Gates asks students to tackle world’s problems
“Are the brightest minds working on the most important problems?” Bill Gates asked an audience of students and faculty in Kresge on Wednesday.
Prince of Monaco reports back on Antarctic research
Antarctica is in hot water, the Prince said.
Students recombine pop hits in Spring Weekend mashup contest
The UA Events Committee announced the winners of the first MIT Spring Weekend mashup contest yesterday. The three top vote-getters Allin Resposo ’11 (aka Allin Gaga), Garrett L. Winther ’11, and Michael R. Harradon ’13 will have their mashups reviewed by Spring Weekend Concert headliner Super Mash Bros., who will decide which mashup will be played at the concert on Friday April 23.
Cravalho takes Screw in landslide
On Friday, Professor Ernest G. Cravalho was awarded the 2010 Alpha Phi Omega Big Screw, raising $3,893.73 for his charity Partners in Health. Cravalho represented 2.006 (Thermal-Fluids Engineering II). The total amount raised in this year’s contest was more than three times of that raised last year ($1,128.51).
Corrections
An article on Tuesday about the Campaign for Students protest misquoted Fangfei Shen, who said “Some people might see this $1,800-a-year as a disincentive to live in McCormick or some other non-dining dorm and they might be incentivized to live in dorms like East Campus just because it is cheaper.” The correct figure is $1,800, not $800.
CPW protest targets dining
Last Friday, in the middle of Campus Preview Weekend, students from the Campaign for Students (CFS) gathered in Lobby 7 to protest the Division of Student Life’s handling of dining reform. Students joined and left the protest intermittently, but the number of attendees at any point in time was around two dozen.
Colleges<br />targeted by cash-strapped cities
Pittsburgh threatened to tax college tuition. Providence sought to tax out-of-state students. And Philadelphia is pressing its colleges and universities to resume voluntary payments in lieu of taxes.
Research reactors seen as security risk
In Cambridge, Mass., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a nuclear reactor emits an eerie blue glow 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Its fuel is 93 percent uranium 235 — the high-purity uranium it takes to energize an atom bomb and exactly what the West fears that Tehran wants to produce.
Corrections
An April 6 opinion column entitled “HDAG is culmination of years of work” improperly referred to Steven R. Lerman ’72 as the Associate Dean for Graduate Education. Lerman is currently the Dean for Graduate Education.
UA will provide free deodorant samples during finals week to reduce Reading Room stench
The Undergraduate Association Senate passed a bill yesterday to provide free samples of soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, and deodorant in the Reading Room on the fifth floor of the Student Center during finals week this term. The bill, submitted by Baker senator Janet Li ’12, was motivated by concerns about poor hygiene among students studying in the Reading Room. This issue, the bill states, “is most apparent just before and during final week.”
Unions and students hold ‘solidarity’ event
Last Friday, members and representatives from three MIT-affiliated unions came together in a student-worker solidarity gathering to discuss the current conditions facing MIT workers. Present at the meeting were representatives from the MIT Police Association, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 615, and the Research, Development, and Technical Employees Union as well as Cambridge City Councilor E. Denise Simmons.
News Briefs
A female prefrosh was found unconscious near McCormick late on Thursday last week, according to an e-mail sent by Bexley housemaster Robert M. Randolph to dorm residents.
With select apps, iPad is more than a pretty face
Let’s set aside the question of whether you should get an iPad and suppose you already bought one last weekend. You probably floated home and loaded it with a few whiz-bang apps and maybe even passed it around to your friends.
APO’s Big Screw is set to break records
Professor Ernest G. Cravalho, representing 2.006 (Thermal-Fluids Enginering II) has collected $1111.96, putting him in the lead of service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega’s annual Institute Big Screw contest, which is in its final day today.
YAY PREFROSH Dispatches from the first day of CPW
So much can happen in a day! <i>The Tech</i> asked a few prospective freshman what they thought of Campus Preview Weekend so far.
Corrections
An article on Tuesday, March 30, about the Penny Arcade Exposition misrepresented an event involving a microprocessor. Jerry Holkins (aka Tycho) offered an Intel Core i7 processor to a fan who represented a community that had presented the comic creators with PAX-themed trading cards. That fan donated the processor to Penny Arcade’s charity, Child’s Play on behalf of the community. The processor was not declined by the fan, nor was it offered in return for the cards.
A nation’s response to an illegal smoke and a quip
WASHINGTON — When an illicit pipe and a foolish joke aboard an airliner touches off a national megascare, scrambling fighter jets and FBI agents, alerting all 4,900 flights in progress and unleashing a media flood, does that mean the security system works?