Penn Medical School's Department of Dermatology was ranked as the number-one academic dermatology program, according to a report published this month in The Dermatology Online Journal. This report is the first to rank dermatology programs based on academic achievement.

System of standards in place for TAs To the editor: Let me correct some misconceptions voiced in your recent staff editorial, "Making TAs better," (10/2/2007) regarding the preparation of teaching assistants at Penn. Contrary to the editorial, there are, in fact, basic standards of preparation for new teaching assistants that apply on a school-by-school basis.

Imagine a world in which everything cost as much as you wanted to pay. Airline tickets for fall break? $50 sounds reasonable. That Porsche you've had your eye on? Yours for a grand. Dinner at Le Bec Fin? No more than the Dollar Menu. Such a state of affairs is both ludicrous and impossible.

The Dartmouth women soccer team doesn't seem to believe that the closer you get to the goal, the better your chance of scoring. The Big Green have been far more effective from outside of the box than in. Struggling on offense, they have only scored eight goals in 11 games.

After a blowout win over Georgetown last week, Penn is ready to put the past behind it and restart its hunt for an Ivy crown when it takes on Columbia in New York tomorrow.

Former Neurosurgery professor Tracy McIntosh will proceed with his court-mandated resentencing for a 2002 sexual assault. McIntosh and his lawyer, Joel Trigiani, announced the decision Friday morning in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. McIntosh's other option was to try to withdraw his original no-contest plea and go to trial.

College sophomore Brandon Moyse never thought Buckcherry would get him into trouble. But when Moyse - who is also a DP sportswriter - opened his inbox last Friday, the rock band was the cause for a distressing e-mail: A message from the Recording Industry Association of America demanding that he remove one of the band's hit songs from his computer.

After last weekend's emphatic wins over Cornell and Columbia, the Penn volleyball team will attempt to duplicate that feat when it faces Brown tonight at 7 p.m. and Yale on Saturday at 4 p.m. Both games will be played at the Palestra. Tonight's contest pits the Quakers (8-6, 2-1 Ivy) against a Brown team (2-11, 0-3 Ivy) that was swept last weekend by league-leader Dartmouth.

As sophomores and freshmen leave today for a four-day break, they should count their blessings: Come fall 2009, fall break will be one day shorter. The Council of Undergraduate Deans made the decision last May to shorten the break in 2009 to one day in order to squeeze a full 13 weeks of classes into the fall semester.

Now is when the dividends for Penn's difficult early schedule are supposed to pay off. And the men's soccer team (4-4-2, 1-0-0 Ivy) will look to cash in when it faces Ivy League powerhouse Dartmouth (6-2-2, 0-0-1) Saturday at Rhodes Field.

NewCourtland Elder Services, a Philadelphia-based company that addresses the needs of the city's elderly population, recently donated $5 million to endow and name the Nursing School's NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health.

NEW YORK--When Joe Sandberg received his 22nd and final handoff, he finished off one of the best performances of his career. It was fourth down and he needed only one yard, but he got 13, enough for his fourth score of the game. Sandberg finished with 197 yards, an average of just under nine per carry.

To describe the inner workings of the underground economy that exist in many urban communities, Columbia professor Sudhir Venkatesh told a story at the 23rd annual public lecture hosted by the Urban Studies Department. Venkatesh, an ethnographer of life in urban neighborhoods, conducted his research on the intricacies of the underground economy in Brownsville, Chicago, an extremely poor and predominantly African American community.

Val Cloud should be happy. Her field hockey team just completed a thrilling 3-2 comeback win at Delaware on Wednesday, which she called one of the best wins in program history. But with a game against perennial Ivy doormat Columbia looming, there's one thing she just can't get out of her mind.

Economics professor and accused murderer Rafael Robb plans to use surveillance-camera footage at several locations that he visited the morning his wife was killed in order to provide an alibi defense at his November trial, according to court papers filed Friday.

Imagine what would happen if all the rules of the library - no speaking, shouting or running - were broken, and the books began reading themselves aloud. Just that happened last night in the Kelly Writers House's Art Cafe during "Suddenly Everyone Began Reading Aloud," a project by College senior Matthew Abess.