Special Projects

Student insurance plan requires balance

Rice University has invested considerable effort in recent years to improve health insurance coverage for students. Success can be measured in many ways, improved care and lower costs among them. By those measures, we have been successful. Negotiating a student insurance plan is a complex task with many different considerations: How much overall cost should students bear? What essential services do they need? What kind of provider network best serves students? Is the insurance company stable? Should all students on the plan pay a higher cost for a few students who may become ill, or should overall costs be kept to a minimum with students who become ill paying for a higher percentage of their care?

Rice receives grant for compiler research

A team of Rice scientists are a chip off the old block, or rather, their work will be. Five Rice professors received a $16 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for their research on improving the efficiency of programs running on processors. Comprised of specialists spanning various sectors in the fields of computer science and probability and statistics, five Rice scientists have come together to work on the platform-aware compilation project, also called the PACE project. Computer systems, including ones found in iPhones and other cell phones, use compilers to translate human phrases and code into binary zeroes and ones that a machine can operate on, computer science professor Krishna Palem said.

This week's Editorial Cartoon

KTRU Pick of the Week: One Day

The album One Day features several great talents in the world of electroacoustic improvised music. On one side of the collaboration is Toshimaru Nakamura, one of the originators in the genre of electroacoustic music, and on the other side is English, the duo of Joe Foster and Bonnie Jones.Nakamura performs on no-input mixing boards, while English features Jones performing on a group of circuit boards and delay pedals as Foster plays the trumpet with various effects utilized at will.

Soarin'! Flyin'! Dancin'!

Rice Dance Theatre will be celebrating 30 years this weekend with its spring performance, Retrospection. The show runs tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. in Hamman Hall. Tickets are $8 general and $5 for students and RDT alumni.

Proposed plan to honor donors disrespectful

The Thresher has a new policy: If any individual, group or organization wishes to donate at least $4.6 million to us, we will put their names and logos on the front page. After all, what would be better than honoring them in the place that people see most often?Such is the thinking behind the new project to honor Rice's major donors (see letters, page 2). As you can see, people are up in arms over the proposed design - concentric ellipses surrounding Willy's statue in the academic quadrangle. And since we aren't allowed to sign our names to those letters, we will express our resentment to this proposed plan with an editorial.

This Week's A&E Slideshow

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Summer Construction Plans (Slideshow)

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Tuesday's Sports Update: Bobcats jump over baseball team in rare Reckling win

The baseball team continued its recent up-and-down stretch with a 4-1 home loss to Texas State on Tuesday. Bobcats (34-12) starter Garret Carruth (4-2) tossed seven strong innings, limiting the third-ranked Owls to just one run on seven hits. Rice (31-12) starter Andrew Benak (1-1) struggled out of the gate, and after a pair of runs on three hits the freshman was replaced by Mark Haynes to close out the first inning.The loss is Rice's second in the last four games and third in the last seven, a foreboding stretch for a team that usually finds itself unbeatable in the late stretch of the season.

Letters to the Editor

New design alters essence of campus

Rice to host C-USA women's tennis tourney this weekend

Sometimes, being average is not that bad. The women's tennis team finished their season with an 11-11 record off a dominant 7-0 win over Northwestern State University, rebounding from a close 5-2 loss against Conference USA favorites Southern Methodist University. SMU, ranked twenty-second, proved to be too much on Senior Day, which saw Rice honor its sole senior, and once walk-on athlete, Emily Braid on Friday. Braid helped the Owls to 70 wins in singles and doubles during her career. Braid started at the sixth spot but fell in straight sets, and closed out her Rice career with a fiery 6-2, 6-4 win against Northwestern State.

Microfinance pioneer shares wisdom with Rice

Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva, the world's first person-to-person micro-lending Web site, spoke at the Shell Auditorium April 14. Jackley was invited by Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Beyond Traditional Borders Director, as part of the Rice 360 initiative. Kiva, which means "agreement" or "unity" in Swahili, has helped nearly 500,000 lenders across the globe loan approximately $67 million to individual entrepreneurs from 45 developing countries since its founding three and a half years ago, the organization's Web site said.

Sunday's Sports Update: Rice unable to get win despite sunny skies

The Owls got to play a game at the regularly scheduled time in the sunshine today, something they hadn't yet experienced in this series. However, the sun didn't shine too brightly on the Rice baseball team today as they lost the finale of their conference series against Marshall 11-7.Games one and two of this series were both postponed due to rain, but both games got finished and the 27-10 Owls took both of them, 7-5 and 10-3, to win the series overall. Rice still leads Conference USA due to East Carolina's loss today to Tulane.

McMurtry slated to thrive by establishing Mongol identity

In the medieval world, the Mongols were the ultimate menace. They attacked with speed and ruthlessness, trying wherever possible to terrify their opponents and use the element of surprise.What made the Mongols especially fearsome was that you could not attack them back: A nomadic people, the fierce tribe had no home base to invade and no central government to overthrow. If for some reason your empire wanted to fight the Mongols, all you could do was sit and wait for them to attack you.

Engineers Without Borders teams to travel to Central America to assess needs, offer solutions

Putting aside problem sets and final projects, students in Rice's chapter of Engineers Without Borders will travel throughout Central America to serve communities in need this summer. According to its Web site, EWB-USA is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing service to fulfill the basic needs of communities in developing countries. Members of Rice-EWB are working on one of four student-led projects in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras. These projects focus on various aspects of helping local communities, from installing water storage tanks to launching educational campaigns about how to sanitize their water.

Women's track places in first at New Mexico meet

Usually, lightning storms and track meets do not mix well. That was not the case this weekend as the women's track team overcame cold and windy conditions, in addition to lightning delays, to take first place at the New Mexico Tailwind Invitational held at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M. Only sprinters, hurdlers, jumpers and weight throwers traveled to New Mexico, as the meet typically boasts strong tail winds - always helpful for sprinters - and fair conditions. The meet showcased the exact opposite, with headwinds both days and stormy weather on Saturday with temperatures in the 40s and 50s, far cooler than the temperatures in which the Owls typically compete.

News in Brief: Rice professor set to blast off to space

Mechanical Engineering Professor Mike Massimino is preparing to fly out of this world. He will be launching into space for the second time on May 12 aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. While in space, Massimino will make repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope. Massimino was too busy preparing for the launch to speak with The Rice Thresher, but he is conveying his experiences via his Twitter account at www.twitter. com/Astro_Mike.

DeGraw may be Free, but he definitely isn't falling

With his 2003 debut Chariot and 2008 self-titled follow-up, Gavin DeGraw had successfully, albeit somewhat mockingly, carved out a certain niche for himself. Cashing in on the oozing, over-indulged sappiness of One Tree Hill, the CW drama that initially landed DeGraw on the iPods of teenage girls across the nation, DeGraw found his place as a gospel-voiced piano-man, a lovelorn mixture of Isaac Slade and Lionel Richie, with a hint of Howie Day on the side.But with the March 31 release of DeGraw's third effort, Free, it's safe to say that the 32-year-old has abandoned the niche he has furnished so well. Gone are the over-produced, tinny guitar riffs; gone is the simple piano-and-drums formula; and gone, for the most part, are the Coldplay-esque refrains of unadulterated love, the kind of quixotic stuff that enthralls Madame Bovary and pisses off Chuck Klosterman.

Miley's latest flick is "Best of Both Worlds

Every girl, whether she is six or 60, has at some point in her life dreamed of being a superstar. Be it a pop star, a movie star or a secret agent, the dream of stardom is always the same. While most of us never get to see this dream fulfilled, there is one out there whom we can at least watch: Hannah Montana (a.k.a. Miley Stewart, Miley Cyrus), your regular girl next door secretly living the life of a singer and movie star. It should not come as a surprise then that her new film, Hannah Montana: The Movie, is just the peak of the Hannah Montana craze.

Greek life at Rice

Brown College's annual toga-themed Bacchanalia party was held last Saturday night in the Brown commons, offering stressed-out students a break from their work in the week before finals.