Former top executives at Moody's Investors Service testified before a Congressional panel that the firm changed its focus from providing investors to cultivating relationships with megabanks and broker-dealers whose securities it was supposed to objectively rate. Gary Witt, a professor in Temple's Fox School of Business, was a managing director in the firm's U.S. derivatives group. "The profit margins were so wide," Witt said, "and yet management really stinted on hiring staff. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now."

Will the stellar Stanley Cup final between Philadelphia and Chicago signal the NHL's rebirth? The sudden surge in interest in the Chicago Blackhawks may have as much to do with quirks of the Chicago television market — where Blackhawks games were invisible — as they do with on-the-ice improvements. "Once [the Blackhawks] got on TV, created a buzz and became a competitive team," said Aubrey Kent of Temple's Sport Industry Research Center, "they had a perfect storm to create one of the best hockey markets there is right now."

Northern Liberties has gotten safer since it metamorphosed into one of Philadelphia's most popular areas, but the slaying of Sabina Rose O'Donnell just north of the neighborhood's Girard Avenue border was a sharp reminder that trendy, transitional areas often begin to expand into poor, crime-ridden ones. But anyone looking for logic about O'Donnell's death shouldn't look at the changing face of Northern Liberties, says one expert. "Gentrification often tends to reduce crime, rather than increase it," said David Elesh, a Temple sociologist.