PrincetonUniversity Communications Office, Stanhope Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA Tel 609-258-3601, Fax 609-258-1301   Feedback Princeton in the News Enclosing directory   The Associated Press State & Local Wire, February 21, 2001 Former press secretary McCurry says Americans trust Bush Former presidential press secretary Michael McCurry, who described himself as the "pinata of the White House press corps" during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, attributed George W. Bush's close victory to a shift in voter sentiments that favors politicians who appear more trustworthy. "(Bush) has promised to change the way Washington does business," McCurry said during a speech Wednesday at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "People think he is believable. What Americans seem to praise most is good, verifiable, accurate information." McCurry graduated from Princeton in 1976 and worked for several presidential campaigns and as a spokesman for the State Department before becoming Bill Clinton's press secretary in 1995. He held that post for three years, including during the beginning of the Lewinsky scandal. McCurry is now the CEO of Grassroots.com a web-based business that helps politicians and advocacy groups share information. International Herald Tribune, February 21, 2001 Harvard Computer Scientists Invent 'Unbreakable' Coding Method A computer science professor at Harvard has found a way to send coded messages that cannot be deciphered, even, he says, by an all-powerful adversary with unlimited computing power. And, he says, he can prove it. If he is right, and he does have some supporters, his code may be the first that is both practical and provably secure... Richard Lipton, a computer science professor at Princeton University, who is visiting this year at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said, ''It's like in the old 'Mission Impossible,' where the message blows up and disappears.'' Someone who uses one of today's commercially available coding systems, Mr. Lipton explained, uses the same key - mathematical formulas for encoding and decoding - over and over again. Eventually, they might be forced, perhaps by a court order, to give up the key. Or the key might be stolen... Some say that a provably unbreakable code could have profound effects, keeping secret messages secret forever. But others say that codes today are already so good that there is little to be gained by making them provably, rather than just probably, unbreakable... USA TODAY, February 21, 2001 Straight-talking Treasury chief stares down critics O'Neill's remarks don't just ruffle feathers, they rattle markets After just one month on the job, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has roiled international currency markets, all but called Democrats socialists, insulted Wall Street traders and disparaged business lobbyists for seeking a tax credit that even President Bush supports. To some in the nation's capital, the new Treasury secretary's candor is delightfully refreshing. To others, including some White House officials, it is unnerving, even politically and economically dangerous... Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and Clinton White House economic adviser, recalled another O'Neill miscue, when the Treasury secretary belittled Wall Street traders as "people who sit in front of a flickering giant screen." Such traders, O'Neill told the Wall Street Journal last month, "are not the sort of people you would want to help you think about complex problems." "The people around the world sitting in front of flickering screens trading currencies are almost always in a semi-crazed state. Therefore, you don't want to feed them lines that make them go berserk," Blinder says... Facts on File World News Digest February 20, 2001 Education: News in Brief Princeton University in New Jersey had decided that students receiving financial aid would no longer be required to take out loans, it was reported February 1. Increased scholarship grants funded by the school's $8 billion endowment would replace the portion of the financial aid package that students previously had to borrow. Princeton officials called it the first time that a U.S. university had instituted a no-loan policy. Heritage Foundation Reports, February 20, 2001 DISPELLING THE MYTHS ABOUT MILITARY USE OF DEPLETED URANIUM The international outcry over claims that the use of depleted uranium during the Kosovo intervention caused leukemia in 24 European members of the peacekeeping force is unfounded. Numerous studies of depleted uranium -- the byproduct of the process of extracting fuel for nuclear reactors and weapons from uranium -- have not found any link between its use by the military and any form of cancer or other health problems. ... In February 2001, experts at the World Health Organization reported that they had found no firm evidence linking individual medical cases in Kosovo to exposure to depleted uranium. In a September 2000 study, the Institute of Medicine concluded that there was "limited/suggestive evidence of no association" between disease and exposure of no less than 20 rem (a unit of radiation), at least four times the highest exposure estimated for Gulf War veterans. And Dr. Frank von Hippel of Princeton University has concluded that even if a ton of depleted uranium dust were spread all over Kosovo, the resulting radiation level would be within one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the normal level. ... The New York Times, February 20, 2001 Literary Set's Liquid Paper Conspiracy Demise of Typewriter Shop Saddens Authors Who Nurse Their Machines Another typewriter store is going out of business; a few more of the shrinking qwerty minority shudder... But more important, typewriter lovers believe that the word-processing computer's so-called advances -- the ability to write without stopping, the nearly effortless power to move words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters quite seamlessly, and even the magic of machine-corrected spelling and grammar -- have not come without their cost. In fact, they suggest, the word processor has vitiated, well, writing itself... Even the obsolescence that has plagued typewriter fans threatens the less nimble members of the computer crowd. Many writers who long ago made the switch to word processing have discovered that they are technological orphans... John McPhee, who teaches writing at Princeton University, is also among the afflicted. "I have a seven-year-old computer," said Mr. McPhee. "If it were an automobile, it would be a Stanley Steamer." ... Omaha World-Herald, February 20, 2001 After-Sex Pill Gets New Push Making an emergency contraceptive available over the counter is the issue, but some equate the drug with abortion Makers of an emergency contraceptive called Plan B visited the FDA this month to begin the process of applying for over-the-counter status. They plan to complete the required studies and apply by the end of the year. They say FDA approval could come no sooner than mid-2002. Some anti-abortion groups, but not all, consider emergency contraception another form of abortion. Supporters say it's not. And they say easier access could prevent many of the 3 million unexpected pregnancies a year in the United States.... [I]t's not clear that emergency contraceptives cause abortions, said Dr. James Trussell, a contraception expert at Princeton University. Many studies have demonstrated that the drugs can inhibit a woman's production of eggs. Some studies suggest they also can alter the uterine lining, which might make a fertilized egg less likely to attach. Trussell said other research has shown no effect on the uterine lining. Some evidence also suggests that regular birth-control pills and breast-feeding alter the uterine lining, Trussell said, and it's equally plausible to suggest that they can prevent a fertilized egg from attaching. Said Trussell: "Nobody, to my knowledge, is going around actively condemning breast-feeding." The Richmond Times Dispatch, February 20, 2001 BLACKS IN CIVIL WAR DISCUSSED DESERVE SCRUTINY, SCHOLARS SAY Healing the lingering wounds of the Civil War among the races will require reopening those wounds to the full light of history, as painful as it might be. That was one message that came across as about 250 people crowded into an auditorium Friday night at the Library of Virginia to search for fresh perspectives about blacks and the Civil War that freed 4 million of them from the shackles of slavery. The event was jointly sponsored by the library and the Tredegar National Civil War Center Foundation, in collaboration with some of the city's most influential black organizations. It brought together national Civil War scholars, such as Pulitzer Prize winner James M. McPherson of Princeton University and Gary W. Gallagher of the University of Virginia, as well as local historians and others with special insights into the struggles of blacks during the war... THE STATESMAN, February 20, 2001 Waft and weft of Bush proposal Middle class students were the ones that carried such tuition debt. The Princeton decision is designed essentially to assist these. "We want to ensure that no student admitted to Princeton feels that he or she cannot attend because it would present a financial hard-ship," the head of the university, Harold T Shapiro, explained. The no-loan policy - which, as the university noted, acts against the national trend of loans making up an increasing portion, often 60 per cent, of student aid packages - has been hailed for the reason that other universities will now be compelled to similarly reduce student indebtedness. The Wall Street Journal called it an encouraging recognition that universities, especially well-off ones, have obligations, too. "And though Princeton is too gentlemanly to say so itself, everyone understands that its move will ultimately force its peers to do the same." This is good news for foreign students, too, who come to the USA mainly for post-graduate and doctoral studies: the fellow-ship amounts (paid for their taking on teaching or research responsibilities) are now bound to be increased and the deductions for medical insurance and the like reduced. The Princeton reform includes a provision to assist all first-year doctoral students with full tuition and a stipend to cover living expenses. This should enable them to devote their time solely to studies, without any anxiety about having to teach under-graduates or assist their professor with his research... "International students who anticipate that they will be unable to afford the costs of a Princeton education without financial assistance from the university should not let that fact deter them from applying for admission." With an endowment of about $8 billion, Princeton is among the wealthiest universities in the USA. The Washington Post, February 19, 2001 Beloved Indeed Literature's A-List Wishes Toni Morrison a Happy 70th The Toni Morrison Society, founded by a group of scholars in 1993 to study the author's work, hosted a black-tie birthday salute, which brought guests ranging from Angela Davis to Gloria Steinem; from Sonny Mehta, president of Morrison's publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf, to Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University, where Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen professor of humanities. Morrison also founded and now directs the Princeton Atelier program, which partners selected students with renowned artists. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and novelists Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joyce Carol Oates have participated in the project. Sunday Business (London), February 18, 2001, Sunday Leading Economics Scholars Question Necessity of EU Tax Harmony Two leading economics professors have blown a hole in the argument that European Union taxes must be harmonised to avoid "harmful" tax competition. In fact, the reverse may be true and harmonised taxes could damage the countries concerned, according to Richard Baldwin of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, and Paul Krugman of Princeton University, New Jersey. Building on a discussion paper they wrote last November, published by the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research, Baldwin and Krugman reject the conventional wisdom that, in a world of high capital mobility, closer economic integration in the EU demands tax harmonisation... Using an analysis known as "new economic geography", they argue that rich countries with generous welfare states may offer excellent infrastructure, established customer and supplier bases, accumulated experience and well-trained workforces -- the result and the source of high taxes. Businesses will be attracted to such countries... The professors' analysis comes as the debate within the EU continues to rage over tax harmonisation. One camp sees it as an essential complement to monetary union; others, including the British government, see it as an unacceptable loss of sovereignty over fiscal policy. For the moment, the European Commission is unwilling to press ahead with a plan that would need unanimous support but would not achieve it... Indeed, the one-tax-fits-all harmonisation might even worsen the distribution of industry because it would neutralise the periphery's tax advantages for economic activities that are not subject to agglomeration. "Given this, higher rates would be unambiguously bad for the periphery. Their initially lower rates were freely chosen, so a scheme that forced them to raise taxes without affecting the location of industry would make no sense," say the academics. Similarly, the core, which is continually bothered by potential tax competition, is only interested in raising rates. New Scientist, February 17, 2001 Listen up It was a challenge no self-respecting hacker could resist. "Here's an invitation to show off your skills, make some money and help shape the future of the online digital economy," it read. "Attack the proposed technologies. Crack them...If you can remove the watermark or defeat the other technology on our proposed copyright protection system, you may earn up to dollar 10,000." The gauntlet was thrown down last September by Leonardo Chiariglione, head of the music industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative. The industry was desperate to find some way to stem the flood of commercial recordings that were being illicitly posted on the Net, and downloaded for free by anyone with a computer and a modem. Pirates had even begun to copy the songs and sell their compilations at bargain prices. It was the ultimate industry nightmare: at best, fear of piracy would prevent record companies putting their wares on the Web. At worst, free downloads and pirate copies would mean no money to pay musicians, the supply of new talent would dry up, and the music - and the profits - would stop. The way to halt this haemorrhage, the industry believed, was to indelibly "watermark" every song it released. While the mark would be undetectable by legitimate users, it would spoil any attempt to make illegal copies. And the SDMI thought it had a watermarking scheme that would do the job. Any hackers who rose to its challenge and managed to evade the watermark would be paid to reveal how they did it. The loophole would be plugged, the music would be secure and the industry could enter a golden age of distributing and selling its music on the Internet... A team of nine researchers from Princeton University in New Jersey, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California and Rice University in Texas, led by Princeton computer scientist Edward Felton, went public claiming success at hacking the system. Because they refused to sign the confidentiality agreement, they were disqualified from winning a cash prize and the SDMI discounted their work. "As the Princeton hackers have elected not to comply, the Princeton group submission cannot be considered a successful attack," says the SDMI. But Felton insists that the hack was successful, and that his team defeated the watermark. "Our focus has always been on the scientific question of whether the SDMI's technologies, if deployed, could be defeated by pirates. We demonstrated that they could be defeated by making small modifications to the music files so that the watermarks were no longer detectable but the sound quality was still acceptable." They brand the SDMI's watermark technology as "flawed" and "inherently vulnerable". They warn: "As currently designed it would not work." The researchers plan to put details of how they hacked the system on the Web, but have not yet done so because hacking is a criminal offence under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "We are still discussing how much information we can provide," Felten says. But even without this information, he thinks it won't take long for hackers to design a program to disrupt the watermark and place it on the Internet for anyone to access. "We had less information than a real user and we were able to break the technology in less than three weeks." The SDMI still refuses to say what loopholes the hackers revealed, and Chiariglione has recently announced that he is leaving the organisation. But early this year, at a conference hosted by a musicians group called the Coalition for the Future of Music in Washington DC, he conceded that 10 or 15 per cent of the people who use online services would be able to defeat the protection system. This did not invalidate it, he said, because avoiding the protection system would be too "inconvenient" for most users. Whether "convenience" is enough to protect music copyright remains to be seen. New Scientist, February 17, 2001 Babar fluffs first shot at universal mystery THE reason the Universe contains so much more matter than antimatter remains as mysterious as ever, following ambiguous results from an experiment designed to find out. For the past two years, the Babar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Palo Alto, California, has been comparing particles called B mesons with their antimatter partners to see if they are exact mirror images. Its first official result, presented on Monday, is about as unhelpful as it could be. It all comes down to measuring a single number known as sin2b. If the B meson and the anti-B meson are precise mirror images it should be zero. If the particles are not - a condition known as charge-parity violation - sin2b should be somewhere around 0.7. Babar's measurement comes out slap in the middle of this range at 0.34, with a sizeable experimental uncertainty. "What we've got right now would be a number from hell, if it was the last thing that we could do," says Steward Smith of Princeton University, spokesman for the Babar team. The measurement could equally well agree with either zero or 0.7, he says... The Washington Post, February 17, 2001 Michael Graves, Postmodern Man Architect Awarded Gold Medal For His Quirky, Colorful Work Michael Graves, 66, was presented with the coveted Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects at a black-tie dinner last night at the National Building Museum. As an architect, he is known for his colorful, idiosyncratic, often enigmatic buildings. As a designer, he is recognized for a wide range of products that also are colorful, original and sometimes strange. His beautiful sketches and finished renderings are cherished by collectors. He has been teaching in the architecture school of Princeton University for 39 years. You can tell he is a good teacher; he exudes mild-mannered empathy but is impassioned by the subject and is extremely acute. Graves also is a ranking member of an exclusive club of famous architects whose services are in constant demand. There is no definitive membership list, nor an established set of standards to get in. It takes a combination of talent, vision, ambition, discipline, savvy, a sense of timing, and sheer luck... Graves emerged as a major force in the architectural world in the summer of 1980, when his competition-winning design for the Portland (Oregon) Municipal Building was first published. Completed in 1982, the building helped usher in the architectural movement known as postmodernism -- Graves's use of pastel colors, figurative sculpture, traditional 1920s setbacks and exaggerated classical and art deco motifs were perfectly in tune with the movement's emphasis on representation, metaphor and overt symbolism. (Modern architecture for the most part rejected all three of these attributes.) ... Indeed, Graves's professional life has been dedicated to proving modern architecture wrong. His work, then, is a form of broad cultural criticism -- every time out, he seeks to set an example for a more perfect world. Graves is not alone in either his traditionalism or idealism, but he is more passionate and focused than most. In a scholarly vein, Graves once stated that architecture should be "sensitive to the figurative, associative and anthropomorphic attitudes of a culture." ... The New York Times, February 16, 2001 Threat of Vouchers Motivates Schools to Improve, Study Says A new study of Florida's efforts to turn around failing schools has found that the threat that children would receive vouchers to attend private schools spurred the worst performing schools to make significant academic strides. The study, sponsored by the state, was conducted by Jay P. Greene of the Manhattan Institute, a pro-voucher research group based in Manhattan... Some independent researchers questioned whether it was too early to make a conclusive statement about the impact of vouchers. "The program is still in its infancy, and I fully believe that it takes awhile, several years at least, before you can look back and look at the early effects of the program," said David Figlio, an economist at the University of Florida who is studying vouchers. Professor Figlio and Cecelia Rouse, of Princeton University's School of Public Policy, are collecting base line data for a study of the Florida program over several years. Professor Rouse said that "the real challenge in all of this is to understand is it really the test scores or is it something else" setting off the improvement... The Jerusalem Post, February 16, 2001 Israel rejects cooperation appeal from UN team Israel has turned down a renewed request for cooperation from a UN team investigating violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a Foreign Ministry official said yesterday. The three-member inquiry team, touring Palestinian territories, sent a message to the Israeli government, said commission member John Dugard. The team, made up of Dugard, a South African, Richard Falk of Princeton University in the US, and Bangladesh's former prime minister Kamal Hussein, was set up in a resolution by the UN Human Rights Commission last December. The resolution accuses Israel of "war crimes" and "widespread, systematic, and gross violation of human rights." Israel said it would not cooperate with the investigation because the resolution dictates the outcome... Albuquerque Journal, February 15, 2001 Anti-Nuke Pledge Offered Scientists created nuclear weapons, and it's science, says a group of physicists and nuclear weapons activists, that must wipe the weapons out. During a San Francisco meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Greg Mello, leader of Santa Fe's Los Alamos Study Group, will unveil Saturday a pledge for physicists and engineers to sign swearing to not work with nuclear weapons. "There are so many extremely important and interesting things for scientists to do, taking care of nuclear weapons is not one of them," he said. Zia Mian, a physicist and research scientist at Princeton University, has already signed the pledge. "There is a tradition going back to Einstein that nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity," Mian said. "It goes against the very spirit of what science is about." Political will doesn't build nuclear bombs, he said, scientists do. Mian said scientists must be aware of their enormous responsibility to civilization... This is not the first pledge of its kind. A group of Japanese scientists have a similar agreement, Mello said, and other movements have circulated across Europe. But the pledge is the first comprehensive launch of such an idea, Mian said. "We need to make a clear public statement," he said. "We expect lots of support for it." USA TODAY, February 15, 2001 All-USA College Academic Teams Here they are, the 20 students named to the All-USA College Academic First Team as representatives of all outstanding undergraduates. Ranging in age from 19 to 44, they include political science and philosophy majors, computer and biological scientists, and published photographers and poets. Each First Team member receives $ 2,500; 40 more students listed on this page are named to the Second Team and Third Team... Lillian Pierce, 20 Princeton University * Home: Fallbrook, Calif., * Class: Junior * GPA: 4.0 * Major: Math * Career goal: Professor * Achievement: Conducted classified research for National Security Agency; co-concertmaster, soloist, Princeton University Orchestra; design director, Princeton University Orchestra Committee; soloist, Delaware Valley Philharmonic, Grossmont Symphony Orchestra; founder, first violinist, Nassau String Quartet; theoretical chemistry research; volunteer, reading for the blind and dyslexic. * Parents: Michael, Elizabeth Pierce * "She is openly joyful about learning, awed by the privileges and riches available to her, and truly humble about her own achievements." -- Nancy Weiss Malkiel, dean of the college... Second team... * Erez Lieberman, Princeton,mathematics. GPA: 3.8. Coordinated, won grant to fund research on electrochemical grinding, an economical, non-polluting industrial cutting technology; religion chair, Yavneh House, Princeton's Observant Jewish Community; published poet...