Alchemist to call MIT home
Alchemist, originally on loan for the duration of MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration, can now call the Institute home. The sculpture, which sits between the Student Center and Massachusetts Avenue, represents a thinking man comprised of numbers and math functions.
We’re number five!
MIT is in a five-way tie for fifth place in U.S. News and World Report’s 2012 national university rankings. The Institute took the No. 5 spot along with Caltech, Stanford, UChicago, and UPenn. Havard and Princeton tied for the No. 1 spot, followed by Yale in third and Columbia in fourth.
173 bids given as recruitment ends
Sorority recruitment wrapped up on Sept. 7 with 173 women receiving bids. Recruitment this year was marked by a higher retention rate — the number of people who stick through formal recruitment — and by more women applying for recruitment sooner.
NASA detects planet dancing with pair of stars
From double sunrise to double sunset the show goes on, always changing.
Castillo death ruled suicide
According to an article published by the Boston Globe on Tuesday, the death of Nicolas E. Del Castillo ’14 has been ruled a suicide by the medical examiner’s office. Castillo’s death certificate, filed on Monday, lists his cause of death as asphyxia. Castillo’s body was found in his room on the 4th floor of East Campus’ West parallel on Sunday, Sept. 4.
Baltimore institute sued for lead dust & kids study
A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday against a prominent Baltimore medical institute, accusing it of knowingly exposing black children as young as a year old to lead poisoning in the 1990s as part of a study exploring the hazards of lead paint.
Famine hits hard in a world now less likely to intervene
DOLO, Somalia — Is the world about to watch 750,000 Somalis starve to death? U.N. warnings could not be clearer. A drought-induced famine is steadily creeping across Somalia and tens of thousands of people have already died. The Islamist militant group al-Shabab is blocking most aid agencies from accessing the areas it controls, and in the next few months, three-quarters of a million people could run out of food, U.N. officials say.
Questions raised over startup’s integrity
Winning the Grand Prize in MIT’s $200K Clean Energy Prize contest in May was only the beginning of an MIT startup’s success. CoolChip Technologies, which develops cooling systems for electronics, was automatically entered as a finalist in the MIT $100K Business Plan Contest as a result of winning the CEP. CoolChip has also been covered by CNN Money, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and Electronic Engineering Times since their CEP win. At the end of August, however, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education cast a shadow over the success of the young company.
Cameron and Sarkozy visit Libya, vow continued NATO effort
TRIPOLI, Libya — The leaders of Britain and France visited Libya on Thursday in a triumphal but heavily guarded tour intended to boost the country’s revolutionary leaders, whose forces were propelled to power with NATO’s help last month by routing Moammar Gadhafi and his military in the most violent conflict of the Arab Spring uprisings.
Shorts (left)
WASHINGTON — An armed drone operated by the CIA this week killed a top al-Qaida operative responsible for plotting terror attacks inside Pakistan, two U.S. officials said Thursday.
China consolidates grip on rare earths
BEIJING — In the name of fighting pollution, China has sent the price of compact fluorescent light bulbs soaring in the United States.
US to seek fines on oil firms for Gulf spill
WASHINGTON — The federal government will seek to fine BP, Transocean and Halliburton for violations tied to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the nation’s top offshore drilling regulator said Thursday.
Sunny but cooler weekend ahead
After experiencing warm temperatures most of this week, a cold frontal passage last night ushered in more fall-like weather. A high-pressure system will settle in to the region, bringing with it a much colder and drier air mass. While temperatures Monday through Thursday were 10°F above normal mid-60°Fs, temperatures this weekend could be as much as 10°F below normal. With clear skies and low wind speeds, the conditions tonight will be ideal for radiative cooling, allowing temperatures to drop into the mid 40°Fs.
White House weighs limits of terror fight
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s legal team is split over how much latitude the United States has to kill Islamist militants in Yemen and Somalia, a question that could define the limits of the war against al-Qaida and its allies, according to administration and congressional officials.
Shorts (right)
JERUSALEM — Senior U.S. and European diplomats tried without success Thursday to persuade the Palestinian leaders to skip or modify their planned U.N. membership bid, officials involved said.
Striking prediction: Abundance of US oil
A new report that predictably found huge potential natural gas supplies in the U.S. also contained news its own writers found surprising — that oil is more abundant than they thought.
A taste of the new dining plan
Let me start by making a huge understatement: I like eating. In fact, I’m pretty sure if I polled everybody who is reading this, close to 99 percent of you would say the same thing — save the 1 percent who simply love to disagree with everything. Let me use this opportunity to make another obvious observation about myself: I like eating good food. I’m sure you all can attest that eating food that tastes delicious helps us start, continue, and end the day in a satisfactory way. At this point, I think it’s clear to say that this was similar to the logic employed by MIT last year when they decided to overhaul the dining system.
THE CONVERSATION Rick Perry: A Texas miracle?
As Rick Perry basks in his front-runner status, the national conversation is turning to the topic of Texas. Assuming Perry does indeed secure the Republican nomination, here is the discussion you can expect to hear up until election day:
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
CORRECTION TO THIS ARTICLE: Because of an editing error, this letter omitted several words from the second sentence. It should read, “Yet data from the Guttmacher Institute show that the abortion rate is over twice as high for women who live with their partner as for those who do not.”
MOVIE REVIEW One Day, Dexter met Emma …
Emma and Dexter met for the first time — officially — on the day of their college graduation and got together that night. Almost. They separated the next morning, but their lives were intertwined for the next twenty years. Starring Anne Hathaway as Emma Morley and Jim Sturgess as Dexter Mayhew, One Day is a film adaptation of the New York Times bestseller of the same title by British writer David Nicholls.
BOOK REVIEW On boxes and coming out of them
Slant, the debut novel of MIT graduate Timothy Wang, tells the story of James, a gay Asian MIT undergrad. Immediately our minds start to categorize: He is gay and he is Asian, a double minority. Of course, there is more to a person than his sexuality and his race, yet somehow in the world we live in, we often find ourselves boxed along these broad lines. Add age and beauty (the skin-deep kind), and the world’s judgment on the person is very nearly delivered. This is what Slant deals with. It is not so much a story of coming out, or coming of age, or simply coming (ahem!) as it is a story of coming to terms.
MOVIE REVIEW A nerd-worthy pandemic
Imagine the chilling prospect of a deadly pandemic throwing the entire world into chaos. In Contagion, Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh takes us on a high-pace cinematic experience depicting the emergence of a novel, highly contagious viral pathogen, and mankind’s dramatic struggle to contain the disease and find a cure. Unlike other disaster movies, the science behind Contagion is highly plausible and described in significant detail, often making the movie feel like a documentary — it’s appealing to the typical (nerdy) MIT crowd. Additionally, the movie features a star-studded cast — a key element for closely connecting with the audience and delivering an intense psychological drama. While highly ambitious and far-reaching, Contagion succeeds in being both an original artistic movie and an entertaining thriller.
Five lessons football fans learned from Week 1
This past Sunday was one of the most highly anticipated opening days for any sport in years, following one of the most eventful offseasons that football has ever seen. For almost five months, the NFL was gripped in a frustrating lockout that prevented players from working in team facilities until late July.
Patriots prepare for tough competition
Editor’s note: This is the second part of a series introducing Boston’s professional sports teams. With the NFL season just getting under way, here’s a look at the New England Patriots. This piece was originally published last fall, but has been updated for the 2011-2012 season.
Sailing starts season strong
The MIT sailing team kicked off its season by competing in three events this past weekend. The Engineers captured fifth place out of 20 teams at the Harry Anderson Trophy, finished ninth at the Toni Deutsch Trophy, and took third and fourth at the Harvard Invitational.
