From the Art Museum to the poker table, photos from around New Student Orientation

The last time high-rise apartments looked this good, Penn students grooved to disco music and Richard Nixon was still president. For the first time since Harnwell College House was built in the early 1970s, it's gotten a renovation. New appliances and surfaces, tiled floors and efficient storage space will greet students moving in this fall to the top 10 floors.

The prospect of never having to take the SAT is no longer confined to high school students' wildest dreams. Schools across the country are re-examining their admissions policies, and several have announced they will no longer require standardized-test scores from applicants.

Like the rest of the Penn women's soccer team, midfielder Natalie Capuano went into last season with high expectations. But after a couple of ugly losses and a fifth-place Ivy League finish, the Red and Blue closed out their 2005 campaign on a sour note. "We were pretty disappointed with that result," Capuano said.

A clinical gene vaccine to combat a severe respiratory disease has been developed in a cooperation between Penn and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. The vaccine, the first gene vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome, is expected to be launched pending additional testing.

Looking a few rows up as the Penn football team assembled for their annual photo, the first thing that caught my eye was the hair. It had a certain wavy thickness and was a certain shade of blond that I would have expected to see on a surfer from California, rather than a football player from North Carolina.

City Council passed this summer a bill that bans smoking in all public places in the city - most notably in restaurants and bars. Former Councilman Michael Nutter, who resigned his seat to join the 2007 mayoral race, was the main sponsor of the ban, a project he has been pushing for years.

Seeing Dave Matthews live has never been so charitable. The king of jam-band ethos will take the stage alongside Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson on Sept. 30 for the annual Farm Aid concert, to be held at the Tweeter Center at the Waterfront in Camden, N.

When I covered the men's soccer home opener last year, the Quakers shut down a physical Villanova team in a 2-0 win at Rhodes Field. Penn (2-0 at the time) outshot its city rival 13-5 (6-1 on goal). Eric Violante and Keith Vereb looked more like forwards than the fullbacks they are, combining for two goals and an assist.

Potential fraternity brothers could have one more option this year - Zeta Beta Tau is looking to come back to campus. The fraternity will try to re-establish its presence after having been expelled from Penn two years ago. The expulsion occurred after participants at an unofficial pledge event in 2004 were sent to the emergency room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where they were treated for alcohol poisoning and bodily injuries.

Drug policy at Penn To the Editor: Something is missing at Penn. While students across the country are fueling a powerful grassroots movement to end America's longest war, Penn students have not yet joined the fight. As The Summer Pennsylvanian reported ("Student groups aim to lessen drug penalties," SP, 7/20/2006), Penn does not currently have a chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the country's leading student organization working to end the War on Drugs.

While most college students are getting news about the Israeli war with Hezbollah on television, some Penn students are witnessing the conflict firsthand. Life in the north of Israel is continually disrupted by rocket attacks but students and University staff are finding a surreal sense of normalcy in Jerusalem as the conflict rages less than 100 miles to their north.

Wilson latest to leave Quakers for Temple The Penn athletic department suffered another defection to the Owls program last week when Jeff Wilson, the former director of men's and women's basketball operations, left for a similar position at Temple. He leaves after a year with the Quakers to work at his alma mater, where he graduated two years ago.

As this is the last issue of the summer edition of Street, it heralds, for many, an approaching departure from West Philadelphia. Be it a road trip back to whence you came or a transoceanic flight to exotic shores that awaits, time spent en route profits categorically from a kickass soundtrack.

DECEMBER UNDERGROUND AFI Major record label etiquette usually dictates that after purchasing a successful band on a smaller label, said label pressures previously successful band to produce quick marketable hits, driving said band away from what made them successful and promptly into the ground.

Allegro Pizza closed for light remodeling Allegro Pizza, at 40th and Spruce streets, closed indefinitely late last week. A sign on the door said that the store had been shut down by the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections, in order to fix parts of the structure including the ceiling.

For the second time in a year, the wheels of Philadelphia's public transportation system may come grinding to a screeching halt. Contract negotiations between SEPTA and the union which represents the workers who run the system's Regional Rail trains have so far gone nowhere.