year-old compound of decaying cellblocks and abandoned guard towers sets a suitably sinister tone for a Haunted House.

While most students feel they need to go abroad to get a global experience at Penn, the University is bringing some of that international expertise to West Philadelphia. The Distinguished International Scholars Program, started by the Provost's Office in 2006, allows faculty to nominate experts in their field for a short-term visit to campus, typically two weeks.

With the Hub retail and apartment building completed in 2006, and with plans for a second complex in the works, the developer has announced that a Hub III is also on the way. The Philadelphia-based development firm Teres Holdings has secured a contract to build the Hub III at 3939 Chestnut Street.

Living in a swing state, you might be used to seeing a lot of Sarah Palin. But what about seeing her at a frat party? Or seeing four of her at a frat party? With Halloween falling the weekend before the presidential election this year, girls across campus are pulling out their favorite suits and dressing up as the Alaskan governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Alumni visiting for homecoming this weekend may find the retail areas on 39th and 40th streets unrecognizable. As recently as the mid 1990s, the southwest corner of the 40th and Walnut streets intersection was occupied by a surface parking lot and a Burger King.

You might want to think again before downing that third drink. Researchers at Wellesley College have found that drinking more than two servings of alcohol a day can increase the rate at which the brain naturally shrinks. The study, carried out on an adult population with an average age of 60, reported rates that are a quarter faster than the natural rate of brain shrinking, which on average is 1.