Janice Dow is a College sophomore from Los Angeles. Her e-mail address is dow@dailypennsylvanian.com

Forget Moneyball. While baseball is largely a game of numbers, no quantitative value can be assigned to the upbeat attitude humming within the Quakers' locker room only days before the season begins Saturday against Davidson and Georgetown. "We want to go down there and execute," junior Steve Gable, a co-captain and the team's starting second baseman, said.

Penn is taking its initiative to help the environment beyond the dining halls to the food trucks on campus. The Undergraduate Assembly is working with the Penn Environmental Group to encourage food trucks to use environmentally friendly containers rather than Styrofoam.

To the untrained eye, fencing might look something like two beekeepers vying to strike each other with swords. There is, of course, slightly more to it than this interpretation implies. In light of the men's team's Ivy League victory on Sunday, perhaps the sport deserves a closer look.

At first glance, cosmology - or the study of the universe - and particle physics - the study of subatomic particles and the forces affecting them - have little in common due to size differences. However, the Physics and Astronomy Department has undertaken a new program to allow cosmologists and particle physicists to assist each other in solving some of physics' thorniest problems.

With their spring break trip to sunny California on the horizon, the men's tennis team only has to endure the frigid Philadelphia air for so much longer. Of course, the northeastern terrain - or rather, the indoor sanctuary - has served the team well thus far.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this year's Penn Reading Project is certainly the shortest work to date. Rather than reading (or, in most cases, not) a book, as entering freshman have done for the past 10 years, the class of 2013 will be asked to "read" The Gross Clinic - a painting by Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins.

Is Twitter a way to stay in contact with your buddies or a manifestation of the human poetic narrative? This question and others came up for discussion as Kelly Writers House Fellow Robert Coover concluded his two-day introduction to the Penn community with an interview yesterday at KWH.

Yesterday, 2,700 Africans died of malaria, 144 South African women were raped and 14,500 children under 15 were infected with AIDS. International development efforts need both more time and more money to help eliminate these tragedies. Thus the College Dean's Advisory Board announcement that it will be developing an international-development minor must be met with praise.

Theft Feb. 13 - A woman unaffiliated with the University reported at about 6 a.m. that an unknown suspect removed her unattended watch from a room at Presbyterian Hospital. Feb. 15 - Penn student Iris Braunstein, 19, of the 3800 bloc of Locust Walk, was arrested at about 10:45 a.

From historical notions of beauty to the racial segregation at Woody's, colorful conversation flew last night at the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center. As part of the Office of Health Education's Body Image Week, Queer People of Color hosted an event last night called "Who's Sexy: Plastic Surgery & Race," which focused on how issues of body image vary across races and sexuality.

Jeff Cellucci has got to feel old. It isn't the harsh reality of graduating from college that's making Penn's senior catcher feel less youthful. He's not freaking out about turning 22 next week, either. And although his knees might ache after a doubleheader or a long bullpen session, it's not that his body is giving out on him.

On Sunday, the Undergraduate Assembly mulled over a policy update addressing the exclusion of American Sign Language from the Wharton language requirement before moving to internal affairs. While both the College and Nursing recognize ASL as a valid language for the requirement, Wharton does not.

This month marked the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth, and he has been getting considerable attention. My subject here is not his work on evolution. No, as director of Career Services, I am interested in the beginnings of his career. How does one become a Charles Darwin? A doctor's son, Darwin was sent to the University of Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, but it did not sufficiently interest him.

In what may turn your friend, your mom or even you into a modern-day Big Brother, Google's newest application, Latitude, allows you to broadcast your exact location to your friends and family. Available for any computer and on certain smartphones that are GPS-enabled, the application utilizes information from GPS satellites and cell towers to pinpoint a user's location.

Senior leadership. Or the lack thereof. That's what all of the Penn men's basketball team's problems have boiled down to. At least that's the line coach Glen Miller continues to offer as an excuse after the Quakers dropped two games to Dartmouth and Harvard at the Palestra this weekend.

Pete Carril knows what he wants to do with the notorious basketball schema he devised. "I'm going to get a bunch of gravediggers and bring them up to Princeton and dig a big hole in the ground," the Hall of Fame coach told The New York Times in 2007. "And then bury the Princeton offense once and for all.