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Princeton in the News

May 12, 1998 | Feedback

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HIGHLIGHTS:

--Theories in astrophysics are "fleeing" from an energy burst described as "Big Bang's Little Brother." (NOTE: In addition to his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study, John Bahcall is a visiting lecturer with rank of professor at Princeton.)

--The Sloan Digital Sky Survey takes shape in New Mexico

--Uwe Reinhardt admits that not all HMO predictions have come true.

 

The Village Voice
Copyright 1998 VV Publishing Corporation
May 12, 1998

HEADLINE: NEW YORK'S DRUG-LAW DEBACLE
BYLINE: JENNIFER GONNERMAN

 Christopher Clemente was supposed to be an Ivy League success story. But when cops busted into a Harlem apartment in 1990, they found the University of Pennsylvania sophomore tossing bags of crack vials out the window. A Bronx native who had won a scholarship to the prestigious Wharton School of Business, Clemente insisted he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He says the cocaine--plus the two handguns police found in the apartment--belonged to his drug-dealing older brother. The police arrested Clemente, then 19, on drug and weapon charges.

Seven and a half years later, Clemente is still incarcerated. His brother was arrested on drug charges, but never went to prison and was fatally shot six years ago. Convicted under New York State's strict drug laws, Clemente got slapped with a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life plus one year for gun possession. ''We all make mistakes, but to take someone out of their community for so long--it kills them,'' says Clemente, who is now 27 and eligible for parole in 2006. ''I'm losing my youth.''  . . .

 For years, it has been considered political suicide to challenge any aspect of the war on drugs. But now some lawmakers are willing to take a chance on reform. A movement to change the state's drug rules has been building in recent months, fueled in part by the upcoming anniversary. Recently, 27 Democrats in the state assembly sponsored a bill to repeal the laws. This legislation is not expected to pass, but it could pave the way for compromise bills. On May 6, a high-profile, bipartisan group--including former Congressman Floyd Flake, former State Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson, Princeton University professor John DiIulio, and led by former GOP State Senator John Dunne--is announcing its support for less-radical legislation that would reform the drug laws.

''These laws are wasteful, inefficient, unjust, and marked by racial bias,'' says Robert Gangi, executive director for the Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group that is helping lead the reform efforts. ''It's time to change them.''  . . .

 

New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
May 9, 1998

HEADLINE: Us and them
BYLINE: Nell Boyce

 HIGHLIGHT: Imagine humans diverging into two or more species as different from each other as we are from chimpanzees. That could be the end result of genetic engineering argues Lee Silver, a biologist at Princeton University, in "Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World". But for Silver, human cloning holds no fears, as Nell Boyce discovers

 Your book hinges on the idea that human cloning will become common, guided by market forces and unhindered by legal issues. What led you to this conclusion ?

The way Americans have used reproductive technologies in the past. For-profit clinics have popped up around the country that are willing to offer any kind of services that infertile couples desire, if they are prepared to pay for them. I don't think that cloning will ever be common, in the same way that in vitro fertilisation is not common. But I think it will eventually be accepted and used by a small minority of people in special circumstances.  . . .

 

The Associated Press
May 7, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Brain substance that suppresses appetite found in rats
BYLINE: By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer

 DATELINE: NEW YORK

Scientists have identified another substance in the brains of rats that suppresses appetite, a possible hint toward the development of a new anti-obesity pill.

The discovery sheds light on the mystery of how the previously known hormone leptin helps the brain control appetite.

It's too soon to tell whether the newly identified substance, called CART, will lead to a slim-down pill. But experts called the work a significant step toward understanding the brain's complex machinery for controlling appetite.  . . .

The work is presented in today's issue of the journal Nature by researchers in Denmark, including Dr. Peter Kristensen of Novo Nordisk Inc., which makes pharmaceuticals. A similar report, from Dr. Michael J. Kuhar and colleagues at Emory University's Yerkes Regional Primate Center in Atlanta, will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Synapse.  . . .

 Previous studies had shown that leptin reduces the brain's production of neuropeptide Y. So the new work suggests that leptin basically pushes on an appetite brake and eases up on a gas pedal, by boosting levels of CART while reducing levels of neuropeptide Y.

"It's a very important piece of the puzzle because it helps to explain leptin's actions," said Bart Hoebel of Princeton University, who didn't participate in the new study.  . . .

  

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 1998 The Atlanta Constitution
May 7, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: School Watch; Two women among finalists for Polytech post
BYLINE: Diane R. Stepp

 Two women are among the three finalists for the job of president of Southern Polytechnic State University.

The state Board of Regents is expected on Wednesday to announce its choice to succeed Dr. Stephen Cheshier at the 3,400-student university in Marietta.

Top candidates are Cynthia S. Hirtzel, dean of engineering at Temple University in Philadelphia, Rogers Redding, dean of Arts and Sciences at Northern Kentucky University, and Lisa A. Rossbacher, dean of the College at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.  . . .

 Lisa Rossbacher joined Dickinson as dean and professor of geology in 1995. Previously she had served as vice president of academic affairs and professor of geology at Whittier College in Whittier, Calif. She has also served as associate vice president for academic affairs of California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. She has a doctorate from Princeton University.

 

The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1998 The Dallas Morning News
May 7, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Scientists call December explosion in galaxy biggest they've ever seen
SOURCE: Science Writer of The Dallas Morning News
BYLINE: Alexandra Witze

For several seconds last December, astronomers watched something 12 billion light-years away explode with as much energy as the rest of the entire universe.

The blast was far bigger than ordinary astronomical phenomena such as asteroids slamming into planets. It was bigger than any single star blowing up. In fact, it's the biggest boom astronomers have ever witnessed, scientists reported Wednesday at a news conference.  . . .

 The new work shows that the burst came from a galaxy near the outskirts of the universe. Only in the past year have scientists started to think that gamma ray bursts could be coming from galaxies that are billions of light-years away.

"This is a spectacular confirmation," says Bohdan Paczynski, an astronomer at Princeton University in New Jersey.  . . .

 

 THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Copyright 1998 Star-Telegram Newspaper, Inc.
May 7, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Cosmic explosion cited as second to big bang
BYLINE: Robert S. Boyd, Knight Ridder News Service

 WASHINGTON - Long ago in a galaxy far away, a cosmic fireball shattered the quiet, producing the most powerful explosion since the birth of the universe, awestruck astronomers reported yesterday.

"For about one or two seconds, this burst was as luminous as all the rest of the entire universe," said George Djorgovski, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Astronomers hope the discovery will help them understand how the universe evolved from its likely origin in the so-called big bang, believed to have been 13 million to 14 billion years ago.  . . .

 John Bahcall, a leading theorist at Princeton University's Center or Advanced Study, [sic] Albert Einstein's old base, called it an "extraordinary phenomenon" that is extremely difficult for theorists to explain.

"We theorists are fleeing for shelter," Bahcall said. "We don't know what went bang in the night. "  . . .

 

Health Line
Copyright 1998 American Political Network, Inc.
May 7, 1998

SECTION: TRENDS & TIMELINES
HEADLINE: HEALTH CARE BUSINESS: THRIVING DESPITE GLOOMY FORECASTS

 "At the beginning of the 1990s, health care inflation was running in the double digits; analysts predicted that by now the nation would be devoting 17% of its gross domestic product to health care," NPR's Robert Siegel reported. According to NPR's Patricia Neighmond, "This is a story with an ominous beginning for many, and an unexpected, happy ending for most. The ominous beginning occurred around 1992, in the form of predictions about what to expect from the tidal wave of managed care companies that were expected to reshape the practice of medicine, predictions that forecast doom and gloom for mostly everyone in the health care industry, other than managed care companies." Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhardt said, "Hospitals were told you're going have huge layoffs, the hospital sector is going to shrink. One-third of the hospital capacity nationwide isn't needed and you're going to have to close them and lay off all these people. Doctors were told there will be a surplus of 165,000 doctors out of 500,000, which is close to 38%. ...

 Everyone told the drug companies you're going to shrink and you're not going to see profits for a decade." He noted, however, that "(n)one of that has come about." According to Neighmond, "most segments of the health care industry are facing some of the best financial years ever."

 

 The Herald-Sun
Copyright 1998 The Durham Herald Co. (Durham, N.C.)
May 07, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Obituaries

 GARDNER

 CHAPEL HILL -- Professor Robert Brown Gardner, age 59, died May 5, 1998 in Chapel Hill, NC. He was a native of Westchester County, New York, and graduated Cum Laude at Princeton University. He also received an M.S. at Columbia University and an PhD. at the University of California, Berkeley.  . . .

 

Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company
May 7, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: MASSIVE BLAST IN DEEP SPACE PUZZLES EXPERTS
BYLINE: K.C. COLE, TIMES SCIENCE WRITER

Tracking a colossal burst of energy to a faint galaxy at the far edge of the cosmos, Caltech astronomers reported Wednesday that the blast was the most powerful explosion since the birth of the universe--big enough to outshine all the stars in the sky.

If their calculations are correct, the 40-second flash, recorded last December, spewed out as much energy as 5 billion exploding stars. "It has more energy than even astronomers thought in their wildest imaginations," said Caltech astronomer Shri Kulkarni, one of the researchers.

At this point, astronomers can only imagine what it is that exploded. One possible explanation for the discovery--reported in today's issue of the journal Nature and announced at a NASA news conference--features giant black holes wolfing down matter and then spitting it out in enormous cosmic burps.  . . .

However, others, such as Princeton University astrophysicist John Bahcall, thought the burst might be explained by currently understood, if extreme and bizarre, events--such as collapsed stars falling into massive black holes.  . . .

 

The Rocky Mountain News
Copyright 1998 Denver Publishing Company (Denver, Co.)
May 7, 1998, Thursday,

SECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: IT'S OK IF YOU JUST DON'T CARE
BYLINE: Froma Harrop; Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin

Call me ''uncaring,'' but I don't care about a lot of things I'm urged to care about. The media drums keep beating, but this woman can't get out of her chair and dance. She ain't got that swing. The only tune that grabs her is Who Cares. Consider the crisis of grade inflation. If professors are giving all their students A's and B's, what's it to me? What's it to the nation? Graduate schools trying to judge candidates may have to deal with it. Employers may have to regard all these summas and magnas with a more skeptical eye. It's probably time they did. I had a college roommate who spent her entire academic career on the dean's list and who never had an original thought in her life.

Oh yes, grade inflation has been turned into a cultural issue - something to do with the decline in national standards, ethics, moral fiber. Apparently, the worst grade inflation is going on in the ''elite'' schools. By that is meant Ivy League colleges. Ivy League colleges are very special, according to the Ivy League. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc., serve as repositories of venerable traditions, so alumni say and media drones swallow whole. Some do recognize that many state schools offer better programs than Brown University but are cynical enough to pay for a brand name. I don't care about grade inflation in the Ivy League. I don't care about the Ivy League.  . . .

 

The Salt Lake Tribune
Copyright 1998 The Salt Lake Tribune
May 7, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Pack Math; Utah researcher discovers patterns in the way that carnivores mark territory; Researcher Finds Patterns in Pack Movements

BYLINE: LEE SIEGEL THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Most people appreciate the visual splendor of the natural world. But nature also harbors a hidden beauty: living things organizing themselves according to mathematical rules.

For example, the distance between ponderosa pines in a pure stand is proportional to the trees' size. Or consider how diversity of insects rises in a mathematically predictable way as you approach the boundary between a forest and a meadow -- a transition zone with more niches for insects.  . . .

In a 1993 study in the journal Nature, Lewis and University of Washington mathematician James Murray showed the computer simulation accurately reflected how wolf packs in Minnesota established territories separated by mile-wide buffer zones.

The study showed that because wolves either stay out of buffer zones or fight each other when they meet, buffer zones are safe havens for deer. Field studies showed that is exactly what happens.

Over the years, Lewis refined his formulas. In a new study, equations describing how wolves and other carnivores set territory boundaries were tested by Lewis and biologists Paul Moorcroft of Princeton University and Robert Crabtree of Montana State University.

They used Lewis' computer simulation to predict how six coyote packs define territories on flat ground near Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. The computer-generated map of the coyote territories closely matched real boundaries observed at the site when scientists tracked coyotes with radio collars.  . . .

 

The San Francisco Examiner
Copyright 1998 The Hearst Corporation
May 7, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Big bang's little brother; Astromers liken blast to 5 billion stars exploding
BYLINE: KEAY DAVIDSON

SOURCE: EXAMINER SCIENCE WRITER

  . . . or "the second-biggest explosion I ever saw," as Maxwell Smart might have quipped on the 1960s TV series "Get Smart."

Still, no astronomer would dub second rate a newly discovered, galaxy-baking detonation at the edge of the universe.

The mysterious explosion, detected late last year, was as violent as five billion (that's right, billion with a "b") exploding stars simultaneously self-destructing, astronomers announced Wednesday at a NASA news conference in Washington.

In sheer intensity, the detonation momentarily ranked second only to the mother of all kabooms: the big bang that spawned our universe more than 10 billion years ago.  . . .

 Still, no one is sure what could cause so titanic a detonation; hence, "theorists are fleeing for shelter," astrophysicist John Bahcall of Princeton University said at the news conference.  . . .

 

The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
May 07, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Tigers' One-Woman Scoring Machine Quashes Hoyas' Early Lead; Princeton 12, Georgetown 11
BYLINE: Joe Wojciechowski, Special to The Washington Post

DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J., May 6

The Georgetown women's lacrosse team took a 6-1 lead in the first half against Princeton but couldn't withstand five goals from the Tigers' Cristi Samaras and lost, 12-11, in overtime tonight in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

After pulling four consecutive all-nighters during exam week, Samaras started slow, and the Hoyas dominated the first half.

"I've had papers to do the last four nights, but when I looked up at the scoreboard and saw it was 5-1, I said there was no way this was going to be the last game," said the junior attacker.

From there, Samaras went to work, scoring three goals in the second half as the Tigers came back to take the lead.  . . .

 

The Washington Times
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
May 7, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Huge blast in space astounds scientists; Gamma ray burst in far galaxy second only to 'big bang'
BYLINE: Joyce Howard Price; THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The most powerful explosion in space since the "big bang" 15 billion years ago briefly lit up the universe in December, astronomers at Columbia University and the California Institute of Technology report.

The explosion, a cosmic gamma ray burst, detonated in the center of a galaxy 12 billion light-years from Earth, almost at the edge of the observable universe.

Despite its distant origin, "for about one or two seconds, this burst was as luminous as all the rest of the entire universe," said George Djorgovski, professor of astronomy at Cal Tech and co-author of a study on the blast published in today's issue of the British science journal Nature.  . . .

 John Bahcall, a professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, [sic] said "more precise images" and better information about the location of this event are needed before anyone can determine if this is a new phenomenon.

"We have a real bull market in observation, but a real bear market in theory," Mr. Bahcall said.  . . .

 

AAP NEWSFEED
Copyright 1998 AAP Information Services Pty. Ltd.
May 6, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: US: SKY MAP WILL MEAN NO MORE LOST IN SPACE
BYLINE: By Alexandra Witze of The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS, Texas, KRT - Nobody will be able to complain of feeling lost in the universe once the Sloan Digital Sky Survey gets under way.

US astronomers are compiling a comprehensive road map to the universe. From highways of galaxies to the back roads of quasars, complete sky map ever.  . . .

 This month, almost a decade after the project was conceived, a telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico is expected to gather the first starlight in a test for the Sloan survey. If all goes well, the survey will begin collecting its first data this (northern) autumn and will be fully running some time in 1999, says project manager Jim Crocker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.  . . .

Part of the survey's sheer size comes from the fact that it's really two surveys wrapped in one.

The first part of the survey, and the more difficult half to achieve, will chart the locations of celestial objects. The Sloan telescope will scrutinise one-quarter of the universe that is visible north, out of the plane of the Milky Way. That view means the survey will be looking "out of all the confusion of dust and gas and stars" of our home galaxy, says Sloan scientist Jim Gunn of Princeton University.  . . .

 

Business Wire
Copyright 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
May 6, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: Dr. Stephen R. Forrest, Chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department of Princeton University, Joins Universal Display Corporation's Board of Directors

DATELINE: BALA CYNWYD, Pa.

May 6, 1998--Universal Display Corporation (UDC) (NASDAQ:PANL), a developer of flat panel display technology, announced today that Dr. Stephen R. Forrest, Chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department at Princeton University, has become the seventh member of its Board of Directors.

Dr. Forrest is one of the principal inventors of the Company's Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) technology for applications such as flat panel displays, lasers and light generating devices.

Dr. Forrest was the Director of the Princeton University Advanced Technology Center for Photonics and Optoelectronics Materials (POEM) from 1992-1997. It was during his tenure at POEM that UDC commenced its OLED efforts. "We have been working with Dr. Forrest for more than four years on this project, and are extremely excited that he has joined the Board," said Sherwin Seligsohn, Chairman of the Board of UDC. "Dr. Forrest's understanding of the fundamental nature of this transformation technology and his insights into the process of technology development will be very valuable to the Company as we begin to transform this extraordinary technology from the laboratory into the marketplace.  . . .

 

Business Wire
Copyright 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
May 6, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: Stockholders Approve Transcell Merger With Intercardia

DATELINE: RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. and LEXINGTON, Mass.

May 6, 1998--Intercardia, Inc. (Nasdaq:ITRC) and Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:IPIC) today announced that stockholders of Intercardia and Transcell Technologies, Inc. have approved the merger of Transcell with Intercardia and the acquisition of related technology owned by Interneuron. The vote was taken by Intercardia stockholders at today's annual meeting and by Transcell stockholders at a special meeting also held today. The transaction is expected to close on May 8, 1998. Both Intercardia and Transcell Technologies are majority-owned subsidiaries of Interneuron.

Transcell's mission is to discover and develop drugs based on breakthroughs in synthetic carbohydrate chemistry primarily made at Princeton University by founding scientist Prof. Daniel Kahne. This platform technology enables carbohydrate-based combinatorial libraries of compounds to be generated on a solid support for uses in drug discovery. Transcell's platform technology for the generation of carbohydrate-based libraries includes solid phase chemistry, robotics systems for library generation, informatic technologies for data storage and analysis and analytical technologies for solid phase chemistry and library analysis.  . . .

 

Gannett News Service
Copyright 1998 Gannett Company, Inc.
May 6, 1998

HEADLINE: Energy burst stumps, delights astronomers
BYLINE: JOHN YAUKEY; Gannett News Service

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON -- Astronomers using Hawaii's Keck Observatory and other telescopes have detected an enormous energy release at the edge of the observable universe, a burst second in intensity only to the seminal big bang explosion believed to have created the universe.

For two seconds this mysterious burst of gamma radiation -- unprecedented in astronomy -- "was as luminous as the entire universe," scientists said Wednesday during an often breathless briefing at NASA headquarters.  . . .

"What we have here is a bull market of data and a bear market of theories to explain it," said John Bahcall, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced study at Princeton University [sic]  . . .

 

THE HARTFORD COURANT
Copyright 1998 The Hartford Courant Company
May 6, 1998 Wednesday

HEADLINE: INTERNET BUSINESS DRAWS IRE OF SCHOOLS; UCONN INCLUDED IN FAKE DIPLOMAS
BYLINE: ROBERT A. FRAHM; Courant Staff Writer

A Bridgeport man who sells phony college degrees and transcripts on the Internet "for amusement purposes" is not getting any laughs from university lawyers.

"They're asking me to stop," Barry DeLucia said this week after receiving warnings from several top universities about trademark infringement.

DeLucia runs "Prestigious Images," an Internet site that until last week offered "very authentic looking" facsimiles of degrees and transcripts from schools such as Yale, Princeton, Duke, Michigan, Florida State, Cornell and the University of Connecticut.

"We take this very seriously," said Jean A. Mahoney, director of technology and trademark licensing from Princeton University, one of several schools that heard about DeLucia's business last week.  . . .

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 6, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: LACROSSE: NOTEBOOK -- DIVISION I TOURNAMENT;
On Outside Looking In: Hofstra, Harvard, UMass

BYLINE: By WILLIAM N. WALLACE

The North Carolina Tar Heels, who finished the regular season with a 7-7 record, were included in the field for the National Collegiate Athletic Association men's lacrosse tournament that was announced Sunday. Unexpected scores at the end of the season led to unexpected results in the selections for the tournament, which begins Saturday.

Loyola, which defeated Johns Hopkins by 10-7, was seeded No. 1 because the team that had been ranked No. 1, Maryland, was upset by Maryland-Baltimore County. Princeton was left at No. 2 and Syracuse at No. 3 while Johns Hopkins, in spite of its late loss, gained the No. 4 seeding. The top four teams each receive a first-round bye.  . . .

Princeton's Jon Hess, the feeder for Jesse Hubbard and Chris Massey in a formidable attack threesome, was No. 1 in assists nationally with 2.75 a game. The Tigers tied Johns Hopkins for first in team scoring at 15 points a game and had the largest average scoring margin, 7.5 goals a game. Duke gave up the fewest goals, at 7.08 a game.  . . .

Women's Tournaments

The three top-seeded teams in Division I -- Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland -- are all from the A.C.C., while the Ivy League, shut out last year, has No. 4-seeded Dartmouth and Princeton. The Division I field expanded to 12 teams this year from 6, and the Division III field to 12 from 8.  . . .

Cristi Samaras of Princeton is the Division I scoring leader at 5.07 points a game, while Claudia Ovchinnikoff of Temple had the most goals, 77 in 17 games.  . . .

 

USA TODAY
Copyright 1998 Gannett Company, Inc.
May 6, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: Wonders of genetics also carry some risks
BYLINE: David Longtin; Duane Kraemer

 Imagine that your child will have to be conceived in a laboratory or face lifelong genetic discrimination. So you go to an in-vitro fertilization clinic where you and your spouse produce several dozen test-tube embryos, choosing only the best after comprehensive genetic screening.

Ridiculous, you say? Such a procedure -- called preimplantation genetic diagnosis -- is already going on. In fact, the process also can be used to select the sex of the baby . . ..

Genetic elitism?

 While Princeton University geneticist Lee Silver says that genes determine probabilities, not outcomes, he argues in his recent book, Remaking Eden, that, barring major reform of the U.S. health-care system, only the rich will be able to afford these emerging technologies. Gradually, they will accumulate beneficial genetic traits: freedom from inherited diseases and greater height, stamina and intelligence. After generations of embryo screening, he warns, these affluent families will gain biological advantages.  . . .

 

The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
May 06, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: DEATHS ELSEWHERE
Benjamin C. O'Sullivan/Lawyer

 Benjamin C. O'Sullivan, 81, a lawyer who defended writer Mary McCarthy against a defamation suit brought by author Lillian Hellman and whose other clients included Aristotle Onassis, died of pneumonia May 2 at a hospital in Portchester, N.Y.  . . .

 Mr. O'Sullivan, a graduate of Princeton University and New York University law school, worked for the Board of Economic Warfare before serving with the 3rd Army in Europe during World War II. After the war, he worked for the War and State departments in Germany and briefly practiced law in Washington before establishing a New York law firm in 1951.  . . .

 

Chicago Sun-Times
Copyright 1998 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
May 5, 1998, TUESDAY

HEADLINE: Creating the 'perfect' human
BYLINE: By Jeremy Rifkin

 NBC recently aired an adaptation of Aldous Huxley's classic dystopian novel about a genetically engineered future society. When Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1932, no one could have imagined that the scientific insights and technological know-how would exist by the end of this century that could make his vision real.

Many leading molecular biologists and geneticists met a few weeks ago at the University of California at Los Angeles to discuss the prospect of making genetic changes in the human "germ line" -- sperm and eggs -- that would be passed on to future generations. The ability to alter genes before conception raises the possibility that we might be able to re-engineer our genetic blueprints and redirect the course of our biological evolution.  . . .

 Some genetic engineers believe that a future genetocracy is all but inevitable. Molecular biologist Lee Silver of Princeton University writes about a not-too-distant future of two biological classes, which he refers to as the "Gen Rich" and "Naturals." The Gen Rich -- perhaps 10 percent of the population -- include businessmen, musicians, artists, athletes and intellectuals who are society's elite. They have all been enhanced with specific synthetic genes that allow them to succeed in their fields in ways not conceivable among those born of nature's lottery.

While Silver acknowledges that the increasing polarization of society into Gen Rich and Natural classes might be unfair, he points out that wealthy parents always have been able to provide advantages for their children. "Anyone who accepts the right of affluent parents to provide their children with an expensive private school education cannot use unfairness as a reason for rejecting the use of reprogenetic technologies," argued Silver.  . . .

 

The Times
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Limited
May 5, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: 'Writing is my work, but not my job'
BYLINE: Jason Cowley

Toni Morrison's new book is expected to sell a million. Jason Cowley meets the pride of America.

Serene, regal and comfortably afloat on a steady stream of achievement, Toni Morrison is unmistakable as she wanders through the leafy enclosures of Princeton University. She moves slowly, as though short of breath, and her silvery braids have the pallor and intricacy of a wasp's nest. Students point at her, whispering as she passes. It is not just her blackness in this citadel of white privilege that is so striking; it is more that this granddaughter of an Alabama slave radiates an essential vitality, a difference.

There is no one quite like her in the US, no one rivalling her status as, to echo The New York Times , the "nearest thing America has to a national novelist", no one who has done more to destabilise the literary hierarchies, while giving voice to the historically dispossessed. She is, in every sense, the new empress of the blues.

Today Morrison is accompanying Seamus Heaney, a fellow Nobel laureate, to a poetry reading; tomorrow Gabriel Garcia Marquez - invited by Morrison in her role as a teacher at Princeton - arrives on the campus for a week of seminars.

At times, Princeton seems like a club for famous writers - the Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, a fourth laureate, is also on campus. But none is as famous as Morrison. Since the publication, in 1970, of The Bluest Eye , her fine first novel, she has, again and again, compelled Americans to confront that part of their history they would rather forget: slavery. In doing so, she invented her own idiom, found a new way of writing about her own culture in a style she proudly calls "indisputably black".  . . .

 

International Herald Tribune
Copyright 1998 International Herald Tribune (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France)
May 5, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: Chinese Celebrate a Centennial American-Style; Big Bash at Beijing U. / The People Party Amid Plainclothes Police
BYLINE: By Steven Mufson; Washington Post Service

DATELINE: BEIJING

In an American-style extravaganza unusual for China's normally staid institutions of higher learning, Beijing University marked its 100th anniversary over the weekend with drunken parties, somber symphonies, lectures, new commemorative stamps, the dedication of a $10 million library, appeals for money and a roster of 140 visiting dignitaries from foreign universities, including Stanford and most of the Ivy League.  . . .

While the university claims to be open, the campus usually bars visitors; soldiers at the gates check student identification cards. The government refused to grant a visa to Perry Link, a China scholar at Princeton University, because of his political views.  . . .

NOTE: This story first appeared in The Washington Post

 

The Ledger
Copyright 1998 Lakeland Ledger Publishing Corporation (Lakeland, FL)
May 5, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: A DAY TO PRAY; MIX OF CIVICS AND RELIGION POSES QUESTIONS.
BYLINE: CARY McMULLEN The Ledger

Farewell Address

On Thursday, mere politicians and pious men and women across the country will gather in parks and on the steps of city halls and state capitols to pray together.  . . .

This year's National Day of Prayer arrives under the cloud of a presidential sex scandal and the deaths of students and teachers at the hands of schoolchildren. Under the circumstances, praying for the nation could be seen as a natural instinct that -- at least -- wouldn't hurt and might help.  . . .

The National Day of Prayer is an example of what sociologists call "civil religion," a marriage of patriotism and religion that walks a narrow aisle between fanaticism and banality. Sociologist Robert Bellah has written that although it has no formal structure, civil religion in America has several basic doctrines, among which are:

God exists and has guided the destiny and fortunes of America from its founding to the present.
Human rights are grounded in divinely granted rights.
Political authority is subservient to divine authority.
America and its leaders have the obligation to carry out God's will on earth.

Robert Wuthnow, professor of sociology at Princeton University, said civil religion doesn't mean that the state calls the tune.

"Civil religion is supposed to point beyond the state. It's one of the few occasions on which we're asked to pause and think about higher values," he said. "The true spirit of civil religion has a prophetic dimension. It calls us to be better and reminds us of our ideals."  . . .

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 5, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: Roukema Again Has Conservative Challenger in Primary
BYLINE: By IVER PETERSON

DATELINE: TRENTON, May 4

"Why are they doing this to me?" Representative Marge Roukema asked with a laugh of mock despair. "I can't explain it, and I am completely confounded."

But not too worried: On June 2, with 18 years in Congress from her Bergen County district behind her and the kind of seniority that makes most incumbents immune to challenge in a party primary, Mrs. Roukema, a moderate Republican on issues like abortion, crime and welfare, will again face a challenger from the conservative wing of the Republican Party. It is the fourth consecutive primary she has had to fight, and the fifth in seven elections.  . . .

 The other race is in central New Jersey's 12th District, where two Democrats are battling to face Michael Pappas, the only freshman on the 13-member state delegation. Republicans hold 8 seats, the Democrats 5.  . . .

The strength of the conservative wing among the state's Republicans is also an element in the 12th District, which Mr. Pappas won two years ago even as President Clinton carried the district.

This year, even though the state Democratic Party did not bother to nominate candidates for Congressional races in the strongly Republican 2d and 3d Districts, the Democrats believe that they can field a winner against Mr. Pappas, who is campaigning against inheritance taxes and for a flat income tax.

"The 12th is the one where we would say all of the evidence is most conducive to our picking up a seat," said Rick Thigpen, executive director of the state Democratic Party. "Pappas is a little to the right of the voters in the district, he doesn't enjoy strong Republican support and we think he's vulnerable."  . . .

But before facing Mr. Pappas, the Democrats have to get through a potentially bruising primary fight of their own between Rush Holt, a physicist and party favorite, and Carl Mayer, a wealthy maverick and one-term Princeton Township Committeeman who is running in his fourth primary race for a Congressional nomination. Mr. Holt beat Mr. Mayer for the party nominations from the five counties that make up the 12th District, and Mr. Mayer's persistence has created some ill-concealed dismay among party leaders.  . . .

Mr. Mayer contributed nearly $1 million of his own money to his campaign in the first three months of this year. He has rented office space and hands out professionally prepared brochures and campaign videos. Mr. Holt, who until October was the assistant director of Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory, raised $114,000 in the same period. He said the 12th District, which was drawn by Republicans to skirt the region's Democratic-voting cities, represents the future.

"If the Democrats are ever going to regain control of the House of Representatives, it will be in districts like this one," Mr. Holt said. "This is where America lives, and this is where the issues that motivate Americans are -- education, the environment, will Social Security be there when you retire."  . . .

 

NPR
SHOW: NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
MAY 5, 1998, TUESDAY

HEADLINE: Health Care Industry Booming
BYLINE: Patricia Neighmond, Los Angeles; Noah Adams, Washington

HIGHLIGHT: Only a few years ago, there were dire predictions tha hospitals, doctors, and drug companies would be in a financial crisis by now -- overwhelmed by demands to cut costs. But those forecasts have turned out to be wrong and now the industry is thriving. NPR's Patricia Neighmond looks at the booming health-care industry, and why economists were so off-base with their forecasts.

NOAH ADAMS, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Noah Adams.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: And I'm Robert Siegel.

Not long ago, economists were forecasting rough times for the health care industry. At the beginning of the 1990s, health care inflation was running in the double digits. Analysts predicted that by now, the nation would be devoting 17 percent of its gross domestic product to health care.

For a time, these and other factors fueled political support for sweeping reform. While the government failed to force massive restructuring of the industry, the health care business has changed many of its practices.  . . .

UWE REINHARDT, HEALTH ECONOMIST, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Hospitals were told you're going to have huge layoffs. Hospital sector is going to shrink. One third of the hospital capacity nationwide isn't needed, and you're going to have to close them and lay off all these people.

Doctors were told there will be a surplus of 165,000 doctors out of 500,000, which is close to 38 percent of you won't be needed. Everyone told the drug companies, you're going to shrink and you're not going to make -- see profits for a decade.

NEIGHMOND: And, who were the forecasters?

REINHARDT: Well, the forecasters, I hate to say it, were people like me.  . . .

 

The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1998 The Richmond Times Dispatch
May 5, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: A LESS LOFTY FOCUS; GRANTS TODAY BACK MORE MODEST GOALS
BYLINE: Mark Johnson; Media General News Service

 DATELINE: WASHINGTON

In 1966, Fred Friendly, the avuncular former sidekick of Edward R. Murrow, took on the task of running a project bankrolled by the Ford Foundation to develop a nonprofit company that would subsidize educational television.

The ultimate result was Big Bird and Julia Child's cooking - the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its subsidiary, PBS.

Ford later financed the University of Michigan study that created the Head Start pre-school program for children of the poor. A decade earlier, Jonas Salk's research that led to the polio vaccine was financed by the Sarah Scaife Foundation.  . . .

 The foundations that bear their names today pursue often strikingly modest objectives by comparison. A list of grants by the Rockefeller Foundation reveals millions of dollars parceled out to advocacy groups and social service projects, such as a civil rights telecommunications forum, the Virginia Film Festival, the Greensboro (N.C.) Story Telling Project, and a Web site on gender, sexuality and the justice system.

"The great majority of these foundations, if you look at their grant list, are very banal," said Waldemar Nielsen, an author on foundations and former Ford Foundation program officer. "I'm not knocking them. They're generous, but banal."  . . .

Finally, since the 1980s, the prevailing political attitude has called for government not to take on new projects but to cut spending and let the private sector do more.

"[We're] now saying that philanthropy should sort of pick up the service functions of government," said Stanley Katz, a philanthropy expert at Princeton University.  . . .

 

The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
May 05, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: OBITUARIES
Miles Wells Kirkpatrick
FTC Chairman

Miles Wells Kirkpatrick, 79, a retired Washington lawyer and former Federal Trade Commission chairman who also served as antitrust section chairman of the American Bar Association, died of cancer May 2 at his home in Strafford, Pa.  . . .

Mr. Kirkpatrick, who was born in Easton, Pa., was an Army veteran of World War II. He was a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania law school.  . . .

 

ABC NEWS
SHOW: WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH PETER JENNINGS
MAY 4, 1998

HEADLINE: A CLOSER LOOK
BYLINE: JOHN MILLER, PETER JENNINGS

HIGHLIGHT: COUNTERFEITERS SEE EURO AS EASY MARK

PETER JENNINGS: As we said, lesson one. Now, there's some real nervousness about all this. What, for example, is it going to mean to the national sovereignty of the nations involved? On the other hand, ABC's John Miller reports that the underworld - the criminal element -- can hardly wait.

 JOHN MILLER, ABC News: (voice-over) The American $100 bill. Wherever you go in the world, for arms merchants, drug dealers and tax dodgers it is the chosen currency. The hundreds are hidden and smuggled in boilers, in the hatchbacks, air bags and upholsteries of cars and trucks.

But the euro dollar may become every bit as attractive and secure as the U.S. dollar, but with one major advantage, it will be minted in bigger bills -- notes worth $220 and $550.

Professor Ken Rogoff of Princeton warns $1 million weighs 22 pounds. A million in euro dollars could weigh just over four pounds.

Prof. KEN ROGOFF, Princeton University: Right now, you can carry a million around in hundreds in a suitcase. And with the euro, you'll be able to carry a million dollars around in a purse.  . . .

 

Business Wire
Copyright 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
May 4, 1998, Monday

HEADLINE: CapStar Hotel Company Plans to Enter Conference Center Business With Acquisition of The Forrestal at Princeton Hotel & Conference Center

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

May 4, 1998--CapStar Hotel Company (NYSE: CHO), a leading hotel investment and management company, today announced that it has signed a contract to acquire the 290-room Forrestal at Princeton Hotel & Conference Center in New Jersey from a partnership between Circa Capital Corporation and Amstar Group, Ltd. Following completion of the transaction, the company will invest approximately $1.5 million to refurbish the center.  . . .

Consisting of a single four-story building with five wings, the Forrestal overlooks a 25-acre wooded setting in Princeton University's master-planned Forrestal Center Business Park.  . . . 

 

DAILY MAIL
Copyright 1998 Associated Newspapers Ltd. (London)
May 4, 1998

HEADLINE: Where there's a will, there's a winner

IT IS a talent that gamblers pray for - the ability to make their horse win or their numbers come up simply by willing it to happen.

Now scientists claim to have shown that chance may, in fact, be a question of mind over matter.

Concentrate hard enough and you can get a coin to come down heads more often than tails, say U.S. researchers.

They have tested their theory with computers in the anomalies research laboratory at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Psychologist Dr Brenda Dunne said: 'Over tens of millions of trials, we have a very strong case that people's intentions can have a small but persistent effect on the results.' One experiment involved a computer hooked up to a drum which the researchers tried to get to beat louder by staring at a screen.

They also used the power of thought to try to reduce or extend the oscillations of a pendulum. But before gamblers get too excited, Dr Robert Jahn, the lab's director, warns that their experiments showed that the mind can affect only about one in 10,000 random events.  . . .

 

The New Republic
Copyright 1998 The New Republic, Inc.
MAY 4, 1998

HEADLINE: HOT AND NOT BOTHERED
BYLINE: Gregg Easterbrook

HIGHLIGHT: The answer to global warming.

Let's assume for a moment that all the clamor over global warming is warranted: that burning fossil fuels to generate artificial greenhouse gases will change Earth's climate with disastrous consequences. Then shouldn't priority number one be to reduce such gases? Not necessarily. If global warming theory really is right, climate change will arrive before even the most ambitious reforms could counter the buildup of greenhouse gases. This makes the immediate priority adaptation--preparing to cope with climate change. Yet the subject of adapting to a warmer world is taboo in the greenhouse debate. Not only is nobody funding adaptation studies, few people in either government or the environmental movement want to discuss them.  . . .

Any serious approach to greenhouse adaptation also ought to include more research into new energy forms. "Since the greenhouse problem is long-term, the R and D is more important now than short-term emissions policy," notes Robert Socolow, head of Princeton University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies.  . . .

 

New Straits Times
Copyright 1998 New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad
May 4, 1998

HEADLINE: Pakistani threat to Ong (Squash)
BYLINE: By K.M. Boopathy

MANSOOR ZAMAN has always been touted as the man capable of denying Ong Beng Hee the world junior title but another Pakistani has emerged as a dangerous challenger to the Malaysian. He is Mohamad Hussain, a stocky and power player who is already making an impression on the professional circuit. Although he turned pro a year ago, Mohamad's ranking has since soared to world No 60 and he is expected to progress further after fine displays in the National Open and YTL Open a fortnight ago. Ong realises the threat from Mohamad and said the Pakistani will be even more dangerous compared to Manzoor. "I'll have to be careful from the way he is playing at the moment. I have a lot of work to do if I want to stay ahead of him." "His fitness is amazing as he keeps going for every shot." said Ong. Mohamad ran down his established compatriot Zarak Jahan Khan, ranked world No 44, in the quarterfinal of the YTL Open in five tough games before bowing out to eventual champion Glen Whittaker of South Africa in the last four. The 18-year-old Mohamad also lost to Whittaker in five games in the last eight of the National Open. His first round opponent was Malaysia's Mohamad Azlan Iskandar, who is also preparing for the world junior championships, in Princeton University, New Jersey, United States, in August. SRA of Malaysia (SRAM) executive director Wong Ah Jit was impressed with Mohamad never-say-die attitude.  . . .

 

The Plain Dealer
Copyright 1998 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
May 4, 1998 Monday

HEADLINE: WHEN IT COMES TO MONEY, FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT; 7 EXPERTS RECALL HOW THEIR EARLIEST FISCAL EXPERIENCES SHAPED THEIR VIEWS

 BYLINE: By MIRIAM HILL; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

A son who feels powerless because he has to ask his dad for money grows up to develop an elaborate allowance system for his own children.

A daughter who watches her mother struggle with the ups and downs of the real estate business craves a more stable career.

A school banking program teaches a lifelong respect for the importance of saving.

Money imprints lessons on kids as indelibly as the numbers inked on a dollar bill. Those early lessons influence how well individuals manage money, whether they are spenders or savers, aggressive investors or certificate-of-deposit lovers.

Figuring out how those first impressions affect you can help you gain control over your financial life, said Suze Orman, author of "Nine Steps to Financial Freedom" (Crown Publishing, $23).  . . .

 Mellody Hobson
Ariel Capital Management, a Chicago mutuals firm

 Hobson got to watch business firsthand because her mom, who raised six children alone, joined the family business - a residential real-estate development company.

"Because my mother was in real estate and she was an entrepreneur, we had a strange relationship with money. In real estate, you're often very leveraged because you borrow a lot of money, so it wasn't often a very secure feeling.

"Money was an interesting topic in our household, because my mother was probably a lot more extravagant and probably paid less attention to saving than you might expect from an entrepreneur. A lot of my career and business existence has been shaped by not wanting to have that kind of situation and insecurity."

As a student at Princeton University, she read about wealthy individuals such as Warren Buffett who built their fortunes through investing. She craved that, too.  . . .

 

PR Newswire
Copyright 1998 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
May 4, 1998, Monday

HEADLINE: Kenny Rogers 'The Gambler' Goes Into Cyberspace with an Internet Casino
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO, May 4

Entertainment superstar Kenny Rogers, known worldwide as "The Gambler," can tell you when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em in his new casino on the Internet which can be found at www.kennyrogerscasino.com.

Rogers is the first internationally acclaimed celebrity to launch an online casino. Featuring high-quality casino entertainment with real wagering for adult players, the site offers Caribbean poker, roulette, blackjack, video slots, video poker, baccarat and craps. The online casino, available worldwide with the exception of the United States, uses Internet gambling software that was developed by CryptoLogic, a publicly traded Canadian company.

Kenny Rogers Casino is the only online casino to offer penny slots and free expert strategy tips, developed for Rogers by leading Las Vegas gaming expert and best-selling author Max Rubin, to help players increase the odds of beating the house.  . . .

All money deposited or withdrawn from Kenny Rogers Casino uses the CryptoLogic Electronic Cash (Ecash) system, which can handle wagers for players as small as a single penny per transaction. Winnings are distributed to players by check, money order or Western Union Quick Pay in US dollars. In addition, encryption and decryption technology is used to protect all information sent over the Internet using CryptoLogic's propriety security algorithm. To ensure the security and credibility of the games, the random number generator used to create the games was tested at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.  . . .

 

The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 1998 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
MAY 4, 1998, MONDAY

ON ECONOMICS
HEADLINE: Labor Strikes Are Becoming Rare as Unions Turn Cautious
BYLINE: JONATHAN MARSHALL

A once common feature of America's industrial landscape has become as endangered as the marbled murrelet: the strike.

In 1970, 2.5 million workers engaged in strikes involving 1,000 or more workers, costing 53 million days of work.

But last year, even with the national UPS strike, a mere 339,000 workers went out on large strikes, totaling 4.5 million days of lost work.  . . .

 The longer a strike goes on, the more convinced workers become that the company really isn't as profitable as they thought. That explains why average wage settlements decline the longer a strike lasts, said Orley Ashenfelter, a Princeton University economist who developed this analysis in a seminal 1969 paper.

 

U.S. News & World Report
Copyright 1998 U.S. News & World Report
May 4, 1998

HEADLINE: Much ado about $6.15
BYLINE: By Paul Glastris

 HIGHLIGHT: The truth about jobs, poverty, and the minimum wage

The last time Bill Clinton proposed raising the minimum wage, back in 1996, Republicans responded with Nostradamus-like forecasts of doom. "A job killer cloaked in kindness" is how House Majority Whip Tom DeLay characterized the president's plan to hike the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour. Rep. John Shadegg warned that 1 in 4 young minority workers not in school would lose his job. Then Sen. Hank Brown predicted a juvenile crime wave "of epic proportions."

Time has not been kind to these predictions. Since the increase went into effect (in two steps, beginning Oct. 1, 1996), overall U.S. employment has climbed nearly 3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis; employment of black youth has gone up about 11 percent; and juvenile crime has declined. Now the Clinton administration is proposing to boost the minimum wage again, to $6.15 an hour by the year 2000. In so doing, it is making bold claims of its own--namely, that a dollar-an-hour wage hike will lift many low-income working families out of poverty.  . . .

  . . . In a 1982 study, University of Michigan economist Charles Brown and colleagues concluded that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage would produce a falloff in teen employment closer to 1 percent than to 3 percent. In 1991, Alison Wellington, now of the College of Wooster, found only a 0.6 percent drop in teen employment. Then in 1994, Princeton University economists David Card and Alan Krueger found that moderate minimum-wage increases have no impact on jobs.

Card and Krueger compared fast-food workers in New Jersey, which raised its minimum wage above the federal level in 1992, with those in Pennsylvania, which didn't. Standard economic theory would predict that New Jersey would lose jobs relative to Pennsylvania. Yet the economists found that fast-food employment grew slightly faster in New Jersey than in Pennsylvania, though not by a statistically significant amount after other factors (such as differences in the states' overall growth rates) were taken into account.  . . .

 

The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
May 04, 1998, Monday

HEADLINE: OBITUARIES

Robert Rockwell
Software Scientist

Robert Rockwell, 50, chief scientist for a German-based software company and a former Bethesda resident, died of a heart attack April 8 on a subway in Munich.

Dr. Rockwell was born in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and moved with his family to Bethesda at the age of 2. He graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and Princeton University, and he received a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Rutgers University.  . . .

 

Variety
Copyright 1998 Reed Elsevier Inc.
May 4, 1998 - May 10, 1998

HEADLINE: DARCY O'BRIEN
BYLINE: Amelia Hart

Darcy O'Brien, an award-winning novelist and best-selling non-fiction author, died of a heart attack March 2 at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was 58.

O'Brien was the son of actors George O'Brien, who appeared in the silent classics "Sunrise" and "The Iron Horse" as well as numerous westerns, and Marguerite Churchill, best remembered for her performance opposite John Wayne in "The Big Trail" (1930).  . . .

 O'Brien, who was born in 1939, attended Princeton University, continued his studies at Cambridge University as a Fulbright Scholar, and received his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.  . . .

 

Agence France Presse
Copyright 1998 Agence France Presse
May 03, 1998

HEADLINE: Particle
BYLINE: Christine Courcol

DATELINE: SUDBURY, Canada, May 3

At the end of a mine shaft stretching some 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) beneath the surface of the earth, dozens of physicists in anti-contamination suits chase a minute particle that could hold the key to the future of the universe.

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) was inaugurated this week outside this northern Ontario mining town to help researchers capture and study elusive sub-atomic particles known as "neutrinos."

Neutrinos are elementary particles that have a mass of almost zero, making them frustratingly elusive to researchers. Yet the particles are believed to be the most numerous entity in the universe.

"Every second, a billion neutrinos go through your thumb nail," said Professor John Bahcall of Princeton University. But over the course of a lifetime one on average will stop long enough to be detected.  . . .

 

Albuquerque Journal
Copyright 1998 Albuquerque Journal
May 03, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: Taking Off the Blinders
BYLINE: John Fleck Journal Staff Writer

 Jim Gunn's camera may show us the universe as never seen before

 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY -- Jim Gunn has spent a lifetime looking at the night sky, but he still hasn't seen very much.The Princeton University astronomer has endured cold nights atop the world's largest telescope, peering deep into space.

But looking at the sky through a telescope is like squinting at the world through a soda straw, and as he nears his 60th birthday, the astronomer wants to see more.

That's why he has come to this ridge in the mountains of southern New Mexico, to help build a telescope that could change our understanding of the universe.

Where the great telescopes of today look at only a tiny bit of the sky at a time, Gunn's project, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, will map a vast expanse of the heavens.

Like biologists trying to understand a forest by looking at just an occasional tree, astronomers have been frustrated in their attempts to understand the large-scale structure of the universe because their telescopes can't see the whole sky.  . . .

 

Asbury Park Press
Copyright 1998 Asbury Park Press, Inc. (Neptune, NJ.)
May 3, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: Princeton stadium opens
BYLINE: ELLIOTT DENMAN; STAFF WRITER

PRINCETON - "It's fabulous," said Princeton University women's track team co-captain Megan Phillips of Ocean Township, gazing out at the posh, state-of-the-art William M. Weaver Track and Field Stadium inaugurated yesterday. "They say it's one of the fastest tracks in the world, and I believe it can be," said Phillips, soon to graduate with a degree in sociology.

Weaver Stadium - named for the former Tiger sprinter and long jumper, class of 1934, whose generosity made it possible - replaces the track inside Palmer Stadium, scene of scores of record performances over the years, that was removed when Palmer Stadium was razed to make way for the still unnamed football stadium to be opened this fall. Appropriately, Weaver, now in his 80s, ran the final meters of a ceremonial one-lap relay.  . . .

 

Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 1998 The Austin American-Statesman
May 3, 1998

HEADLINE: UT research looking for improved design of fusion reactors
BYLINE: Dick Stanley

 Two University of Texas fusion researchers stunned their peers worldwide in 1996.

In complex mathematical equations published in the journal Science, UT physicists William Dorland and Michael Kotschenreuther predicted that a planned $11 billion fusion reactor would fizzle.

Almost two years later, the project, called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, is on indefinite hold while its American, Russian, Japanese and European builders rethink its design.

Financial problems were ITER's undoing, rather than Dorland and Kotschenreuther's criticisms, but their concerns also influenced the fusion research community, said Richard Hazeltine, the physicist-director of UT's Institute for Fusion Studies.  . . .

 Dorland and Kotschenreuther initially believed they could overcome the problem of turbulence by redesigning ITER's doughnut to shrink and flatten it a little.

Still collaborating, they now advocate an alternative design called a spherical tokamak. A small, experimental version is being built at Princeton University.

"The doughnut is proportionally taller than a conventional tokamak, and the doughnut's hole is smaller," Dorland said.  . . .

 

The Florida Times-Union
Copyright 1998 The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, FL)
May 3, 1998 Sunday

HEADLINE: Princeton studies mind over matter; Tests find thoughts can alter chances; skeptics abound
BYLINE: Knight-Tribune News Service

 In a basement lab at Princeton University's engineering school, scientists think that if they concentrate really hard, their thoughts can alter reality.

The X-Files it's not, but it's weird work for the austere halls of science at an Ivy League school. In a recent experiment, psychologist Brenda Dunne pressed a button and then concentrated on her computer. The computer was hooked up to a drum. She was trying to will the drum to beat harder.

'Boom-BOOM,' it went. 'BOOM-BOOM-boom-BOOM.'

'When people look at the computer with intense concentration, can they produce bizarre, unexpected, inexplicable events?' said Dunne.

Testing that theory at Princeton's Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab 'over tens of millions of trials, we have a very strong case that people's intentions can have a small but persistent effect on the results.'  . . .

 

The Herald-Sun
Copyright 1998 The Durham Herald Co. (Durham, N.C.)
May 03, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: Scion seeks history of Oxford preacher, teacher
BYLINE: BARBARA ARNTSEN The Daily Dispatch of Henderson

HENDERSON -- Thirteen years before America began its fight for independence from England, John Chavis was born a free black man in Oxford.

He fought in the Revolutionary War, attended Princeton University, became a missionary among his people for the Presbyterian Church, and opened a prestigious school in Raleigh to which prominent whites sent their children.

Yet, despite those accomplishments, he died a poor man, stripped of his right to teach or preach, and left with no means to earn a living. Even today, 160 years after his death, information regarding his life and death are shrouded in mystery.

"There are a lot of myths surrounding John Chavis, and one is that he didn't have a family. That is simply untrue, and I really don't know why some historians have insisted in perpetuating that information," Helen Chavis Othow said.

Othow, a professor of English at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, should know. She has spent the past 10 years researching the lineage of John Chavis and is looking for a publisher for her book, "New Revelations about John Chavis."  . . .

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 3, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: Czars to Bolsheviks

BYLINE: By Stephen Kotkin; Stephen Kotkin, the director of Russian studies at Princeton University, is the author of "Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization." He is writing a history of the Ob River basin from 1500 to 2000.

RUSSIA
A History.
Edited by Gregory L. Freeze.
Illustrated. 478 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $45.

A HISTORY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUSSIA
By Robert Service.
Illustrated. 654 pp. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press. $29.95.

Far in the northeast of Europe, the extreme northwest of Asia, amid thick forests and bogs, lived sparse tribes of hunters, fishers and agriculturalists who spoke languages identified as Finno-Ugric and East Slavonic. Around the turn of the ninth century, via the formidable rivers between the Baltic and the Black Seas, vikings arrived in pursuit of furs and silver. Known as Rus in Arabic sources, Rhos in Byzantine ones, the Scandinavians assimilated and helped establish a series of principalities grouped around a single family and its many branches. Within less than 100 years, one of that family's offspring, Vladimir, built a hilltop palace south on the Dnieper River, at Kiev, near the livestock-herding nomads of the forested steppe and the open wild fields.

In Kiev, the pagan Vladimir considered entreaties from Jews, Muslims and Christians. Of Judaism and Islam he learned that both necessitated circumcision and prohibited the consumption of swine. Islam further banned alcohol, though it permitted a man to have a large number of women. What to do? According to "The Tale of Bygone Years," first compiled two centuries later in the 1180's, Vladimir listened to the Muslims, "for he was fond of women and indulgence. . . . But circumcision and abstinence from pork and wine were disagreeable to him. 'Drinking,' he said, 'is the joy of the Russes. We cannot exist without that pleasure.' " Vladimir took the plunge for the Christian faith. He also availed himself of an estimated 800 concubines.  . . .

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the boundaries of Russia have changed (again), and presumably so have the boundaries of Russian history. Perennial assertions by Ukraine that it and not Moscow is the true successor to Kievan Rus would seem more difficult to ignore since independence. At the same time, large chunks of what had been Kievan Rus are today part of Poland and Lithuania. Belarus, too, can reasonably claim Russian and Ukrainian lands as well as Polish or Lithuanian ones. Central Asia, Bessarabia, the Caucasus, Finland, Alaska and northern California were once Russian. Should territories that have ceased to be part of Russia be included in Russian history? Would their inclusion, however compelling historically, ratify Russian imperialism? Is the current Russian Federation the proper unit of Russian history, at least for the time being? Where is Russia? What is Russia?  . . .

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 3, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: The Talkies

BYLINE: By Michael Wood; Michael Wood is the author of "The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction." He teaches English at Princeton University.

 "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet"
The American Talking Film: History & Memory, 1927-1949.
By Andrew Sarris.
573 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $35.

 AS Groucho Marx, in "Duck Soup," leaves the august and matronly Margaret Dumont's bedroom, Chico Marx enters, disguised as Groucho: long nightgown, floppy nightcap, round glasses, absurdly false mustache. We know this is Chico because we have seen him put on his disguise -- otherwise we might have a problem. Dumont is surprised to find this figure still there, since she has seen him leave, and she expresses her surprise.

"Oh no," Chico says. "I no leave."

"But I saw you," Dumont says. "With my own eyes."

Chico replies, in one of the most dizzying philosophical moments in the cinema: "Well, who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?"

She has to believe him and her own eyes, as we all do at the movies, silents as well as talkies. Sound increased the range of things our eyes could not tell us, but the need and difficulty of believing them remained. "The art of the cinema," Andrew Sarris wrote in "The American Cinema" (1968), a book many of us carried around till the pages fell out and almost all the directors described there had become old masters, "is the art of an attitude, the style of a gesture." The attitudes and gestures could be aural, but only by extension, by metaphor. And it is striking that many of the sharpest and most memorable moments in Sarris's companionable new book are lucid accounts of visual events or impressions  . . .

 " 'You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet' " is loosely organized, although organized might be too strong a term, but it has plenty to say. As he points out, Sarris has after all been "a practicing polemicist" for three decades, and has "more than 40 years of published missionary work" to his credit. The book takes the form of a series of notes and essays covering a small fraction of the films Sarris must have seen. At times he quotes from "The American Cinema," at times he takes off from it into much longer riffs -- on Alfred Hitchcock, for instance, and on John Ford, and on Josef von Sternberg. On two serious points -- the virtues of Vincente Minnelli and Billy Wilder -- he revises his earlier, dismissive opinions that Minnelli had "a fatal flaw as an artist," namely a "naive belief that style can invariably transcend substance," and that Wilder should be classed in a section called "Less Than Meets the Eye."  . . .

 

Newsday
Copyright 1998 Newsday, Inc (New York, NY)
May 3, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: SUNDAY FOCUS / THE EURO'S HIDDEN POLITICAL COSTS

BYLINE: Kathleen R. McNamara. Kathleen R. McNamara teaches politics and international affairs at Princeton University and is the author of "The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union."

RECENTLY, THE GERMAN parliament voted by a ratio of more than 10 to one to support the move to a single European currency. Polls continue to show that more than half the German public does not support trading in their Deutschemarks for Euros. Despite similar levels of public opposition to the new currency in most European nations - and serious questions about the costs of giving up their national currencies - this weekend the governments of the European Union (EU) will meet to approve the launching of the Euro. Eleven of the EU's 15 member states will agree to go ahead with Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) starting on Jan. 1, 1999. The Euro will be introduced into daily circulation three years later.

The United States now counts the EU as its foremost political ally and one of its leading trading partners, so the Euro's adoption is much more than another Old World contretemps between the governing and the governed. And of course, the gap between those who govern and the citizens of Europe isn't necessarily bad. Leadership, after all, implies the ability to innovate and forge ahead, to do the hard, unpopular thing. But if Europe's leaders don't heed these early warning signs in the currency shift, it could be disastrous. The project is unprecedented in modern times - sovereign states have never before elected to give up their currencies. And there is plenty in the history of European integration to give us pause about the sturdiness of the political foundations for EMU.  . . .

 

The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1998 The Richmond Times Dispatch
May 3, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: BETWEEN THE BOOKENDS
BYLINE: Ann Lloyd Merriman; Editor, Commentary/Books

 *As a news correspondent, Leslie Cockburn has roamed the world, and she writes of her travels in Looking for Trouble: One Woman, Six Wars, and a Revolution (Anchor, $24.95). Her assignments gained her first-hand knowledge of the Cali Cartel, the Ayatollah, and the Third World. She has been named the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

 

The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1998 The Richmond Times Dispatch
May 3, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: ALOUD AND PROUD; GROUP THAT RECORDS FOR BLIND CELEBRATES

BYLINE: Carlos Santos; Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE

 Biographer Joseph Blotner, state Sen. Emily Couric and author Deborah McDowell were busy last week reading aloud in small soundproof studios in Charlottesville.

Blotner read the condensed version of his Faulkner biography. Couric, a Charlottesville Democrat, read "The Oxford Book of the American South." McDowell, a University of Virginia professor, read "Leaving Pipe Shop," a memoir of her childhood.

The trio, and other well-known local residents, were reading in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic.  . . .

There are several dozen studios across the country, most in university communities. The headquarters for Recording for the Blind is in Princeton, N.J.  . . .

 

The San Francisco Examiner
Copyright 1998 The Hearst Corporation
May 3, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: Politicians learn to live with Raiders' costly return; Mayoral candidates Mary King, Ignacio De La Fuente are not afraid to admit fault in costly deal;

CAMPAIGN '98
BYLINE: KATHLEEN SULLIVAN
DATELINE: OAKLAND

Among the hundreds of patches of brilliantly colored fabric stitched together to form Mary King's mayoral campaign coat, only one bears a name: RAIDERS.

It's not an advertisement, the Alameda County supervisor said, but an acknowledgement that the Raiders are an integral part of Oakland.

"You have to sew it into the community," she said.

King points to the patch as evidence that she is not hiding from the financial problems surrounding the 1995 deal that brought the football team back to Oakland from Los Angeles.

"Whoever gets to be mayor has to deal with the Raiders problem, whether they signed the deal or not," King said in a recent interview at her campaign headquarters. "I think the public would rather have someone who has guilt and remorse, rather than someone who is just pointing a finger."  . . .

 Michael Danielson, author of "Home Team: Professional Sports and the American Metropolis," said politicians mistakenly believe that landing a sports franchise is a "sure-fire" way to maintain their careers.

"But there is zero evidence of that," he said.

Danielson, a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University and an avowed sports fan, described the Raiders pact as a "strange deal."

"Trying to sell seat licenses for the same building, even if it's been renovated, to fans who are accustomed to buying tickets on a per seat basis, that's the toughest sell of all," he said. "Seat licenses are more likely to be relatively successful when building a new stadium."  . . .

 

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
May 3, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: EDWIN T. JAYNES; LONGTIME WU PHYSICS PROFESSOR

Edwin T. Jaynes, a retired professor at Washington University, died Thursday (April 30, 1998) at Barnes-Jewish Extended Care Facility in Clayton of complications from diabetes. He was 75 and lived in St. Louis.

For 32 years, Professor Jaynes taught physics at Washington University. He was appointed Wayman Crow professor of physics in 1975. He retired in 1992.

His interests were in electromagnetic theory and statistical mechanics, subjects on which he published numerous articles.

Professor Jaynes was born in Waterloo, Iowa. After earning a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Iowa, he served as an ensign in the Navy in World War II and worked at the naval research laboratory near Washington. He later got a doctorate in physics from Princeton University.  . . .

 

AAP NEWSFEED
Copyright 1998 AAP Information Services Pty. Ltd.
May 2, 1998, Saturday

HEADLINE: EUR: COUNTDOWN TO EMU LARGELY IGNORED IN US
BYLINE: By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON, May 1 Reuters - On the eve of a summit that will formally approve the founding members of a single European currency, the event has sparked remarkably little discussion in US policy circles and has been largely ignored by Americans.

Despite the US apathy, Europe's economic and monetary union offers potentially vast opportunities to American businesses, while posing huge risks for the global economy.  . . .

Princeton University Professor Peter Kenen said: "I look forward to good economic news." But he predicted a period of adjustment as the planned European Central Bank attempted to balance the interests of the various member countries and make the necessary political compromises.  . . .

 

The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1998 The Dallas Morning News
May 2, 1998, Saturday

HEADLINE: A MEASURE OF FAITH; George Gallup Jr. Considered the priesthood but found his calling in polling others' beliefs

SOURCE: Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
BYLINE: Diane Winston
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.

PRINCETON, N.J. - When George Gallup Jr. joined the family polling firm, the church lost a prospective priest but the world gained a Spirit-filled layman. Mr. Gallup, who is chairman of the George H. Gallup International Institute and executive director of the Princeton Religion Research Center, chose a secular path for a religious call. But he can twirl a rubber band as deftly as a Catholic prays the rosary.

"I was drawn to the church and thought about being an Episcopal priest," said Mr. Gallup, whose deep bass voice would have rung appealingly from any pulpit. "But I decided Dad's field offered an opportunity to find truth, to see how people respond to God and to explore their religious lives. When I started surveying in the early 1950s, this was virgin territory."

That the once-virgin territory is now well-explored is due, in no small part, to Mr. Gallup's zeal. Over the years, Gallup polls have measured belief in God, angels, miracles, born-again experiences, biblical inerrancy, and heaven and hell. Among his recent projects is a survey on gratitude commissioned by Thanks-Giving Square in Dallas.

On Thursday, Mr. Gallup will discuss his findings during the institution's annual celebration of the National Day of Prayer.  . . .

 

International Herald Tribune
Copyright 1998 International Herald Tribune (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France)
May 2, 1998, Saturday

HEADLINE: By Any Measure, Europe's New Monetary Union Is a Historic Exploit
BYLINE: By Reginald Dale; International Herald Tribune

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

Starting from the Declaration of Independence, it took the United States nearly 90 years to establish a fully fledged common currency, and a further 50 years to set up the Federal Reserve system in 1913.

When the European Union introduces the euro, backed by a European Central Bank, at the beginning of next year, it will have traveled the same distance in just over 40 years.

Of course, it is not an exact parallel. But the comparison is worth making if only because so many people forget how far, and how relatively fast, the Europeans have come since they began their postwar drive for closer unity in the 1950s. As the debate over the single currency has intensified during the past two years, the focus has been much more on the economic and financial technicalities than on the momentous historical dimensions of the endeavor. Yet, by any historical yardstick, the decision by 11 West European countries to link their destinies in an economic and monetary union is an epoch-making achievement. And, in many ways, the Europeans face a harder task than the Americans did before them.  . . .

 Today's circumstances are much more auspicious than when the then European Community concocted its initial plan for monetary union in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a target date of 1980. That effort was blown apart by the first international oil shock and the Europeans' ragged response to it. - In those days, too, as Peter Kenen, an economist at Princeton University, has pointed out, fixed exchange rates were no longer fashionable and most European governments were still using capital controls. France and Germany for years engaged in a bitter doctrinal argument over whether economic union should precede monetary union, as Germany insisted, or vice versa, as France proposed.  . . .

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 2, 1998, Saturday

HEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths

MAHER, THEODORE NICHOLAS

MAHER - Theodore Nicholas. "Ted" died of a long standing illness on his birthday, March 2, 1998. He is survived by 3 children: Candace, Michael and Nicole, as well as four grandchildren. Ted was raised in Greenwich, CT. He served in the South Pacific during W.W. II and later graduated from Princeton University. He was a professional writer and retired from the FAA in Washington, DC. He had many accomplishments including writing several unpublished novels. In his later years, he was especially proud of this thirty year chip.

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 2, 1998, Saturday

HEADLINE: Students Sing To Aid Cause Of Road Safety
BYLINE: By The New York Times

DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J., May 1

Last spring, shortly after a member of their a cappella singing group was killed in what the police are calling a drunken driving accident, Princeton University's Tigertones set about planning an event to commemorate a lost friend and to help prevent similar tragedies.

The fruit of their yearlong efforts, a concert to raise money for the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving, will be held Sunday at Carnegie Hall. Along with their counterparts from Harvard and Yale, the Tigertones will sing in a two-hour concert, which they say has the potential to raise awareness of the dangers of drunken driving.

Many of the Tigertones who will be singing witnessed the accident in March 1997. The group was driving on Interstate 95 near St. Augustine, Fla., during spring break. Eight of the Tigertones were in a motor home; four others, including Richard Modica, were following in a car. The car was rear-ended by a sport utility vehicle and rolled into a ditch.  . . .

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 2, 1998, Saturday

HEADLINE: Studio Sues Over a 'Star Trek' Book
BYLINE: By LYNETTE HOLLOWAY

A "Star Trek" fan says that the Paramount Pictures Corporation, which owns the copyright to the series and spinoffs, is behaving more like the evil Borg than like the good-guy captains, Jean-Luc Picard and James Kirk.

The fan, Samuel Ramer, accused Paramount yesterday of trying to prohibit him from using the "Star Trek" copyright after ignoring its use for years by many others.

The complaint stems from a suit filed in February in Federal District Court by Paramount that accuses Mr. Ramer of violating copyright laws by publishing an unlicensed book about the series.  . . .

Each year, tens of thousands of trekkies attend hundreds of unlicensed conventions at which people show up dressed as "Star Trek" characters, said Adam Schrager, a doctoral candidate in political science at Princeton University and author of an unlicensed "Star Trek" book, who is expected to serve as an expert witness for Mr. Ramer.

"As word gets out there, I think a lot of the fans will swell to his side," said Mr. Schrager, who has known Mr. Ramer for 10 years. "There have been unauthorized 'Star Trek' books on the market for as long as there has been 'Star Trek.' It is an entire universe."  . . .

 

New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
May 2, 1998

HEADLINE: Shock waves
BYLINE: Hazel Muir

HIGHLIGHT: Massive magnetic fields may tear the crusts of neutron stars

Colossal cracks ripping through the solid crusts of neutron stars could be the cause of enigmatic blasts of gamma rays from space, say astrophysicists in the US.

The gamma-ray flashes, from so-called soft gamma repeaters, were first spotted in the 1970s. Unlike gamma-ray bursters, which flash only once in distant galaxies, the repeaters are relatively close and, as their names imply, often reappear. Although the flashes last only a split second, they are extremely bright.

"When they're bursting, they're the brightest things in the Galaxy," says Robert Duncan of the University of Texas at Austin.  . . .

 Bohdan Paczy'nski, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey, thinks that the new estimates of the strengths of the magnetic fields that power soft gamma repeaters are an important step towards a final explanation of why these bright beacons appear. But he says it will take more precise data to put the theory to the test.

 

 NPR
SHOW: NPR WEEKEND SATURDAY
MAY 2, 1998, SATURDAY

HEADLINE: Nano CD
GUESTS: Steven Chou

BYLINE: Scott Simon, Washington, DC

HIGHLIGHT: Scott speaks with Steven Chou, Princeton engineering professor about a CD he's created, a compact disk the size of a penny.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST: And you're listening to WEEKEND EDITION.

Compact discs became popular lovers because they didn't scratch, could hold more tunes, and maybe most of all, were smaller and lighter than vinyl records. Many of us remade our music library to accommodate CDs.

If Princeton engineering professor Steven Chou is any indication of the future, another shrink down may be on the way. Professor Chou has shrunk CDs to the size of just a penny. These Mighty Mouse discs can hold thirty times the information of a standard CD.

Professor Chou joins us from his office in Princeton. Thanks for being with us, sir.

STEVEN CHOU, PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Thank you, Scott.

SIMON: And it's an even-ever-smaller CD, but it works like an old record, uses a needle?

CHOU: The needle vibrates at a frequency, and when the needle is very close to the surface of the compact disc, the atomic interaction between the needle and the surface will change the vibration frequency.

SIMON: So, it's still a frictionless system?

CHOU: That's correct. And the density of the CD is 800 times denser than the conventional CD. Because of such a high density, so even you make a nano CD with a penny size, it still can contain the information of 30 conventional compact discs.  . . .

 

NPR
SHOW: NPR WEEKEND SATURDAY
MAY 2, 1998, SATURDAY

HEADLINE: Roman God of Mildew
GUESTS: Elaine Fantham

BYLINE: Scott Simon, Washington, DC
HIGHLIGHT: Scott speaks with Princeton University Professor Elaine Fantham about the Roman god of mildew.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST: The ancient Romans worshipped the god love, the goddess fever, and the goddesses of hope, victory, and the moon -- powerful interests each and every one. But what could be said for the god mildew?

On the line with us from her office at Princeton University to discuss the god the Romans called Robigo (ph) is Classics Professor Elaine Fantham. And, Professor, wonderful to talk to you again.

ELAINE FANTHAM, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Hello, Scott.

SIMON: And let me just guess, the god mildew had green stuff growing up and down his arms?

FANTHAM: It's a nice thought. Something like the jolly green giant?

SIMON: Exactly.

FANTHAM: But, I think he'd have been a rather dingy giant, because mildew makes things look pretty horrible. I hope you remembered, by the way, last Saturday to make your sacrifice to him.  . . .

 

The Record
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp. (Bergen County, NJ)
May 2, 1998; SATURDAY; ALL EDITIONS

HEADLINE: PRINCETON SEEKS A GENEROUS GRAD; $25M GETS NAME ON STADIUM
BYLINE: The Associated Press
 DATELINE: PRINCETON

Wanted: Princeton alum with deep pockets and an interest in sports.

University fund-raisers are seeking a gift that will cover a major portion of the cost of the new $45 million football stadium scheduled to open in September.

The asking price: $25 million. The payoff: your name on the side of one the university's most prominent structures for decades to come.

Corporations need not apply. The university wants to continue the tradition of naming buildings after alumni.

"We're fortunate to have an alumni body that is extraordinarily generous,"spokesman Justin Harmon said Friday."We'd like to name the stadium after an individual associated with the university, someone

who's been a part of the university."

Officials have begun approaching, one by one, those with a possible interest in making such a"leadership gift,"he said.  . . .

 

Sun-Sentinel
Copyright 1998 Sun-Sentinel Company (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
May 2, 1998, Saturday

HEADLINE: OBITUARIES

WOLPERT - Alan I., 71, of Fort Lauderdale, FL passed away at his home after a long battle with pancreatic cancer on April 30, 1998. Mr. Wolpert was a graduate of Princeton University, a chemical engineer and served as infantry lieutenant in the Korean War. He was a man of many careers. In the early 1950's, he founded Heterene Chemical Company, Inc. of Paterson, NJ, manufacturer of chemicals for consumer products which are used in all households. In 1982, after retiring as CEO, he moved to FL with his best friend and wife, Joanie, and changed careers, becoming a charter boat captain at Bahia Mar.  . . .

 

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