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News & Notes: U. researchers examine how targeted advertising personalizes web experience for each user

News & Notes: U. researchers examine how targeted advertising personalizes web experience for each user

Daily Princetonian Staff

In a study examining how the commercialization of online data has personalized web users’ experience, researchers at the University and Belgium's KU Leuven have released "bots" that mimic the behavior of real people online, according to "Freedom to Tinker," a blog hosted by the University's Center for Information Technology Policy. Their research studies the different personal experiences that arise due to the practices of companies like Google, which stores data on users' web history and filters their search results based on this history.

NEWS | 12/04/2013

Expansion to residential colleges provides students with alternate housing option

Expansion to residential colleges provides students with alternate housing option

Loully Saney

Students had the option to live in gender-neutral housing in the residential colleges for thefirst timethis academic year.

NEWS | 12/04/2013

About 12 percent of eating club members drop clubs before graduation

About 12 percent of eating club members drop clubs before graduation

Lorenzo Quiogue

The launch of anew official websiteabout the eating clubs has provided a unique window into the clubs’ real membership numbers, one which suggests that a significant number of students drop the eating clubs before graduating.As of the beginning of the current semester, 1,710 students in the Classes of 2014 and 2015 are members of the eating clubs according to the InterClub Council website.

NEWS | 12/04/2013

After value of U. purchase from hospital drops, part of price becomes charitable contribution

Daily Princetonian Staff

Princeton formally donated $4.1 million to the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro in fiscal year 2012.

NEWS | 12/04/2013

Q&A: Andrew Rosenthal, New York Times Editorial Page Editor

Anna Mazarakis

Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of The New York Times, spoke on campus Tuesday evening about the current state of news and editorial journalism.

NEWS | 12/03/2013

Andrew Rosenthal talks "the facts about opinion" and responsibility to be well-informed

Andrew Rosenthal talks "the facts about opinion" and responsibility to be well-informed

Anna Mazarakis

Citizens have a responsibility to be well-informed in order to keep the government in check, New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal said in a lecture on campus Tuesday evening.

NEWS | 12/03/2013

News & Notes: University of California, Santa Barbara meningitis outbreak reaches four cases

Daily Princetonian Staff

Princeton is not the only school experiencing an outbreak of meningitis B. Four students at the University of California, Santa Barbara have been diagnosed with the disease since November, The Los Angeles Times reported. All four cases have been of serogroup B, the same serogroup that has affected eight people at the University.

NEWS | 12/03/2013

News & Notes: Harvard dean admits most frequently awarded and median grades are A, A-, respectively

Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic

The most frequently given grade at Harvard College is an A and the median grade is an A-, Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M.

NEWS | 12/03/2013

Club Nom seeks to facilitate dialogue between eating club members, other upperclassmen

Jasmine Wang

A new initiative, Club Nom, has been launched to facilitate dialogue between eating club members and students who eat independently, in the co-ops or in the residential colleges.

NEWS | 12/03/2013

Yale's selective social science majors not likely to follow Wilson School to non-selectivity anytime soon

Regina Wang

Despite the entrance of the first non-selective class of undergraduate Wilson School majors this year, similar interdisciplinary majors at Yale University are not currently considering similar alterations to their application processes.Like the formerly selective Wilson School’s old application process, the Ethics, Politics and Economics major and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs major require prospective students to apply during their sophomore year.

NEWS | 12/03/2013

Updated: U. may join First Lady’s initiative to increase low-income students’ access to higher education

Jacob Donnelly

Princeton is in conversations with the White House about taking part in anew educational initiative byFirst Lady Michelle Obama ’85 that seeksto increase low-income students’ access to higher education.Nevertheless, some administrators and faculty said they appreciated the motives behind the new initiative but expressed skepticism about the potential impacts of the initiative if applied to Princeton, noting that the University has already taken a number of measures to recruit low-income students and is already actively working to improve those measures.Obama announced the initiative in November in a speech at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C.

NEWS | 12/02/2013

Eisgruber ’83 meets local officials for first time, discusses old "scars" of town-gown relationship and goals for improvement

20131202_EisgruberMeetandGreetwithTown_AnnaWindemuth

Eisgruber ’83 meets local officials for first time, discusses old "scars" of town-gown relationship and goals for improvement

Daily Princetonian Staff and Anna Windemuth

As University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 met publicly with town leaders and residents on Monday night for the first time since his September installation, the discussion touched on old town-gown tensions but also addressed ways to improve the University’s relationship with town government.Current negotiations regarding the University’s annual voluntary contribution to the town budget were excluded from Monday’s discussion, Mayor Liz Lempert announced at the beginning of the meeting, which was held in the town hall.

NEWS | 12/02/2013

Meningitis vaccine consent form will not require students to waive rights

Elliott Eglash

Those who wish to receive the emergency meningitis vaccine that the University is offering will not have to waive any rights before receiving it. Consent forms were made available over Thanksgiving break on theUniversity’s websiteand emailed to underage students in order to be signed by their parents.

NEWS | 12/02/2013

Faculty consider alternative to Coursera, new Committee on Teaching and Learning

Sheila Sisimit

Members of the faculty discussed the possibility of creating a University-specific alternative to Coursera, as well as the proposed creation of a new committee to oversee the continuation of online courses, on Monday at the December faculty meeting.Philosophy professor Gideon Rosen noted that the University is free to explore options outside of Coursera in order to avoid conflicts of intellectual property, such as whether the material is owned by Coursera, the University or the professors teaching the courses.In one alternative to Coursera, he said, the University can “invest considerable resources in developing [its] own proprietary platform.” He added that some members of the computer science department are interested in helping out.“I must say that developing our own proprietary platform gives me nightmares,” University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 replied.Eisgruber currently sits on Coursera’s board of advisers.The new committee would be called the Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Learning, and it would not only vet the online courses but would also be responsible for monitoring them and their procedures, Rosen explained.The committee could also expand the work of the Faculty Committee on Grading by leading a campus-wide conversation on the most effective methods of assessment, according to documents circulated at the meeting detailing the potential committee’s duties.

NEWS | 12/02/2013

Updated: McCarter general manager, Triangle Club accountant charged with embezzling over $100,000

Marcelo Rochabrun

McCarter Theatre General Manager Thomas Muza, who also worked as Princeton Triangle Club’s accountant, has been charged with embezzling over $100,000 from Triangle, the N.J.

NEWS | 12/02/2013

Updated: Gas leak evacuates 500 from central campus, is turned off before noon

Updated: Gas leak evacuates 500 from central campus, is turned off before noon

Michael Granovetter

During some routine excavation work occurring just south of McCosh Health Center on Monday morning, a backhoe struck a 2.5-inch high-pressure gas line, causing a rupture shortly before 10 a.m.

NEWS | 12/02/2013

News & Notes: SCORE precept enrollment to be used for all courses next spring

Daily Princetonian Staff

Students will be able to select all spring-semester precepts and lab sections directly in SCORE during course selection, University Registrar Polly Griffin announced in an email to the student body on Monday.

NEWS | 12/02/2013

News & Notes: Lawrence Township company aims to ferment University food waste

Daily Princetonian Staff

Twenty tons of food waste from University dining halls could be sent to a plant in Lawrence Township, N.J., each week to be cycled through a new waste handling process involving mass fermentation, The Times of Trenton reported on Friday. Local startup company AgriArk has made a deal with the University to use University food waste in the development phase of its efforts to establish a food waste processing plant in Lawrence, according to a proposal AgriArk has filed with Mercer County. Using Japanese fermentation technology that decomposes food waste in an acidic, anaerobic process similar to that used to make kimchi and other pickled vegetables, AgriArk’s industrial homestead would turn food waste into solid and liquid fertilizers that could be sold back to the University. AgriArk hopes to have permits by the end of January and a functional site up and running by the spring, the Times reported.

NEWS | 12/01/2013

In introductory language classes, discrepancies in proficiency not an issue

Paul Phillips

More than half of the students who take SPA 101: Beginner's Spanish I, a class for students with no previous background in the language, have studied Spanish before enrolling in the class, according to a survey conducted by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in spring 2012. The survey, which received 106 responses, also revealed that 29 percent of the students surveyed had taken at least three years of Spanish before beginning the introductory course. “Language teaching is very different in different institutions,” Spanish Senior Lecturer Alberto Bruzos Moro explained.

NEWS | 12/01/2013

Unpublished J.D. Salinger story kept in University library leaked illegally online

Patience Haggin

A previously unpublished J.D. Salinger story housed in the University’s Firestone Library was illegally made public online on Wednesday, The New York Times reported. Salinger’s story, “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” provides the backstory to his famous 1951 novel "The Catcher in the Rye" by recounting the death of Kenneth Caulfield, the older brother of the novel’s protagonist.

NEWS | 12/01/2013

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