If second-year physics graduate student John Alison were a few years older, he would have studied at Fermi, a famous physics lab in Chicago. Instead he will head to Switzerland this summer to study particle physics. Geneva, Switzerland boasts the world's premier particle accelerator thanks to a 1990s budget cut that halted construction of a similar model in the U.

There are two blackened pots sitting in my kitchen cabinet. One features a pasta pattern, while the other has charred Rice-A-Roni permanently glued to its steel surface. Speaking of cooking casualties, one of my plastic bowls perished last year due to a bad interaction between a microwave and chocolate chips.

Mingling with a group of older and wiser graduate students are numerous undergraduates hoping to gain experience and knowledge. The concept of taking graduate-level classes either for submatriculation or for experience has long been a tradition for undergraduates at Penn.

A home in Pearlington, Miss. was sinking and Engineering graduate student Kyle Sirianno was determined to find out why. He encountered the home - which had sunk by two inches because the septic tank underneath it was broken - while testing the quality of well water in Pearlington, an area still suffering from the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

In the past, Penn might have overlooked a Dartmouth squad coming off a nine-win season and picked to finish dead last in the Ivy League preseason poll. Not this year, though. For one, Quakers coach Glen Miller doesn't put any stock in Dartmouth's preseason ranking.

Students don't need alcohol to have fun To the Editor: With regard to last Friday's article "Building school spirit one brewski at a time" (Jan. 25, 2008), the column failed to mention that the state of Pennsylvania must grant a liquor license to any venue that intends to sell alcohol.

Penn will comply with requests for information about endowment growth and financial-aid spending asked for in a letter from the U.S. Senate Finance Committee early this week. The letter, written by committee chairman Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and ranking Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, seeks to gather data in order to assess how colleges are making education more affordable and how tax breaks for endowments factor into financial-aid policy.

Boy did the women's basketball team need that break. After stumbling through a horrendous December and first half of January, during which Penn lost ten straight games, the Quakers (3-13, 0-1 Ivy) are wrapping up their two-week layoff. And the team had no shortage of things it needed to improve.

The spring season for tennis is starting with a bang. With two big wins against Drexel and Saint Joseph's under its belt, the men's tennis team has established a high benchmark for this afternoon's match against Georgetown. The Quakers will have a quick turn-around when they travel to face Old Dominion on Sunday, but they won't be overlooking the Hoyas.

It was a bit like New Student Orientation all over again last night for next year's residents of the Radian, as they met with future roommates and hallmates for the first time. As construction progresses on the Radian, located at 39th and Walnut streets, its future residents gathered last night at Marathon Grill.

After all the glory of Wednesday - when Penn won five straight games to topple its arch-rival, No. 1 Princeton - it's back to business as usual for the women's squash team. On Saturday, the Quakers (8-0) will host their final two home matches of the seasons, taking on unranked George Washington and No.

From force-feeding pledges various mysterious substances to quaffing copious amounts of alcohol in creative ways, the fraternity initiation process has always been one of the more curious practices of American college culture. However, this rite of passage took a turn for the worse at Yale, where a recent Zeta Psi pledge event resulted in a spate of controversy when the Women's Center threatened to file a lawsuit against the fraternity.

It took Jim Skinner more than 40 years to go from flipping burgers to managing fortunes for the fast-food giant McDonalds. Yesterday, he shared some of the secrets to his success with students at the Woodlands Ballroom at the Hilton Inn at Penn. The event was a corporate benefit banquet billed as "An Evening of Philanthropy," hosted by Penn's chapter of the Alpha Kappa Psi Professional business fraternity.

For Americans, there's July 4th, there's New Years Eve - and then there's the Super Bowl. Between the game and the grub, this annual showdown between football's best has become what amounts to a national celebration for football fanatics and novices alike.

Forget the Florida trip. Forget the Big 5. Forget Loyola. Forget North Carolina. The real season starts today. And it's a late start, to be sure. Harvard's trip to the Palestra tonight will mark the first time that the Quakers (5-12, 0-0) have ever opened their Ivy League season in February.

Mayor Michael Nutter's decision last week to revoke SugarHouse's casino license for its proposed 5,500-slot parlor provided a new setback for casino developers interested in coming to Philadelphia. Nutter revoked the license in order to more completely evaluate whether the proposed casino is the best use for the land at the Fishtown site.