The exhaustive voter-registration efforts that marked this year's election may have resulted in more voters than Philadelphia's polling places can handle, according to the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia political watchdog group.

Complaints from Penn students about the customer service at the McDonald's restaurant on 40th and Walnut streets prompted the company to fire some of its employees last week. Following an incident that occurred at the restaurant in the early hours of Sunday, Oct.

New study spaces called Incubation Stations in the Weiss Tech House will provide students with more room to think this semester. The larger of the two rooms features a wall-to-wall white board, projection equipment and new computers fully stocked with software such as Matlab and Adobe Creative Suite.

Even CEOs have to silence their BlackBerrys sometimes. In the Advanced Management Program, part of Wharton's Executive Education department, high-level executives and government officials leave their busy lives at work and return to taking notes in the classroom.

Theft: Oct. 23 - Someone reported that GPS devices, left in plain sight, were stolen from an automobile and ambulance on the 4200 block of Sansom Street at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 23 - Two male students, 18 and 20, reported that their unattended wallets were stolen from an unsecured room at the Iron Gate Theatre, located on the corner of 37th and Chestnut streets, a little before 5 p.

Before applying to college, many high-school seniors consult the U.S. News and World Report's annual ranking of American colleges and universities. Now, however, they have another consideration: how their top choice stacks up against universities around the world.

Eat breakfast, study for midterms, pray to God - although not necessarily in that order. For a large portion of Penn students, daily or weekly prayer is an integral part of their schedule. According to associate chaplain Stephen Kocher, "On some level, the majority of Penn students and staff are engaged in some sort of prayer in a regular basis," although how they do so varies across the board.

The high school sophomores taking the PSATs used to be the ones getting an early start on SAT preparations. But now, a new test from the College Board is putting pressure on students to start preparing as early as middle school. Readistep - a pre-SAT test announced by the College Board last week - aims to help eighth-grade students begin preparing for high school and college.

For many Penn students, Sunday morning doesn't start until at least noon. Not so, however, for 10 brothers from the Sigma Nu fraternity. Using only bed sheets, spray paint and determination, the brothers woke up early Sunday morning to build a community haunted house for the People's Emergency Center, a social service agency located on 39th Street just north of Powelton Avenue that provides housing and assistance for families facing homelessness and poverty.

In the midst of the economic crisis, relations between the U.S. and China - a growing economic superpower - may play a crucial role. Zhou Wenzhong, who has been China's ambassador to the U.S. since 2005, discussed this relationship yesterday in a lecture

What's your anti-drug? For many targets of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign - a five-year, $1 billion effort by the federal government to promote drug-resistance skills, alternatives and negative consequences - it doesn't seem to matter. A recent evaluation led by the Annenberg School for Communication found little correlation between exposure to anti-drug advertisements and anti-drug beliefs.

Leadership, according to journalist Chris Satullo, "can be boiled down to six Yoda-esque, pithy statements." Satullo, longtime columnist and former editorial page editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, spoke to a group of about a dozen students and faculty yesterday over dinner as part of the Fox Leadership Speakers Forum.

Last Friday, Philadelphia Police captains, community members and proud parents alike gathered in Temple University's McGonigle Hall to recognize the Police Academy's newest graduates. The 91 officers, after spending this week on traffic control during the World Series, will then be deployed to districts across the city - including several that will require them to work closely with Philadelphia universities.

This is the last semester that students will use a Scantron sheet and No. 2 pencil to evaluate their professors. Starting in Spring 2009, the course evaluation system will be completely electronic. With this shift, the Student Committee for Undergraduate Education hopes to make the qualitative comments - which students currently handwrite at the bottom of the evaluation form but are not published online - accessible to everyone.

The long-term future of government policies on abortion, the death penalty, use of torture and a number of other issues are at stake in the 2008 presidential election. Experts believe this year's election is significant because the president's power to appoint justices to the Supreme Court has the potential to substantially alter policies in the long run.

Domus, the eight-story, $71-million luxury apartment complex located on 34th and Chestnut streets, is up for sale - barely a year after its completion in the fall of 2007. Domus was intended to be built and then put on the market shortly after, according to a spokeswoman for the building's developer.

Based on a celebrity-studded public service announcement of the same name, "Don't Vote / 5 Friends" is a viral video produced and distributed by Penn Leads the Vote - a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing voter turnout.