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Princeton in the News
October 18, 2000
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People, October 16, 2000Halle Berry, fresh off well-received turns in X-Men and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, spoke at a Princeton University seminar on women, race and film. Scoop caught up with the actress, 34, on campus.
Why did you agree to speak at this conference?
Because the invitation came at a time that was probably the darkest, scariest time of my life. I'd been in a car accident, as everybody on the planet probably knows, and I was questioning my self-worth every day. I spent a lot of time crying and praying. The letter from Princeton was a light at the end of the tunnel. It reminded me I was a woman of substance.
Business Week, October 9, 2000MOM'S KEY ROLE IN KIDS' HEALTH
A stepmother is no substitute
More and more children in the U.S. spend part of their childhood in single-parent or divorced households. If that means they are living with a stepmother, report Anne Case and Christina Paxson of Princeton University, they are likely to receive less health care and to be more exposed to health risks than if their birth mother were present.
Investor's Business Daily October 9, 2000Drugmakers' Profits Are On The Line In Fight Over Generics, Brand Names
Investor's Business Daily It's the other big battle over prescription drugs. Not the one over a Medicare drug benefit. This fight is between generics and brand-name drugmakers over patents. Generic firms say brand-name companies use frivolous patent claims to delay generic drugs from coming to market.
"In the next few years, patent protection of drug companies will be topic No. 1 before Congress," especially if lawmakers add a Medicare drug benefit, said Uwe Reinhardt, an economist at Princeton University.
Los Angeles Times October 9, 2000SCIENCE WATCH
NEW LEDS OFFER VISION OF THE FUTURE
LEE DYE
We've heard it all before: Headsets with tiny display screens that will allow us freedom of movement while viewing high-resolution images.
But most of the headsets we've seen in the marketplace are awkward to wear, provide disappointing images and eat batteries for breakfast.
That's about to change, according to major players in the imaging field. A relatively new technology, organic light-emitting diodes, has moved from the research lab to the manufacturing industry, promising to replace everything from liquid-crystal displays on cell phones and laptops to the 20-inch monitors sitting on many computer desks.
Cambridge Display Technology of Cambridge, England, a spinoff from Cambridge University, has come up with what it calls a very inexpensive method for producing diodes. It prints them on a thin film using inkjet technology, plastering the film with tiny diodes in much the same way that a desktop printer splatters droplets of ink on a sheet of paper.
That technology was developed with the aid of U.S. researchers at USC and Princeton University.
USA TODAY October 9, 2000Heat of campaign gets to Bush
Gore Close presidential race leads to verbal missteps
Jill Lawrence
WASHINGTON -- Can Al Gore get through the week, and another debate, without giving George W. Bush more fodder for the character wars? Will Bush's language skills and knowledge base hold up through the next 90-minute encounter, especially with foreign unrest dominating the news?
Fred Greenstein, a presidential leadership specialist at Princeton University, says he doubts Bush's ability to transcend his rhetorical limitations. "He's boilerplate. He recites these little catechisms," Greenstein says.
The New York Times October 8, 2000Without Fanfare, Morning-After Pill Gets a Closer Look
By GINA KOLATA
Each month, at least one woman comes into Katterman's Sand Point Pharmacy in Seattle to ask for a prescription drug. None of the women have seen or spoken to a doctor but each says she needs the drug immediately.
The pill is an emergency contraceptive that can prevent pregnancy if it is taken within 72 hours after intercourse, and it is part of what public health officials say is a revolution that is potentially as important -- if quieter -- as the one initiated by the recent approval of the abortion-inducing pill, mifepristone, or RU-486. While mifepristone offers a way to end pregnancies, the emergency contraceptive pill can prevent them.
Public health advocates say the pill could provide enormous benefits.
"Our belief is that if emergency contraception pills really were widely used, to their maximum potential, then the number of unintended pregnancies could be cut in half," said Dr. James Trussell, associate dean at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "It has a huge potential. But I can guarantee you that the emphasis in that sentence is on potential," he added.
The Economist October 07, 2000Heretical thoughts about independent voters
"THE Party's Over". Ever since David Broder's book of that title appeared in 1971, political parties have seemed to be in terminal decline in America. The final weeks of any campaign seem particularly focused on the unaligned. This week's debate in Boston saw George W. Bush and Al Gore in their usual helter-skelter pursuit of swing voters, those who either refuse to identify with one of the two main parties or who switch back and forth so frequently as to make any labelling meaningless.
So popular is the notion that swing voters are what matter in American campaigns that it comes as something of a shock to discover how little hard evidence there is for it from the hustings. Indeed, such evidence as there is from the polling booths points in the opposite direction: Americans are actually more partisan than they were.
These numbers contradict not just conventional wisdom but also the registration figures from states like California. All the same, they are backed up by a recent study by Larry Bartels of Princeton University.
Financial Times October 7, 2000COMMENT & ANALYSIS
Building better babies
David Pilling asks whether there is anything wrong in screening embryos in search of specific characteristics:
By DAVID PILLING
It was an extraordinary last-ditch effort to save a child. Desperate parents with a terminally ill daughter conceived a new baby, seemingly for the sole purpose of saving an otherwise doomed sibling.
In spite of the impression one might get from this week's media furore about Adam Nash - the Denver baby who helped to save his six-year-old sister Molly - the incident happened more than a decade ago. That Adam Nash was conceived in order to help an existing sibling is, to put it bluntly, old hat.
Twelve of the couple's eight-cell embryos were tested for Fanconi anaemia, the genetically inherited disease that threatened to kill Molly. If the parents had conceived Adam naturally, there was a 75 per cent chance he would have suffered from Fanconi, or would have been a carrier of the disease.
The question is whether selecting one embryo because of its potential to help Molly - through a non-invasive procedure - is morally worse than discarding another embryo because it might carry a disease. Lee Silver, a geneticist at Princeton University, believes that such issues will come into greater focus as scientists learn more about the connection certain genes have with abilities and disabilities. Because the federal government does not regulate private fertility clinics in the US, he regards it as inevitable that some parents will choose to give their offspring a genetic head-start.
International Herald Tribune October 7, 2000Bill Clinton, the Progressive
BRIEFLY
New York Times Service
PRINCETON, New Jersey - Opening a Princeton University conference on the Progressive Era, President Bill Clinton has likened his presidency to the far- reaching reforms enacted under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Mr. Clinton pitched his own brand of activist government to the audience of historians and students, comparing his accomplishments in office to those presidents' efforts to reduce the power of entrenched special interests, strengthen the presidency and force an often reluctant nation to become engaged with the world.
The New York Times October 6, 2000President Puts Himself in Progressive Company
By IVER PETERSON
PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 5
Opening a Princeton University conference today on the Progressive Era, President Clinton likened his presidency to the far-reaching reforms enacted under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
The president's 45-minute talk also served as a vehicle to pitch his own brand of activist government to historians. Mr. Clinton compared his accomplishments in office to Roosevelt's and Wilson's efforts to reduce the power of entrenched special interests, strengthen the presidency and force an often reluctant nation to become engaged with the world. And while he included Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican and one of his favorite presidents, in his speech, only Democrats were on his list of progressive presidents who had succeeded Roosevelt.
The Record October 6, 2000CLINTON TOUTS RECORD OF HIS PRESIDENCY
LINDA A. JOHNSON, The Associated Press
PRINCETON
Addressing a Princeton University conference on"The Progressive Tradition,"President Clinton said he and Vice President Al Gore had worked to redefine the roles of government and the president, much as the dominant figures of the early 20th century reform movement had.
Clinton delivered the keynote address Thursday for the two-day gathering of scholars examining the period of political and social reforms from 1900 to 1920 led by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, a former Princeton University president. Clinton said the United States can sustain such a reformist era even longer today.
Speaking before about 800 people, Clinton said he had closely studied the Progressive Era, a time of "swift and stunning change" shaped by technological advances, much like today.
The Associated Press State & Local Wire October 5, 2000Business news in brief from around New Jersey
EWING, N.J. (AP) - Motorola Inc. has awarded Universal Display Co. of Ewing the licensing rights for Motorola electronics technologies.
Under terms of the agreement, Motorola will receive a minority equity stake in Universal Display and provide licensing rights on more than 75 patents and patent applications for the development of flat-panel displays using Organic Light Emitting Devices, the displays on cellular telephones, computers and other terminals.
Universal Display has 31 patents and more than 50 pending for flat panel displays. The company has been developing the technology with Princeton University and the University of Southern California since 1994.
PR Newswire October 5, 2000Motorola Grants OLED Technology Rights to Universal Display and Takes Equity Position
EWING, N.J. and SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Oct. 5
Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) has awarded Universal Display Corporation (UDC) (Nasdaq: PANL; PHLX: PNL), a leading developer of flat panel display technologies, licensing rights for Motorola technologies related to Organic Light Emitting Devices (OLEDs), both companies announced today. OLEDs are considered a critical platform for future flat panel displays for cell phones, computers, wireless terminals and other communication devices.
UDC has been developing OLED technology with Princeton University and The University of Southern California (USC) since 1994. It is located in the Princeton Crossroads Corporate Center, minutes away from the Company's research partners at Princeton University, in an 11,000 sq. ft facility which includes a pilot production line as well as technology development and technology transfer facilities.
The Times October 5, 2000Take the sand mouse test
Anjana Ahuja
AN intriguing gauntlet has been thrown down by a New York scientist. Dr John Hopfield, from Princeton University, has invented an animal called the sand mouse that exists purely on computer. It is made up of 660 cells that operate like brain cells - they are interconnected and emit signals when prompted to do so under certain conditions.
The 660 cells recognise the word "one" spoken by different voices in noisy settings. The challenge is to answer this question: what computational principle allows the mouse to pull off this feat? It is something the human brain can do but that computers generally have trouble with, which is why Hopfield is claiming that it could help to illuminate the machinations of the human brain.
The Associated Press October 4, 2000Bush, Gore debate seen as unlikely to change race dynamics
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON
George W. Bush partisans insist he was the clear victor. Al Gore supporters say he had the upper hand. And undecided voters may be inclined to remain that way, at least for now.
Both sides suggest Tuesday's first presidential debate seems unlikely to sway large numbers of undecided voters in what is shaping up as the closest race in a generation.
"I haven't seen a presidential debate that has seemed to me to be as evenly matched," said Fred Greenstein, a political science professor at Princeton University. "No one shot himself in the foot. No one scored a knockout. There was no humor."
U.S. Newswire October 3, 2000Pitt Researcher to Lead Panel Discussion at White House Forum on Technologies for Successful Aging
PITTSBURGH, Oct. 3
Rory A. Cooper, Ph.D., professor and chairman, department of rehabilitation science and technology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS), has been selected to co-chair a panel discussion on Health Care and Assistive Technology at the national Forum on Technologies for Successful Aging. This forum, which is sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology, will take place on Oct. 4 and 5 at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C.
On day two of the forum, Dr. Cooper, who is co-chairing the panel with Malcolm Steinberg of Princeton University, will present his panel's conclusions for policy recommendations to all participants. These proposals will include several short-term opportunities as well as several, five- to 10-year recommendations to federal policymakers.
Albuquerque Journal October 2, 2000Hauling in the Cosmic Picture
John Fleck Journal Staff Writer
International venture
Hatched at a meeting at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in the late 1980s, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has been more than a decade in the making.
After more than a year of telescope testing, the survey officially began this spring, and formal dedication ceremonies for the project are planned for Thursday.
Originally funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the project now involves a broad international collaboration, with members including the University of Chicago, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, the University of Washington, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, a consortium of Japanese researchers, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and the United States Naval Observatory.
Work is expected to take five years.
Chicago Tribune October 2, 2000JAMMING 'BACTERIAL LANGUAGE'
EXPERTS SEEK WAYS TO AVERT INFECTIOUS ATTACKS
By Robert S. Boyd, Knight Ridder/Tribune.
WASHINGTON
A new front is opening in the never-ending war between germs and humans.
As befits this information age, the battle is to control the enemy's communications systems. The enemies in this case are potentially lethal bacteria such as E. coli, salmonella and Vibrio cholerae, the bug that causes cholera.
Researchers have discovered in recent years that these and other infectious microbes need to exchange messages with each other in order to be dangerous. They are harmless if they can't communicate.
These organisms have developed what researchers call a "bacterial language"--a set of chemical signals that enable them to take a head count, rather like a sergeant calling the roll of his platoon. The bacteria don't attack until they sense that their numbers are sufficient.
In a recent report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University, in Princeton, N.J., said E. coli and salmonella bacteria wait until their numbers reach a critical mass before they start to release the poisonous toxins that have sickened or killed hundreds of people who ate contaminated food.
"If bacteria started producing toxins as soon as the infection began, it would be like waving a flag to alert the host's immune system," Bassler wrote. "If the bacteria are in small numbers, they don't stand a chance, but if they wait until they reach high cell densities, then they have a much better chance of establishing an infection."
Scientists call this bacterial communication system "quorum sensing." That's because it works a bit like a quorum in human society, where it takes a certain number of people to get a meeting going.
"Quorum sensing enables bacteria to coordinate their behavior, to act like multi-cellular organisms and to acquire the benefits of cooperative activity," Bassler said.
Computerworld October 2, 2000Feds Step Up Revolutionary Quantum Computer Funding
Development years away, but warnings raised if U.S. lags in computing research
Patrick Thibodeau
Washington
Preparing for an eventual post-silicon-chip world, the U.S. is increasing its research spending on quantum computers and other advanced computing alternatives. But foreign governments are doing likewise, and a race to develop new technologies -- potentially raising profound implications for computer security -- may be beginning.
In quantum computing, a single subatomic particle could represent both a zero and a one, a simultaneous state that may make huge increases in processing power possible. As envisioned, quantum computing will have enormous abilities to factor numbers and potentially to break codes.
National security and the secure functioning of e-commerce transactions are both "dependent on the fact that certain [encryption ] codes work," said Richard Lipton, a Princeton University computer science professor who's currently on leave to work at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. But that could be jeopardized if another country "secretly discovered a way to build a quantum computer and just didn't tell us," he told the subcommittee.
"They would be reading all our mail, reading probably all the military's mail and the like. This would probably not be good," said Lipton. w
THE HARTFORD COURANT October 2, 2000A DRINKING LIFE;
YOU CAN LOOK AT THESE GUYS AND YOU CAN LOOK AWAY. OR YOU CAN LOOK AT THESE GUYS AND SAY, WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING.'
SUSAN CAMPBELL ; Courant Staff Writer
Michael Staron started drinking as a teenager at large Polish gatherings his family attended in the '60s, not long after they'd come to Hartford from Poland. He gave Hartford's Bulkeley High School a few months. At this point -- he's 53 -- he can't remember much about that time.
His life has been a cycle of drinking, not meeting his bills, hitting the streets, getting help and falling back down. Earlier this year, he befriended a shelter worker, but she left for another job. In her absence, he's slipping. A July vow to stop drinking has evaporated.
His hold on a subsidized apartment in Hartford's South End, arranged in part by the friendly shelter worker, is tenuous. With temperatures about to drop, this is not a good time to lose his grip.
He has severe arthritis, and an open tracheotomy oozes mucus from his neck and renders him voiceless. To understand Staron, one must read his lips, but to see him on the streets is to turn away. He's a drunk.
People like him, but as with others among Hartford's homeless, you can look at his substance abuse in two ways, as a weakness of will or as an illness. Will vs. ill. The battle plays itself out in Staron's life every day. And how you look at it matters, because how individuals view an issue is how public policy is formed.
So after all these years, the question remains: What do we do with someone like Staron? Few would suggest abandoning him. "I would think a decent society provides minimal support to its least fortunate members," said Peter Singer, Princeton University philosophy professor and author of 1979's "Practical Ethics."
Last year, Singer's appointment to a top position at Princeton's Center for the Study of Human Values created a furor among disabled people and their advocates. Singer had questioned giving public aid to severely disabled children and argued that their parents should have the right to end their lives.
"There ought to be a willingness among the reasonably comfortable members of society to provide something for basic needs: food, shelter, basic health care," Singer said. "Beyond that, exactly how you solve the problem of why people are homeless is a more detailed question. "There is no obligation to throw money down a hole. I think if we're talking about something like heroin, people have tried to stop this at enormous public expense, in terms of law enforcement. It's time to look at an alternative for much less money, to reduce the harm."
Portland Press Herald October 2, 2000FDA's approval of RU-486 draws considerable support
Of course, you have to understand where it's coming from.
M.D. Harmon
PANDEMONIUM
There was considerable rejoicing here in the capital city of Hell when the news was announced last week that RU-486, the drug cocktail that aborts unborn babies in the womb, had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration.
Back on Earth, meanwhile, the approval generated strong criticism. RU-486 is a combination of two drugs used to produce an abortion in the first seven weeks of pregnancy. One of the drugs, mifepristone, starves a baby in the womb in a period of a week or two. Then a second drug, misoprostol, causes contractions that expel the dead fetus.
Women who take the drugs are, in the words of Robert P. George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, "sent home to have a miscarriage."
Princeton's Professor George, in an interview for National Review Online, said that "Many women waiting at home for the child growing within them to die and be evacuated from their bodies are going to feel an isolation that simply can't be comforted by the 'support' of a boyfriend, parents, friends or counselors. Ironic, isn't it, that the liberals responsible for approving RU-486 are patting themselves on the back for doing women a big favor. Some 'favor.' "
Roanoke Times & World News October 2, 2000NOBEL LAUREATE TO TELL OF MENTAL ILLNESS
CHILDS WALKER THE ROANOKE TIMES
Nobel laureate and recovered schizophrenic John Nash will speak at Roanoke College tonight.
Nash, 72, won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1994, more than 40 years after he published his definitive article on game theory.
The Nash equilibrium, as scholars call it, states that games such as chess and military strategy reach equilibrium when each player believes he or she can't do any better under the circumstances.
Simple, really, but the theory has become a key link in economic, social and mathematical theory, a significance its creator never envisioned when he tapped out a 26-page thesis at age 21 at Princeton University.
Left at that, Nash's story would be remarkable. But the Bluefield, W.Va., native also spent almost half his life in a schizophrenic fog.
Already a respected mathematician and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nash began to frighten friends in 1958 when he told them aliens were sending messages to him through The New York Times. Other delusions followed along with a deepening paranoia. He would later say that the delusions seemed to enter his head as logically as the mathematical theories he had once crafted.
Nash spent a few of his sick years in Roanoke with his mother, but after she died in 1969, he moved to Princeton, N.J., where he haunted the campus he had once illuminated with his genius.
Nash began to wake from his mental illness in the late 1980s. Most schizophrenics never recover and many kill themselves, but Nash reconnected with the world day by day.
He has spent most of the last decade discussing his experience with mental illness, deepening his relationships with family and friends and again immersing himself in mathematical theory.
Aerospace America October, 2000Recent Awards Presented at AIAA Meetings
The following awards were presented at the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit; AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference and Exhibit; AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference and Exhibit; AIAA/AAS Astrodynamics Conference and Exhibit; and 18th AIAA Applied Aerodynamics Specialist Conference and Exhibit, 15 August 2000 at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, Denver, CO.
Technical Awards
Ronald A. Hess, Professor and Vice Chairman, Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, and Robert F. Stengel, Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, recently received the AIAA Mechanics and Control of Flight Award. Hess received the award, "For advance toward the design and analytical evaluation of flight control systems, emphasizing the safe piloted operation of aircraft." Stengel received the award, "For many contributions to the theory and practice of aerospace control and guidance, and for educating a generation of students in these concepts." The award is presented for outstanding recent technical or scientific contributions by an individual in mechanics, guidance, or control of flight in space or the atmosphere.
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