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Princeton in the News
May 18, 1998 | Feedback
HIGHLIGHT: Princeton's Frank von Hippel, Zia Mian comment on India's nuclear tests.
The New Republic
Copyright 1998 The New Republic, Inc.
MAY 18, 1998HEADLINE: The Pluralist
BYLINE: Tomas VenclovaThe First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin
by Caryl Emerson(Princeton University Press, 293 pp., $29.95)
Remarkable men and women do not usually appear one at a time. They come in clusters and constellations. In the first half of the twentieth century, Russia produced an unbelievably bright constellation of talents. Their contribution to world culture was virtually unmatched. ...
Only in the final years of the Soviet regime did the old names arise from the underground where their memory had been preserved, against incredible odds. And then communism collapsed. After decades of control and supervision, Russia became one of the freest countries in the world. In this environment of budding and anarchic capitalism, however, art and philosophy were marginalized. Those who had esteemed the former "non-persons," who had hoped for their immediate sanctification, suddenly found their idols considered irrelevant by most of the public. In this new climate, the centennials often fell flat, and the old heroes were targeted by disrespectful (or just disoriented) attacks.
This vulgarity may be painful, but it is better, and less mendacious, than official praise. Mikhail Bakhtin is a good case in point. He, too, belonged to this group of men and women of genius. Born in 1895, he was an obscure and ignored philosopher during most of his lifetime. At the end of his life, and immediately after his death in 1975, he became a sort of intellectual guru and cult figure. Yet his hagiography is now, suddenly, a thing of the past. ...
Caryl Emerson is arguably the most knowledgeable and gifted Bakhtin scholar in the United States. She has already produced several works on him, including the groundbreaking study Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (1990), written together with Gary Saul Morson. Her elegant new book, which refers to Bakhtin's centennial in its very title, is, as she puts it, a history of "Bakhtin's reception by his own culture--undertaken by an outsider to that culture." To define herself as an outsider is excessively modest. Emerson deals with Russian history and culture with admirable ease; she is at home in areas that many native scholars would consider unfamiliar and esoteric.
The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin is, first and foremost, an extensive overview of recent Russian polemics concerning Bakhtin's ideas. Yet it is more than that. It provides us with fascinating glimpses of his life and his character, and with a history of his intellectual career in Russia and in the West, and with a serious discussion of the problematic areas of his thought. After giving the reader a clear picture of recent Russian criticism on Bakhtin, Emerson proceeds to her own opinions, which, as a rule, are very well-reasoned and tend toward the golden mean. ...
PR Newswire
Copyright 1998 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
May 15, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: Bruce M. Ramer, Los Angeles Attorney, Elected President Of the American Jewish Committee
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 15Bruce M. Ramer, a prominent Los Angeles attorney, today became the 24th National President of the American Jewish Committee. Mr. Ramer succeeds Robert S. Rifkind, a distinguished New York City lawyer, who held the post since December 1994.
The election took place at a Board of Governors/National Council meeting, part of the human relations agency's 92nd Annual Meeting, which concludes today at the Capital Hilton Hotel. ...
Mr. Ramer is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. ...
Business Wire
Copyright (c) 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
May 15, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: Universal Display Corporation Announces First Quarter Results
DATELINE: BALA CYNWYD, Pa.May 15, 1998--Universal Display Corporation (UDC) (NASDAQ:PANL), a developer of flat panel display technology, announced today its unaudited results of operations for the quarter ended March 31, 1998.
Universal Display had a net loss of $321,108 (or $.03 per share) for the quarter ended March 31, 1998 compared to a loss of $600,490 (or $0.07 per share) for the same period in 1997. The decrease in the net loss was attributed in increased contract revenue and reduced research and development costs.
The Company earned $98,977 from contract research revenue in the quarter ended March 31, 1998 compared to no revenue in the same period in 1997.
The revenue was derived primarily from a $100,000 grant from the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology to continue development of OLED technology and to study manufacturing development issues, and from a subcontract under a 3-year, $3 million contract Princeton University received from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency.
Research and development costs were lower because the 1997 Sponsored Research Agreement with Princeton University and the University of Southern California does not require payments to commence until August 1998. ...
The Times
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Limited
May 15, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: Emerging into the limelight
BYLINE: John O'LearyThe capital's academic shrinking violet is blooming, says John O'Leary
For an institution with a distinguished history stretching back almost 170 years, King's College is one of London's best-kept secrets. Well respected though it is in academic circles, the capital's other academic powerhouses have tended to hog the limelight.
That may be about to change, however, following a merger which will cement King's position as one of London University's two largest colleges (with University College London) with 16,500 students. Having taken in the Institute of Psychiatry last year, the college believes it can make further strides in both teaching and research. ...
The college's research profile has already benefited from last year's addition of the Institute of Psychiatry. With the improvement in King's last research rankings, the college will soon have the fifth highest research income among British universities.
Academics have started to take note of this and other improvements. Professor Lucas takes particular pride in the recruitment of two professors from Princeton University, in the United States, in the past 18 months. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 15, 1998, Friday, Late Edition - FinalHEADLINE: WEEKEND EXCURSION; A Cradle of Conflict, Poetry and Religion
BYLINE: By GUSTAV NIEBUHR
DATELINE: DEERFIELD, Mass.Massachusetts' Pioneer Valley offers a pastoral escape from the urban agglomerations of New York and Boston, but it's more than simply a place to catch up on quiet time.
You can come here to learn, if you like, to stretch your mind in an area rich in early America's political, religious and literary history.
Bisected by the Connecticut River, the valley formed one of the colonial era's first and most fascinating frontiers. Its towns still carry close associations with the long and often violent struggle between Puritans and Indians, the spiritual excitement of America's most famous religious revival and the creative work of one of the nation's greatest poets. ...
Seeking Landmarks
The next day was Sunday, so it seemed appropriate to hunt for landmarks remaining from the valley's singular place in American religious history. Even as Deerfield was rebuilding from the raid, the town of Northampton, 15 miles to the south, called the Rev. Jonathan Edwards its minister.
Through his preaching, Edwards, one of America's greatest theologians, helped inspire the Great Awakening, a vast religious revival in the 1730's and 1740's. Although he is often remembered for a particularly vivid sermon on sin and damnation, Edwards was a man of many talents, possessed of a scientific and philosophical mind, fascinated with nature and gifted with an elegant and expressive style. ...
Edwards's career in Northampton ended abruptly in 1750, when his congregation dismissed him after the leaders rejected his proposal for raising standards for membership in the church. He had already weakened his standing in 1744 with a public inquiry into how some local youths had obtained a book on childbirthing, an investigation that embarrassed several prominent families. After his dismissal, Edwards moved west to Stockbridge, serving as a missionary to local Indians and writing some of his greatest works. He died in 1758, shortly after taking office as president of the College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton University. ...
Chicago Tribune
Copyright 1998 Chicago Tribune Company
May 15, 1998 FridayHEADLINE: MACARTHUR CHIEF QUITTING NEXT YEAR
After 10 years as chief executive and president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Adele Simmons will step down in September 1999, she announced at Thursday's annual meeting of the foundation board of directors.
Prior to her work with the foundation, Simmons was president of Hampshire College for 13 years, dean of students at Princeton University and dean of Jackson College at Tufts University.
Under Simmons' leadership, the foundation has made grants totaling about $1.3 billion; implemented a 10-year, $40 million initiative to support school reform in Chicago; and supported documentary films, including the hit, "Hoop Dreams."
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 1998 The Atlanta Constitution
May 14, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: North Fulton inventor got early start with gadgets
BYLINE: Craig SchneiderWhen he was 5 years old, Jack Gilbert's father brought home a crank-up phonograph to play records. And when Dad went away on a business trip and Mom wasn't looking, the boy's curiosity got the better of him.
"I got a screwdriver and started to take the thing apart. It intrigued me what made that disc rotate," said the 68-year-old inventor, sitting in his Roswell workshop.
Springs started flying.
The boy started to cry just thinking about the spanking he would get, but that didn't stop the youngster who would one day receive an engineering degree from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and go on to invent a device to measure the bubbles in soda pop and a way to separate red from white blood corpuscles. ...
Gilbert's latest and, he believes, his greatest invention is a steam engine that operates on water and electron energy. He maintains he has found a way to create steam that results in no harmful emissions and is strong enough to power an automobile. "It's very clean," he said. "I love it." A steam-driven car called the Stanley Steamer clocked an incredible 127 mph on a Daytona beach in 1906. But the amount of energy needed to create the steam, and the resulting pollution from the burning of coal or oil for the boiler, scientists say, has made the method impractical for cars.
Gilbert says he has the problem licked, and even has a small demonstration model, not much bigger than a breadbox, in his workshop. But he has yet to receive a patent, and he needs a sponsor with three-quarters of a million dollars to build a full-size model.
Despite the doubters, Gilbert remains upbeat.
"I remember attending a Princeton University seminar by Albert Einstein. He said that with a negative attitude we could disprove anything, but with a positive attitude we have an unlimited potential.
"The bumblebee, theoretically, has a body too large for its wings, and shouldn't be able to fly," said Gilbert. "But what happens? It flies around and stings you." ...
THE NEWS
Emerging Markets Datafile
May 14, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: MI AMIGO, OCTAVIO PAZ: THE GREAT MEXICAN POET, THE NEWS
BYLINE: CARLOS FUENTES
Carlos Fuentes is the author of numerous books, including "The Old Gringo," "Christopher Unborn" and "The Crystal Frontier." His piece was provided exclusively to Book Review by NPQ and translated from Spanish by Alfred Mac Adam.
"I cannot begin this lecture without paying homage to the great Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz. His work encompasses and enriches the culture of our century. It will also survive it. A writer as great as Octavio Paz is, along with his readers, both guardian and witness of his own immortality." ...
"Lectures, prefaces, recollections, public defenses, speeches, essays. For 30 years, I was a close reader of Paz's work. He responded in kind with essays on my books, forewords and a beautiful poem. To all this should be added my correspondence with Paz, the more than 1,000 letters we exchanged over three decades, which are deposited in the Princeton University library. ...
The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
May 14, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: Yield Key To Mystery Of Blasts
BYLINE: Curt Suplee, Washington Post Staff WriterIt is impossible to know, from initial evidence, whether India succeeded in setting off a thermonuclear device in underground tests Monday because the presumed explosive "yield" could have been created by other, less sophisticated kinds of weapons, numerous experts said yesterday.
The ability to make working thermonuclear weapons -- the sort produced by fusion in "hydrogen bombs" as opposed to the less powerful, fission-based "atomic bombs" dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II -- indicates an extraordinarily high level of technological expertise, even among developed nations. If India has reached that goal, it is of profound concern to those who fear India's capacity to conduct nuclear warfare, perhaps with its traditional rival, Pakistan. ...
"Boosted" fission devices employ a small amount of two hydrogen isotopes embedded in the fission material. In the blast, some of the hydrogen fuses, amplifying the fission chain reaction and increasing the yield ten- or twenty-fold. "It might have been a boosted fission device," said Princeton University physicist Frank von Hippel, who is skeptical of Indian claims of a thermonuclear explosion as conventionally defined. Alternatively, it might have been a test of a "primary" fission device used to ignite a very small "secondary" fusion reaction, he said. ...
Business Wire
Copyright 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
May 13, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: 1998 Nicholas Green Scholarship Winners Announced
DATELINE: WASHINGTONMay 13, 1998--The Nicholas Green Scholarship Fund today announced the recipients of the 1998 Nicholas Green Scholarship. Three scholarships of $2,500 each were awarded at the Fourth Annual Nicholas Green Scholarship benefit luncheon held here today prior to the Investment Company Institute's General Membership Meeting.
The three outstanding individuals chosen to receive the 1998 Nicholas Green Scholarships are: Michael Peter Barakat, a native of Naugatuck, Conn.; Logan Joseph Kleinwaks, a resident of Reston, Va.; and Anna Marie Sykes, a resident of Homdel, N.J. ...
Kleinwaks, a freshman at Princeton University who focuses on physics and mathematics, plans to travel to Zurich, Switzerland to study at the Institute for Theoretical Physics. Kleinwaks was a finalist in the 56th Westinghouse Science Talent Search for his research in the field of neutron scattering. Kleinwaks said in his essay: "Ultimately, I hope that I can incorporate both forms of exploration, science and travel which I believe can help solve practical problems facing society by increasing our physical understanding of the world."
The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 1998 The Christian Science Publishing Society
May 13, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: Will the Universe's Big Bang End in a 'Big Crunch'?
BYLINE: Peter N. Spotts, Staff writer of The Christian Science MonitorDATELINE: GREENBELT, MD.
In their quest to answer the biggest questions about the universe, scientists are turning to a 1,700-pound satellite taking shape here at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
The $88-million spacecraft is designed to make the most precise all-sky maps yet of tiny changes in the afterglow from the fireball that, scientists say, formed the universe. The changes, researchers say, constitute a cosmic code that will help them answer the ultimate question: Will the universe expand forever or slow, contract, and collapse in the "big crunch"?
Known as cosmic microwave background radiation, the afterglow first picked up as a "hiss" in 1964 carries details on key features of the cosmos, such as the nature and density of its matter, its evolution, and its expansion rate. Competing notions about how the universe evolved and what its future holds depend on those details, explains Charles Bennett, the lead scientist on the satellite project, called the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP).
"Basically, Joe Blow comes up with a model of cosmology. He says: I like this kind of matter and this much of it. He can tell you exactly what fluctuations you should see in the cosmic background radiation," Dr. Bennett says. "This means that the cosmic background radiation becomes an incredibly powerful tool" for testing theories. "That's why people are so excited" about the mission, adds George Smoot III, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. "Either we will understand the universe, or we'll have to come up with new ideas" if the satellite's data fail to match theories' predictions. ...
"At some level, there had to be some temperature differences in the early universe that were the seeds of those structures," Bennett continues, with slightly cooler spots representing regions of greater density. In 1989, NASA launched the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft, which spent four years mapping the radiation more closely. It found the predicted temperature differences, but not in enough detail to allow cosmologists to test their various notions about the universe. COBE fueled expectations that the answers were there to be found.
"We got to be confident about that because of COBE," says Dr. Smoot, the lead scientist for one of COBE's three detectors. MAP, he adds, "represents a big step forward." The craft, a collaboration between researchers at Goddard, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California at Los Angeles, is designed to measure the temperature difference between two tightly spaced regions of sky. ...
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 1998 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
May 13, 1998 WednesdayHEADLINE: ALFRED P. MCNULTY, 73, OWNED CONSTRUCTION FIRM
DATELINE: CLEVELAND HEIGHTSAlfred P. McNulty was regarded by his colleagues and clients as an expert in construction management in Cleveland.
He was the founder and president of Applied Project Management Co., a construction and consulting firm. His more than 60 building construction and remodeling projects in the area included International Management Group, Bratenahl Place, American Automobile Association and University School Upper Campus, as well as hospitals and factories. ...
Mr. McNulty, 73, died Sunday at Cleveland Clinic Hospital. He had cancer. ...
He attended Princeton University, where he received a bachelor's degree in engineering and in 1950 a master's degree in civil engineering. ...
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
Copyright 1998 The Providence Journal Company
May 13, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: Darius Lee 'Bud' Goff dies at 78; former lawmaker, Warwick mayor
DATELINE: WARWICKDarius Lee "Bud" Goff, 78, of Paget, Bermuda, died Saturday in the Columbia Health Southwest Regional Hospital, Fort Myers, Fla. He was the husband of the late Paula (Dodge) Goff. ...
He attended Princeton University. ...
The Record
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp. (Bergen County, NJ)
May 13, 1998HEADLINE: THREE ACCUSED OF HELPING BANK ROBBER ESCAPE POLICE
COLUMN: AROUND NEW JERSEYDATELINE: NEWARK
After a bloody bank robbery last year in Princeton, a fleeing bandit found himself with $164,000 but no ride out of town.
So Sandress Casiano approached three strangers, showed them the cash, and offered them $500 each if they could get him a lift, according to court documents filed by the FBI. ...
In the Nov. 6 holdup at the Sovereign Bank near Princeton University, one armed bandit, Angel Rivera, 20, of Trenton, was shot and killed by police inside the bank as he threatened to kill a hostage, one of the bank tellers. ...
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 1998 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
May 13, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: TIPSHEET;
LOOKING AT WHO'S IN AND WHO'S OUT IN THE WORLD OF SPORTS
BYLINE: Jeff Gordon; Of The Post-DispatchMysteries of the universe
How could the NCAA accuse Cincinnati of lacking "institutional control" over its squeaky-clean basketball program? What's next, an investigation at Princeton?
Star Tribune
Copyright 1998 Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
May 13, 1998, Metro EditionHEADLINE: The president and his books;
Could White House reading habits influence policy moves?SOURCE: New York Times
BYLINE: Judith MillerIf Bill Clinton's interest in germ warfare was intensified by having read "The Cobra Event," a biological thriller, it's not the first time that history has perhaps been nudged by what a president read.
The Founding Fathers were highly literate. Their views on liberal democracy were shaped largely by the works of Montesquieu and other French enlightenment philosophers, as well as their English counterparts John Locke and Thomas Hobbes.
Despite the distractions of television and polling, many modern presidents have been voracious readers. Fred Greenstein, a professor of politics at Princeton University and a scholar of the presidency, called Harry Truman "a real bookworm." Alas, he added, much of the material that Truman read about the Soviet threat was false. ...
The Chattanooga Times
Copyright 1998 Times Printing Company
May 12, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: Modern religion is personal thing, scholar observes
BYLINE: By Ruth Robinson, The Chattanooga Times
"I wrote a good application," Dr. Charles H. Lippy said with a laugh. Obviously, it took more than that, but Lippy is among 11 scholars who have received a Louisville Institute summer stipend award.
The Louisville, Ky., Institute was founded in 1990 as a center for research and leadership education on American religion. Summer awards are given to support scholarly projects that seek to nurture inquiry and conversation on the character, issues and history of American Christianity.
Lippy, the Leroy A. Martin distinguished professor of religious studies at UTC, has written or edited 15 books. Among the books he has authored are Modern American Popular Religion and Being Religious, American Style.
Lippy's doctoral degree is from Princeton University. He taught at Clemson University for 18 years before coming to UTC in 1994. His appointment in the Holston Conference is his post at UTC. ...
BUSINESS LINE
Copyright 1998 FT Asia Intelligence Wire
May 12, 1998HEADLINE: Cuts more ethical than essential
Nandita ShuklaAT A recent press briefing, Mr. Brian Atwood, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, announced that India will receive assistance from the US for reducing pollution and growing economically in a climate-friendly way. In June 1997, at the United Nations General Assembly special session, the US President, Mr. Bill Clinton, announced that his country would devote at least $1 billion over the next five years to help developing nations achieve clean and sustainable growth. This assistance is just a beginning of that commitment. ...
The US proposal was that there should be no fixed carbon dioxide targets before 2010, and asked for maximum flexibility between countries, years and greenhouse gases - allowing countries to meet their commitments by a variety of routes. By including methane, nitrous oxides and halocarbons in the climate equation, countries need not necessarily cut carbon dioxide emissions from power stations and vehicle exhausts. Instead they might reduce methane venting from coal mines or cut production of halofluorocarbons. The US proposal was to increase flexibility further by making national emission quotas over several years, with countries possibly banking or borrowing credits many years in advance. There was severe criticism from the developing as well as developed countries to these proposals. However, at the UN Convention last year, the US agreed to provide $1 billion in assistance, over five years, to fund energy efficiency programmes, develop alternative sources of energy, and improve resource management to promote growth that does not adversely affect the climate. ...
Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, theorised in 1896 that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by coal-fired industries would cause global temperatures to rise. The first credible projections about how much warming might occur came in the mid-1960s, when scientists at Princeton University estimated that average global temperatures would rise by 2 degrees Celsius in the next century if carbon dioxide levels doubled. ...
PAP News Wire
Copyright 1998 PAP Polish Press Agency
May 12, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY HONOURS FOR PROFESSOR QUANDT
Cracow, May 12: Professor Richard Quandt of Princeton University, the US, received the Merentibus Medal, the highest distinction of the Jagiellonian University of Cracow, in a ceremony held on that prominent school's Day on Tuesday.
The University's senate unanimously awarded the medal to Professor Quandt in recognition of his services to Cracow and the university.
Thanks to Professor Quandt, a representative of the Mellon Foundation, the Jagiellonian University Library and other university libraries have received grants totalling two million USD. The Jagiellonian University Library also received 500 thousand USD for computer equipment. ...
THE HARTFORD COURANT
Copyright 1998 The Hartford Courant Company
May 12, 1998 TuesdayHEADLINE: JOURNAL PUBLISHES MOZZOCHI RESEARCH PAPER
BYLINE: NANCY SMYTH LASTRINA; Courant ColumunistGlastonbury resident C.J. Mozzochi recently published a 13-page research paper in the German mathematics journal "Forum Mathematicum."
Mozzochi, who holds a doctorate in mathematics studies, based the paper in part on research that he did while in residence in 1994 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
His paper is titled "On the scattering matrix for the Eisenstein series for the Hecke congruence groups." It was sent to the German journal by Professor Peter Sarnak, chariman of the Princeton University School of Mathematics. ...
NPR
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
MAY 12, 1998, TUESDAYHEADLINE: India Tests
GUESTS: Frank Von HippelBYLINE: Robert Siegel, Washington, DC
HIGHLIGHT: Robert talks with Frank Von Hippel, a physicist and professo of public and international affairs at Princeton University. Von Hippel explains the difference between the three different nuclear devices that the prime minister of India claims were tested yesterday.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: India said yesterday that it conducted three different underground tests, of a fission device, a low yield device, and a thermonuclear device.
For some insight into the differences among them, we turn to Frank von Hippel, a physicist and professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University. Von Hippel questions whether India actually tested a thermonuclear weapon yesterday.
FRANK VON HIPPEL, PHYSICIST, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: It could have had some thermonuclear material in it, but it would not have a second stage which -- much harder, more powerful stage, which would be triggered by the fission device. I think the yield is really the key piece of information. I mean -- and that does tell people familiar with nuclear weapons technology quite a bit.
SIEGEL: And in this case, what the yield tells you is, or what the yield tells people who are familiar with these things is, that that isn't a true big H bomb, that's a trigger bomb probably that went off.
VON HIPPEL: That's right. ...
SIEGEL: Frank von Hippel is a physicist and professor of international and public affairs at Princeton. He spoke to us from Princeton, New Jersey.
NPR
TALK OF THE NATION
MAY 12, 1998, TUESDAYHEADLINE: India's Tests
BYLINE: Mike Shuster, New York; Melinda Penkava, Washington, DCHIGHLIGHT: Reaction to India's detonation of three nuclear weapons.
MELINDA PENKAVA, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Melinda Penkava, sitting in for Ray Suarez.
It has been a quarter century since India tested any nuclear weapons. Yesterday, India's new prime minister, who's been in office less than two months, announced that India set of three nuclear blasts in an underground test. Many other nations are condemning that move. President Clinton spoke out this morning.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This action by India not only threatens the stability of the region, it directly challenges the firm, international consensus to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I call on India to announce that it will conduct no further tests and it will sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty now, and without conditions. I also urge India's neighbors not to follow suit; not to follow down the path of a dangerous arms race. ...
PENKAVA: And with us to talk about India and the bomb -- the blast that took place or the testing we have Arjan Markajani (ph), who is the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Mr. Markajani joins us here in studio 3A, welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.
ARJAN MARKAJANI, PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH: Thank you very much, Melinda.
PENKAVA: And Zia Mian a research associate at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University. He joins us from the studios at Princeton. Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION. ...
ZIA MIAN, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, CENTER FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Thank you, it's a pleasure. ...
PENKAVA: And it does seem, Zia Meyon, that one of the pronouncements from the Indian government yesterday, one official was saying, well, maybe now we would be willing to sit down and talk about some of the underpinnings of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, now that we have done the these tests.
MIAN: It's not really surprising that they would. They've also, incidentally, said that they would be willing to participate more actively in the negotiation of fissile material cut off treaty, that has been stalled for several years. And so, this is part of the process, I think, for the BJP government saying that we've done this, but we can be reliable negotiating partners in the arms control process, provided that there is some kind of recognition of our reasonableness, and there are not things imposed like sanctions et cetera, et cetera.
So, this is a way of beginning the negotiating process for how to manage what is clearly a new crisis. ...
PR Newswire
Copyright 1998 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
May 12, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: Harvard Law Professor, Randall Kennedy, captures Grand Prize for the 18th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award; Samuel Hynes Wins First Place Award
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 12
Race, Crime, and the Law (Pantheon Books) by Harvard Law Professor, Randall Kennedy, has won the Grand Prize for the 18th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
Through Race, Crime, and the Law, Randall Kennedy not only uncovers the long-standing failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals, but he engages in the debate over the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection. Kennedy also analyzes the responses of the legal system to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice have rendered trials unfair; examines the idea that, under certain circumstances, members of one race are statistically more likely to be involved in crime than members of another and probes allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments. ...
Randall Kennedy received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his law degree from Yale Law School. A Rhodes Scholar, he served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and lives in Dedham, Mass. Race, Crime, and the Law is Kennedy's first book. ...
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1998 The Richmond Times Dispatch
May 12, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: THE HIGH COST OF CRIME & PUNISHMENT;
CRIME IS DECREASING, BUT WHY? SOME CREDIT INCREASE IN PRISONSBYLINE: Frank Green; Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Crime is going down.
According to the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, the most recent National Crime Victim Survey showed a drop in overall crime for 1996, the fifth consecutive year the crime rate has fallen.
The violent-crime rate dropped 10 percent, continuing a trend that began in 1994; property crime continued a 20-year decline.
Has the growth in prisons contributed to the decline? The experts disagree.
Most criminologists maintain there's no relationship whatsoever, said Robert Moffit, director of domestic-policy studies for the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.
"But, as [Winston] Churchill once said, you have to be an intellectual to believe that," Moffit said.
Heritage Foundation analyses have shown that there is a connection, Moffit said. The evidence shows that about 6 percent of the male population between the ages of 15 and 24 is responsible for about 50 percent of serious crime, he said. ...
Moffit cites the conclusion of John J. DiIulio, a political scientist and criminologist at Princeton University, that more incarceration has led to less crime.
"There is a very solid body of evidence that shows that most of our problems are with repeat offenders." ...
The Times Union
Copyright 1998 The Hearst Corporation (Albany, NY)
May 12, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: Honor for Barshied
HIGHLIGHT: Averill Park runner awarded $2,500 for athletics and academics
Senior Ben Barshied of Averill Park High has been named a regional winner in the 10th annual ESPN SportsFigures Scholarship and will receive a $2,500 grant to reward his excellence in academics and athletics. The award was formerly called the Scholastic Sports America Award.
Barshied, who competes in cross country and indoor and outdoor track for the Warriors, ranks first in his class (98.9 grade point average) and scored 1,580 on his SATs. He's also president of the senior class.
In cross country, Barshied has been a Colonial Council all-star for four seasons and captained the Averill Park team both as a junior and senior.
He holds three records (3,000, 3,200 and two-mile) in indoor track and one record (3,200) in outdoor track. He finished fifth in the state in the 3,200 in Class B last year.
Barshied, also a finalist for the sixth annual Sports Foundation Scholar Athlete award Wednesday at the Albany Omni, will attend Princeton University in the fall. ...
Business Wire
Copyright 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
May 11, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: Michael E. Hogan Appointed Chief Scientific Officer at Genometrix
DATELINE: THE WOODLANDS, TexasProfessor Michael E. Hogan of Baylor College of Medicine's Molecular Physiology and Biophysics Department has been appointed chief scientific officer at Genometrix Incorporated, a biotechnology company that develops microarray devices for pharmaceutical, diagnostic and genetics uses.
Dr. Hogan has served as the company's scientific advisor since its founding in 1993 and as an advisor to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the fields of chemical carcinogens, pharmaceutical design and DNA technologies. Currently he is heading a collaborative project with Genometrix, Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and The National Cancer Institute to develop microarray-based systems for cancer research, assessment and diagnosis. ...
After receiving his Ph.D. in physical biochemistry from Yale University in 1978, Dr. Hogan was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the Damon Runyan-Walter Winchell Cancer Fund at Stanford. He held the position of assistant professor of molecular biology at Princeton University and has been at Baylor College of Medicine since 1988. ...
The Ottawa Citizen
Copyright 1998 Southam Inc.
May 11, 1998, Monday, FINAL EDITIONHEADLINE: Time travel not as far out as you think
BYLINE: ROBERT MATTHEWS; THE DAILY TELEGRAPHDATELINE: LONDON
Last week astronomers from the California Institute of Technology announced they had detected a cosmic explosion which, for a couple of seconds, emitted as much energy as all the stars in the universe.
Known as a gamma ray burster, its precise cause is something of a mystery, the sheer violence of the event leaving even the most imaginative astrophysicists groping for explanations. The best they have come up with is that perhaps two spinning black holes slammed into each other and evaporated.
Whatever it was, at least one news report declared that it took place last December -- which is unlikely, for if so powerful an explosion took place so close that its light reached us in just six months, we would not be around to read about it now.
What the report really meant was that the explosion had been detected last December -- the light travelling an estimated 12,000 million years from the edge of the universe to reach us. ...
But as the physicist Prof. John Barrow shows in his thought-provoking new book Impossibility (Oxford University Press), the arguments against time travel are not as impressive as one might think.
The standard put-down for time travel is the so-called Grandfather Paradox: The idea of going back in time and doing something inconsistent with the present. The example is of travelling back a few decades and accidentally killing your grandfather before you had been conceived. One then has the paradox of time-travellers who were never born going back to kill their ancestors...
In other words, time-travellers may be capable of going back in time, but only as observers.
If correct, this argument would reduce time-machines to the level of a stargazer's telescope that allows one to observe the universe as it was long ago. Happily, a somewhat less defeatist resolution of the Grandfather Paradox has recently been put forward by Nicholas Smith, a philosopher at Princeton University. ...
Sacramento Bee
Copyright 1998 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.
May 11, 1998SECTION: EDITORIALS
HEADLINE: POST-NAFTA IMMIGRATION TRENDS: GLOBALISM BITES BACK
BYLINE: Douglas S. Massey
Most people think that Mexican immigrants head north simply because wages are low in Mexico and high in the United States. The U.S. Border Patrol's latest multibillion-dollar campaign has been designed accordingly. But the reality is more complicated , and that is why American immigration policy has been so spectacularly unsuccessful.
As part of an international committee, I recently surveyed research on immigration from around the world. I have also recently completed my own study of Mexico-U.S. migration. Both exercises yielded the same conclusion: Immigrants tend to come not from the poorest communities, but from places undergoing rapid growth as a result of their entrance into the new global market. Rather than seeking to settle abroad to reap higher lifetime incomes, immigrants more often are seeking resources to take back home -- resources for dealing with development itself. ...
Beefing up border patrols? Thomas Espenshade, professor of sociology at Princeton University, has analyzed Immigration and Naturalization Service statistics from 1977 through 1988 and found that tougher border enforcement had virtually no deterrent effect on migration of undocumented workers. In my own study with Kristin Espinosa, we found that border crackdowns actually have the perverse effect of inducing people to begin migrating for fear that conditions at the border will get even worse, and then inducing them to stay longer to avoid the hazards of crossing again. ...
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company
May 10, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: A fight for New Seabury: Carl Icahn seeks to grab control of the 2,000-acre resort from its longtime owner in a war of bankruptcy plans
BYLINE: By Karen Curran, Globe Correspondent
DATELINE: MASHPEE
Armed with a bold plan, Carl C. Icahn, one of the nation's most successful investors, is attempting to wrest control of New Seabury from longtime owner Christopher Burden. Once one of the premier resorts on the East Coast, the 2,000-acre seaside community was forced to file for bankruptcy in March 1997.
Icahn plans to return New Seabury to a first-class resort centered by the two existing golf courses. He is also considering a major refurbishment or replacement of the golf clubhouse and substantial improvement of the beach, dining and tennis facilities.
New Seabury is currently more than $40 million in debt. Icahn, in a carefully orchestrated bid for ownership that began last August, has become its largest creditor. ...
The 1996 Forbes 400 list puts 61-year-old Icahn's fortune at $950 million. He was raised in a middle-class section of Queens, New York. With $4,000 in poker winnings, he dropped out of Princeton University to head for Wall Street. By 1968 he had parlayed it into a $400,000 seat on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Icahn's forte is investing in companies for profit. His most well-known run at RJR Nabisco recently cleared $130 million on his 19.9 million-share stake. ...
The Columbus Dispatch
Copyright 1998 The Columbus Dispatch
May 10, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: REWARD IS SWEET FOR TWIN GRADS; HOME-SCHOOLED STUDENTS READY TO GO TO PRINCETON
BYLINE: Roger Alford , Dispatch Staff ReporterAt times, Charles Nabrit and his wife, Paula Penn-Nabrit, questioned their decision to educate their children at home.
But not anymore.
Not since the letters arrived with the news that their twin sons, Damon and Charles, had been accepted at Princeton University.
Those letters were proof to the couple that they had done right 10 years ago when they pulled their children out of traditional schools.
''As home-school students, they never had anyone to compare themselves to,'' Nabrit said. ''They didn't know how they stacked up with other students. So the college admission was validation for us.'' ...
At Princeton, Damon plans to study biology and Charles will study computer science. The couple said their sons will receive partial scholarships. ...
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company
May 10, 1998, Sunday, Home EditionHEADLINE: CAMPUS & CAREER;
COMMUNITY ACTIVISM ON RISE AMONG STUDENTS;VOLUNTEERISM: INTEREST IN POLITICS HAS DECLINED. COLUMBIA PRESIDENT SAYS PUBLIC SERVICE MAY BE SEEN AS AN ALTERNATIVE.
BYLINE: JOHN J. GOLDMAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Gray skies and wind cold enough to cause shivers failed to dampen the enthusiasm of almost 1,000 students who gathered on Columbia University's campus on a recent Saturday morning for a unique pep rally.
After a short speech by Columbia President George Rupp, who praised their efforts and pledged to work in the crew renovating Harlem brownstones, the student volunteers fanned out to more than 40 projects throughout the city.
Their tasks included not only painting and construction, but clearing rubbish from parks, fixing food for homeless shelters, sorting books for a public school's library, helping people with AIDS, assembling bleach kits for a needle exchange program, and preparing clothing for low-income women going on job interviews.
Clearly, the celebration of community service--meticulously organized by students--was both a tribute to idealism and conscience. It united the campus in helping Columbia's neighbors and mirrored volunteer efforts at other colleges across the nation. ...
A 1964 graduate of Princeton University, Rupp recalled his own political commitment during his student years.
"I was very heavily involved in both the civil rights movement, and from the mid-'60s on, in anti-Vietnam," he said. "I think it is fair to say that national politics did seem a vehicle for national change.
"Many of us were excited about involvement in national politics even if it was in an antagonistic form. . . . I see less of that now among our students.
"I think this is part of a very large cultural change," Columbia's president added. "I would characterize the cultural change as the collapse in the confidence of secular liberalism to solve our problems. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 10, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Word for Word/Historical 'What Ifs?';
Annie Could've Gotten Her Gun And Blown Away the Kaiser
HISTORIANS try to answer many questions, but the one they seem to have the most fun with is, "What if?"
Case in point: the current issue of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, 37 military historians were asked to ponder what might have been if fickle circumstance broke another way at this or that pivotal moment.
Robert Cowley, the journal's editor, writes that such musings "can reveal in startling outlines the essential stakes of a confrontation." Four selections are excerpted below. ...
Josiah Ober
Alexander Dies Young
At the battle of the river Granicus (334 B.C.), the first major engagement of Alexander the Great's invasion of the Persian Empire, Alexander was nearly killed. . . . Alexander was confronted by an ax-wielding Persian who dealt the young Macedonian king a heavy blow to the head. Alexander's helmet was damaged; a second strike would certainly kill him. At this moment, one of Alexander's companions, Cleitus the Black, speared the Persian axman. . . . What if Cleitus had been a second or two slower with his spear? If Alexander had died at age 22 (instead of age 33, in 323 B.C.) human history would have been very different indeed. . . .
Absent a strong king . . . Macedon would quickly have devolved into chaos, its remarkable potential exhausted by squabbling among local notables. There would be no sustained Persian expedition, and the Greek city-states of the south would soon regain their independence. . . .
There would have been no brilliant Hellenistic period, no integration of a wider world into a Greek political-cultural sphere. Without the challenge of strong Greek influence, Judaism would have developed in very different ways; Jesus of Nazareth might have stuck to carpentry. As they expanded eastward in the second century B.C., the Romans would have encountered a political situation much less conducive to the creation of unified Mediterranean empire. ...
Josiah Ober heads the classics department at Princeton University.
The Record
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp. (Bergen County, NJ)
May 10, 1998; SUNDAYHEADLINE: INDIAN HILLS SENIOR LIVES HER DREAM
COLUMN: NORTH JERSEY SCHOLAR
BYLINE: KAET SAKS, Staff WriterThe first time she saw Princeton, Kathleen Pellicci was 7. Her parents visited the university with Kathleen and her younger sister in tow.
"They took a photo of us in T-shirts that had little tigers the Princeton mascot on them, and I thought the campus was so beautiful, I said: 'I want to come to this school one day, " Kathleen recalled.
Through the years, she often thought about that dream and wondered if she would ever be able to make it come true.
In February, she did just that.
A senior at Indian Hills High School in Oakland, Kathleen learned that she had been accepted on early decision for admission to Princeton. ...
Calgary Herald
Copyright 1998 Southam Inc.
May 9, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: Digital sky survey team to map universe
BYLINE: ALEXANDRA WITZE, KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: DALLASNobody will be able to complain of feeling lost in the universe once the Sloan Digital Sky Survey gets under way.
Astronomers are one-upping Rand McNally by compiling a comprehensive road map to the universe. From highways of galaxies to the back roads of quasars, more than 50 million celestial objects will be put on the most complete sky map ever.
"Every astronomer, professional and amateur, will in the next decade use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey," says astrophysicist Michael Turner of the University of Chicago.
The project is expected to be finished in about six years, creating the first new celestial map in more than 40 years. Professional and amateur astronomers alike will use it to find their way around the sky, scientists say. ...
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 scrutinize 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. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
May 9, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: U.S. JOBLESS RATE PLUNGES TO 4.3%, LOWEST SINCE 1970
BYLINE: By SYLVIA NASAR
The nation's unemployment rate tumbled in April to 4.3 percent, the lowest level in nearly three decades, and employers added more than a quarter-million jobs to payrolls, the Labor Department said yesterday.
The steep drop in unemployment, from 4.7 percent in March, is superb news for most Americans whose pay is now rising faster than the cost of living and who are employed in greater numbers -- 64.2 percent of the population -- than ever.
"It's a great number," said Arthur J. Rolnick, senior vice president of research at the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. "This is exactly what we have been shooting for for almost 20 years: strong growth and low inflation." ...
The report underscored the very strong start to the second quarter. The momentum in the job market is such that most economists, inside the Fed and out, expect the unemployment rate to edge down even further.
"There's still room to move down," said Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University, "because of the pool of the people who are available to work, especially high school dropouts and workers who have only high school degrees." ...
New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd.
May 9, 1998HEADLINE: Us and them
BYLINE: Nell BoyceHIGHLIGHT: 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.
What about people who say that you should stop cloning with laws ? For example, Britain has banned human cloning since 1990.
Human cloning will not harm people if couples use it to have children that they're going to love, and the children are healthy. Many Americans would see laws banning cloning as irrational, and they would try to get around them, in the same way that British women come to America right now to buy human eggs because they can't buy them in Britain. ...
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times Company
May 9, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: SEEING IS BELIEVING -- WITH 3D SOFTWARE AND ITS VIRTUAL TOURS,' THE CHANCE TO TINKER COMES LONG BEFORE THE FIRST NAIL IS STRUCK
BYLINE: ALLAN HOFFMAN, LINDA SHAW; NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE: SEATTLE TIMES STAFF
When one of their clients had trouble visualizing a home renovation project, architects Ken Gruskin and Michael Markovitz turned to the computer.
"To gain their confidence," says Gruskin, "we created a virtual model."
With a three-dimensional virtual version of the project, the architects were able to take the couple on an electronic "walk-through," giving them a feel for the way their ranch-style home would look after the renovations. Walls would be added and removed. A bedroom would be converted into a home office. The entryway would be transformed, with low walls added between the foyer and the living room.
"She said the walls felt too high," says Gruskin. "While she was sitting there, we lowered the walls, and then we walked her through again." ...
Broderbund claims: "3D Home Architect Deluxe gives you all the tools and confidence you need to design your own dream house, remodel your existing home or plan an addition. It's that easy and complete."
Not quite, according to the pros.
"Home-design software isn't going to make you a designer, any more than me owning MacInTax makes me an accountant," says Kevin Lippert, a lecturer on computing and architecture at Princeton Universty's School of Architecture. ...