There was excitement in the air on the evening of Feb. 1, as spectators filed into Kresge Auditorium for the BattleCode 2008 final tournament. Thousands of dollars in prizes were at stake as the teams sought to prove their software’s mettle.

Last Wednesday, Jan. 30, MIT Housing e-mailed all residents of on-campus housing to ask for written permission to include their birth dates in census information sent to the Cambridge Election Commission.

Joseph F. Coughlin founded AgeLab to unravel a paradox: Humanity in the last century achieved the dream of much longer life, but didn’t plan for the effects on work, health and daily living.

Allan T. Demaree, a retired executive editor of Fortune magazine, gladly makes donations to Princeton University, his alma mater, even though he knows it has become one of the wealthiest educational institutions in the world. His son, who also went to Princeton, points to its endowment of $15.8 billion, and will not give it a penny.