When 10-year-old Nicole and her dad travel two-and-a-half hours from central Pennsylvania each week so she can undergo chemotherapy, her visit is always brightened by the company of a few furry, four-legged friends. Yesterday, Nicole and other guests at the Ronald McDonald House - a home away from home for families of children being treated at local medical facilities - enjoyed a special Halloween treat of puppies dressed as pumpkins, princesses and Phillies players.

Playing with Barbies might seen like an innocent pastime, but tonight Barbie isn't just going on a date with Ken - she's going to rehab. Bloomers, the all-female musical comedy group, will perform its fall show, "Barbie shows her Bloomers" tonight from 8 to 10 p.

Just last month, it seemed like you couldn't walk 10 feet without being asked if you were registered to vote by someone with a clipboard. I'm not talking about the student groups with tables and T-shirts on Locust Walk - I'm talking about the ACORN canvassers from the local community who blanketed the entire city.

By HARRISON GARFINKLE Contributing Writer dpsports@dailypennsylvanian.com Men's fencing coach David Micahnik isn't losing any sleep over the May graduation of four-time first-team All-American Ron Berkowsky. Instead, he's comforted by the the return of two former All-Americans, juniors Jon Berkowsky - Ron's brother - and Andrew Bielen, who will provide the team with a boost of energy and some continuity.

The Philadelphia zoning board declared at a hearing on Wednesday that the city's only secure youth detention facility - the Youth Study Center - is permitted by the zoning code to relocate to 48th and Haverford streets in West Philadelphia. That doesn't mean the city can begin constructing the new center yet, however.

Please, for your own sake, don't pigeonhole Bobby Sewall. The Brown wide receiver is certainly good at his job - his eight receptions and 116.2 receiving yards per game make him the most prolific in the Ivy League. But if you ignore his other abilities, you're liable to get burned.

With the Phillies one out away from their first World Series title in 28 years - but one Tampa Bay Rays' hit away from yet another setback - the standing-room-only crowd at Cavanaugh's turned to alcohol to quell its anxiety. "Chug, chug, chug," screamed a pair of students near the door, as others prepared for one final "Let's go Phillies!" chant.

At the end of September, 114 Penn students had received pre-litigation letters from the Recording Industry Association of America asking them to pay a fine of about $3,000 or face a potential lawsuit. But the University is trying to prevent more students from that fate with recent efforts aimed at curbing illegal downloading on campus.

You might want to think again before downing that third drink. Researchers at Wellesley College have found that drinking more than two servings of alcohol a day can increase the rate at which the brain naturally shrinks. The study, carried out on an adult population with an average age of 60, reported rates that are a quarter faster than the natural rate of brain shrinking, which on average is 1.

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.

Everyone - except the guy who has to wear it - thinks the plastic visor is a cool accessory to standard-issue football garb. For senior defensive back Tyson Maugle, it's a pain, just like the broken nose he sustained three weeks ago, which forces him to wear the add-on to his helmet.

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.

Penn students might know David Pottruck for the fitness center that bears his name, but they probably don't know much else about the member of the College Class of 1970. Pottruck was a two-sport athlete for the Quakers in football and wrestling. He was the CEO and president of discount brokerage Charles Schwab, a trustee of the University and has also been involved in a startup airline company and a sports retail network.

Alicia Puglionesi is a College senior from Havertown, Pa. Her e-mail address is puglionesi@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Wei-Hwa Huang has been haunted by his lack of nerves before. When the pressure is on, the 33-year-old Mountain View, Calif., native just hasn't been able to perform. No, Huang isn't an athlete, trial lawyer or surgeon. And unless there's something he's not telling us, he's never defused a bomb.

Ready for your pre-Pre SAT? College Board, which administers the SAT and PSAT, recently announced that it will introduce a new standardized test for eighth graders. The two-hour "ReadiStep" Test will ask students multiple-choice questions on reading, math and writing.