PrincetonUniversity Communications Office, Stanhope Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA Tel 609-258-3601, Fax 609-258-1301   Feedback Princeton in the News Enclosing directory   Environment News Service January 3, 2001 SOUTH POLE SNOWPACK REVEALS CENTURY'S AIR QUALITY SOUTH POLE, Antarctica, January 3, 2001 (ENS) - A team of scientists will search the South Pole snowpack this January for 100 year old air samples, to investigate what the air quality was like during the last century. The pockets of air trapped in the snowpack will provide scientists with a historical record of gases that were present in the atmosphere during this period. Researchers will then be able to analyze this record for clues to how human activity has influenced atmospheric processes. With support from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the six investigators from Bowdoin College in Maine, NOAA's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin and Princeton University, will draw air from the snowpack at incremental depths, stopping at about 120 meters, at which point the snow turns to ice. Defense Week, January 2, 2001 DARPA Selects Quiet Supersonic Platform' Contractors The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the participants in its project to design an airplane that can fly faster than the speed of sound without the harsh effects of a sonic boom on the ground. The sonic booms restrict the flight of today's supersonic aircraft from all but the most remote air routes. If the military were able to fly its supersonic aircraft in more places, it could reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of many military operations, experts say. ... In addition, DARPA awarded contracts to seven research facilities, including several universities, for the QSP technology development segment of the program, a segment aimed at advancing certain key technologies. ... According to a DARPA statement, contracts for the QSP technology development segment went to: *Princeton University, for research on off-body energy addition combined with a strategically shaped vehicle to attenuate ground shock signatures; ... The New York Times, January 2, 2001 Constructing a More Plausible Universe With 'Warm Dark Matter' Cosmologists often turn to computer simulations in concocting likely inventories of what the universe is made of. ... Over the last two decades, for instance, computer simulations have lent increasing support for the idea of cold dark matter. ... But cold dark matter had some shortcomings. In simulations, it usually produced large galaxies much as they are in reality. But the smaller structures seemed wrong; it produced too many dwarf galaxies everywhere, as satellites to large galaxies and even in what are observed as virtually empty intergalactic voids. Computer simulations at Princeton have now tested an alternative idea: dark matter that is not cold or hot, but warm. ... "It looks as if warm dark matter solves all the problems," Dr. Jeremiah P. Ostriker, an astrophysicist and provost at Princeton, said in an interview last week. "Is it true? We don't know, but it's testable. All we have to do is look at the sky and see if it looks like the cold dark matter simulation or the one for warm dark matter." Besides Dr. Ostriker, the research team included Dr. Paul Bode of Princeton and Dr. Neil Turok, an astrophysicist at Cambridge in England. The results have been discussed at recent scientific meetings and soon will be published in an astrophysics journal. E, January 1, 2001 Designer People use of genetic engineering to create gene-enriched people The Human Genetic Blueprint Has Been Drafted, Offering Both Perils and Opportunities for the Environment. THE BIG QUESTION: Are We Changing the Nature of Nature? Princeton University microbiologist Lee M. Silver can see a day a few centuries from now when there are two species of humans--the standard-issue "Naturals," and the "Gene-enriched," an elite class whose parents consciously bought for them designer genes, and whose parents before them did the same, and so on for generations. Want Billy to have superior athletic ability? Plunk down the cash. Want Suzy to be exceptionally smart? Just pull out the Visa card at your local fertility clinic, where the elite likely will go to enhance their babies-to-be. ... The Public Interest, January 1, 2001 Politics in a Brave New World. BY all accounts, we are on the cusp of a great technological revolution or revolutions. In the last several months, Time, Newsweek, Wired, the New York Times Magazine, even the stuffy, high-brow Partisan Review have run cover stories on the technological marvels about to transform our lives. None of this apparently is science fiction but what leading scientists in their respective fields are predicting as fact. ... Lee M. Silver, a molecular biologist and neuroscientist at Princeton University, predicts that by mid century genetic engineering will have become sufficiently feasible, safe, and efficient that we will possess "the power to change the nature of humankind." ... Financial Times, December 29, 2000 Towards a piracy high watermark COPYRIGHT PROTECTION: Paul Talacko looks at the initiative to create secure music standards and the digital watermarking technology b: ... SDMI is a response to the flood of illegally copied music files that has swept through the internet. Its members include large hardware, consumer electronics, software and media companies. Most of the illegal MP3 files on the internet have been copied or "ripped" from CDs, says Leonardo Chiariglione, the executive director of SDMI. ... At the heart of technologies proposed for SDMI is a technique called digital "watermarking". This involves subtly embedding information about, say, copyright or who owns a file, into a digital image or music. SDMI watermarks will also determine whether a music file can be copied. They will be "screened" with special software included in SDMI-compliant music players. SDMI-compliant players will reproduce music that bears a watermark so long as the user is observing the terms of the licence. But they will also reproduce music without a watermark. The hackers' task is thus to remove the watermark and the task of SDMI to find a watermark that cannot be removed without doing so much damage to the file that people would rather buy their own legitimate copy than listen to it. SDMI presented the world's hackers with four different types of watermarking and two other non-specified files and bid them do their worst. ... Perhaps the most important crack and possibly the most successful comes from a team of academics who have not yet published full details of their research. The team is based at Princeton University, but also includes members from Xerox Parc and Rice University. Edward W. Felten, of the department of computer science at Princeton and a member of the team, claims that they managed to crack all four approaches provided by SDMI. It took them about a one-half-person week for each approach, he says. Once you know a particular mechanism all other files that use it can be easily cracked. Presidential Campaign Press Materials, December 28, 2000 PRESIDENT ELECT BUSH NOMINATES DONALD RUMSFELD AS SECRETARY OF DEFENCE WASHINGTON, DC - President-elect George W. Bush today announced his intention to name Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense during the Ford Administration and a former U.S. Congressman, to serve as Secretary of Defense. ... Mr. Rumsfeld was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1932. He attended Princeton University on scholarship and.. from 1954 to 1957, served in the U.S. Navy as a Naval aviator. He and his wife, Joyce, have three children and five grandchildren. ... The Miami Herald, December 27, 2000 Mobile-clinic doc brings preventive care to kids it otherwise might never meet MIAMI _ The path that led Arturo Brito to this steamy parking lot at West Homestead Elementary School began, as so many paths do, with parents who set a lifelong example of giving back. ... Brito finds it somewhat ironic that his pragmatic, grass-roots view of health care has led him far afield again in the past couple of years. He has attended hearings all over the country as a member of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, an advisory group to the president on the use of people in research. ... Brito's work with this "heavy-duty, high-profile group of folks" led by Princeton University President Harold T. Shapiro "is thrilling for the Department of Pediatrics and the medical school," said Dr. R. Rodney Howell, University of Miami's chairman of pediatrics. ... The New York Times, December 27, 2000 Colleges Are Moving to Ensure English Fluency in Teaching Assistants At colleges and universities, graduate-student teaching assistants are often the backbone of large lecture classes, especially in the sciences. They guide undergraduates through lab assignments, set up the review sessions and often give out grades. They are sometimes an undergraduate's only hope of understanding incomprehensible course material. So when teaching assistants come from abroad and cannot be understood in English, work that was difficult often becomes impenetrable. The communication gap occurs because graduate students are admitted to advanced-degree programs based on their academic work, not their teaching ability. ... In recent years, some of the nation's top colleges have wrestled with the problem. This year, for the first time, Princeton required incoming graduate students from foreign countries to pass an oral proficiency exam in English, before permitting them to teach this fall. ... The Christian Science Monitor, December 26, 2000 Japan calls for joint initiative on economic ties to US Friendly foreign governments see a change in administration in Washington as an opportunity to improve their relationship with the United States. So it is that the Japanese government is exploring the idea of proposing closer economic integration of the American and Japanese economies. ... At the moment, Japan's economy shows signs of slowing. Real growth after inflation is running about 1 percent - a piddling pace. Another recession may lie ahead, warns Douglas Ostrom of George Washington University. Some economists blame this meager growth in large part on the Bank of Japan's monetary policy. Even though Japan has declining prices, the bank raised interest rates in August to 0.25 percent from near zero. The fuel for economic expansion, the money supply, is growing slowly. ... Princeton University economist Paul Krugman has likened the bank to a driver who runs over a pedestrian. The driver looks back and says, "I am so sorry, let me undo the damage" - and proceeds to back up his car, running over the pedestrian again. ... THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, December 26, 2000 The 2000 award for Texans of the year What Texans stood out in 2000? From global to local, here are my nominations for this year's award: ... RUTH SIMMONS - In November, this Houstonian was named the first African-American president of an Ivy League institution. Brown University's new leader grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward, the daughter of a sharecropper. After she left the state at age 17, she earned a doctorate from Harvard University. Dr. Simmons' first college presidency was at Smith College. She moved there in 1995 after serving Princeton University as vice provost. Like other university executives, the Texan faces the challenging task of expanding Brown's endowment. Since she doubled Smith's coffers, the terrain should seem familiar. ... Chicago Tribune, December 24, 2000 REQUIRED READING FOR STUDENTS If anyone knows what it takes to get into a top college it's Howard Greene. A former Princeton University admissions officer, a graduate of Dartmouth College and holder of master's degrees from Harvard and New York University, Greene has co-authored three new books aimed at helping students gain admission to the best colleges in the U.S. ... The Florida Times-Union, December 24, 2000 Bush takes break after working on filling his Cabinet AUSTIN, Texas -- President-elect Bush has assembled about half of his Cabinet despite a transition period cut short by the recount deadlock. ... Bush is behind where Clinton was after his election in 1992, when his core Cabinet was in place by Christmas, along with a battery of other top administration officials. But Clinton wasn't hampered by a five-week, postelection stalemate. 'I think it's remarkable' how swiftly Bush is moving, said Fred Greenstein, a Princeton University professor of politics and author of a book on presidential leadership. 'This guy does present the portrait of someone who finds it easy to make decisions.' ... The New York Post, December 24, 2000 "NICCOLO'S SMILE: A BIOGRAPHY OF MACHIAVELLI" BY MAURIZIO VIROLI Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" isn't exactly a treatise on honesty, loyalty or kindness. But Princeton University professor Maurizio Viroli sets out to prove in his new book, "Niccolo's Smile," that the man whose name is synonymous with artful deviousness and manipulation was actually a charming humanitarian who loved poetry, adventure and women. ... Telegraph Herald, December 24, 2000 Americans celebrate Christ's birth, commercialism Churches:Pageants range from retelling of Bible story to Web-surfing for day's true meaning ... Mixing the twin American pieties - sacraments and sales - is deeply rooted American tradition, and not one that is necessarily hypocritical, says Leigh Schmidt, a Princeton University scholar who leads research into modern American holidaymaking. In his study, "Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays," Schmidt describes the seeming mix of the sacred and profane as "a compelling linkage of religious, civic, and folk celebration to modern forms of display and retailing." Not every culture tolerates the mix so well. The original "mystery plays" - recountings of biblical tales dating back more than 1,000 years - died out in northern Europe in the Middle Ages partly because their popularity attracted merchants, and church leaders were aghast at seeing trinkets peddled alongside scripture. By contrast, what Schmidt describes as "convergences of fair and festival" has happily thrived in American at least since the early 19th century. ...