Task Force on Community Engagement in 2030 Planning
On Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012, Provost Chris A. Kaiser PhD ’87 announced to the faculty that he had appointed a “Task Force on Community Engagement in 2030 Planning.”
BC gets new housemasters
Burton-Conner #111, the housemasters’ apartment, has new residents. On Aug. 31, the new housemasters, history Professor Anne E. C. McCants and her husband, William D. “Bill” McCants, a senior attorney with the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, moved into their new home. They follow Professor Merrit Roe Smith and Bronwyn M. Mellquist, who stepped down after eight years.
Sororities give out 173 bids
MIT’s Panhellenic Association offered 173 bids this year, the same number as last year. Alpha Phi and Kappa Alpha Theta gave out the most bids, with 37 each. Recruitment saw a slight increase in the number of registrants this year, with 350 students registered for the first day. Students who registered and stayed throughout Recruitment went through a five day process, with three days dedicated to mutual selection and ranking sororities at the end of the day.
Sorority women prohibited at frat rush
The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) recently passed a regulation restricting sorority women from participating in fraternity Rush events. This especially restricts sorority members from being “Rush girls,” friends of the house that help out with events during Rush.
Peer2Peer hopes to start next semester
Two years ago, MIT’s long-running Nightline phone service shut down, leaving the campus without an organized peer-to-peer support system. However, an anonymous email-based program, Peer2Peer, is tentatively expected to start operating next semester.
Dancing the night away
On Saturday night, members of the MIT Ballroom Dance Team gathered in Kresge Auditorium to perform their second annual dance concert. Elaborately costumed dancers took the stage, sometimes in pairs and sometimes in groups, to perform nearly 20 different numbers in styles including tango, waltz, cha-cha, and samba (the viral Korean hit “Oppa Gangnam Style” even made an appearance). The MIT Ballroom Dance Team consists of MIT undergraduates, graduate students, and other MIT-affiliates. Members have been working on planning the concert since April. The concert also featured guest performances by the MIT Asian Dance Team and by MIT’s South Asian Fusion dance team, Chamak.
Higher prices, new LaVerde’s
Over the summer, LaVerde’s Market reset its shelves, switched up the grill’s sandwich menu, and installed a shiny new beverage section. But along with those changes, the convenience store has upped its prices.
Hurricane scaling
The destruction wrought by Hurricane Isaac — with its 11-foot surge, seven dead, power knocked out in half of Louisiana and nearly $2 billion in damage - has renewed debate among forecasters about how best to warn people of coming storms.
Design will cost users, but thrills Apple’s partners
The iPhone 5 has plenty of new features to keep Apple fans happy. But there is one feature Apple unveiled on Wednesday that is likely to annoy many: a new connector on the phone’s base.
Fresco’s closes after 21 years of service to community
Fresco’s Cafe and Grille, a restaurant on the northwest corner of Vassar and Mass. Ave., will be closing after 21 years of operation.
Number six? Not too shabby
MIT is tied with Stanford for the sixth place spot in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2013 national college rankings. Ranked ahead of the Institute stand Columbia tied for fourth with University of Chicago, Yale in third, and Princeton tied for first with Harvard.
The first 71 days of office
President L. Rafael Reif, MIT’s 17th, has begun his “freshman year” at MIT, as he told the Class of 2016 during its Convocation. He is now entering his third month in office since assuming the role on July 2. The Tech interviewed Reif about his first summer on the job and his plans for the future.
New lung cancer study suggests more-tailored drug treatment
The first large and comprehensive study of the genetics of a common lung cancer finds that more than half the tumors from that cancer have mutations that might be treated by new drugs that are already in the pipeline or that could be easily developed. For the tens of thousands of patients with that cancer — squamous cell lung cancer — the results are promising because they could foretell a new type of treatment in which drugs are tailored to match the genetic abnormality in each patient, researchers say.
Hockfield appointed to the HKS
Former MIT President Susan J. Hockfield will be the Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) Marie Curie Visiting Professor this academic year, the school’s Dean, David T. Ellwood, announced on Friday. Ellwood and other members of the HKS faculty had several discussions with Hockfield, after which she was nominated and approved by tenured faculty. She will be affiliated with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and will continue to serve as a professor of neuroscience at MIT.
Alcator C-Mod may lose funds
President Obama’s budget request to Congress for fiscal year (FY) 2013, announced in February, proposed to shut down MIT’s federally-funded Alcator C-Mod, a tokamak (toroidal magnetic confinement device). To give itself six more months to agree on a formal appropriations bill, Congress will pass a continuing resolution this month. The resolution will likely sustain funding for Alcator C-Mod at current levels until the final budget for FY 2013 is out. If the final budget passed by Congress is in line with the president’s request, technical, engineering, and administrative staff would be laid off, and some 30 PhD students in Nuclear Science & Engineering (Course 22) would be forced to graduate by October 2013.
Far from ‘junk,’ DNA dark matter crucial to health
Among the many mysteries of human biology is why complex diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and psychiatric disorders are so difficult to predict and, often, to treat. An equally perplexing puzzle is why one individual gets a disease like cancer or depression, while an identical twin remains perfectly healthy.