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Particles' odd behavior offers clue to matter's origin

HIGHLIGHT: Scientists find a mismatch between a particle- antiparticle pair. It may help explain emergence of matter.

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On Friday, though, an international team of physicists came a step closer to explaining matter's presence. Their latest key to unraveling the mystery: proof that a subatomic particle, called a B meson, can be subtly different from its antimatter counterpart...

"Now you can compare this phenomenon on two different systems. This allows you to point in the directions that will be most promising," says Stewart Smith, a Princeton University physicist and a spokesman for the team that made the discovery...

Economists lack an appetite for declaring a recession

When the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) meets to officially decide on the month that an economic expansion has ended, the six economists usually sit down to a meal.

The "rookie member" of this committee, Princeton University economist Ben Bernanke does not expect to get that "free French dinner" anytime soon.

While the economic data is "quite ambiguous," Professor Bernanke sees no "screaming" evidence of a recession today...

THE NATION; ;

Possible Stem Cell Compromise Cited by Bush Catholic Advisors; Politics: President is torn between the religious vote and medical community.

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The advisors are focusing in particular on one option, now under discussion among White House aides, in which the government would pay only for research that uses existing stem cells scientists already have isolated from embryos. Any experiment that caused the destruction of additional embryos to obtain new cells would be ineligible for federal funds.

Spokesmen for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents the church in the United States, specifically have rejected this idea, saying it would make the government complicit in embryo destruction. But one of the nation's leading Catholic thinkers on abortion issues now is offering a different view. "I can imagine circumstances in which this would not only be politically acceptable but could be a morally justified policy," said Robert P. George, a moral philosopher at Princeton University who participates in a weekly telephone conference of Catholic intellectuals that often includes White House staff...

Marriage amendment planned

A broad-based coalition of religious groups announced plans Sunday to introduce a constitutional amendment declaring marriage as a union solely between a man and a woman, eliciting strong reaction from gay and lesbian rights activists...

According to Daniels, the co-authors of this text were professors Mary Ann Glendon of the Harvard Law School, Robert George of Princeton University, and others...

KEY TRIAL ADVANCES BIG BANG THOUGHT

A central piece of a major scientific puzzle fell into place Friday when physicists announced results of experiments confirming a basic theory about how matter was created in the first moments after the Big Bang...

"After 37 years of searching for further examples of CP (charged-parity) violation, physicists now know that there are at least two kinds of subatomic particles that exhibit this puzzling phenomenon," said Stewart Smith, a Princeton University physicist and member of the international team...

Tiny Discovery May Answer a Question About the Big Bang

By observing millions of subatomic particles called B mesons, a team of scientists working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California has found new evidence of a basic but subtle lopsidedness in nature that may explain why the universe contains mostly matter, rather than being virtually empty and devoid of stars, planets and people...

The asymmetry was first seen in 1964 by Dr. Val Fitch of Princeton University and Dr. James Cronin of the University of Chicago in an experiment for which they later received a Nobel Prize...

New President at Princeton Names Woman as Her No. 2

Princeton University yesterday named Amy Gutmann, a professor of politics and former dean of its faculty, as provost, the university's second-ranking official.

With Shirley M. Tilghman having taken over as president of Princeton last week, Dr. Gutmann's appointment will make the university one of only two major research institutions in the country to have women in the top two posts...

Lopsided antimatter sends charge among physicists

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Now, results released Friday by an international research team based at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center point to the answer: Nature prefers matter to antimatter by a small margin. That margin is the reason why the story of creation does not end simply with "let there be light."...

"After 37 years of searching for further examples of [charged-parity] violation, physicists now know that there are at least two kinds of subatomic particles that exhibit this puzzling phenomenon," said Stewart Smith, a Princeton University physicist and member of the international team...

Kismet could point to fate of robots;

Scientists say 'A.I.'-like machines are not likely soon

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Before we get carried away with Kismet and her possibilities, a voice of dissent. Enter Edward Tenner of Princeton University, author of the book Why Things Bite Back, an acclaimed 1995 study of the unexpected consequences of evolving technology.

"I could build a convincing model of a baby, and I could build crying into it and smiling and all the things that babies do," Tenner said in a phone conversation from Princeton, N.J. "And if I gave that to somebody to hold, even though they knew it was incredibly fake, it would be hard for them not to feel certain things. But just because we feel it doesn't mean the robot has consciousness...

The problem, Tenner said, is that for a robot to achieve human consciousness, it would have to experience the world in the same way humans do... 

Outside panel finds CIA soft on China

Classified reports found to be flawed

A commission of outside experts has concluded that CIA reporting on China is biased and slanted toward a benign view of the emerging communist power...

The commission included several academics such as Harvard University professor Stephen Rosen, Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg and University of Pennsylvania professor Arthur Waldron, as well as former Ambassador to China James Lilley...

Research Reveals Tax Policy Impact on Growth of Small Business

Conference Planned

Today, the Office of Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration, released a study by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers and a Syracuse University economist, and Harvey S. Rosen, an economist from Princeton University. The Holtz-Eakin/Rosen analysis shows clear linkage between tax policy and the growth and survival of small business...

The Holtz-Eakin/Rosen study clearly reveals that when marginal tax rates of the personal income tax increase, small business owners are more likely to grow their businesses more slowly, to purchase less capital, and to hire less... Thus, marginal tax rates appear to have a substantial effect on the growth of entrepreneurial enterprises...

Greenhouse gas emissions soar in defiant US

AMERICA, the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases, is polluting the planet on a greater scale than ever before.

Official figures show its emissions of carbon dioxide - the main contributor to global warming - are accelerating rapidly, while other industrialised countries are cutting their output...

Robert Williams, of the Princeton University Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, said: 'It's an astonishingly large increase in a single year. The major reason is we don't have a policy to address this problem. We need to have a national target, incentives for business and a regulatory system that will get us to meeting national goals.'...

SPACE- NASA spacecraft for space probe

An unmanned spacecraft took off on Saturday to look for clues about how the Universe will end. The Microwave Anisotropy Probe (Map) will journey into deep space on a voyage to explore some of the mysteries of the Cosmos. With it astronomers hope to determine the content, shape, history, and the ultimate fate of the Universe. The American space agency Nasa's $145m (103m) spaceprobe will construct a full-sky picture of the oldest light in the Universe...

...The so-called Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation - will be compared to the patterns predicted by various models of the Universe's evolution, in an attempt to find the right match...

"The cosmic microwave light is a fossil," says Professor David Wilkinson, Princeton University, Princeton, US. "Just as we can study dinosaur bones and reconstruct their lives of millions of years ago, we can probe this ancient light and reconstruct the Universe as it was about 14 billion years ago."...

When Mr. Wrong Is Mr. Right

Mating across species boundaries sounds downright unnatural. Such peculiar pairings often don't produce any offspring at all, or they give rise to sterile progeny, such as mules. But for some birds, mating with another species may produce distinct evolutionary payoffs...

The scientists arrived at that conclusion after 20 years of collecting data on collared flycatchers, a particularly easy species to study because the birds return to their birthplace to breed...

...The team discovered that female collared flycatchers were using male pied flycatchers to help raise chicks that they had not sired: More than half of the offspring raised by interspecies pairs were pure collared flycatchers...

Scientists have praised the study for its huge quantity of data, carefully collected over two decades. "It's a very impressive piece of work," says Princeton's Mr. Grant, an expert on hybridization in Darwin's finches...

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