Twice a year, Penn safety personnel who act on behalf of students, faculty and staff with outstanding bravery and dedication are publicly recognized by colleagues and student organizations, illustrating a campus-wide appreciation. Leading the way, University President Amy Gutmann welcomed the nearly 100 uniformed officers and student heroes to receive awards at the Division of Public Safety Commendations ceremony and the Penn Police Department Oath of Office ceremony last night.

Hospitals are in the business of curing what ails their patients, but in 2006 about 19 out of every 1,000 patients developed an infection while being treated at Pennsylvania hospitals. This data, released last Thursday by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, is the group's second state-wide report on hospital-acquired infections.

Baseball coach John Cole called the entire weekend against Cornell a "big downer." Penn was shaken up to the tune of three losses in four games amid rain delays, extra innings and a hailstorm of Big Red offense, which poured on 36 runs to the Quakers' 19.

Penn Previews is the time for the University to make its best impression on accepted students - and their parents. Which leads us to wonder why administrators would want to hold one of the Penn Preview days on the Friday of Spring Fling. Seeing college students drinking at 10 a.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) announced yesterday that he has been diagnosed with a recurrence of Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system. Specter, whose term ends in 2010, expects to remain in office and continue re-election efforts, he said in a statement.

Security officials restricted entrance into Harnwell College House last night at about midnight as authorities investigated a suspicious material that was found on the building's 14th floor. After on-site testing, and analysis, the substance was found not to be hazardous.

Former Law student Joseph Cho, accused of trying to kill his neighbors last January, was again found mentally competent to stand trial yesterday. Cho allegedly discharged 15 shots into the door of his neighbors' apartment in January 2007. The neighbors were two male Drexel University students who Cho believed were spies.

Mayor Michael Nutter's first 100 days in office have been anything but uneventful. He has the sizable task of managing a city that has seen its share of crises in recent years. He became Philadelphia's mayor amid some criticism, but if the reception he got after arriving on campus yesterday was any indication, many members of the Penn community stand firmly behind Nutter.

"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to see China and the Olympics," said College sophomore Dennis Murphy, who is going on the Penn-in-Beijing program this summer. The summer abroad program - run by the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication - is centering its second-annual program and its courses around the fact that the Olympics will be in Beijing later in the summer.

This is a defining moment. At a time when our nation is at war and our American dream is slipping away, we cannot settle for the status quo. Pennsylvania is a state that embodies America's founding promise that we can always come together to seek a more perfect union.

The Nursing School received a $10 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study sedation management in critically ill children on ventilators. It is the largest grant the school has ever received. The study - which began earlier this month - aims to minimize recovery times of patients on ventilation tubes by tightly managing titration of sedatives.

The Democratic presidential candidates will face off in Center City tonight - but Fox News pollster and Penn alumnus Frank Luntz will bring the excitement of the debate to campus. As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama debate at the National Constitution Center in this primary season's 21st Democratic debate, Luntz will conduct focus groups at Penn that will air on Fox tonight.

Nursing Dean Afaf Meleis has a history of never taking no for an answer. Meleis began her career after finishing high school in the Middle East when she was just 15. She was one of the top candidates to enter Alexandria University in Egypt, but because the minimum age of acceptance was 16, she was told that she was too young to attend.

The Division of Public Safety responded to 24 Spring Fling related incidents this year - down from 28 last year. The incidents included 19 hospitalizations, two arrests and three investigations, according to DPS officials. There were no loud party disturbances this year.

All Penn's Taylor Tieman needed was a little extra motivation. And, unknowingly, the Villanova softball team might have handed her just that in the fifth inning of game two. "I looked over and they had already started packing up all their stuff, and I got kinda pissed," Tieman said.

While Penn students bemoan the latest yearly round of tuition increases, they may be surprised to learn that the University actually ends up shouldering much of the cost of teaching its students. Tuition and other fees made up 72 percent of the total cost of educating Penn's undergraduate and graduate populations last fiscal year, according to the University's financial statements.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama aren't the only ones debating major issues facing America - the Penn Democrats and College Republicans came together for a debate of their own last night at the Penn Bookstore. The event, an annual tradition among the two groups, served as a forum for members of both parties to debate a variety of issues.