For pollsters, cell-phone static may be getting in the way of good polling. Across the country, pollsters attempting to accurately reflect the public's choice for president are facing a big - and unprecedented - problem: cell-phone dominance among youth combined with historic young-voter turnout in the primaries.

Technology upgrades across campus are giving more students an interactive classroom experience. Numerous central pool classrooms - spaces that are open to classes held by any school - are in the process of a massive technology update. Changes include increased accommodations for "clicker" technology, upgrades in projection technology, Windows 2007 on all classroom computers and the installation of SMART Sympodium, a new program that can record a professor's voice as well as what he does on the computer in a lecture hall.

One early Sunday this past September, College senior Zachary Roseman hopped onto the Bolt Bus with his friend Benji and headed to New York City. "It was one of the last times Yankee stadium was going to be standing" said Roseman, "and my friend had never been to a game.

For a year now, student government leaders have been unsure of Penn's future role in Ivy Council, a consortium of student leaders from around the Ivy League. The disagreement resurfaced in a debate at last Sunday's Undergraduate Assembly meeting about whether to fund the Penn delegation's travel to the upcoming conference, which will be held tomorrow at Columbia University.

Try and say it: Philadelphia sells sea shells by the Jersey shore. It doesn't carry quite the same ring, but if the tongue twister is the most consideration you've given shells recently, it's worth paying a visit to the annual Philadelphia Shell Show this weekend.

Some Wharton courses have, in one sense, become paper-thin recently. A number of Wharton professors have offered course bulk packs online to students this semester. By going the paperless route, professors say they are giving students a convenient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly way of acquiring their course material.

The Times Higher Education, a London-based higher-education magazine, recently ranked Penn the 11th-best university in the world, a three-place improvement over last year. The rankings are based on peer and employee review as well as data on the school's research output, teaching, and international orientation.

The new freshmen faces in student government have increased the overall diversity of those groups, many student government and minority coalition leaders say. There has been a specific focus by those groups this year to increase minority involvement in student government, including an information session in September hosted by the six branches of student government and six minority and cultural coalitions.

College sophomore Francis Udler calls his plans for this weekend "ridiculous." "I'm going to have to study during fall break," Udler said.

Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine is making an effort to curb a national and statewide shortage of some types of veterinarians. In recent years, there has been a lack of veterinarians who specialize in fields other than companion-animal practice, according to Gary Althouse, chairman of the Vet School's Clinical Studies department.

When it comes to media spotlight, Penn is near - but not quite at - the top. Penn is number 11 in a new ranking by the Global Language Monitor that rated 4,000 American colleges and universities according to their popularity in the media. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia universities all cracked the top 10.

Commercial. Catalogue. Couture. College Hall? Clad in a Michael Kors bolero and Christian Louboutin shoes, English professor Wendy Steiner appeared last month in a photo spread for the college issue of The New York Times Magazine. Steiner - a self-proclaimed "lifelong subscriber to Vogue magazine" - has always believed in a close connection between the worlds of fashion and the arts.

The Daily Pennsylvanian incorrectly reported Tuesday that the Social Planning and Events Committee had incurred a $50,000 debt at the end of the 2007-08 school year. "SPEC as an organization is not in debt," said SPEC president and College senior Michelle Jacobson.

The City of Philadelphia will face a budget deficit of at least $650 to 850 million over the next five years, Mayor Michael Nutter said yesterday. Nutter had warned in mid-September that Philadelphia would face a deficit of at least $450 million due to fall off in business-privilege taxes and increases in pension costs.

View Larger Map

Political campaigns have made unprecedented efforts to register new voters this year - but attempts have already been made to scare some of them away from the polls on Nov. 4. A flyer has been distributed around Philadelphia universities and in low-income neighborhoods over the last month, incorrectly stating that voters with outstanding arrest warrants or unpaid traffic tickets might be arrested if they show up to cast a ballot.

Let's talk about sex, baby. At least, Trojan Condoms thinks Penn students should. Trojan, which just released its 2008 Sexual Health Report Card, placed Penn 21st out of 129 schools surveyed about the availability of "sexual health resources and information to their students," according to the study pamphlet.