Peer Ears: here to listen
Feeling stressed but don’t know what to do? Starting next spring, students will be able to take advantage of a new student-run program called Peer Ears, designed to allow students, or “peer ears,” to refer their peers in need to the proper MIT support resources. The program was founded by Divya Srinivasan ’13 and Emad Taliep ’14, who felt that many students were not always sure where to go if they encountered a problem. Unlike MedLinks, however, peer ears will not be trained to handle mental health issues themselves.
Swartz gets high-powered attorneys
Aaron Swartz has a new legal team. The Internet activist accused of mass downloading files from JSTOR through the MIT network has hired top San Francisco law firm Keker and Van Nest to represent him, according to court filings on Wednesday. Keker is a medium-sized law firm specializing in intellectual property law.
Sloan grad student found dead
Heng “Nikita” Guo, an MBA student in MIT’s Sloan School, passed away last Friday in her apartment in Cambridge. Her death has been ruled a suicide by the Medical Examiner’s office. She was 28.
Introducing the Predict the 2012 Presidential Election contest
Do you think you can predict the 2012 presidential election? Which direction will the swing states swing?
A note from the Chancellor
This death is a tragedy for the MIT community. Our hearts go out to Ms. Guo’s family — and to the larger MIT community of which she was a valued part. At this time, I urge all members of the MIT community to take especially good care of themselves and of one another at this difficult time. MIT’s full range of student support and mental health services is available to you all. Students can also turn to their housemasters and graduate resident tutors (GRTs) for support, as well as resident advisors in the fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (FSILGs). All members of the MIT community are encouraged to take advantage of grief counseling offered by Mental Health Service at 617-253-2916.
MIT prepares for the Frankenstorm
MIT is closed today due to considerations for Hurricane Sandy. There will be no classes, and all non-essential personnel will be off work for the three shifts of the day. Most of MIT Medical is closed, though Urgent Care is open.
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.