NEWS ANALYSIS Court rules for NIH in stem cell case
The latest battle over human embryonic stem cell research is over, and the National Institutes of Health has won — the research can continue. The war can still go on with appeals, potentially as high as the Supreme Court, but researchers are unlikely to face court-ordered prohibitions on research as that multi-year process continues.
New Building Services tool on MIT Mobile App allows for easy work order submissions
The MIT Mobile App service, available for the iOS and Android platforms as well as the most recent feature phones, has a new widget for the MIT Department of Facilities. The new Building Services tool allows users to easily report on-campus maintenance issues, such as problems with leaks, lighting, and locks. The widget can mark the problem site by detecting a user’s current location using GPS, or the user can select a building or area from a list. The user also has the option to upload a photo of the problem. The widget takes those data and submits a work order to the Department of Facilities. The new widget “allows our customers to report things as they see them,” said Ruth T. Davis, manager of communications for the Department of Facilities.
CORRECTIONS
The caption for the mood meter photo in the April 15 issue mistakenly identified the creators as M. Ehsan Hoque G, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences Rosalind W. Picard ScD ’91, and Javier H. Rivera G from left to right. The creators should be, from left to right, Javier H. Rivera G, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences Rosalind W. Picard ’86, and M. Ehsan Hoque G.
Beta alumni disband fraternity
Beta Theta Pi (Beta) has been disbanded, a decision that was made by its local alumni association, advisory board, and the national organization. Members were notified of the decision on June 5 and were asked to move out of their house within five days.
Facilities may move
The people who keep MIT running day-in, day-out are looking for a new home. The Operations group of MIT’s Department of Facilities is mulling use of the former California Products Corporation’s property at the corner of Waverly St. and Putnam Ave., just northwest of West Campus. At a June 22 meeting, MIT officials pitched the idea to residents of Cambridgeport — the neighborhood where this property currently lies dormant.
NEWS ANALYSIS Dorm transfers review
Next semester marks the first year of MIT’s new undergraduate dining plan, requiring students who live in Simmons, McCormick, Baker, Next, and Maseeh Hall to purchase meal plans ranging from $2,500–$4,500 per year. Opponents to the plan have suggested that the cost may be prohibitive for some, driving students away from dorms where they otherwise would have liked to live. Here we present a breakdown of requests for transfers to and from every dorm from 2008–2011. Data from prior to 2008 is not available, nor do we yet know how dining plans will affect how freshmen pick dorms. However, with these data we can begin to ask whether dining changes significantly impacted dorm popularity.
Boston celebrates July 4th
Despite the hot and humid weather, masses from around the world crowded into Boston for one of the most anticipated Fourth of July celebrations in America. Everyone was full of national spirit; children and adults alike wore red and blue foam Lady Liberty crowns and played games on blankets spread out along the banks of the Charles River. Those seeking the best seats for the spectacle arrived early in the morning, stretching clusters of lawn chairs from the Harvard Bridge all the way to the Hatch Shell, where the 38th Annual Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular would take place later in the day. Other spectators took to the seas, docking their boats around the barge from which the firework show would ignite and release its potential energy into the skies.
Here today, gone tomorrow, those cameras.
Surveillance cameras come and go in Lobby 10, with some frequency, it would seem.
Agarwal officially CSAIL’s director
Anant Agarwal, a professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, assumed his role as director of CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) last Friday on July 1. Agarwal will succeed Professor Victor W. Zue ’76, who held the directorship for four years. CSAIL is MIT’s largest interdisciplinary lab and is home to over 900 undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers.
Borges to manage Maseeh Hall
As of July 1, Rui Borges is officially the new house manager of Maseeh Hall, MIT’s newest undergraduate dorm. For the past 10 years, Borges has served as the house manager of Simmons Hall. In an email to Simmons residents, he said that he will miss everyone at Simmons and is looking forward to the new challenges he will face as manager of Maseeh Hall. Over the next few weeks, he will be working closely with Nika L. Hollingsworth, who was named as his successor as house manager of Simmons Hall. Hollingsworth has spent the past two and a half years as assistant manager of the Warehouse, one of MIT’s graduate dormitories. Rounding out the house team at Maseeh will be Suzanne Flynn and Jack Carroll, formerly of the Phoenix Group, who will now be the Housemasters of Maseeh Hall.
Disney lab resurfaces
Disney Research opened a new lab near MIT in East Cambridge this month, 11 years after closing the doors to its old Cambridge lab. Disney Research works in a number of areas — including robotics, computer graphics, and video processing — that benefit many facets of The Walt Disney Company. The new lab plans to work in the social sciences and forge ties with researchers at MIT.
IN SHORT
Boston Pride Week events this Saturday will include a parade and festival. The parade will traverse South End, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and City Hall Plaza and will last from noon to 4 p.m. The festival will run from noon to 6 p.m. at City Hall Plaza. For more events, visit http://www.bostonpride.org/prideweek/.
Faculty want flexibility
Better use of technology will enhance undergraduate education, a collaborative living community for MIT faculty will soon become a reality, and interdisciplinary research is an increasingly popular focus, said the May/June 2011 Faculty Newsletter. The newsletter reported on issues ranging from the experimental First-Year Focus program to broad goals of the faculty. Innovation and collaboration in teaching, learning, and research was a recurring theme.
Peter Diamond withdraws 3rd Fed nomination
On June 5 Peter A. Diamond PhD ’63 announced that he would withdraw his nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Senate Republicans had repeatedly blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Diamond, an MIT professor of economics and the 2010 Nobel Prize winner. Diamond explained his decision and delivered an indictment to partisan politics in his June 6 New York Times opinion column “When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough.” Obama first named Diamond as a candidate to fill one of three long-standing vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board in April 2010.