Tips for Thanksgiving travel
• Travel on Tuesday or Thursday morning rather than on Wednesday. Flights are cheaper, and there are fewer people to deal with at the airport.
New 3D dental scanners raise radiation concerns
Because children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to radiation, doctors three years ago mounted a national campaign to protect them by reducing diagnostic radiation to only those levels seen as absolutely necessary.
Other Athena changes on the horizon
Though initially interested in deploying multi-function printers, the Athena Working Group will be testing out the idea of scanners in Athena clusters. The pilot scanners will be separate from printers and will be full-featured photo and document scanners that can scan to a file directly. The working group decided against using multi-function printers because many students need higher quality scans than the typical multi-function scanner can provide. (There might still be pilot multi-function devices to test out scanning in general.)
Athena printing changes coming
Over the past year, Information Services and Technology, the UA, and the MIT Administration have been examining how the Athena printing system can be improved to maximize efficiency and cut costs.
Dell hid a plague of faulty capacitors, documents reveal
SAN FRANCISCO — Documents unsealed Thursday in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell Inc. have raised more questions about how the company handled an unprecedented number of faulty computers sold to governments, schools and corporations from 2003 to 2005.
The online petition against the dining plan
We, the undersigned, write to voice our objection to the new dining plan proposed by the House Dining Advisory Group (HDAG), which is slated to begin next fall.
Gehry helps out in Chicago
It’s not every day that Frank Gehry designs lobby furniture for an office building.
More unrest over new dining plan
Student opposition to the proposed House Dining Advisory Group continues this week. A major new petition launched on Wednesday evening has amassed over 1,298 signatures from undergraduates as of early Friday morning. On Thursday, students held an “eat-in” protest at Baker House to show that they could cook for themselves.
Worm in Iran was perfect for sabotaging centrifuges
Experts dissecting the computer worm suspected of being aimed at Iran’s nuclear program have determined that it was precisely calibrated in a way that could send nuclear centrifuges wildly out of control.
UA proposal seeks flexible dining options
Dean for Student Life Chris Colombo met with Undergraduate Association leaders last Friday to discuss possible changes to the new dining plan this fall. UA President Vrajesh Y. Modi ’11 and Vice President Samantha G. Wyman ’11 presented a proposal in which dorms would decide their own dining plan and current upperclassman could opt out of the new dining plan.
Early action applications on the rise
The number of undergraduate early action applicants has again increased, by about 14 percent over last year. Though the admissions office does not have an exact tally yet, they predict that there will be nearly 6,500 early applications, which would be 800 more than last year’s 5,684.
News Briefs
A complaint against Kappa Sigma for holding noisy pledge events at Burton Conner on Oct. 10 has been investigated by the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and dismissed after following the pre-hearing procedures outlined in the IFC Judicial Bylaws, according to Ryan Schoen ’11, president of the IFC.
News Briefs
The UA Committee on Space Planning is working on revitalizing the former game room next to LaVerdes Market on the first floor of the Student Center.
20 arrested in NYC trying to see underground art
The New York City police have arrested 20 people for trying to enter an abandoned subway station housing the formerly secret guerrilla exhibition of underground street art that was revealed to the public this month.
The secret to how cats drink, as told to professors by Cutta Cutta
It has taken four highly qualified engineers and a bunch of integral equations to figure it out, but we now know how cats drink. The answer is: very elegantly, and not at all the way you might suppose.
Corrections
The article about Commencement speaker Ursula Burns incorrectly stated that the MIT Corporation make the final decision selecting the Commencement speaker. In fact, it is President Susan Hockfield who has the final say.
Two new petitions fight dining process
Two more student petitions against the new dining plan have sprung up this past week, one at Next House and another at Baker.