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Tweets aren’t big fans of #oscar nominated films, @princeton team finds

Tweets aren’t big fans of #oscar nominated films, @princeton team finds

Twitter posts are an unreliable indicator of box-office success, University researchers have found.A research paper released last month by Felix Wong GS and postdoctoral research associate Soumya Sen of the electrical engineering department demonstrated that Twitter users are both more positive in their reviews than other movie rating sites and that tweets tend to be less positive in their reviews of Oscar-nominated films than non-nominated ones. The paper also questioned the ability of Twitter to predict success in theaters.

NEWS | 04/23/2012

With council vote, Arts and Transit District progresses

While the New Jersey Historic Sites Council’s 5-1 vote to abandon the current Dinky easement brings the University one step closer to its Arts and Transit Neighborhood, the victory is nevertheless a limited one. University Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee ’69, who spoke at the meeting, called the vote “a very helpful step” for the University but noted that it was only one part of a much larger approval process that the plans for the University’s Arts and Transit District must undergo.

NEWS | 04/22/2012

Projects Board requests extra $2,500 from USG to fund Communiversity

The USG approved the Project Board’s request for $2,500 in funding for the Communiversity festival at the USG Senate meeting Sunday night.

NEWS | 04/22/2012

News & Notes: Harvard to shorten exam period

Administrators at Harvard outlined a plan last week to shorten the school’s exam period, which would push some exams into the evening.The proposed exam schedule, announced at the school’s Committee on Undergraduate Education meeting, would shrink exam periods from eight days to six, according to the Harvard Crimson.

NEWS | 04/22/2012

Residential colleges launch Oxford-inspired pilot program

This coming fall, many freshmen will have an additional layer of support during their first year at the University. A subgroup within the Working Group on Campus Social and Residential Life has decided to implement a pilot program that will connect sophomores with the incoming freshmen living in their old dorm rooms.

NEWS | 04/22/2012

The rise of, and challenges to, campus entrepreneurship

In 2007, Nikhil Basu Trivedi ’11 traded his home in the Bay Area — an arm’s length from the Northern California, Stanford-infused entrepreneurship scene — for a new home in Princeton, N.J. But when he arrived on campus, he said he was struck by the absence of a thriving entrepreneurship culture. The Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, the supposed hub of campus start-up life, had about five involved members.

NEWS | 04/22/2012

News & Notes: Planning Board rejects housing proposal

One month before the University Medical Center at Princeton completes its move to a new location in Plainsboro, the Regional Planning Board rejected a proposal for increasing the number of apartments that will replace the hospital.

NEWS | 04/22/2012

Moskos ’94: Cop returns to academia

For Peter Moskos ’94, the Baltimore streets provided an unconventional classroom.Currently an associate professor of sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and at the City University of New York, Moskos traveled to Baltimore to study street crime firsthand for his research while in graduate school at Harvard. He first planned to accompany police officers as a researcher, but an administrative issue forced him to choose between heading back to Harvard or becoming a real cop. He chose the latter. Moskos would spend over a year as a uniformed patrol officer in Baltimore’s Eastern District, one of Baltimore’s roughest neighborhoods.

NEWS | 04/22/2012

USG referendum eliminates freshman officer positions

Both referenda on the ballot for spring USG elections passed last Friday. The first, sponsored by the Princeton Coalition for Endowment Responsibility, recommends the creation of an oversight committee to encourage the University’s endowment to be invested in “socially responsible ways,” according to the text of the referendum on the USG website.

NEWS | 04/22/2012

For the Pre-Frosh: 5 overhyped parts of Princeton – and 5 reasons you should come anyway

Admissions is a curious process. For years, the prefrosh arriving on campus have groomed themselves into the types of individuals universities would want. Each student’s cocktail, whether founded on academics, athletics, notable leadership or other qualities, met the scrutiny of picky admissions offices. For a high school senior, I remember the process being miserable... Read the full post on The Prox.

NEWS | 04/21/2012

Krugman discusses global financial crisis, Europe

In a rare public appearance, professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explored the similarities between the current European financial crisis and the Great Depression of the 1930s in a filled-to-capacity lecture Thursday.“If you had said in 2006 that we would be where we are now, very few people would have believed you,” Krugman said as he began the lecture.

NEWS | 04/19/2012

News & Notes: Yale freshman found dead on Wednesday

Zachary Brunt, a freshman at Yale, was found dead in the Josiah Willard Gibbs Laboratories on Wednesday afternoon.

NEWS | 04/19/2012

Students question Late Meal pricing

For Ray Grossman ’15, late lunch serves as a reward after sitting through four and a half hours of class on an empty stomach every Monday. However, more often than not, Grossman pays extra for his choice of lunch.“It’s definitely a little depressing,” he said. “It puts a damper on my day, but it’s not the end of the world.”

NEWS | 04/19/2012

New group, Princetonians against Obesity focuses on community service and charity

Princetonians Against Obesity, a student group that gained USG recognition this past Sunday, hopes to spread awareness and tackle this nationwide health problem, according to representatives from the group.

NEWS | 04/19/2012

Removal of 460 feet of train tracks approved

Opponents of the University’s plan to move the Dinky further south suffered another setback Thursday morning. In a 5-1 vote by the state Historic Sites Council, the University and New Jersey Transit received approval to remove 460 feet of train tracks.The train tracks, which go from Princeton Junction to the University, are owned by NJ Transit but are operated through an easement in the portion of land that belong to the University. The easement also allows NJ Transit to operate the University-owned Dinky train stations.

NEWS | 04/19/2012

CIA chief visits Ivy

David Petraeus GS ’87, the director of the CIA, spoke at a private event at Ivy Club and met personally with President Shirley Tilghman on April 5, according to multiple sources familiar with the visit. Petraeus turned down an invitation to speak at the Wilson School, from which he received his MPA and Ph.D.The event was open to juniors and seniors in the club, according to a source within the club who was granted anonymity due to the off-the-record nature of the event. Some juniors and seniors in the University’s Reserve Officer Training Corps also attended the event, said an ROTC cadet who did not attend but was familiar with the event.

NEWS | 04/19/2012

Budget cuts affect ROTC

The Princeton Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program will be facing budget cuts and will strictly limit the number of contracted cadets this year, reflecting the funding problems and downsizing that ROTC programs have encountered nationwide.

NEWS | 04/18/2012

Second round of phishing e-mails sent to student body

When Shikha Uberoi ’13 checked her email last Friday morning, she found a message from an individual named “Brett Ashlock,” who said he was organizing an online social network for students called “Princeton Collaborative Networks.”

NEWS | 04/18/2012

U. to offer online lectures

The University will make lectures and other classroom content available online due to a new partnership with the educational web platform Coursera, a major advancement in the University’s effort to improve online learning on campus. Coursera, a for-profit company founded in 2011 by two Stanford professors, announced on its website that it will offer eight Princeton courses in the fields of history, computer science, sociology and statistics, beginning as early as this June.Coursera offers free interactive lectures supplemented by short quizzes, assignments and online forums. The company also announced Wednesday that it has formed partnerships with Stanford University, University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania.

NEWS | 04/18/2012

Undergraduate course assistants received well

Graduate students and professors are no longer the only people grading students’ work, as this year the physics and computer science departments launched a pilot program in which selected undergraduates were employed as course assistants for selected lower-level classes. After conducting the program for almost one academic year, program coordinators in both departments and several course assistants praised the success of the system and said that they expect it to continue.

NEWS | 04/18/2012

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