Empty UA Senate seats filled by new elections or presidential appointments
The UA Senate has seen several empty seats lately, and not because of students sleeping in. Several seats were never filled because nobody ran in UA elections or there was no clear winner. Other seats were vacated after senators resigned.
2011–2012 IFC Executive Board elected
The 2011–2012 Interfraternity Council (IFC) Executive Board was elected on Tuesday by the Presidents’ Council, with Thomas A. Anderson ’13 elected as the IFC’s new president. Anderson, a brother of Zeta Psi, was previously IFC Judicial Committee secretary. The new executive board will assume their positions at the next Presidents’ Council meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 16.
Cambridge City Council Candidates: Part 1
Tuesday, Nov. 8 marks election day in Cambridge. Eighteen City Council candidates, including all nine incumbents, are running for one of the nine two-year seats.
Jaenisch awarded for genetic research
Professor Rudolf Jaenisch, MIT biology professor and a founding member of the Whitehead Institute, was recently named by President Obama as one of the seven recipients of the National Medal of Science, the highest honor given by the U.S. government in the fields of science and engineering. Jaenisch was awarded for his work on epigenetic regulation, the biological processes that affect how genetic information is translated into cell structures without changing the genes themselves. Last Friday, Jaenisch sat down with The Tech to discuss his research and inspiration:
Letter from Chancellor Grimson on Castillo, Tonegawa deaths
Editor’s Note: The following text was sent as a campus-wide email last Friday.
City Council candidates
Candidate Top three priorities Background MIT/Cambridge relations Students Need Henrietta Davis Healthier Children: Better physical education and food in schools. Better parks and playgrounds for children. Better serivces for seniors: More housing options. Environmental initiatives: Greener transportation options, energy-efficient buildings, planning for climate change, locally sustainable food. Eight terms on City Council 2010–2011 Vice Mayor Chair of Council Environmental Committee Enjoys working with MIT on environmental and energy matters. More housing options, especially for graduate students. An increase in housing development in Kendall Square area. Minka vanBeuzekom Public schools: Improve education by targeting early childhood and adult education programs in schools. Environmentalism and urban living: Encourage commerce growth; increase city growth while paying attention to overpopulation and overbuilding in places like Kendall, Lechmere, Alewife Overlay. Increase innovation in Cambridge government: Function with the best practice. Epidemiologist with a background in public health. Owner of small biotech company in Cambridge in the ’90s. Involved in many environmental and community activist groups, including Green Decade Cambridge and Area Four Neighborhood Coalition Leader. Believes there should be a distinction between MIT, the university, and MIT, the investment corporation. Takes the stance that the MIT Investment Management Company is not taking its full share of consequences — while developing Kendall, for example, it should invest in more than just the corporate sector. Pedestrian and bike safety Sufficient housing Improved nightlife, including longer businesses hours Larry Ward Working with young adults ages 18–24: Provide training and employment opportunities. Focus on good governance: Better communication between residents, including MIT students, and the city. Keep Cambridge family-friendly: Affordable housing, effective education. Former Chairperson of City of Cambridge’s University Relations Committee. Has experience working with MIT and students. Has lived in Cambridge for 25 years. Hopes to bridge gap between students and the city. Aims to help students utilize the city better: MIT students have a lot to offer and can, for example, be mentors for younger students. Improved nightlife Pedestrian and bike safety Tom Stohlman ’76 Zoning and development of Kendall Square: Work with MIT Investment Management Company, which owns a large part of the last undeveloped zones. City Manager’s contract: Expires in 2012 and currently under automatic renewal; Stohlman hopes to spur discussion about new options for the contract. Pedestrian safety: Sidewalk/street repair. Attended MIT in ’70s (Courses 4 and 10) and has since seen the progression of the Institute. Returned to Cambridge 11 years ago. Consults/advises several fraternities and sororities; sees undergraduates a lot. Believes that councillors perceive MIT and Harvard too negatively. He thinks the councilors should be more positive about what MIT does for Cambridge, including the commercially strong tax base that the MIT Investment Management Company generates. Keeping neighborhoods and bicycle paths safe. Charles Marquardt Preparing Cambridge for next generation of administrative leadership: City manager might retire after his 30 year term; assure all transitions are concise and well thought-out, and knowledge is retained in transitions. Sustainable and strategic development: While much innovation is occurring, keep Cambridge’s “small-town” feeling. Opportunities for working middle-class: Cambridge is slowly becoming a community of the very wealthy and the very poor. Diverse background, worked in private sector for many differently-sized companies. Grew up working in Cambridge. Dealt with different levels of Cambridge Board as community member and business owner. Believes the interaction between the MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo) and Cambridge City Council hasn’t been stable. He believes MITIMCo hasn’t done a good job of making Kendall and Central Squares publicly appealing. Increase in on-campus housing, especially for grad students Pedestrian and bike safety Matt Nelson Preserving economic diversity: Improve education and housing policies so Cambridge doesn’t become a city of the rich and the poor. Cambridge youth: Emphasize learning and increase educational opportunities outside of the classroom. Driver, pedestrian, and especially biker safety: There is no good system for bikes to get around the city. Cambridge native Appreciates Cambridge’s history and vision for future State coordinator of Massachusetts Environmental Voters Education Fund Believes that Cambridge has been lucky to have MIT and the technical innovation it has brought to the city. Wants to see students get more involved, especially as mentors for younger students in the city. Improve Cambridge to be a safer and more comfortable city. Affordable housing. James Williamson Pedestrian Safety: Improve and sustain real enforcement by the CPD of the largely unknown Cambridge Bicycle Ordinance and the Mass. General Laws. Major improvement of public transportation in Cambridge: Will insist on better and more timely and accurate information from the T. Participatory budgeting: Cambridge citizens have say in part of the budget; shift the government so it is more “bottom-up”, versus “top-down.” Greater community consultation over important decisions. Has lived in Cambridge for forty years. Long-time Council activist. Committed to protecting integrity and human diversity in the city. Believes that the MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo) is too commercially oriented. Thinks that MITIMCo should better reflect academic and residential needs of the students. Make MIT resources more widely and publicly available. “I’m not going to tell them what they want — they should tell me!” Leland Cheung G City Manager: Contract renewal in March 2012. Activism: Ensure that progressive legislation is being passed. Council transparency: Online tools to understand government services, voting items, and ways to interact with the Council. Served one term on Council. Current student at Harvard Kennedy School and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Wants to increase student involvement in the city, including student internships, because the local government directly affects them. Increased housing and retail options More open space A voice to speak for their interests
Cause of death determined Examiner’s report: Tonegawa death suicide
Freshman Satto Tonegawa’s cause of death was ruled self-inflicted asphyxiation, according to his death certificate filed with the Cambridge City Clerk’s office. Tonegawa, son of MIT Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, was found dead in his MacGregor dormitory room last Tuesday. He was 18.
Mosquitoes genetically altered
These mosquitoes are genetically engineered to kill — their own children.
Bizarre blizzard hits Boston area
The first snowfall came early this year with an accumulation of 1 inch in Boston and 1–2 inches in Cambridge this past Saturday in a rare October blizzard. The snowstorm dumped over a foot of snow in some parts of western Massachusetts, leaving over 620,000 people without power, mostly in the western part of the state. The outage is ongoing; as of 8 p.m. last night, 450,000 people are still without power in Massachusetts.
Police Log
Jun 21 Bldg. 44 (51 Vassar St.) 10:30 a.m., Past larceny of a Macbook from locked office. Dispatched sector 3 for report.
Watson puts MIT, Harvard to shame
Yesterday was a bad day for MIT at The IBM Watson Challenge held at Harvard’s Burden Auditorium. Teams of students from the MIT Sloan School of Business and Harvard Business School competed against Watson, IBM’s champion Jeopardy! robot. Representing MIT were Sloan students Ari M. Oxman G, Raymond J. Andrews G, and Gautham V. Iyer G. Harvard Business School was represented by Genevieve Sheehan, Jonas P. Akins, and Jayanth Iyengar. Watson emerged victorious, with a final score of $53,601, trailed by Harvard with $42,399, and MIT with $100.
Watson: Cambridge Challenge accepted
Watson, IBM’s champion Jeopardy! computer, is making its way to Cambridge to compete in a trivia match with students from the MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Business School. The competition, dubbed the “IBM Watson Challenge,” will be held at the Harvard Business School’s Burden Auditorium on Monday, Oct. 31. The challenge will be preceded by “The Race Against the Machine: The Future of Tech” Symposium at the MIT Media Lab, which will include a number of talks about Watson’s creation and the future of the technology. Following the symposium, buses will depart from the Media Lab at 2:15 p.m. for those interested in attending the trivia competition at Harvard.
For Romney, Bay State no longer a punch line
WASHINGTON - During his first presidential campaign, Mitt Romney often turned his home state into the butt of jokes, portraying himself as a lone culture warrior in a bastion of gay-marriage activists, scientists experimenting with human embryos, and reckless liberals who had given rise to blighted neighborhoods ruined by poverty.
Baker student robbed
A possibly armed robber stole a laptop from a student on the fifth floor of Baker House yesterday evening at 5 p.m. The student was approached from behind and felt something stuck in his back. The assailant demanded the student’s laptop, acquired it, and then fled the scene. Though no weapon was clearly identified, the victim saw the suspect with “something shiny” as he fled, according to a police bulletin. The suspect was described as a tall black male wearing a dark raincoat and carrying a black backpack. He has not been apprehended, and nobody was injured in the incident.
MacGregor freshman found dead
Satto Tonegawa ’15 was found dead in his MacGregor dormitory room Tuesday evening.
Prototype for $1K house has final price tag of $6K
What can you build for $1,000? Last summer, Professor Yung Ho Chang in the Department of Architecture and Ying chee Chui ’11 — then a graduate student in the department — designed and built a house in Sichuan, China using local materials for that much.
Fifth week flags issued to frosh
Fifth week flags, the annual warnings from instructors that a student is failing or in danger of failing a class, were sent out over a 10-day period beginning Oct. 12. 249 flags were given this year to 215 students, roughly 19 percent of the freshman class — about the average proportion of students flagged every year. Thirty-one students were given two flags, and two students were given three flags.
UCSF trial offers new hope for melanoma patients
Shannon Jimerson, an advanced-stage melanoma patient being treated at UCSF, did a little dance this week while still sitting on the exam table after she got the news she desperately wanted to hear.
MIT has a new EVPT
Israel Ruiz SM ’01 was appointed as executive vice president and treasurer (EVPT) by the MIT Corporation on Oct. 14, a position held for five years by Theresa M. Stone SM ’76. In that position, Ruiz will be among MIT’s senior leadership, working with President Susan J. Hockfield alongside the provost and chancellor. Most members of the MIT community are familiar with the latter three positions — all of whom have direct involvement in academics or student life — but many may wonder, “What exactly does the EVPT do?”