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 New York Times, February 27, 2001 Drug Makers Listen In While Bacteria Talk About 10 years ago, a romantic candlelight dinner in Winchester, N.H., was ruined when the husband looked down at his imitation crabmeat salad and saw green light shimmering back at him. ... Such cases of glowing seafood, reported by the Food and Drug Administration, were caused by marine bacteria that produce light. While the public rarely encounters these microbes, scientists have been studying them for decades. Now, their discoveries could lead to new drugs to combat some of the most deadly infections known to man. What scientists have found is that many types of these microbes do not glow when they are alone. It is only when enough of them are together, a microbial minyan, so to speak, that they decide to light up. This indicates that bacteria, long thought to be lone operators, have a communication system that lets them determine how many of them are there. The system has been dubbed quorum sensing because it allows the bacteria to determine whether enough of them are present to get down to business. If drugs can be developed to disrupt this communication system, the bacteria may be fooled into thinking they are alone. Instead of killing the bacteria, as many antibiotics do, such drugs would merely tame them until the body's immune system could wipe them out. ... So far, most quorum sensing has been found to occur within a species. But an intriguing finding is that there also is a communication system that works across species. Dr. Bassler at Princeton discovered this by finding that signals from other types of bacteria could turn on the lights in Vibrio harveyi, one of those glowing marine bacteria. She has dubbed this second system "bacterial esperanto" because it appears to be a universal language understood both by Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Dr. Bassler said she had identified this signaling molecule but had not yet published her finding. ... U.P.I., February 27, 2001 Common compound can superconduct Physicists hunting for affordable high-temperature superconductors that could make perpetual engines and "floating" trains a reality have found a candidate where they least expected it -- in an abundant, accessible material that for years had been virtually ignored. The newly discovered superconductor is magnesium boride, a simple metallic compound discovered in 1953 and long sold in kilogram-size bottles for a variety of commercial preparations. In a surprise announcement that will be published in the British journal Nature Thursday, Jun Akimitsu and colleagues at Aoyama-Gakuin University in Tokyo have discovered magnesium boride superconducts at an "amazing" 39 degrees above absolute zero. This is a much higher temperature than that required for any other stable metallic compound and one that carries important practical implications. So important, in fact, that rumors circulating about the research forced Nature to lift its embargo early. "There are very few things in the science world where one single breakthrough could change everything, and this is one of those areas," Robert Cava of Princeton University, who wrote an accompanying commentary, said in an interview. He cautioned that "this is a promise of potential, not a promise that this is the one that's going to do it." ... The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, February 25, 2001 Budget chief has pinched a penny Bush's spending overseer will watch his books closely, despite surplus Washington --- How tight with a buck is the federal budget chief? As a senior vice president of Eli Lilly and Co., Mitchell Daniels would hold a Christmas luncheon for his staff. Rather than pay a florist for centerpieces, though, he would borrow poinsettias from other offices at the pharmaceutical giant's Indianapolis headquarters. "Mitch is nearly as legendary here for his frugality as for his ability to recall facts and figures," says Ed West, the corporate spokesman who reported directly to Daniels at Eli Lilly. Daniels, 51, will need both traits in his new job as President Bush's director of the Office of Management and Budget. With Bush's first budget due Wednesday, it will be his job to hold down federal spending in an era of surpluses. He must convince everyone with a stake in a spending program that fiscal restraint is necessary to fulfill Bush's promise of a $1.6 trillion tax cut without a return to deficits. ... After graduating from Princeton University and Georgetown Law School, he went to work for Richard Lugar, then the Republican mayor of Indianapolis. When Lugar was elected to the U.S. Senate, Daniels came to Washington with him. He served as President Reagan's chief political adviser in the mid-1980s. ... The Star-Ledger, February 25, 2001 Princeton University Strikes a Balance Between Scholarship, Entrepreneurship Joseph Henry, father of the electric motor, wanted to let his wife know when he was coming home for lunch. So he rigged a few wires from his Princeton University lab to ring a small bell inside his campus home. Henry built his device in 1832, five years before the telegraph. It should have been a gold mine, but there was "no IPO for that invention, so we didn't make a dime," said James Wei, dean of the school of engineering and applied science at Princeton. ... Now, however, the storied university with no business school has decided to get down to business. During the past three years, the ultimate ivory tower has quietly followed MIT and Columbia and Stanford universities by taking equity in start-up firms. Today, nine companies can trace roots directly to Princeton's laboratories, and the Ivy League school owns equity stakes in seven of them. They are developing everything from color screens for thin computers to nonpolluting spark plugs and cheap ways to make solar power. ... Of course, any alliance between academia and commercial enterprise can be fraught with ethical consequences. "Far too many schools jumped on the tech bandwagon for all of the wrong reasons," said Louis Berneman, head of technology transfer at the University of Pennsylvania. "A university that wants to generate revenue should put a McDonald's franchise on its campus." Princeton has tried to strike the right balance. "It is finding new and interesting ways to work with industry without compromising its exceedingly deep commitment to scholarship and education," Forrest said. Agence France Presse, February 23, 2001 Japanese scientists eye breakthrough in superconductors Japanese scientists reported Friday they had made a low-temperature superconductor out of simple, cheap materials, a step towards realising one of the most seductive dreams in technology... Writing in next Thursday's issue of the British science weekly Nature, a team led by Jun Akimitsu of Aoyama-Gakuin University in Tokyo reported they had mixed two common chemicals -- magnesium and boron -- and baked it at a high temperature in a furnace, bathed in pressurised argon... Robert Cava of the Department of Chemistry and Materials Institute at Princeton University, New Jersey, said Akimitsu's findings were "startling ... amazing." "This holds tremendous promise for even higher superconducting temperatures in conventional materials," he said in a commentary published by Nature. "If I didn't know better, I'd think we'd all been dreaming." ... The Independent, February 23, 2001 SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH: WEST IGNORED HEALTH ADVANCES TO EXPLOIT MILITARY RESEARCH Nazi Germany lost many of its best scientists after 1933 as the Jewish intelligentsia fled the country but some scientific areas useful for the regime's military or racial goals flourished. Jet propulsion, guided missiles, computers and calculators, the electron microscope and data processing were all either developed or brought to fruition during the Nazi period. When, at the end of the war, the Allies started to comb through German science in search of findings they could exploit they ignored Germany's pioneering tobacco work, concentrating on research that might be of military importance. Thus rocket bombs and aerotechnical engineering skills were exploited - to the point of kidnapping and transferring the scientists abroad - while sciences that could clearly have helped save lives were ignored. Robert Proctor of Princeton University observes that American priorities became clear when it launched an effort to resupply Germany with tobacco - in 1948 and 1949, 93,000 tons of it were shipped free of charge to the defeated nation as part of the Marshall plan. The Bulletin's Frontrunner, February 22, 2001 McCurry Says Bush's Trustworthiness Key To Win The AP (2/21) reported former White House press secretary Mike McCurry, "who described himself as the 'pita 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. " In a speech at Princeton University, McCurry said, "(Bush) has promised to change the way Washington does business. People think he is believable. What Americans seem to praise most is good, verifiable, accurate information." McCurry said Bush "will have to maintain the trust of Americans in order to be a successful president," adding, "Truth does matter. Credibility matters, believability matters desperately." THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN, February 22, 2001 FAA credit union opens new office A new monthly index, designed to better gauge overall economic activity and inflationary pressures, will be released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago beginning March 5. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index will closely track periods of economic expansion and contraction, officials said... The index is adapted from methodology developed by James Stock of Harvard University and Mark Watson of Princeton University. The underlying theory is that a common factor exists in all inflation indicators... Investor's Business Daily, February 22, 2001 More poor kids accepted to college, but rising costs keeping them out The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance said the cost of college as a share of income in 2000 was 62% for low-income families. That's up 20% from 1972. Since 1993, merit grants have surged 336%, adjusted for inflation. Need-based aid has risen just 88%. Pell Grants covered 84% of college costs in 1975. Now they cover 39%. Princeton University will offer grants instead of loans to low-income students, starting this fall. Some 80% of college applicants will be nonwhite in 2015, the report said. Among those, over 45% will come from low-income families.