Baltimore institute sued for lead dust & kids study
A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday against a prominent Baltimore medical institute, accusing it of knowingly exposing black children as young as a year old to lead poisoning in the 1990s as part of a study exploring the hazards of lead paint.
Famine hits hard in a world now less likely to intervene
DOLO, Somalia — Is the world about to watch 750,000 Somalis starve to death? U.N. warnings could not be clearer. A drought-induced famine is steadily creeping across Somalia and tens of thousands of people have already died. The Islamist militant group al-Shabab is blocking most aid agencies from accessing the areas it controls, and in the next few months, three-quarters of a million people could run out of food, U.N. officials say.
Questions raised over startup’s integrity
Winning the Grand Prize in MIT’s $200K Clean Energy Prize contest in May was only the beginning of an MIT startup’s success. CoolChip Technologies, which develops cooling systems for electronics, was automatically entered as a finalist in the MIT $100K Business Plan Contest as a result of winning the CEP. CoolChip has also been covered by CNN Money, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and Electronic Engineering Times since their CEP win. At the end of August, however, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education cast a shadow over the success of the young company.
Engineered T-cells vanquish cancer in patients
PHILADELPHIA — A year ago, when chemotherapy stopped working against his leukemia, William Ludwig signed up to be the first patient treated in a bold experiment at the University of Pennsylvania. Ludwig, then 65, a retired corrections officer from Bridgeton, N.J., felt his life draining away and thought he had nothing to lose.
CORRECTIONS
Due to police error, the police log published on April 11, 2008 misstated the identity of Mikhail Shklyar of Beverly Mass., who was reported arrested for trespassing on March 18, 2008. The man who was actually arrested shared the same name, Mikhail Shklyar, but was from Brooklyn, New York at the time of the arrest.
Ex-Genzyme chief gives $10m to MGH cancer unit
Retired biotechnology executive Henri A. Termeer, who built Genzyme Corp. into the largest US company specializing in drugs to treat rare genetic disorders, is donating $10 million to Massachusetts General Hospital to establish it as a world leader in personalized medicine.
UA elections begin tomorrow
Voting in the elections for the Undergraduate Association Senate and Class of 2015 Council will begin on Wednesday. Online voting will begin on Wednesday at 9 a.m. and run until Thursday at midnight, while paper voting will occur between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Friday in Lobby 10. There are currently five candidates for 2015 president, one for vice president, and one for publicity chair, but no candidates for social chair.
MIT remembers sacrifices made on September 11
This is the second segment in a two-part series on MIT’s response to the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Class registration is finally going digital
Registering for classes is going to get a lot easier. Over the last two weeks, students in Courses 4, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21W, and 24 participated in the pilot online registration system. Online registration is expected to expand to other departments by next semester.
Google defends its huge use of electricity
Google disclosed Thursday that it continuously uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, but it says that in doing so, it also makes the planet greener.
REX sees hiccups, but still a success
Orientation is always an exciting time. 2011 was no exception.
CORRECTIONS
An article originally published on September 5, 2008, incorrectly stated that sorority recruitment had moved from fall to spring in 2007. Recruitment had moved from spring to fall.
Class of 2015 is typical, or better, on GIR ASEs
The class of 2015 has outshone previous classes on several Advanced Standing Exams this year. A higher number of students in this year’s freshmen class are also placing out of General Institute Requirements through sufficient scores from AP and IB exams.
MIT fined $175K after FedEx fire
The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing a $175,000 fine for MIT, as a result of a CSAIL researcher shipping 33 devices with lithium batteries via FedEx in a box not labelled for hazardous materials — a violation of federal law. The box caught fire at FedEx’s Medford, Mass., facility on Aug. 25, 2009.
Ten years ago
Today’s MIT undergraduate population was at a delicate age on Sept. 11, 2001. Spanning the boundary between elementary school and junior high, we were old enough to understand what physically happened but far too young to fully comprehend the political and international significance of the attacks.