14 million votes already cast
With more than one in three votes likely to be cast before Election Day this year, Republicans are stepping up their efforts to chip away at what has been a Democratic advantage in early voting in key battlegrounds like Ohio and North Carolina.
‘Fiscal cliff’ could lower MIT funding
The potential “fiscal cliff” at the end of 2012 would slash the U.S. federal budget across the board, hitting the nearly $475 million MIT receives from the government each year for research. The Institute could see up to 10 percent cuts in its federal research funding, according to Vice President for Research and Associate Provost Claude R. Canizares.
MIT closed on Monday for hurricane
MIT was closed yesterday due to considerations for Hurricane Sandy. There were no classes, and all non-essential personnel were off work for the three shifts of the day. While most of MIT Medical was closed, Urgent Care remained open.
Paintballs may deflect an incoming asteroid
In the event that a giant asteroid is headed toward Earth, you’d better hope that it’s blindingly white. A pale asteroid would reflect sunlight — and over time, this bouncing of photons off its surface could create enough of a force to push the asteroid off its course.
EdX platform integrates into classes
Nearly six months ago, Harvard and MIT announced the launch of edX, billed as a new online learning platform that would revolutionize education for students around the world seeking. But the universities associated with the nonprofit venture — which now include the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Texas system schools — are also in it to improve their residential classes. This fall, several courses that MIT students are taking on campus — including freshman General Institute Requirement 8.01 (Physics I) — are also making use of edX software.
How safe is the food?
You’ve probably heard of the horror stories of finding lizard tails in salads or clumps of hair in soup. You probably think, or at least hope, that it never happens to you here in Cambridge. But how safe, really, is the food you eat around campus?
MIT Together for wellness
Now that MIT students are halfway through their first semester, they have had enough time to gauge how they are doing so far this year, academically and otherwise. Last week, MIT launched MIT Together, an initiative aimed to de-stigmatize and de-mystify asking for help in the MIT community. The core of MIT Together is a new website, together.mit.edu. On the site, students can find listings of student help services ranging from academic resources to mental health support.
Interactive: an introduction
Since February 2004, the City of Cambridge has made available on its website a regularly-updated database of restaurant inspection reports. Our team scraped the data that was available online, including each restaurant’s name, location, and history of violations. We classified these restaurants into four basic categories: on-campus options (including dining halls), shops, fraternities, and food trucks. These restaurants were plotted on a map of Cambridge along with line charts that show the number of violations they accrued over time. Finally, we scraped data from local search and reviews website Yelp to provide more contextual information about these businesses. We will continue to renew this data as it is updated in the future.
VMware to provide software for HarvardX CS50x
EdX and VMware, Inc. announced an agreement yesterday to provide VMware software to those taking HarvardX’s CS50x course, Introduction to Computer Science. All students enrolled in CS50x will now have access to VMware Fusion 5 and VMware Workstation 9 — virtualization software that allows users to run different types of virtual machines (Windows, Linux, etc.) on their computer — for the duration of the course at no charge.
One-fifth of ’16s receive fifth week flags
203 freshmen, about one-fifth of the freshman class, received fifth-week flags last week. According to Julie B. Norman, senior associate dean and director of the office of undergraduate advising and academic programming (UAAP), 37 of the 203 freshmen who got a flag received more than one. The number of freshmen who received who received flags is on par with that of previous years.
Employee healthcare changes
MIT employees will see changes to their healthcare benefits and premiums in 2013 as MIT conforms to the requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Signed into law by Obama in 2010, the PPACA established a timetable for implementing healthcare changes, the nearest of which is Jan. 1.
City boycotts Le Méridien
Workers at Le Méridien Hotel, located at 20 Sidney Street in Cambridge, are seeking MIT’s endorsement of a boycott on the hotel. The boycott began on Oct. 11 and is in response to what the workers say is management’s refusal to respond to a request that hotel employees be permitted to consider the option of unionization without managerial interference. In reference to the Le Méridien labor dispute, Nate Nickerson, MIT’s director of communications, informed The Tech, “MIT’s general practice is not to assess the business actions of other organizations.”
More light shed on health violations
The Massachusetts Department of Health released hundreds of pages of documents Monday detailing a history of violations at the New England Compounding Center, whose tainted medicine has caused a nationwide meningitis outbreak. The documents include dozens of complaints from as early as April 1999, less than a year after the company began as a compounding pharmacy in Framingham, Mass.
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: Pitch Contest finale
In true MIT style, this year’s Elevator Pitch Contest — part of the $100K Entrepreneurship Competition — was full of cosplay and nerdy puns, reminding us that entrepreneurship is fun! The audience was given red balloon-drumsticks, emblazoned with “100K,” with which to make as much noise as possible. The theme of the night was “superheroes.” Hosts were dressed as Avengers superheroes, who represented each of the five competition tracks — Emerging Markets, Energy, Life Sciences, Mobile, Products & Services, and Web/IT.
Task force approves of Kendall plan
A faculty task force has recommended to the Provost that MIT proceed with its east campus (Kendall Square) rezoning proposal, but to consider the land as “an extremely precious resource” and to drive the process with a new comprehensive design plan, rather than commercial interests. The report was discussed at Wednesday’s faculty meeting and released later that day.
Aaron Swartz asks court to suppress data from MIT
MIT released details and logs of Aaron Swartz’s use of the MIT network to law enforcement without a warrant or subpoena, according to court documents filed on Friday, Oct. 5.
Sustainability, ethics and global systems
On Monday, Oct. 15, the Dalai Lama participated in a whole-day forum, in which he shared the stage with a diverse group of experts. The event, titled “Global Systems 2.0,” focused on global issues, such as world hunger, climate change, and global health. The day consisted of two panels: one in the morning titled “Ethics, Economics, and Environment,” and one in the afternoon titled “Peace, Governance, and Diminishing Resources.”