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Princeton in the News

Enclosing directory

Prized discovery may have been a mirage

What seemed to be hints last year that physicists at the CERN laboratory in Geneva had discovered one of the most coveted prizes in all of science -- a particle believed to be the source of mass and weight in the universe -- may have been a statistical mirage, the mathematical equivalent of seeing mythical beasts in a grainy photograph, scientists say...

...Chris Tully, a physics professor at Princeton University who works at CERN and who had pushed for the extra running time, said the new analysis had indeed cast serious doubt on some of the suspected Higgs detections. "For the laboratory, Maiani made the best decision," Tully said...

Guide Proposed for Trials of Rogue Leaders

A group of leading international legal scholars and jurists, convinced that more public figures are likely in coming years to face trial for abuses like genocide and crimes against humanity, is proposing the first set of guidelines for such cases.

The guidelines, to be published on Monday by a new law program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, were devised by more than 30 legal experts from at least half a dozen countries and several international organizations, including the United Nations...

Legal scholars release principles on universal jurisdiction

A panel of international legal scholars has released a set of principles intended to guide courts of various nations in prosecuting those who commit war crimes, torture and genocide and then flee the countries where the crimes occurred...

..."Universal jurisdiction is a potent weapon," said Princeton University professor Stephen Macedo, chairman of the project that developed the guidelines over an 18-month period. "It would cast all the world's courts as a net to catch alleged perpetrators of serious crimes under international law."...

Anti-matter hunt pays off

...BaBar embodies the high-stakes game of what's called New Physics. It's a collaboration among 600 scientists and engineers from 73 institutions in nine countries, including UBC, the University of Victoria, the University of Montreal and McGill University. The combined price tag for the detector and what's called the B factory is roughly $300 million...

...So now MacFarlane heads the U.S. group responsible for the key analysis behind the BaBar results. And he's not the only expatriate Canadian scientist playing a key role in the BaBar effort.

Stanford University physicist Patricia Burchart, a University of Toronto graduate, has co-ordinated analysis from the experiment's physics results. And Stew Smith, the Princeton University researcher who is the public face of BaBar, is originally from Victoria and studied physics at UBC...

Yomiuri

This is the final installment of a three-part exclusive interview by The Yomiuri Shimbun and The Daily Yomiuri with economist Paul Krugman during his recent trip to Japan.

FEATURE: Princeton prof. says 'No' to Sri Lanka child monks

Lanka's prime minister to recruit 2,000 children into Buddhist monastic orders to cope with a shortage of monks has met criticism from a scholar who says child ordination is against Buddhist doctrine.

Gananath Obeyesekere, an anthropology professor at Princeton University, says the campaign targets children as young as 5 years even though Theravada Buddhism doctrine states that a boy must be at least 15 years of age to become a monk...

Now you see it, now you don't

Even physicists get their sums wrong. A glimpse of the eagerly sought particle known as the Higgs boson, reported last year, was revealed last week to be just a mathematical slip...

...The correction means the relative size of the excess signal is just two standard deviations, giving it a five per cent chance of being due to noise. That's still enough to be tantalising, says Chris Tully of Princeton University, who is responsible for data analysis on one of the detectors....

Monsters in our midst

HIGHLIGHT: Bring out the T. rex in your chicken and the ape in your aunt. The past is coming back to life with a roar as we discover the power of evolution's sleeping genes, says Philip Cohen...

...Still doubtful ? Well, a few years ago, plenty of people were. But the success of a small group of pioneers who have recreated ancient genes and given snakes back the rudiments of their long-lost legs and hens their teeth, is starting to convince the sceptics. "The technology will be there," says David Stern, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University. "Things are happening so rapidly now." Just two years ago, Stern predicted that scientists would take two centuries to resurrect a dinosaur. "Now I'd guess more like 60 to 100 years," he says...

Amtrak station relocation discussed

NIAGARA FALLS -- Mayor Irene J. Elia met Thursday with Ralph Learner, dean of the Princeton University School of Architecture, to discuss the city's plan to move the Amtrak passenger train station to north Main Street.

DEFENSE DAILY INTERNATIONAL

SCIENTISTS TACKLE TV CHALLENGE

CONFERENCE

SCIENTISTS from nine European universities will meet today to discuss the latest generation of materials that are being developed for use in foldable TV screens and mobile phones.

Among the speakers at a seminar in Aberystwyth will be two of the world's leading experts, Professor Steve Forrest, from Princeton University in the United States, and Dr Ian Hill from the Sarnoff Corporation, New Jersey...

Controversy brewing over quote in McCullough book

... (Richard) Rosenfeld, who wrote a 1997 revisionist account of the revolutionary era called "American Aurora," ran the quote through a database of Jefferson writings being compiled at Princeton University. Nothing turned up. He asked other Jefferson experts, who said they'd never heard it.

Rosenfeld insists that the mistake is critical, because he says it undermines McCullough's entire heroic portrayal of Adams. Rosenfeld thinks Adams attacked civil liberties, and that Jefferson never really forgave him...

Is Koizumi Japan's FDR or its Hoover?

Not everyone has a bookstore shelf with his or her name on it. At the south branch of Kinokuniya in Shinjuku, for example, this honor is reserved for the likes of Charles Dickens, Friedrich Nietzsche, the Dalai Lama and Paul Krugman.

Krugman himself is not sure how many books he has written or edited, though he puts the number at about 18. The works of this Princeton University economist (previously of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) range from eye-crossingly technical academic volumes to more accessible books aimed at what Krugman calls "a broader public."...

JURASSIC CHICKEN PROJECT AIMS TO REWIND EVOLUTION

TEAMS OF scientists are working on plans to recreate dinosaurs by winding backwards evolution and picking out genes in modern animals that would also have existed millions of years ago...

...David Stern, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, said: "If something is possible then someone is going to try it. We have 50 to 100 years before this happens, and we need that much time to think about the ethical implications."...

Update on a Genius

... (Chris) Hirata, an 18-year-old prodigy who graduated with a 4.2 grade-point average, spent his college years helping NASA design a mission to Mars, experimenting with harmonic oscillation and trying to convince his mother to let him walk to school...

...Now, Hirata is off to Princeton on a full scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in physics after scoring a perfect 990 on the Graduate Record Exam. He rejected similar offers from Harvard, Stanford and Caltech...

...In the end, ...Hirata chose Princeton, because there are faculty members there that he'd like to study with and grad students get to work closely with their professors...

GENOME TO BRING BACK DINOSAURS 'IN 60 YEARS'

A REAL-life Jurassic Park dinosaur could be created within 60 years, according to a US scientist.

A bit of tinkering with a chicken egg could be all it takes to resurrect a prehistoric monster. David Stern, an evolutionary biologist, says the success of a group of scientists rewinding evolution by recreating ancient genes could bring the past back to life...

Separation of marriage and state

Absent from the debate over marriage - gay or straight - is this simple query: Why should a couple need government's permission to wed?

This question occurs amid calls for a marriage amendment to the Constitution. "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman," the proposal states. The Alliance for Marriage supports this idea as does Princeton University professor of jurisprudence Robert P. George. In a July 23 National Review cover story, George advocates changing the Constitution lest same-sex marriage "strike a blow against the institution more fundamental and definitive even than the disastrous policy of 'no-fault' divorce."... 

Koizumi Reform--Key to Success

Krugman: Koizumi should clarify reform plans

The following is taken from an interview with Paul Krugman, 48, a Princeton University professor of international economics who received the John Bates Clark Medal in 1991, which is awarded by the American Economic Association to economists under 40. He is considered a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Economic Science. It is the fifth installment in a series of interviews with intellectuals at home and abroad on what efforts will have to be made to make Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's reform attempts successful.

My fundamental concern is that Koizumi's strategy (of advocating structural reform) is based on politically correct phrases. But what sounds good doesn't always make sense economically...

The music industry is no longer threatening computer science professor Ed Felten with civil lawsuits for his research into one of the industry's digital copy-protection schemes. He doesn't have the same assurance, however, that the United States government won't launch a criminal prosecution if he proceeds...

...Okay, back to Felten, who teaches at Princeton University. He ran afoul of the DMCA earlier this year. He and other researchers had taken up the music industry's challenge to break a digital watermarking scheme that was under consideration for CDs and other digitally recorded music...

Empire May Profit But Patients Won't

...So, please, hold your applause for Senate passage of the Patients' Bill of Rights. It is well-intended legislation that is beside the point..

...And Princeton's Uwe Reinhardt, an authority on the economics of health care, said, "It was a ridiculous diversion of political energy that distracts from the truly shocking problems of the American health care system - the uninsured, the elderly without drugs and the medical-error problem."

Smithsonian Appoints 18 To Scientific Advisory Panel

Broad Mandate Includes Direction of Research

A group of nationally recognized scientists, including six researchers from the Smithsonian Institution, has been appointed to examine the vitality of scientific research at the Smithsonian and outline a direction for its vast enterprises...

...Also on the panel are Jeremy B.C. Jackson, an oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego; Simon Levin, a biologist at Princeton University... 

Army Research Laboratory Awards To Five Collaborative Technology Alliances

Teams led by Honeywell [HON], General Dynamics [GD], Britain's BAE SYSTEMS, Telcordia Technologies and Micro Analysis and Design were recently awarded eight-year cooperative agreements totaling $300 million altogether by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) for the collaborative technology alliances program...

...The fourth of the collaborative alliances is the Communications and Networks Alliance, which is led by Telcordia Technologies. At more than $76 million, the deal is the most lucrative deal of the five alliances. The 13- member team includes BAE, Motorola, Network Associates, BBN Technologies, along with the Georgia Tech, the University of Maryland, the University of Delaware, Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University, the City College of New York/Research Foundation of CUNY, and Clark Atlanta University...

Laptops now as common as backpacks on campus

Colleges require students to plug in and to log on

...However, not all faculty and students are convinced that schools should require or even recommend laptop use...

...Critics also wonder where education's affair with digital technology is headed. In a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Princeton University's Stanley Katz defended technology but warned of a "land-rush mentality" fueled by cutting-edge projects that sometimes appear to lose sight of the goals of higher education...

Coalition seeks marriage amendment

Proposed law would limit marriages to man-woman unions

...The idea of a marriage amendment was raised in 1998 by an alliance of conservative Christian groups. Daniels' coalition doesn't include those organizations, but its 45-member advisory board has a strong religious tilt, including leaders of major black denominations, an Episcopal bishop, several Roman Catholic officials, and representatives of Jewish and Muslim groups.

Its lay members include professors from Princeton University, Amherst College and the law schools of Harvard, Notre Dame and Louisiana State...

The Language of Identity - Novelist A.J. Verdelle's struggle to discover her inner voice

..."Here I was wanting to write and feeling in a sort of fantasy way that he was going to be able to teach me--and it was finished. So I started to try because there didn't seem to be anything else to do," she trailed off.

Through this effort, and like Denise, Verdelle would "write myself to a future," with the publication of The Good Negress in 1995. Awarded four national prizes, the book was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Verdelle earned grants from the Whiting Foundation and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, as well as a position to teach creative writing at Princeton University. Of course, Verdelle's writing achievements were also influenced by Toni Morrison--who lectures at Princeton--and her background in both statistics and music...

Princeton Computer Scientist Sues for Right to Speak at a Conference

A computer-science professor at Princeton University and his research team have filed a lawsuit that seeks to clear the way for publication of their research about unscrambling encrypted digital music. The suit, which challenges a provision of copyright law, names as defendants the recording industry and the U.S. Justice Department...

...The computer scientist, Edward W. Felten, had tried to present his findings at a conference of computer scientists in April...

Professor Sues to Publish His Research

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation June 6 filed suit on behalf of a Princeton University professor and his colleagues, seeking an order that they be allowed to publish their research and challenging the constitutionality of a federal copyright law...

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