Ever wonder why most of your professors in science and engineering are men?

In a thriller of a match on Saturday night at the Palestra, the Penn volleyball team lost its Ivy League opener to Princeton in four games. The Tigers (10-0, 1-0 Ivy) had already grabbed a 17-11 lead in an electrifying first game when coach Kerry Carr was forced to call a timeout.

Receiver Matt Carre was in sync with sophomore quarterback Robert Irvin on Saturday. So was Braden Lepisto. And Chris Mizell. One week after throwing for under 100 yards and two interceptions, Irvin was hitting all of his targets on Saturday. Three Penn receivers set career highs in the win over Dartmouth.

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

Mayor John Street may have signed a citywide smoking ban into law this month, but the issue is far from extinguished.

Jen Morrison, a senior in the School of Nursing, has gotten great career advice at Penn - from her peers. When she was a freshman and needed help choosing classes and buying books, these nurses were there with advice. When she became a junior and needed to get CPR-certified, they were once again there to help.

Penn's No. 7 spot on the 2007 U.S. News & World Report college rankings may not be an indicator of the University's ability to educate students, according to a new report from an education think tank. The report from the Washington-based Education Sector criticizes the popular U.

This country is dropping the ball when it comes to teaching teachers, an expert said yesterday. Arthur Levine, the former president of Teachers College at Columbia University, spoke yesterday afternoon at Irvine Auditorium about his report on the state of teacher education in America.

What do you get when you combine the Wharton School, rampant corruption and the Chinese Communist Party? A purging, of course. Last Sunday, Chinese security forces removed Chen Liangyu, a graduate of the first Wharton senior executive training program run in Shanghai in 1990, from his post as Shanghai's Communist Party boss and placed him under house arrest.

For Nyssa Liebermann, tomorrow's game at Dartmouth hits close to home. In the Hanover, N.H., contest, Penn's senior captain will be pitted against Lizzie Bildner, the Big Green's leading scorer and the Penn forward's childhood friend. "She's a pretty happy-go-lucky girl," Liebermann said.

As a new freshman at Penn, I can hardly describe my excitement for the coming four years. Already, I have experimented with uranium, participated in meaningful discussions on U.S. poverty and learned much from amazing professors. Just as Noam Harel wrote in his guest opinion last Friday, "there has never been a better time for current or past Penn students to puff our chests out when we say, 'I go to Penn,' or 'I went to Penn.

Penn's poor play against Villanova won't cut it against Princeton. Tomorrow at the Palestra, the Quakers volleyball team (4-6) kicks off its Ivy league season against undefeated Princeton (9-0). This will be Princeton's first Ivy League match as well. On Wednesday, the Quakers lost to Villanova in a clean sweep.

Sex under the Button may just be the stuff of Penn mythology, but the University is giving hopeful students 50,000 chances to make sure they do it safely. The Office of Health Education purchases 50,000 Lifestyle condoms per year, according to Director Susan Villari.

Most professors probably wouldn't question the worth of a disabled baby's life. Peter Singer, however, is not your average professor. In his book Practical Ethics, Singer wrote that "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person.

Arthur Gardner Smith had some stiff competition running for freshman class president. But he still managed to get 40 percent more votes than his closest competitor, and the new leader of the Class of 2010 is eager to get started. Freshman class representatives were finally announced last night after a race that featured a historic number of candidates, high voter turnout and allegations of tampering with election materials.

When asked about how he viewed Penn's football program this year, Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens replied, "They're as good as any team I've seen on tape" - high praise, considering Teevens' squad played host to No. 1 New Hampshire last week and ended up on the wrong end of a 56-14 beatdown.

Blink, and you might miss Molly Weir. But if you take a closer look at the women's soccer team's speedy sophomore and Penn's recent performance, you might notice something. "She needs to learn some composure in and around the box," coach Darren Ambrose said.