MIT Launches Clean Energy Contest With $200,000 Cash Prize
If soaring oil prices don’t provide enough encouragement to develop alternative energy, MIT has come up with an extra incentive: $200,000 in cash.
OLPC Sued for Allegedly Copying Keyboard Design
A Natick-based company filed a lawsuit against the One Laptop Per Child Foundation last Thursday, claiming OLPC copied its multilingual keyboard technology.
10-250 Renovations to Begin During IAP
The lecture hall 10-250 will be closed for renovation during January’s Independent Activities Period and the spring semester. Large classes traditionally held in 10-250 will move to other venues for the spring.
Campus Birth Control Expenditures Increase
In health centers at hundreds of colleges and universities around the country, young women are paying sharply higher prices for prescription contraceptives because of a change in federal law.
MIT Early Applicants Increase As Harvard Stops Its Program
Early applications increased by 13 percent this year, to a total of 3,937 applicants. The increase comes as Harvard and Princeton Universities eliminated their early admissions programs. The rise, however, falls far short of increases at other competitive institutions such as Yale University.
Psych. Departments Ignore Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis and its ideas about the unconscious mind have spread to every nook and cranny of the culture from Salinger to “South Park,” from Fellini to foreign policy. Yet if you want to learn about psychoanalysis at the nation’s top universities, one of the last places to look may be the psychology department.
Killing of University of Chicago Student Unsettles Campus Life
The students stood in a circle on the campus quadrangle at the University of Chicago and held slender white candles as they remembered a gentle graduate student from Senegal who was killed early Nov. 19, weeks before he was to receive his doctorate.
News Briefs
Legatum, a private investment firm with an interest in sustainable development, gave MIT a $50 million structured gift to create the new Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, according an MIT press release. The LCDE hopes to offer a fellowship program for graduate students, starting in the 2008–2009 academic year and to “create a platform for sustainable development,” according to the center’s Web site.
DiFava, Amster to Head Facilities
The Department of Facilities has separated into two divisions: Operations and Security, headed by MIT Police Chief John DiFava, and Capital Projects and Strategic Planning, headed by newcomer Richard Amster Jr. This separation was effective Nov. 5.
Make a Splash: ESP Encourages Students To Dive and Explore
Hundreds of middle and high school students arrived at MIT last weekend to participate in the Educational Studies Program’s annual Splash weekend event.
Gov. Patrick Has Enough Votes To Remove UMass Chair Tocco
Governor Deval Patrick has rounded up enough votes on the University of Massachusetts board of trustees to muscle aside Stephen P. Tocco and probably replace him with Robert J. Manning, an investment executive who is the board’s vice chairman, UMass officials say.
News Briefs
Melis N. Anahtar ’08 was named a Rhodes Scholar on Nov. 17. The scholarship will send Anahtar, along with 31 other students from around the world, to Oxford University for two or three years of graduate study.
Study Compares State Scores With Other Countries’
American students even in low-performing states like Alabama do better on math and science tests than students in most foreign countries, including Italy and Norway, according to a new study released last week. That’s the good news.
Decline of University Tenure Track Raises Concerns
Professors with tenure or who are on a tenure track are now a distinct minority on the country’s campuses, as the ranks of part-time instructors and professors hired on a contract have swelled, according to federal figures analyzed by the American Association of University Professors.
Novartis and MIT Unite To Find New Techniques For Drug Manufacturing
Novartis and MIT signed the first contract of a 10-year corporate partnership on June 1, creating the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing. The center was created to improve manufacturing techniques in the pharmaceutical industry.
OLPC Hits Financial Setbacks
The dream of a laptop computer cheap enough to distribute to millions of poor children is finally coming true — but not quite in the way its backers imagined.