August 2011

WMBR Needs Your Designs

by Liv on August 30, 2011

in Arts,Campus Culture,In the News

Design from a 1998 t-shirt. Credit: WMBR

Heads up graphic designers, art hobbyists, and doodling enthusiasts: WMBR needs designs!

Each November, the station hosts a week-long fundraising drive to replenish their capital budget and keep shows on air for another year. Typically, the station rewards donors with premiums such as WMBR-branded t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc.–which is where the call for designs comes in. According to WMBR’s music director:

We are reaching out to the local artist community for logos or other images. This year is special for us, we’re celebrating 50 years on the air! Because of this, we’re especially looking for designs that highlight the 50th anniversary of WMBR.

While we can’t provide cash payment, any designers whose images we use will receive publicity via on-air mentions and on our website, as well as ample samples of their work on the actual premiums. In addition, you’ll be helping out one of the premiere radio stations in the region. Rough drafts are welcome if accompanied by examples of other finished work.

Interested parties should send a jpeg or link to their proposed design to premiums@wmbr.org. Deadline is Monday, Sept. 12.

Check out examples of previously used artwork here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=43949&id=22335947090

 

 

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Sourcemap: Mapping Your Carbon Footprint

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on August 29, 2011

in In the News,Media

“It’s a great tool to demonstrate to our clients the care that we take in sourcing,’’ said the owner a pair of Cambridge restaurants. He was commenting in today’s Boston Globe article on Sourcemap.com, an alumnus-founded software company that combines “mapping software with carbon footprint information to help people track the carbon used to produce the things they eat, use, and wear.”

New map styles include directories of suppliers, pictured above.

New map styles include directories of suppliers.

Founder Leonard Bonanni MA ’03, SM ’05, PhD ’10, who created Sourcemap as his PhD thesis, is moving from a .org address to a .com address to emphasize business opportunities that include new social media facets and advanced options for paying customers.

New features, available in the free version as well, include new map types, visualization of impact along a supply chain, and the ability to add multimedia. Read the Boston Globe article and the Sourcemap blog for more.

Just for fun, look at sample maps such as the sources for an IKEA bed and the iPhone 4. Slice of MIT first covered Sourcemap back in 2009 when the project was in beta. Read the older post for a bit of history.

 

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Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—Aug. 27, 2011

by Amy Marcott on August 27, 2011

in Franken Photo of the Week

Iguazu Falls on the Brazil-Argentina border (© Owen Franken).Iguazu Falls on the Brazil-Argentina border (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his Web site.

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Are the Faculty Even Vaguely Human?

by Amy Marcott on August 26, 2011

in Campus Culture,Modern Geekhood,Student Life

What if I totally crack? Does anyone actually make it out? Do normal people go here? These questions and more were all addressed by an MIT Admissions Office marketing video created in 1992. The last question is accompanied by a nerd hunt—choreographed to “Pump Up the Volume,” for some reason. [Spoiler alert: they don't find any nerds.]

If this was an actual motion picture, it might even get a PG rating for the couple shown making out at the beginning. Or is that G-worthy these days?

Anyway, a major Madison Avenue marketing firm produced the video, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Seriously). Admissions officers used it for almost a decade in their nationwide meetings with prospective students and their families.

Maybe it even inspired you to come to MIT? Let us know in the comments if it did. Or perhaps it makes you want to attend MIT all over again?

The video is featured on the new Admissions Office website, which also offers two earlier marketing videos, from 1954 and 1934.

Now, without further ado, MIT: The Motion Picture (1992):

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Experimenting with Empathy

by Liv on August 25, 2011

in Campus Culture,Research,Science

Emile Bruneau, a postdoc in the Saxelab Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, has long been interested in group identity. What informs our opinion of others?” he asks. “And how does experience change the way people think about others’ actions and thoughts?” Recently Bruneau’s research has led him to focus on empathy.

“You could think of empathy as stepping into someone else’s shoes and seeing through their perspective,” he says, “but an equally valid definition of empathy might be stepping in their shoes and thinking from your own perspective.”

Learn more about Bruneau’s empathy research and experiments in the video below, which was produced by students in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

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Oh It’s On, Big Red. It is ON

by Amy Marcott on August 24, 2011

in Alumni Life,Modern Geekhood

Recently, our colleagues at the Cornell Alumni Association have encouraged some friendly trash talking about the MIT Alumni Association, all in a bid to garner more Facebook likes than the Institute.

Facebook logo

Like the MIT Alumni Association Facebook page. Show Cornell who's boss!

It seems MIT has set the gold standard among the alumni associations of Ivy+ institutions (the Ivy League plus MIT and Stanford, in case you weren’t aware such a distinction existed), and Cornell is gunning for numero uno. As of this writing, MIT had 7,483 likes and Cornell just 5,831. Cornell keeps posting on Facebook and tweeting about how they are closing in on us.

MITers, are we going to stand for this?

Let’s show Big Red just how much we love big numbers and accumulate even more Facebook followers. Like our Facebook page and spread the word to other members of the MIT community.

What is Ivy Plus you ask? Members of the MIT Alumni Association staff meet annually with our colleagues from other institutions of similar caliber to swap ideas and best practices. Our counterparts from other schools are a great bunch of people, full of useful and at times innovative ideas, and we welcome this friendly rivalry. We have great respect for the Cornellians, who are really into social media. Taking the top spot from us means a lot to them.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t offer some friendly observations. Let’s take a look at just some of what the Cornell community has been saying about us.

Screen shot of Cornell's Facebook page

First, about Doonesbury. What you call cheating, referring to the online straw poll MIT hacked, we call an innovative solution to a challenge. It’s not our fault we love to solve problems with finesse. Plus, you got the guy from The Office. He has a lovely singing voice.

Second, is it really a burn, Cornell, if you’re the ones comparing yourselves to us in the first place? It’s not like we even noticed we were number one. But now that you mention it, we’re happy to fight for it.

And I bet we can do it without fancy computing tricks.

But I make no promises.

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Video Features Airplane-Building MIT Student

by Liv on August 23, 2011

in Campus Culture,Student Life

A new video on TechTV peeks into the world of Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, an MIT physics student who began taking flight lessons at age 9 and by age 12 was encouraged to build her own airplane–and attend MIT. She did both.

Reflecting on her path to aviation, Pasterski says, “Flying was amazing. It gave me a different view of the world. It also exposed me to a new group of people–general aviation enthusiasts who had built airplanes, flown in air shows–a close-knit community that I had now become a part of.”

Watch the entire seven-minute video below or on TechTV.

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Make Your (SHASS) Day

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on August 22, 2011

in Arts,Economics

The summer issue of Said and Done, a enewsletter from the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, presents these tasty bits:

Watch the performance by Daniel Manesh ’14, piano; Albert Wu ’14, violin; and graduate student Yoni Kahn G, horn.

Watch the performance by Daniel Manesh ’14, piano; Albert Wu ’14, violin; and graduate student Yoni Kahn, horn

Watch a short video of three MIT students and the MIT Chamber Music Society performing the Finale of the Trio for Piano, Violin, and Horn by Johannes Brahms (Trio Op. 40, 1865).

Or, in another performance, hear MIT students and alums of the MIT Chamber Music Society play the first movement of the String Quintet in C major by Franz Schubert.

Read a  Slate magazine interview with Economics Professor Jonathan Gruber, who is shaping health care reform at the national and state level.

Learn about The Deaths of Others, a new book that explores the fate of civilians in America’s wars by  John Tirman, executive director of the MIT Center for International Studies.

Browse in the SHASS bookshelf.

 

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Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—Aug. 20, 2011

by Amy Marcott on August 20, 2011

in Franken Photo of the Week

Ted Kennedy in his office, 1980 (© Owen Franken).Ted Kennedy in his office, 1980 (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his Web site.

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As Close to Mars as a Human Can Get

by Amy Marcott on August 19, 2011

in Alumni Life,Engineering,Research,Travel

Kavya Manyapu SM ’10 wants to go to Mars. But until that’s possible, she’s content eating, sleeping, and breathing the Red Planet. The Boeing engineer recently spent two weeks at the Analogue Mars Habitat, a two-story cylindrical building in southern Utah that serves as one of four Mars base-like habitats built by the Mars Society.

The structure, 26 feet in diameter, includes multiple beds, a shower (which each crew member uses once every three or four days), toilet, science lab, kitchen, and work areas.

A roundtrip mission to Mars would take at least two years, so research at the desert station seeks solutions to some of the challenges of extended space travel—maintaining an adequate food supply is one. A study is currently underway to grow nutrient-rich bacteria using recycled water, such as urine.

Read more about Manyapu and watch the video of her experience.

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