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Princeton in the News
September 19 to 28, 1998 | Feedback
Princeton in the News September 19, 1998 through September 28, 1998
HIGHLIGHTS: Stadium opens to rave reviews; Affirmative Action findings by Bowen/Bok receive attention on editorial pages
Astronomy
Copyright 1998 Kalmbach Publishing Company
October, 1998HEADLINE: Outsmarting the early universe; Cover Story
BYLINE: Bartusiak, MarciaChuck Steidel, one of the nations top young astronomers, has pioneered a new way to study the distant universe.
As the afternoon shadows lengthen, puffs of clouds move down the mountain like ghostly apparitions. Ever so slowly, this cool autumnal day, the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea clears. And just in time.
Twelve minutes after nightfall, Charles Steidel directs one of the twin Keck telescopes to its first target, a deep field in the constellation Aquarius. Steidel is actually conducting his run remotely from the observatory's ranch-like headquarters, situated in the quaint town of Waimea lower down on the mountain. Steidel loves this set-up. He can fly in quickly from Caltech, where he is a professor, no longer losing time acclimating to a two-mile-high site. Known as Chuck to his friends, Steidel has a formal demeanor, polite and lowery. His clothes are casual, the requisite uniform for observing: green sweat-shirt and jeans. Tonight, he and his graduate student Kurt Adelberger are attempting to map the distribution of young galaxies in the early universe. They want to know how the galaxies congregate into giant clusters.
Just a decade ago the far universe was a dim mirage. Now, thanks to new technologies and clever strategies, astronomers are pushing outward billions of light-years, to nearly the edge of the visible universe and the beginning of time, given the amount of time it takes light to travel those great distances. Steidel's triumph in this endeavor was mastering a technique for detecting young galaxies. He might be called the Henry Ford of galaxy hunting: He began finding infant galaxies wholesale, in assembly-like fashion. "I think Chuck's work is one of the most important developments in observational astronomy in the last 10 or 20 years," says Caltech astronomer Wallace Sargent. ...
Indeed, upon entering Princeton University in 1980, he at first feared that adopting a science major would provide no more than vocational training, simply acquiring the tools of a trade. But he eventually learned that the astronomy department offered the opportunity to do research. ...
While his social life was booming, he feared failure in his studies. His senior thesis put limits on identifying galaxies at great distances, work "reduced to rubble by Princeton's top faculty members, Jerry Ostriker, James Gunn, and Ed Turner. The worst experience I've ever had in astronomy,' he says. But sheer inertia kept him in the game. Although theory is stressed at Princeton, he eventually chose Caltech, a haven for observers, for graduate school. "A visit to the 200-inch at Palomar in the spring of 1984 clinched it for me,' he explains. "Keck is high-tech, but it has no personality like the 200-inch has. Palomar's dome has a classical beauty. It was then that I decided to be an observer." ...
Corporate Legal Times
Copyright 1998 Corporate Legal Times Corporation
October, 1998BYLINE: DAVID M. MIRCHIN; David M. Mirchin is vice president and general counsel of London- and Boston-based SilverPlatter Information Inc., an Internet and CD-ROM publisher of bibliographic and full-text databases for researchers and professionals.
Can You Be Held Legally Liable for Hypertext Linking?
THE ISSUE of liability for hypertext linking was raised in two recent cases, one in Scotland and one in New York.
In the Scottish case of Shetland Times v. Jonathan Wills and Zetnews, the Shetland News set up a web site that included headlines copied from its arch competitor, the Shetland Times.
When users at the Shetland News' web site clicked on a headline, they were sent to the Shetland Times' site, where the entire article was displayed. The Times claimed this link violated its copyright and misled users into thinking the articles were part of the News, when in fact they were written by Times correspondents. ...
Commercial Fair Play
These cases are essentially about commercial fair play. They represent instances where the linking organization was accused of unfairly piggybacking on the content and work of the linked party, and benefiting from the work of the content provider. ...
Recommendations
Linking by underlining the name of the linked site should be legal, and should not require the linked site's permission.
Consent to link should be obtained when the link violates commercial fair play or constitutes a trespass, violating the linked site's reasonable expectation of privacy. Based on this standard, consent should be obtained when:
* The link falsely implies an affiliation between sites;
* The link uses the trademark or logo of the linked site;
* Using an IMG (image) link;* Deep linking to an internal page in circumvention of the linked site's reasonably effective preventive measures; or
* Using a frame that modifies or distorts the linked site. ...
An IMG link was involved in a dispute involving the "Dilbert Hack Page." Dan Wallach, a computer science graduate student at Princeton University, used an IMG link to create this page, but he reluctantly agreed to take down the link following letters from attorneys at United Media, Dilbert's syndicators. You can follow the trail at www.cs.Princeton.edu/ dwallach/dilbert/.
If your organization tends toward the "better safe than sorry" dictum, consider obtaining written permission to use an IMG link. ...
Sky & Telescope
Copyright 1998 Sky Publishing Corporation
October, 1998HEADLINE: Where have all the baryons gone? interstellar matter
We live in a world made mostly of baryons: Protons and neutrons, the particles that provide nearly all the mass of ordinary matter, from stars and galaxies to the pages of this magazine. (The electron, the third component of atoms, is not classified as a baryon and is nearly 2,000 times less massive than a proton or neutron.) More than a decade ago, cosmologists analyzed the mix of chemical elements that exist now and, based on the nuclear reactions that happened in the Big Bang, predicted the total amount of ordinary matter that ought to exist. That amount is about 4 percent of the "closure density" of the universe: the amount of mass that would make the universe balance between expanding forever and collapsing. However, despite their best efforts, astronomers have found only enough stars, gas, and stellar remnants to account for about 0.7 percent of the closure density. So where are the rest of the baryons?
Renyue Cen and Jeremiah P. Ostriker (Princeton University) believe they have part of the answer. Their simulations, presented to the American Astronomical Society last June, show that more than half of all the ordinary matter in the universe now may be in the form of a hot, intergalactic plasma. Cen and Ostriker say that this gas, with temperatures near 1 million degrees Kelvin, is getting hotter as the universe grows older. Their simulations show that cooler gas (below 100,000 [degrees] K) was by far the dominant form of baryonic matter in the early universe - a notion buttressed by recent observations. But as the universe ages, the gas heats up, say Cen and Ostriker, primarily because of strong shock waves that occur when very large gas clouds collide. ...
Business Week
Copyright 1998 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
September 28, 1998HEADLINE: CHAIRMAN FORD
BYLINE: BY KEITH NAUGHTON; With Kathleen Kerwin in Detroit
HIGHLIGHT: His Roots, His Role, His PrioritiesWilliam Clay Ford Jr. is fuming. The Detroit Lions, the football team he manages and co-owns with his dad, have just suffered a heartbreaking overtime loss to the Cincinnati Bengals -- the second straight loss of the season. Disheveled and hoarse, he strides into the locker room and kicks a chair in disgust. ''I'm sick of losing,'' he grumbles. ''I hate this.'' But as sportswriters gather around him, he cools off, praises his coaching staff, and says only they will decide whether to bench quarterback Scott Mitchell for throwing two critical interceptions. ''It's not all Scott's fault today,'' he says of the 34-28 loss.
Bill Ford Jr. is about to have a lot bigger problems than interceptions to worry about. On Sept. 9, he was named to succeed Ford Motor Co.'s Alexander J. Trotman as chairman of the automotive giant founded by his great-grandfather Henry Ford nearly a century ago. Running a football team, of course, is small potatoes compared with overseeing the world's second-largest carmaker. But the chair-kicking episode gives a glimmer of what Chairman Ford will be like. ...
But it was the classroom, not the playing field, that counted most in the family, and Bill Jr. excelled there, too. At Princeton University, where he met his wife, Lisa Vanderzee, he majored in political science, writing his senior thesis on Ford's labor relations. In 1983, four years after joining the company, he took time off to earn a masters in management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bill also read deeply about environmental issues. He studied the works of nature author Edward Abbey and read Rachel Carson's seminal work, Silent Spring. As a teenager, he began volunteering on clean-water projects and became involved in Earth Day. ''It struck a chord with me very young,'' he says. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 28, 1998, Monday, Late Edition - FinalHEADLINE: Carol Kay, Scholar And Professor, 51
Carol Kay, a professor of 18th-century literature and culture at the University of Pittsburgh, died on Sept. 12 at Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh. She was 51.
The cause was aplastic anemia, said her husband, Jonathan Arac.
Ms. Kay wrote "Political Constructions" (Cornell University Press, 1988), which examined the political history, moral philosophy and fiction between the English civil war and the French Revolution. Claudia L. Johnson, a professor of English at Princeton University, called the book "one of this generation's most important studies of 18th-century fiction."
Ms. Kay graduated from Radcliffe College in 1967 and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1975. From 1973 to 1979 she taught English at Princeton. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 28, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: Peter Putnam, 78; Scholar Wrote of His Blindness
BYLINE: By ERIC PACEPeter Brock Putnam, a blind historian who spoke in public and wrote about blindness and was active in nonprofit organizations, died on Wednesday at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 78.
He had suffered from lymphoma for three years, said his son Brock.
Peter Brock Putnam had his sight when he was born, in Fort Oglethorpe, Ga. He went on to graduate from Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., and entered Princeton University. When he was a 20-year-old Princeton undergraduate, he was blinded when he shot himself in the head with a .22-caliber rifle while trying to commit suicide during "a state of depression," his son Brock said.
Later, Peter Brock Putnam recalled that after the shooting, "in a 10-day sleep I cannot remember, I had a miraculous awakening to life and a sense of my own selfhood previously lacking. Near death and totally blind, I was more alive than I ever had been." ...
The Boston Herald
Copyright 1998 Boston Herald Inc.
September 27, 1998 SundayHEADLINE: 'Inside the Sky' author finds that to air is human
BYLINE: By John McMurtrieThe author Paul Theroux, a fan of trains, dreads air travel, which he has described as passing through a void in a carpeted tube.
To William Langewiesche, the air itself is a worthy destination. A pilot since his 1960s childhood - when he was taught by his test-pilot father - Langewiesche has spent the better part of his life observing the sky.
After years of working as an air-taxi pilot and flying cargo around the world, Langewiesche now writes for a living. His latest book, "Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight," is, as he calls it, "a guide to a still unsettled place in the human experience."
Early on in this thoughtful, often poetic work, Langewiesche shows the reader how underappreciated the sky is.
A friend of his at Princeton University denies that Langewiesche "visited" places he flew over in a low-altitude trip along the Eastern seaboard. Langewiesche, to prove his point, takes his friend on a flight over Princeton. ...
Copley News Service
Copyright 1998 Copley News Service
September 27, 1998, Sunday
HEADLINE: AWAY FROM THE MANGERMixing the Santa myth with the Messiah
BYLINE: Sandi DolbeeThere he kneels, red stocking cap beside him, white head of hair bowed, hands clasped at the foot of the manger. Santa Claus worshiping the Christ Child.
The statuette is a popular seller this time of year at O'Connor's Church Goods in San Diego.
''It brings both thoughts together,'' says Jacquelyn O'Connor. ''It's especially good for parents teaching children.''
She adds, ''They see Santa Claus and the birth of Jesus and they remember why we're celebrating Christmas.''
But it's not for everybody.
''I have a problem with that,'' says the Rev. Mark Cansino, associate pastor of youth and family ministries at the Lutheran Church of the Incarnation in Poway, Calif.
For Cansino, and other Christians, mixing the myth with the Messiah may be hazardous to spiritual health. ...
There, somewhere between Bethlehem and the North Pole, the manger and the shopping malls, lies the great Santa Claus debate for Christians. It's older than Rudolph and more complicated than getting to all the houses around the world in one night.
''There's a range of responses that Christians have had on that,'' says Leigh Eric Schmidt, a professor of religion at Princeton University, and author of the new book, ''Consumer Rites: The Buying & Selling of American Holidays.''
''People have complained for about a century that this is Santa Claus Day and we need to get rid of Santa Claus and replace him with Jesus,'' says Schmidt. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 27, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: GOVERNMENT;
One Lawmaker's Ideas on Peeling Away Layers of Redundant ServicesBYLINE: By RICHARD TRENNER
In her quest for consolidation of municipal services, Governor Whitman may find an unexpected ally in a prominent Democrat who once sought his party's nomination for governor.
Alan J. Karcher, a former speaker of the New Jersey Assembly who is an ardent advocate of municipal consolidation, believes "the costs of maintaining New Jersey's multiple and redundant jurisdictions mount into the billions of dollars."
Mr. Karcher, a 55-year-old Princeton resident who represented Middlesex County in the Legislature for 17 years before retiring in 1990, has just completed a book, "New Jersey's Multiple Municipal Madness," (Rutgers University Press, 1998) in which he proposes that many of the state's 566 municipalities be shown the door.
A key theme of Mr. Karcher is that the motives for creating so many municipalities, largely in the 19th century, were usually "petty, personal" and, by today's standards, politically incorrect. ...
About 85 years earlier, New Jersey's first borough -- Princeton Borough -- was created, Mr. Karcher writes, "for easier control of alcohol consumption and repression of African-Americans." Indeed, he sees the creation of local jurisdictions as having been, until the advent of zoning in the 1920's, a popular tool for segregating people along economic, class and racial lines. ...
The urban-suburban tug-of-war and land use patterns have long concerned Mr. Karcher, according to Karen Jezierny, an assistant dean at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and an aide to Mr. Karcher in the Assembly. "He has been a visionary" in terms of regional planning and the need to counter the further division of New Jersey into prosperous suburbs and poor cities, Ms. Jezierny said. ...
Newsday
Copyright 1998 Newsday, Inc. (New York, NY)
September 27, 1998, Sunday
HEADLINE: BORN IN THE USABYLINE: BY RICHARD FIRSTMAN. Richard Firstman is an author and freelance writer.
Men live in dreams and in realities.
Milovan Djilas, "Conversations with Stalin"
THE NEW CUSTODIAN went from room to room after the school buses rumbled off, a solitary figure sweeping floors, emptying waste baskets, mopping up. Danyk Szafranski was 65 years old and had a broad, weathered face, bushy gray hair and a reticent smile. He was a latecoming immigrant, a man who had lived a lifetime on the frontier of the Soviet Union. He spoke almost no English, but managed to convey to anyone who cared to notice that he was very, very glad to be here in Woodland Middle School, East Meadow, New York, United States of America. Not many did notice, though. Mostly, the teachers still in the building returned his polite nods on their way to the parking lot. Good night, they might say as they passed, leaving the new custodian to his night's work in the darkening hallways. ...
Over the next couple of years, Danyk told Mary Friedman bits and pieces about his family. He had come to America with his wife, Olga, in 1992. ...
When Danyk was 2, Mary received word that her mother, a widow, was ill. She and Sam decided she should go back to Ukraine to take care of her until she was well. And it was agreed that she would take Danyk with her, so that her husband could stay behind in America to work and save money. Mother and child sailed to Europe in 1933 for what was expected to be a visit, though one of undetermined duration. ...
And no more freedom to leave. Under American law, Danyk's birth in the United States gave him automatic citizenship. But in Stalin's USSR, citizenship was even more involuntary. With the latest appropriation of the western Ukraine, Mary - first a citizen of Austria and then of Poland - found that she was now a citizen of the Soviet Union. And so was her son. When she applied for exit visas to return to the United States, she was summarily turned down. ...
As Danyk saw, he was not the only American citizen in this situation. What he didn't know was how many there were. Starting in the 1930s and worsening in the early days of the Cold War, the Soviet Union refused to recognize American citizenship for travelers with direct family ties to Soviet territories, and prohibited them from leaving once they arrived for visits. In one of those boxes at the National Archives is a revealing 11-page memorandum from the embassy in Moscow, dated Jan. 18, 1949, and titled "Treatment of American Citizens in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." It is marked "Secret." Accompanied by interviews with 20 Eastern European-Americans barred from leaving the Soviet Union, the dispatch reported that there were then 1,900 people with unresolved cases - including 21 children separated from parents in the United States. ...
The report attributed the heart of the problem to the Kremlin's deep-seated fears that those who were allowed to leave would not only breach the USSR's ironclad isolation from the west but would spread negative perceptions of the Soviet Union to the outside world - acting, in effect, as spies. Most suspect were people from remote areas, like Ternopol, that were closed to foreign travelers. But the report suggested that the other part of the problem - the embassy's impotence - was the result of Washington's unwillingness to make a serious issue of it: It was American foreign policy in this precarious time that only so much would be done for these 1,900 people. "These were real tragedies," says Robert C. Tucker, professor emeritus of politics at Princeton University, who worked in the embassy in those years. ...
Newsday
Copyright 1998 Newsday, Inc.
September 27, 1998, Sunday
HEADLINE: OBITUARIES / JEFFREY MOSS, 56,COMPOSER, CO-FOUNDED SESAME STREET
BYLINE: THE ASSOCIATED PRESSJeffrey Moss, a co-founder of "Sesame Street" who helped create Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch and wrote the tunes "Rubber Duckie" and "I Love Trash," has died. He was 56.
He died of colon cancer at his home in Manhattan on Thursday.
Mr. Moss won 14 Emmy and four Grammy awards as head writer and composer-lyricist for the educational show seen by millions of children in 130 countries. He also earned an Oscar nomination for his lyrics for "The Muppets Take Manhattan." ...
A Manhattan native whose father was an actor and mother was a writer, Mr. Moss graduated from Princeton University and took a job as a production assistant on CBS "Captain Kangaroo." He later became one of the show's writers. He was recruited to write for "Sesame Street," a show he helped create in 1969 with Muppets wizard Jim Henson and Joe Raposo, the musical director. ...
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL
Copyright 1998 Sentinel Communications Co.
September 27, 1998
HEADLINE: SEEKING TO PRESERVE THE PAST
BYLINE: Reviewed by Barbara J. Saffir, Sentinel Architecture CriticArthur Cotton Moore, an architect who helped ignite the modern preservationist movement, wields words as powerfully as he does images.
In The Powers of Preservation, the sixth-generation Washingtonian has created a colorful memoir of his extensive works, as well as a text for those looking for a pragmatic approach to preserving U.S. cities. ...
In his book, he does not offer a mere nuts-and-bolts approach to his projects, nor does he impart a strict restorational philosophy.
Instead, he captures Washington's long road to regentrification with the zeal of a youngster ripping open presents on Christmas morning and the verbal palette of a Princeton University graduate, which he happens to be. ...
THE INDEPENDENT
Copyright 1998 by Worldsources, Inc.
September 26, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: The global economy of the coming century: A cautious wait
BYLINE: Rebecca SultanaAS the millennium approaches, an economic earthquake is shaking the globe, producing an upheaval comparable to the Industrial Revolution that gave birth to the manufacturing age. The Information Revolution is powered by breathtaking technological advances, accelerating world trade and the spread of free market policies. Economic barriers are being torn down. Vast new markets beckon. All the major regions are growing, reforms continue and prospects for the developing world have rarely looked better. ...
The problem is that most proposals for what Bill Clinton calls the "new international economic architecture" either lack precision or are politically unrealistic. In any case, in this brave new world, the international economic system is unlikely to escape the crises and crashes as seen in Mexico, Russia and the East Asia. As Peter Kenen, a Princeton University product, now in Washington Institute for international Economics, concluded in a study, "the future world could be divided between wealthy and stable states and a sea of failed states; even in the absence of cataclysmic change, moreover, there will be unpleasant shocks.
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 26, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: New Jersey Turnpike Link Dealt Setback by E.P.A.
BYLINE: By RONALD SMOTHERS
DATELINE: EDISON, N.J., Sept. 25
In the latest setback for New Jersey's longest-pending highway project, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it was opposed to a $300 million, high-speed, limited-access highway that would connect the New Jersey Turnpike with the thriving business corridor along Route 1 in the central part of the state.
After nearly 18 months of studying the proposed highway, the agency concluded that the highway would not solve the area's many transportation problems, as its proponents had insisted it would, and that it would not justify the loss of 18 acres of wetlands. ...
Cathy Dowgin, a South Brunswick resident and a leader in the local campaign against Route 92, applauded the environmental agency's ruling, saying it would save soybean fields and fruit orchards that are visible from her house from being turned into a ribbon of highway.
For five years, her group has been fighting forces ranging from the corporate employers along Route 1 to Princeton University's president to top elected officials, and it was only in the last year, she said, that the group secured the support of national, regional and statewide organizations like the Sierra Club, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group. ...
Ventura County Star
Copyright 1998 Ventura County Star
(Ventura County, Ca.) September 26, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: Briefs: Brothers become rivals for a day/Garrett shows way for Ivy Leaguers
Even Superman couldn't accomplish what Dallas Cowboys quarterback Jason Garrett did -- make the jump from the Ivy League to the National Football League.
Garrett, a 1989 graduate of Princeton University, led the Cowboys to a 31-7 win over the defending NFC East champion New York Giants on Monday night and will start in this week's game against the Oakland Raiders.
Dean Cain, the actor who played Superman in the television series "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," was an All-Ivy League safety at Princeton from 1985-87 and the best he could get was a free-agent contract with the Buffalo Bills, although he was injured and didn't make the team.
"I think the jump for anybody is difficult," Garrett said. "But it's certainly even more difficult for players from the Ivys."
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Copyright 1998 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.
September 25, 1998 Friday
OPINIONS
HEADLINE: TOUGH PUNISHMENT WORKS TO DETER CRIMINALSWe have been keeping score as the evidence continues to roll in: Those who perceived and predicted that punishment is linked to plummeting crime rates are way ahead of those who argued otherwise.
One of the first detailed analyses was made in Arizona years ago by Michael K. Block, a professor of economics and law at the University of Arizona, and attorney Steve Twist, in a study titled Lessons from the '80s: Incarceration Works.
There also was a study of the Wisconsin prison system by John J. DiIulio Jr., professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. DiIulio found that it cost about twice as much to keep Wisconsin criminals on the streets without supervision as it does to imprison them. DiIulio summarized that "imprisonment is a valuable corrections option from which the state cannot afford to shrink." ...
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company
September 25, 1998, Friday, City EditionHEADLINE: Names & Faces
BYLINE: By Beth Carney and Maureen Dezell, Globe Staff'Totally' an insider's view
New England teenager Dillon Teachout has a unique perspective on the Monica Lewinsky affair. The 19-year-old Vermonter spent the last couple of weeks of her summer working as, yes, an intern in Kenneth Starr's office during the frantic preparation of his report, according to the Washington, D.C.-based weekly, The Legal Times. A sophomore at Princeton University, Teachout raves about the independent prosecutor. "I really have never encountered a nicer group of people," she said, calling Starr "totally nice." "He went around after the report came out and hugged the three writers to thank them for their work," she said. As for Lewinsky, Teachout said she felt "really kind of sad" that Lewinsky's private notes were made public. Teachout may have learned something about unwanted publicity herself. She said, after the Legal Times story, "We've decided I would not give any more interviews."
The New York Post
Copyright 1998 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.
September 25, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: "ELECTRA' MAY MOVE TO B'WAY
BYLINE: Ward Morehouse IIIFOR the first time since 1994, when Diana Rigg starred in an accaimed revival of Medea, Greek tragedy is returning to the Great White Way.
Princeton University's McCarter Theater is in talks with the Shubert Organization, which owns 16 Broadway theaters, about moving the McCarter's highly praised production of Electra, Sophocles' ancient tale of incest.
It stars Zoe Wanamaker as the half-mad Electra and Claire Bloom as her murderous mother, Clytemnestra.
Electra, which officially opened in Princeton to a number of rave reviews last week, is set to close there Oct. 4. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 25, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: William Piel Jr., 88, Ex-Corporate Lawyer
William Piel Jr., a leading corporate lawyer of his time, died Sept. 13 at his home in Sherman, Conn. He was 88.
Mr. Piel joined the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell in 1935 and became a partner in 1946. At his retirement in 1980 he was the firm's senior litigating partner.
Born in New York City on Nov. 28, 1909, Mr. Piel graduated in 1932 from Princeton University. He entered Harvard Law School and joined Sullivan & Cromwell soon after graduation. ...
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1998 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
September 25, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
Howard WilliamsHoward Williams, 94, Sarasota, died Sept. 23, 1998.
He was born June 7, 1904, in St. Louis and came to Sarasota 48 years ago from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He served at the American Embassy in Rio de Janeiro and retired as an Army colonel after serving in World War II. He was a member of the Sara Bay Country Club and Biltmore Forest Country Club in North Carolina. He graduated from Princeton University. ...
The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle
Copyright 1998 Southeastern Newspapers Corporation
September 24, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: AUGUSTAN FINDS INTERESTING STORIES IN JAPAN
BYLINE: Charmain Z. Brackett; CorrespondentA visit to Augusta's city sister in Japan while she was a junior at Davidson Fine Arts School sparked a flame of interest in the Far East for Ginny Parker.
''I was one of about 50 students who went to the sister city, Takarazuka,'' said Ms. Parker, who works for an English-language newspaper, The Japan Times, in Tokyo. ''We performed. I played the violin. We were there two weeks, I think.
''It was my first time out of the U.S., and we stayed with host families. I spoke no Japanese . . . I was impressed with Japan and fascinated with the fact that it was not Western.''
Her fascination grew into a desire to learn more about the country and its culture. While at Princeton University, she took a Japanese-language course and the spark grew. She ended up majoring in East Asian studies and graduated in 1996. ...
Business Wire
Copyright 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
September 24, 1998, Thursday
HEADLINE: New Class Of Molecular Compounds Can Lead To Substantially Higher Efficiencies For Universal Display Corp.'s Flat Panel Display TechnologyDATELINE: BALA CYNWYD, Pa
(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 24, 1998-- Research Partners at Princeton University and the University of Southern California Again Show the Extraordinary Potential of Organic Light Emitting Devices (OLED)
Universal Display Corp. (UDC) (NASDAQ:PANL), a developer of flat panel display technology, announced Thursday that its research partners at Princeton University and the University of Southern California had demonstrated the ability to increase the efficiency of OLEDs up to 4 times by using phosphorescent dyes in the devices. This should also reduce power requirements which is important for portable applications. The use of this class of molecules to emit light, announced in the Sept. 10, 1998 issue of Nature, was previously thought to be impossible in OLEDs. "Until now, the maximum energy conversion efficiency from an OLED was assumed to be limited to 25% based on theory. This new discovery increases the potential internal efficiency of OLEDs to 100% for light generation using certain phosphorescent dyes. This is the second time this year that our research team has made a remarkable discovery. What was previously assumed to be impossible for OLEDs has turned out to be not only possible, but desirable, paving the way for the development of highly efficient OLEDs" said Dr. Julia Brown, vice president of Technology Development. "It had previously been shown that adding a fluorescent dye to an OLED increases the brightness and efficiency. Now that it has been shown that phosphorescent dyes can also be used, a clear pathway exists to create longer lived, highly efficient devices with a wider range of color possibilities. ...
Daily Record
Copyright 1998 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail Ltd.
September 24, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: MY E-MALES; I bedded string of lovers Monica tells Internet pal; Monica Lewinsky told friend about a string of lovers whilst pursuing Bill Clinton
BYLINE: Allan Hall
Monica Lewinsky admitted to pals in e-mail messages that she'd bedded a string of lovers even as she lusted for Bill Clinton.
They included a spa nutritionist and a man with whom she boasted of being "sooooooooo naughty".
In the computer notes, gathered by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, she writes about her favourite topics: sex, shopping and her constant failing battle to lose weight. The fine print found buried in the ancillary evidence gives a peek into her private world. ...
She described meeting a "cute" Australian businessman on a visit to Princeton University with her father.
Wondering about romance if the man were to visit the US again, she said: "Hopefully, I'll have lost half my ass by then." ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 24, 1998, Thursday
HEADLINE: Paid Notice: DeathsHEMINGWAY, DAVID S.
HEMINGWAY-David S., 84. Of Riverside, CT on September 17, 1998. Husband of the late Lucy Truesdale Hemingway; son of the late Roy Willet and Mary Booth Hemingway; father of D. Stuart, Jr. (Riverside, Conn), Margaret Hemingway (Washington D.C.), Timothy Truesdale Hemingway (Holland, MI), Barbara Hemingway (Arlington, VA), and Samuel Scott Hemingway (Seattle, WA); brother of Booth Hemingway (Exeter, NH), Harvey W. Hemingway (Woodstock, GA), and Margaret H. Harrington (Rye, NH); also survived by four grandchildren. Graduate of Hotchkiss School in 1932 and Princeton University in 1936. Memorial service to be held at later date. Contributions may be made to Greenwich Hospital, Greenwich, CT, 06830.
The Seattle Times
Copyright 1998 The Seattle Times Company
September 24, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: WE DON'T NEED CALIFORNIA-STYLE SOLUTION' TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
BYLINE: MARK TRAHANT; TIMES STAFF COLUMNIST
This election day, Washington voters ought to strap on gold-colored wrist bracelets that say "W.W.C.D.?" Maybe it will help us figure out those pesky ballot measures. W.W.C.D.? I'll get back to that. First let's look at I-200.
Most people's first reaction to the so-called affirmative-action initiative is emotional. We can't let race be the only reason we hire, get into college or get a contract, right? The word "only" is important because it adds fuel to that emotional reaction by focusing on the apparent unfairness of preferential hiring.
"Only" cuts both ways. What if race and culture are only one part of the decision-making process? Only one item on a long, complicated list of reasons why diversity matters in the 21st century America.
I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't think affirmative action is important; I've benefited from that and other government programs my whole career. I am not self-made and I give credit to all the people - including taxpayers - who have helped me find my path.
Life works in circles. And so it has been for me with affirmative action. When I was a teenager, editing a small tribal newspaper in Idaho, I was on the receiving end of society's generosity. I was given a chance. I had no experience, no college degree and no qualifications. But over the next 25 years I've been able to move around the circle to the contribution side, promoting other people's careers, acting as a mentor and, at times, an employer. ...
But what about college admissions?
"The Shape of the River," a 20-year survey of more than 45,000 former students, says university affirmative-action policies - the act of taking a chance on young people - helped create the African-American middle class. The study, by William Bowen, president of Princeton University, and Derek Bok, a political scientist and former president of Harvard, also shows why affirmative action is important to society: A diverse student body improves the learning atmosphere. Colleges are stronger when they expand the definition of who is qualified to be there. ...
The Associated Press
September 23, 1998, WednesdaySECTION: Commentary
Here are selected recent California newspaper editorials on topics of state interestSacramento Bee: Study makes powerful case for diverse admissions
Two years after passage of California's Proposition 209, questions about the fairness of affirmative action as applied remain, but a major new study sheds new light on some of the arguments. It offers powerful evidence that race-conscious admissions policies at the nation's most elite universities have had positive effects on black and white individuals and provide benefits for society as a whole.
The study by two former Ivy League presidents, William G. Bowen of Princeton University and Derek Bok of Harvard University, directly links the affirmative action policies of 28 of the nation's most selective universities to the creation of "the backbone of the emergent black middle class," and credits them with teaching white students the value of integration.
The study, which focused on blacks, examined the grades, test scores, attitude and achievement in college and subsequent careers of 45,000 students over 20 years. It found that blacks entered the elite schools with lower test scores and received lower grades than their white classmates. But those who graduated were as likely as whites to earn advanced degrees and more likely to obtain professional degrees in law, medicine and business. ...
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company
September 23, 1998, Wednesday
HEADLINE: COMMENTARY;MERIT AND THE RELEVANCE OF RACE IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS;
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: THE USE OF RACE-BASED SELECTION HAS OPENED MANY FIELDS FOR BLACKS, A NEW STUDY SHOWS.
BYLINE: WILLIAM G. BOWEN and DEREK BOK, William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton University, and, Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University, are the authors of, "The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in, College and University Admissions" (Princeton University Press, 1998)
In his classic study of Wall Street lawyers in the 1960s, Erwin Smigel reports that "I only heard of three Negroes who had been hired by large law firms. Two of these were women who did not meet the client." Smigel's statement is not surprising. In the 1960s, few leading professional schools or nationally prominent colleges and universities enrolled more than a handful of minority students. In the late 1960s, however, colleges and universities began to change these statistics, not by establishing quotas, but by considering race, along with many other factors, in deciding whom to admit.
This policy was adopted because of a widely shared conviction that it was simply wrong for overwhelming numbers of minorities to continue holding routine jobs while almost all influential positions were held by whites. Educators also considered it vital to create a more diverse learning environment to prepare students of all races to live and work in a multiracial society.
In recent years, race-sensitive admissions policies have been vigorously contested in California and other states. Surprisingly, however, there has been little hard evidence of how these policies work and what their consequences have been. To remedy this deficiency, we examined the college and later-life experiences of tens of thousands of black and white students who entered 28 selective colleges and universities in the fall of 1976 and the fall of 1989. What did we discover?
Compared with their extremely high-achieving white classmates, blacks in general received somewhat lower college grades and graduated at moderately lower rates. Still, 75% graduated within six years, a figure well above the 40% of blacks and 59% of whites who graduated from all Division I NCAA schools. More than 90% of both blacks and whites in our survey were satisfied or very satisfied with their college experience, and blacks were even more inclined than whites to credit their undergraduate experience with helping them learn crucial skills.
Although more than half of the black students attending these schools would have been rejected under a race-neutral admissions regime, they have done exceedingly well after college. A remarkable 40% of black graduates who entered these selective colleges in 1976 went on to earn PhDs or professional degrees in the most sought-after fields of law, business and medicine. This figure is slightly higher than that for their white classmates and five times higher than that for all black BAs nationwide. ...
Were black students demoralized by competing with whites possessing higher high school grades and test scores? Is it true, as conservative scholar and author Dinesh D'Souza asserts, that "American universities are quite willing to sacrifice the future happiness of many young blacks and Hispanics to achieve diversity, proportional representation and what they consider to be multiracial progress"? The facts are very clear on this point. Among blacks with similar test scores, the more selective the college they attend (that is, the higher the test scores of their classmates), the likelier they are to graduate, earn advanced degrees and receive high salaries. Far from being demoralized, blacks from the most selective schools are the most satisfied with their college experience. ...
NOTE: Versions of this op-ed piece also appeared in The Boston Globe and The Washington Post.
Star Tribune
Copyright 1998 Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
September 23, 1998, Metro EditionHEADLINE: Long-term outlook positive, Stern says; Fed official notes short-term hurdles
SOURCE: News ServicesThe international economic slowdown that began a year ago in Asia is taking a toll on U.S. economic prospects, several Federal Reserve bank presidents said.
Slowing growth now poses more of a danger to the U.S. economy than inflation, said William McDonough, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. That suggests that he may have become more open in recent days to the idea of a cut in U.S. interest rates by the Federal Open Market Committee.
But Minneapolis Fed President Gary Stern, while noting some short-term hurdles stemming from worldwide economic turbulence, said Tuesday that the long-term outlook for the U.S. economy remains positive. ...
Still, the U.S. economy is the Fed's first priority, he said. "The No. 1 brand name in the world is the dollar. We need to protect that brand name," Jordan said.
Blinder, currently an economics professor at Princeton University, also said Asia's problems have hurt the U.S. economy through reduced demand for domestic goods.
"U.S. net exports are frankly going to hell quickly," he said in a speech to a Washington conference. "The first half of 1998 saw the fastest deterioration in our trade balance in our history." ...
Chicago Tribune
Copyright 1998 Chicago Tribune Company
September 23, 1998 WednesdayHEADLINE: PROFESSOR CHARLES D. HURD, 101
BYLINE: By Anthony Colarossi, Tribune Staff Writer.Charles De Witt Hurd always considered his discovery to be an accidental one.
An organic chemistry professor at Northwestern University for more than 40 years, Mr. Hurd spent a large part of his career heating substances and recording their chemical reactions.
But in 1929 and 1930, Mr. Hurd first burned the materials found in a cigarette and discovered that they acted to create cancer-causing substances.
"He showed the heating of almost any material in a cigarette would lead to carcinogenic compounds," said Robert Letsinger, Mr. Hurd's colleague and professor emeritus at Northwestern. "That was one of the impacts of his research."
Mr. Hurd published his findings immediately, but it was much later, in 1964, that the U.S. surgeon general cited Mr. Hurd's work as evidence of the dangers of smoking.
Mr. Hurd, 101, died Sept. 11 in the Presbyterian Home in Evanston.
The story of Mr. Hurd's life is filled with the rich, important memories of a brilliant career. He was born in 1897 in Utica, N.Y., and attended Syracuse University as an undergraduate. He started his graduate work at the University of Minnesota, where he received the DuPont Fellowship and studied with professor Lauder W. Jones. In 1920, Mr. Hurd moved with Jones to Princeton University and completed his doctorate there. ...
The Des Moines Register
Copyright 1998 The Des Moines Register, Inc.
September 22, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: Proving the merits of affirmative action
BYLINE: Rob MorseEvery once in a while a book comes along that transforms a national debate, and I'm not talking about special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's report to Congress.
The former presidents of Princeton and Harvard, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, respectively, have written a book that would have been nice to have two years ago. Remember the polemic-fest about affirmative action? It's hard to forget at the University of California at Berkeley. Because of the regents' 1996 ban on taking race into account in admissions, the number of black and Latino freshmen has been cut in half -from not nearly enough to nearly nil.
Bowen and Bo's book, "The Shape of the River," released this month by Princeton University Press, shows us what the University of California system, the state and the nation will be missing by not considering race when admitting students.
This isn't 1996's abstract debate about "fairness," "merit" and what might happen to black students admitted to elite universities despite lower SAT scores than whites.
The book is about what really has happened to almost 50,000 black and white students admitted to 28 elite colleges and universities. Twenty years of their lives, incomes and contributions to the nation have been charted in a database developed by the Mellon Foundation. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 22, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: Essay; Science Squints at a Future Fogged by Chaotic Uncertainty
BYLINE: By MALCOLM W. BROWNE
BACK during China's Shang dynasty, around 3,500 years ago, sages foretold the future by casting oracle bones -- the clairvoyant equivalent of crap shooting.
Things have changed somewhat since then, even though predictions are as much in demand as ever, and even though we still send plenty of business to astrologers, tarot-card readers, numerologists, phrenologists, necromancers and psychics of all stripes. Aside from the traditional soothsayers, we sometimes also heed forecasts based on observations, scientific synthesis and reasoning.
Scientific sages depend not on tea leaves or the positions of planets but on tools like mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, complexity theory, celestial mechanics, geology, economics and epidemiology. Needless to say, scientists discount the naive paradigms of fortune tellers, ancient and modern. ...
Predicting life spans in the absence of detailed knowledge has long interested scientists as well as insurance statisticians. A forecast of life expectancy based on the average age at death of a person's four grandparents is a simple example of statistical forecasting. But a much more daring approach was devised a few years ago by Dr. J. Richard Gott 3d, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University.
Dr. Gott's scheme is based on the "Copernican principle," which assumes that the odds are overwhelmingly against any particular place or time being "special." From this, Dr. Gott reasoned that the mere knowledge of how long something (or someone) has been around is sufficient to estimate how much longer it could last. Based on this system, and the assumption that Homo sapiens appeared on earth about 200,000 years ago, Dr. Gott calculated that intelligent human beings are 95-percent certain to survive a minimum of 5,128 years more, and a maximum of 7.8 million years more. ...
National Public Radio
SHOW: NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
SEPTEMBER 22, 1998, TUESDAYHEADLINE: "The Shape of the River"
BYLINE: Robert Siegel, Washington DC; Linda Wertheimer, Washingto
HIGHLIGHT: NPR's Anthony Brooks reports on a new book on affirmative action, titled "The Shape of the River," by two former Ivy League presidents, Derek Bok of Harvard, and William Bowen of Princeton. Based on 20 years of data and personal histories from blacks and whites who attended some of the nation's best colleges and universities, the book concludes affirmative action helped build the black middle class and promote diversity and tolerance among whites.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Linda Wertheimer.
SIEGEL: And I'm Robert Siegel. On Friday, President Clinton received the final report of the Race Initiative Advisory Board. The panel spent 15 months listening to Americans talk about race.
Among the issues they considered was Affirmative Action, especially as it applies to college admissions. In the last few years, race-based admissions policies have come under attack in several states. And they've actually been rolled back in California and Texas.
Now a new book challenges the conservative assault on affirmative action at the nation's elite universities.
NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.
ANTHONY BROOKS, NPR REPORTER: The book is called: "The Shape of the River." It's written by two former Ivy League presidents, Derek Bok of Harvard and William Bowen of Princeton.
The conclusion of these two supporters of Affirmative Action is: it's working. Their evidence consists of 20 years worth of data and personal histories from 45,000 Blacks, Whites and Asians, who attended some of the nation's most selective colleges and universities and then entered the work force.
Bok and Bowen argue that to judge Affirmative Action fairly, we must take the long view. Borrowing a metaphor from Mark Twain, they say: "only then can we judge the true shape of the river."
William Bowen says this adds new perspective to an old debate.
WILLIAM BOWEN, FORMER PRESIDENT, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; CO-AUTHOR, "THE SHAPE OF THE RIVER": And one of the contributions, I hope, of our book, is that it allows us to link how people looked when they were admitted and how they did in school to what then happened to them in what coaches like to call "the game of life;" and that's new. ...
BOWEN: Americans are notorious for having very short time horizons, for thinking that every problem should be fixed instantly, if not sooner. Progress has been made, a lot of it, as the book demonstrates.
But this is a problem, the problem of race in America, that has been -- what? -- 200 years or more in the making. And it would be astounding if it were resolved in 20 or 30 years. We just have to be a little more patient, hard as that is, sometimes.
The Post and Courier
Copyright 1998 The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
September 22, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: ACHIEVERS Leadership taught
Michell Glover, a teacher at Rivers Middle School, was among 39 teachers from across the nation, who recently took part in the Leadership Program for Teachers of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the program consisted of four weeks of study conducted at Princeton University.
USA TODAY
Copyright 1998 Gannett Company, Inc.
September 22, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: Obstacles thwart Japan U.S., world officials urge quick solution to bank woes
BYLINE: Rich MillerJust do it.
That's what exasperated U.S. and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials are telling Japan about fixing its battered banking system.
"The Japanese authorities need to move and adopt a decisive plan," IMF Assistant Director Charles Adams told reporters Monday. "The precise details are less important than actually tackling . . . the problems that are there."
Japan's banking woes will be high on the agenda when President Clinton meets Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi today in Tarrytown, N.Y., near New York City.
Obuchi had been hoping to tell Clinton that he had reached agreement with opposition parties in the parliament on how to rescue and repair crippled Japanese banks. But the agreement looked in danger of unraveling Monday as the ruling and opposition parties clashed over a bailout of Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan.
The dispute was the latest obstacle hindering Tokyo from taking quick and decisive action to resolve a problem that has been years in the making and which even Obuchi admits poses risks for the world economy. ...
Japanese officials also argue that widespread bank failures in Japan could further undermine corporate and consumer confidence in the country and thus hurt rather than help the economy. That concern is shared by some U.S. experts, including former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder.
"Forced bankruptcies of major, brand-name financial institutions may seriously undermine confidence and spread panic," says Blinder, who's now a professor at Princeton University. ...
The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
September 22, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: The 'Morning-After' Kit; New Emergency Contraceptive Gives Women a Second Chance To Prevent Pregnancy
BYLINE: Sandra G. BoodmanLate one Saturday night last July, Vicki Woods made the discovery that causes millions of women each year to experience instant, stomach-clenching anxiety. She and her boyfriend were in bed when they found that the condom they were using had broken. A few seconds later, the 32-year-old computer programmer realized there was a good chance she might get pregnant.
"I got out of bed and I was freaking out and got on the Internet and logged onto the Planned Parenthood [Web] site," Woods recalled. A few minutes later she had a list of five doctors and five drugstores near her Seattle home that dispense emergency contraceptive pills under the auspices of a special program to expand their use. Known more commonly by its less accurate moniker, "the morning-after pill," emergency contraceptives are ordinary birth control pills that in high doses are effective in preventing pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. ...
Three weeks ago the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the sale of Preven, the nation's first emergency contraception kit available by prescription, a move hailed by family planning advocates and health officials who see it as a safe and easy way to dramatically reduce the nearly 3 million unintended pregnancies that occur annually in the United States. Half of these pregnancies are the result of contraceptive failure. ...
Last year, for example, when a team of six women from Elgin DDB Needham, the giant advertising agency, were assigned to work on a public service campaign in Seattle promoting emergency contraception, "none of us knew what it was," said senior account executive Pamela Long, who is 26.
But on some campuses, notably Princeton University, the method is well known. Its fame is due in large part to the efforts of James Trussell, former director of the Office of Population Research, who helped establish a toll-free number that provides information about emergency contraception and doctors who dispense it. Trussell also helped establish an Internet site that has registered more than 100,000 hits, according to Marie Bass of Reproductive Health Technologies Project in Washington. ...
Asbury Park Press
Copyright 1998 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
September 21, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: Elias has rough homecoming, sees action on kickoff returns
EAST RUTHERFORD - This was certainly not the homecoming Keith Elias had envisioned.
The Lacey High School running back returned to Giants Stadium, where he spent three seasons with the Giants, as a member of the Colts, watching most of the game from the sideline as the Indianapolis offense sputtered throughout.
With Lamont Warren still nursing an ankle injury he suffered in the opening game of the preseason, Elias is serving as halfback Marshall Faulk's primary backup. But he still spent the bulk of the afternoon on special teams before entering the offensive backfield in a mop-up role with the game out of hand in the fourth quarter. In all, he finished with three yards on three carries, giving him 12 yards on six carries for the season.
For the first time since his days at Princeton University, Elias was used on kickoff returns, taking the place of Aaron Bailey, who was inactive for yesterday's game. Elias returned two for a total of 45 yards, including a 28-yarder. -- Stephen Edelson
The Associated Press
September 21, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: Obit-Montgomery
DATELINE: SANTA FE
Former New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Seth Montgomery has died after a 20-year-plus battle with multiple sclerosis.
Montgomery, who died Friday, retired in 1994 because of poor health. He was 61.
A memorial service is set for 5 p.m. Tuesday n St. Francis Auditorium.
The Santa Fe native had been named to the court in 1989 by then-Gov. Garrey Carruthers. A Democrat, he ran unopposed for the post in 1990.
His colleagues on the court elected him to serve as chief justice during his last year on the bench. ...
Montgomery received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1959 and his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1965. Before attending Stanford, he served in the Navy. ...
The Associated Press
September 21, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: A high office is diminished in the eyes of a rising generation
BYLINE: By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press WriterDATELINE: WASHINGTON
The presidency towers in the eyes of children, a dimly understood but awesome job where George Washington was brave, Abe Lincoln was honest and the aura of celebrity sparkles like fairy dust.
Now they are seeing a different side.
Kids who knew little more about the White House than the habits of Buddy and Socks now know more than adults wished. "The president has another friend he loves besides his wife," a first-grader blurted out in a Virginia religious class, as recalled by his instructor.
Some educators worry that underneath all the teen titillation provided by the Monica Lewinsky investigation, President Clinton's troubles may erode confidence in the office, not just the man, for youth as well as for adults.
"If anybody is going to put the nail into the coffin of the imperial presidency, it will be Bill Clinton," Princeton University historian Fred Greenstein said. "He's a reminder that politicians are human." ...
The Herald
Copyright 1998 McClatchy Newspapers Inc. (Rock Hill, S.C.)
September 21, 1998 MondayHEADLINE: Teacher of the week: Maggie Lowry
BYLINE: Judy H. Longshaw The HeraldMaggie Lowry
Age: 30, born June 10, 1968 Job:
Teaches biological studies, physical and integrated science at Chester High School. She's been a science teacher there for six years. Education: Earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Emory and Henry College in Virginia. She returned to Erskine College for a year to get certified to teach. Recent honor: She was one of 39 teachers selected last summer to attend four weeks of classes at the Environmental Science Leadership Institute at Princeton University. The group studied global warming and climate change. "I think it's real. Temperatures come in a cyclical pattern but they are cycling up more than cycling down."
She and her partners did a project on carbon cycling and created a game for students, which is available at www.woodrow.org and is in the K-12 teaching section on the environment. The site tells viewers that she saw "more Broadway musicals in her four weeks at Princeton than most New Yorkers see in a lifetime. She entertains her students with her renditions of these during lecture and lab activities." ...
Legal Times
Copyright 1998 American Lawyer Newspapers Group Inc.
September 21, 1998, MondaySECTION: SCANDAL NOTEBOOK
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
At age 19, Dillon Teachout is not old enough to have voted for Bill Clinton.
But for the last three weeks of her summer vacation, the Princeton University sophomore was hard at work on the document that some believe could bring his presidency to a close.
Call it a stroke of luck--or a nightmare. Teachout finished her summer-long internship at the humanities journal The Wilson Quarterly, and unexpectedly found herself working around the clock as an intern in Kenneth Starr's Office of the Independent Counsel. Her boss, Wilson Quarterly Literary Editor Stephen Bates, brought her along when he took leave to co-write Starr's report as an associate independent counsel.
"I didn't find out Stephen was involved with writing the report until I got there the first day, " she says. "I said to him later that I felt like I married a frog and got a prince. I was expecting to go there and shred and photocopy, and I ended up being in the thick of it."
Teachout says she worked only at night during her first week in Starr's office. She familiarized herself with the report and looked for ways that the different sections could be smoothed together, offering suggestions for cutting.
As the pace of the work became more frenzied, she floated around the office helping wherever she could, inserting cite checks in the report, proofreading, and editing. ...
Now back at Princeton--where her peers include the son of White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and a close friend of Chelsea Clinton--Teachout says that the news of her summer experience has drawn mixed reactions.
"I think people who have reservations wouldn't necessarily have expressed them to me. But the people who were interns on the Hill want to know all about it, " she says. ...
Sacramento Bee
Copyright 1998 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.
September 21, 1998SECTION: EDITORIALS
HEADLINE: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
In the wrenching debate over ending affirmative action, much of the argument was based on emotional and anecdotal evidence and opposing philosophies of social justice. Lacking from both sides was sound, academic analysis of the policy's long-term effects -- whether positive or negative -- on American society as a whole.
Two years after passage of California's Proposition 209, questions about the fairness of affirmative action as applied remain, but a major new study sheds new light on some of the arguments. It offers powerful evidence that race-conscious admissions policies at the nation's most elite universities have had positive effects on black and white individuals and provide benefits for society as a whole.
The study by two former Ivy League presidents, William G. Bowen of Princeton University and Derek Bok of Harvard University, directly links the affirmative action policies of 28 of the nation's most selective universities to the creation of "the backbone of the emergent black middle class," and credits them with teaching white students the value of integration.
The study, which focused on blacks, examined the grades, test scores, attitude and achievement in college and subsequent careers of 45,000 students over 20 years. It found that blacks entered the elite schools with lower test scores and received lower grades than their white classmates. But those who graduated were as likely as whites to earn advanced degrees and more likely to obtain professional degrees in law, medicine and business. They are also more involved than their white classmates in civic affairs. ...
The authors conclude that while affirmative action's benefits were substantial for blacks, its elimination would have had a minor effect on whites. Specifically, if more than half of the blacks accepted at selective colleges had been rejected, the probability of any white applicant being accepted would rise just 2 percentage points, from 25 percent to 27 percent. ...
The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
September 21, 1998, MondayOBITUARIES
HEADLINE: Robert Sharkey Dies at 72; GWU History Professor, Department Chairman
Robert Poindexter Sharkey, 72, a retired George Washington University economic history professor and history department chairman, died of cardiac arrest Sept. 19 at his home in Washington.
Dr. Sharkey joined the GWU faculty as an associate professor of economic history in 1963 and became a full professor two years later. He retired in 1985. ...
Dr. Sharkey was a native of Atlanta. He was a 1948 cum laude graduate of Princeton University, where he had served as chairman of the Daily Princetonian. ...
Albuquerque Tribune
Copyright 1998 Albuquerque Tribune
September 20, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Montgomery was N.M. Supreme Court justice
BYLINE: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SANTA FE -- Former New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Seth Montgomery has died after a 20-year-plus battle with multiple sclerosis.
Montgomery, who died Friday, retired in 1994 because of poor health.
He was 61.
Montgomery received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1959 and his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1965. Before attending Stanford, he served in the Navy. ...
Asbury Park Press
Copyright 1998 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
September 20, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Elliott Denman column
Old Nassau's special house
The tab will run you a cool $25 million and from where I sat yesterday it would be worth every last dime.
The dough would put your name on the magnificent edifice that, for the moment, is simply known as Princeton Stadium.
This is the dazzling, $45 million, state-of-the-art, intimate-yet-evocative functional-yet-flamboyant facility that was christened in yesterday's 6-0, two-field-goals-to-zip shutout of a pesky Cornell team intent on wrecking the grand opening party. ...
Princeton has raised $21 million of the $45 million it cost to build this beauty on the site of the razed Palmer Stadium. But the deep-pocketed $25-million donor has yet to surface.
Be advised that they are not sweating this one out in Tigertown. "Once the larger Princeton community has seen the stadium, my guess is that we'll have a good shot at naming gift," said Van Zandt Williams, the university's vice president for development. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 20, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: ON POLITICS
Clinton's Monica Problems Cast Shadow on 2 FreshmenBYLINE: By James Dao; James Dao reports from Washington for The New York Times
ATELINE: WASHINGTONThis is a tale of two freshmen whose fates may have become oddly intertwined because of one President and his relationship with an intern.
The first, Representative Steven R. Rothman, is a first-term Democrat from Fair Lawn who not long ago seemed like a shoo-in for a second term, given the solidly Democratic nature of his district in northern New Jersey.
Now, Republicans and many analysts say Mr. Rothman may have become vulnerable because of President Clinton's problems.
The second, Representative Michael Pappas, is a first-term Republican from Rocky Hill who not long ago seemed in real danger, given the mixed party loyalty of his district in the central part of the state and a determined, well-financed Democratic campaign to oust him.
Suddenly, Mr. Pappas looks like a tough card to beat -- also because of President Clinton's problems. ...
But state Democrats now privately question whether Mr. Pappas can be beat, even though he is facing a well-financed candidate in Rush Holt, a physicist affiliated with Princeton University whose father was a Senator from West Virginia. In perhaps the clearest sign of the incumbent's strength, the state A.F.L.-C.I.O., which worked against Mr. Pappas in 1996, has decided to stay on the sidelines this year.
Mr. Holt acknowledges that Mr. Clinton's problems "are the first thing out of everybody's mouth" these days. "But I have no sense that it is affecting people's vote for Congress," he adds. "They are very concerned about whether government is looking out for their interests." ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 20, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - FinalHEADLINE: In the Region/New Jersey; Spec Construction Ending Route 1 Corridor Lull
BYLINE: By RACHELLE GARBARINE
AN eight-year lull in speculative office construction is ending on the Princeton Route 1 corridor, where three projects are about to get under way without leases from a single tenant in place.
A fourth project, with a commitment from a tenant for a sizable amount of space, is also moving forward.
If realized, the projects will within a year bring a total of 723,000 square feet of space onto the corridor, a 20-mile stretch between New Brunswick and Trenton. With vacancy rates low and rents high enough to justify new construction, developers say it is a good time to build, despite the stock market's volatility in recent weeks. Three of the projects are in West Windsor and one is in Plainsboro. ...
J. Douglas Petrozzini, a senior vice president at the brokerage's Edison office, said tenants looking for 20,000 square feet of space or more were having a difficult time finding it along the corridor, which continues to be bolstered by its central location, proximity to Princeton University and access to labor. Over the last year, he added, some 700,000 square feet of space was absorbed, "So putting another half million square feet or so on the market should not affect that momentum," Mr. Petrozzini said.
And David H. Knights, director of marketing and leasing for the 2,200-acre Princeton Forrestal Center straddling South Brunswick and Plainsboro, noted that "at least three tenants known to be shopping for space have requirements equaling a total of 160,000 square feet." The center is owned by Princeton University. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 20, 1998, Sunday
HEADLINE: Editorial Observer; African-American Progress in the New South
BYLINE: By BRENT STAPLESAfter a rocky and sometimes violent start, American colleges were so swiftly and quietly integrated that a miracle slipped by unnoticed. What the country reaped is partly explained in a new report from Princeton University Press, showing that a mere 20 years of affirmative action at the elite universities has integrated the professions, dramatically
expanded the black middle class -- and dismantled a racial caste system that was 400 years in the making.
Conservative ideologues discount this progress out of hostility to affirmative action. But some civil rights activists minimize progress too, fearful that celebrating it would suggest that the struggle for justice is finished. This preference for pessimism has dominated the debate and clearly shaped the latest study from the Southern Education Foundation, which monitors the 19 Southern and border states that once maintained segregated college systems. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 20, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: COLLEGE FOOTBALL; Princeton Christens Its New Stadium Appropriately
BYLINE: By WILLIAM N. WALLACEDATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J., Sept. 19
The home team scored on its first two drives in its new home today, and went on to dedicate Princeton Stadium with a 6-0 victory over Cornell.
Princeton's ace place-kicker, the senior Alex Sierk, made field goals of 47 and 37 yards following impressive drives, and that was good enough in the season opener for both teams. Perhaps the team in orange, black and white was inspired by the festive occasion and the first capacity crowd at a Princeton home game in four decades.
All 27,800 tickets were sold and most of the seats occupied for the unveiling of the $45 million stadium, the Ivy League's first new football facility in 14 years and only its second in 71 years. Tickets cost only $5, reflecting the university's effort to bring crowds to its new arena. It was the largest crowd at a Princeton game since 38,000 saw the 1989 game with Yale in Palmer Stadium, which had 45,750 seats.
The sparkling stadium was more exciting than the game, a dull one because the defenses limited big plays and scoring threats. Dropped passes on both sides also crimped the offenses. "Not an ugly victory, but a great one," claimed Steve Tosches, the Princeton coach. "We're 1-0 for the first time since 1995." ...
There was pageantry before the kickoff. Most impressive was the parade onto the field of 280 former Princeton players, marching under big orange and black banners designating their years. They spread from one goal to the other. The youngest were those from the 1997 team, which played all of its 10 games on the road while the new stadium was being built, and the oldest was from the 1927 squad.
Princeton Stadium, which may get a new name should a donor come forth with $25 million, went up in 18 months on the site of Palmer Stadium, which was built in 1914 and was deemed beyond the point of repair by engineering studies.
It is the first new Ivy facility to be built since 1984, when Columbia's Lawrence Wien Stadium opened. The other six stadiums were built between 1903 and 1927.
In contrast to Princeton, officials at Harvard and Pennsylvania chose to keep their stadiums and have poured thousands of dollars into their on-going rehabilitations. Harvard Stadium, 95 years old, is the nation's oldest. Penn's Franklin Field, in its present conformation, dates to 1921. ...
Newsday
Copyright 1998 Newsday, Inc. (New York, NY)
September 20, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: COLLEGE FOOTBALL / TIGERS ENJOY A PICTURE-PERFECT DAY
BYLINE: By John Jeansonne. STAFF CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.
Princeton, N.J. - The whole thing felt like this side of paradise to Princeton's football team. "It was wonnnnnnderful," coach Steve Tosches said. A season opener in the new $45-million stadium, perfect late-summer weather, the first home sellout in 34 years, a 6-0 victory over Cornell.
It certainly was otherworldly, with a mix of old and new, of Ivy League restraint and big-time football yahooism. Some students actually painted a tiger paw and an orange letter "P" on their faces. Others wore blazers and striped bowties. Kids carries black and orange balloons and Princeton band members wore long orange tiger tails tucked into their pants. Men of various ages strolled or wobbled into the stadium wearing Princeton hats decorated with their graduation years - "64" or "54" or "27."
Of course, everybody tailgated.
A concert band performed outside the striking new edifice that replaced hallowed old Palmer Stadium, which had been built in 1914 and was the second-oldest football arena in the nation when it was torn down after the 1996 season. The new joint looks a bit like a museum on the outside, feels like a Nebraska football scene inside, though much smaller, with 27,800 packed in yesterday. ...
The Observer
Copyright 1998 Guardian Newspapers Limited
September 20, 1998HEADLINE: World: No cheer for pompom casualties;
Edward Helmore in New York and Arnold Kemp report on the rise and risks of a surprisingly hazardous sport
THE ORGANISERS of cheerleading, American football's long-legged adornment, have been accused of ignoring safety legislation, preventing its emergence as a sport in its own right, and exploiting it for profit.
Cheerleading, which began at Princeton University 100 years ago, is not all rah-rah-rah and pompoms but a demanding and sometimes dangerous sport akin to gymnastics with elements of dance. Still classified as an 'activity' in some US states, it is campaigning for Olympic recognition.
At present, it provides a lucrative market for companies, which organise clinics and training camps and sell uniforms. A recent study put the value of uniforms and camps at $200 million a year. ...
Omaha World-Herald
Copyright 1998 The Omaha World-Herald Company
September 20, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Cloning Widespread, Unregulated
SOURCE: THE KNIGHT RIDDER WASHINGTON BUREAUDATELINE: Washington
When Dolly the cloned sheep made her worldwide debut last year, she stepped straight from the pages of science fiction into an intense public debate. A chorus of voices called for bans on all human cloning.
A mere 18 months later, cloning technology is advancing so quickly in animals it has become almost commonplace, and the ability to clone humans now seems a certainty. But our ability to regulate such technology is far from certain.
"Everybody who thought it would proceed slowly and could be stopped was wrong," said Lee Silver, a professor of genetics from Princeton University and author of "Remaking Eden." "Everyone's doing it - in pigs, cows, goats. It won't even make the newspapers anymore." ...
The San Francisco Examiner
Copyright 1998 The Hearst Corporation
September 20, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Race: The perpetual issue
SOURCE: EXAMINER EDITORIAL WRITER
THE PRESIDENT'S advisory board on race capped 15 months of dialogue and deliberation with a minimally hopeful report. Its most positive observation is that racial attitudes of whites have improved over the last 40 years.
But the panel chaired by historian John Hope Franklin found much still to be done to assure African Americans and other minorities a chance to overcome the nation's "history of white privilege."
Many people will find little to argue about in the board's recommendations for "a country in racial transition." They include reducing disparities in the treatment of different racial groups by police and courts. The panel backs Clinton's strategy of "mend it, don't end it" on affirmative action's use of race-conscious policies to aid minorities in education, jobs and awards of business. In California, state and local agencies are now barred by referendum from granting such "preferences."
The advisory board's position on that issue got powerful support earlier this month in a book by former presidents William Bowen of Princeton University and Derek Bok of Harvard. They said a 20-year study at 28 elite universities found substantial benefits from policies to boost admissions of blacks. These students wound up matching and in some categories exceeding whites in getting advanced degrees, forming "the backbone of the emergent black middle class." The Ivy League authors found no basis for the idea that affirmative action cheats either whites or blacks.
Such documentation for improving the country's record of fairness needs to continue, both in government and academia.
The Seattle Times
Copyright 1998 The Seattle Times Company
September 20, 1998, Sunday Final EditionSECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WORKSPROPONENTS of Initiative 200, the measure to undo affirmative action in our state, must be crossing their fingers and hoping the tsunami of news about President Clinton drowns out word of a new study on affirmative action. Otherwise, Washingtonians might discover these programs work and produce the precise results for which they were intended. A major study of records and experiences of students at 28 selective colleges and universities shows affirmative action has created the backbone of the black middle class.
The report was done by former college presidents William Bowen of Princeton University and Derek Bok of Harvard University. Bowen and Bok examined grades, test scores, choice of major, graduation rates, careers and attitudes of 45,000 students over 20 years.
Drawing on data from students entering college in 1976 and 1989 and lengthy follow-up questionnaires, the study, at first blush, may seem to confirm what affirmative-action opponents suspect: Blacks entering these schools arrive with lower test scores and grades than white classmates. As they work through school, they get lower grades and graduate at lower rates.
What happens next is more striking. After graduation, blacks earn advanced degrees at rates matching white classmates. They are more likely than white classmates to get professional degrees in law, medicine and business. They are more likely to get involved in civic affairs. ...
THE SUNDAY OKLAHOMAN
Copyright 1998 The Sunday Oklahoman
September 20, 1998, SundayDEATHS and FUNERALS
HEADLINE: Paul Taylor Condit Sr.
CONDIT Paul Taylor, Sr., M.D., Ph.D., died after a long illness Tuesday, September 1, 1998 in Los Angeles, California. He was 79. Born in New York City on October 27, 1918, Paul grew up in Plainfield and Princeton, NJ. He earned his Bachelor's degree in 1940 and Masters in Chemistry in 1941 both from Princeton University. ...
American Scientist
Copyright 1998 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research SocietySeptember 19, 1998
HEADLINE: The Queen of Mathematics: A Historically Motivated Guide to Number Theory; book reviews
BYLINE: Cipra Barry
Jay R. Goldman. 525 pp. AK Peters, 1998. $59.95.
Number theory is to mathematics as evolution is to biology or electromagnetism to physics: None is the final word in its discipline, but each is a fundamental and fascinating subject. The great German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss called number theory the "Queen of Mathematics." As Jay Goldman shows in this combination history and textbook, number theory's reign has lasted several hundred years by now - and its influence is only growing.
The roots of number theory go way back, at least as far as Pythagoras in the 5th or 6th century B.C. But the subject really got started through the efforts of one individual: Pierre de Fermat, the 17th-century French jurist, whose famous "Last Theorem" was only recently settled by Princeton University number theorist Andrew Wiles. ...
The Associated Press
September 19, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: Princeton fans delight in new stadium
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.
Princeton Stadium made its debut Saturday and the new structure was enough to make Superman a kryptonite shade of green with envy.
"I'm very envious, I would have loved to have played here," said actor Dean Cain, a Class of '88 alumni who still holds the Princeton record for interceptions in a season. "Coming back to Princeton is like coming back to a second home, and this is a great place to come home to."
Cain, who starred in "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," was part of the sellout crowd of 27,800 on hand to watch Princeton christen its new home with an Ivy League game against Cornell. The $45 million stadium was met with approval from students, alumni and just plain football fans.
"It's beautiful," said sophomore Susan Schaefer of Greenwich, Conn. "It's really a thoughtful piece of construction. It's great to be part of a new tradition. It will be great for school spirit." ...
"Princeton people like to look at the old things and really treasure them, but this is really nice," said Somerville resident Rod McNealy, Class of '72. "It's special because it's very intimate. It reminds me of Palmer, but they made it smaller so they'll fill it. Even when you had a good crowd at Palmer, they got lost because it was 40,000 seats." ...
The Fresno Bee
Copyright 1998 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.
September 19, 1998 SaturdayEDITORIALS
HEADLINE: Affirming affirmative action; New study makes powerful case for diverse admissions.
In the wrenching debate over ending affirmative action, much of the argument was based on emotional and anecdotal evidence and opposing philosophies of social justice. Lacking from both sides was sound, academic analysis of the policy's long-term effects -- whether positive or negative -- on American society as a whole.
Two years after passage of California's Proposition 209, questions about the fairness of affirmative action as applied remain, but a major new study sheds new light on some of the arguments. It offers powerful evidence that race-conscious admissions policies at the nation's most elite universities have had positive effects on African-American and white individuals and provide benefits for society as a whole.
The study by two former Ivy League presidents, William G. Bowen of Princeton University and Derek Bok of Harvard University, directly links the affirmative action policies of 28 of the nation's most selective universities to the creation of "the backbone of the emergent black middle class," and credits them with teaching white students the value of integration.
The study, which focused on African-Americans, examined the grades, test scores, attitude and achievement in college and subsequent careers of 45,000 students over 20 years. It found that African-Americans entered the elite schools with lower test scores and received lower grades than their white classmates. But those who graduated were as likely as whites to earn advanced degrees and more likely to obtain professional degrees in law, medicine and business. ...
In California, the study should lend support to the minority-outreach efforts that have replaced universities' sometimes misguided affirmative action policies. It might also positively influence universities to craft admission policies that rely on more than just grades and test scores as predictors of college success.
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 19, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: A Palestinian Confronts Time; For Columbia Literary Critic, Cancer Is a Spur to Memory
BYLINE: By JANNY SCOTT
Several years ago, Edward W. Said began writing a memoir mostly about his childhood in Palestine in the years before Israeli independence in 1948, before his family fled to Egypt, before he landed at Columbia University, before he became one of the most influential literary and cultural critics in the world.
Several months ago, something struck Mr. Said about his timing: The writing of the memoir, which he is currently finishing, had coincided exactly with his treatment for leukemia, which was diagnosed after a routine cholesterol test in 1991 and which is likely one day to end his life.
The start of chemotherapy in 1994 had been a point of no return, an acknowledgment that Mr. Said was entering what he calls a final phase. The start of the memoir was the opposite, a going back, an effort to rescue from oblivion a time and places that had all but disappeared.
So they fell into a rhythm, the writing and the illness, each in counterpoint to the other. For the first six months of last year, Mr. Said was too sick to teach. He had various viruses, then pneumonia. The leukemia worsened. Unable to work, he wrote.
"It's like the inverse of my illness," he said in an interview recently. "It's like a mirror, but from which all the actual images have been effaced. There is nothing in the book about it. And I found that very salutary, having something like that to go back to." ...
His education was Anglocentric, as he has put it, mostly in elite colonial schools. He also spent several years in a boarding school in Massachusetts. He graduated from Princeton in 1957 and got his Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard in 1964. Columbia hired him in 1963 as an instructor in English, then promoted him rapidly. ...
New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
September 19, 1998HEADLINE: Paths of glory
BYLINE: Marcus Chown
HIGHLIGHT: Superfast jets from exploding stars could explain cosmic speed freaks
GAMMA-ray bursts may be produced by the debris expelled from a supernova in a hyperfast jet, according to a Princeton astronomer. His theory would also explain why some pulsars fly through space much faster than normal stars.
Gamma-ray bursters, which exist at the edge of the Universe, are the source of the most powerful blasts of energy known. Astronomers can only guess at what makes them pack that kind of punch, but the discovery last year of X-ray and optical "afterglows" associated with these bursts suggests that they might be the fading fireballs of some kind of stellar explosion. Now Renyue Cen of Princeton University in New Jersey is suggesting that these intense bursts of energy might come from a supernova that is expelling material far faster in one direction than in others.
In a paper to appear in "Astrophysical Journal Letters" Cen speculates that some unknown process sweeps a path free of protons and neutrons, allowing the neutrinos formed within the exploding star to escape. Some of the neutrinos decay into electrons and positrons, forming a jet travelling at about 99.9994 per cent of the speed of light.
The electrons would emit light as they interacted with magnetic fields. Because they are moving so fast, the Doppler effect would boost this radiation to gamma-ray frequencies, producing the burst that we observe.
Cen's theory would also explain why some pulsars are moving at up to 500 kilometres per second - tens of times faster than ordinary stars. "A supernova jet propels a pulsar in the opposite direction just like the exhaust of a rocket," says Cen. ...
New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
September 19, 1998HEADLINE: Ghosts in the sky
BYLINE: Hazel Muir
HIGHLIGHT: Is the Universe really a giant hall of mirrors where you can't believe your eyes ? Watch this space, says Hazel Muir
IF YOU had met physicist Dmitry Sokoloff in the early 1970s and asked him what he was doing, you might have thought he'd gone off the rails. Sokoloff was sifting through catalogues of distant galaxies trying to find our own Galaxy. He was looking for us, here, out there - but in an era long gone by. On a planet called Earth in this galactic ghost, maybe hundreds of millions of light years away, human life would eventually evolve, two world wars would rage across the globe, and 1998 years after a fabled prophet was said to have been born, a country called France would win the soccer World Cup.
Sokoloff never found an image of the Milky Way in its youth. But the idea wasn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Since the beginning of this century, astronomers have pondered the possibility that light in the Universe moves in mysterious ways, creating multiple images of every bright object inside - including our own Galaxy. We can now be pretty sure that no Milky Way lookalikes exist nearby. But they may lurk in distant corners of the cosmos, and scientists plan to look for them using satellites due for launch in the next few years. Early next century, we may learn that the Universe is a giant hall of mirrors where you can't always believe your eyes. ...
Astronomers now know there are no images of our Galaxy nearby. But there could yet be some lurking farther afield, beyond the range of existing telescopes, and finding these could soon be possible. In 2000, NASA plans to launch its MAP (Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite, and in 2006, the European Space Agency will launch Planck (see Genesis to Exodus, New Scientist, 19 October 1996, p 31). "These will give us insight into the Universe on such huge scales," says Cornish. With David Spergel of Princeton University in New Jersey, he will be part of the team that analyses the first MAP data. ...
The Times Union
Copyright 1998 The Hearst Corporation (Albany, NY)
September 19, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: RPI gets research funding bonanza
BYLINE: ALAN D. ABBEY; Business editorHIGHLIGHT: Troy New center to study digital video archiving and retrieval is one of several new high-tech programs benefiting school Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been on the receiving end in the last few months of millions of dollars in corporate and government funding to set up institutes and research centers in fields from video to power generation to biology.
The grants and gifts come as industry is looking for research and training of new workers from the academic world rather than from their own resources. The result is a local bonanza that in some cases includes other Capital Region schools.
''Recently we have had very large, very public awards that dramatize the positive effect we are having on the area's economy,'' said spokeswoman Sheila Nason. ''The public is becoming increasingly aware of the effects technology is having on our daily lives. The research may seem arcane, but it makes a difference.''
The latest funds, $145,000 a year for five years, which RPI must share with other schools, comes from the federal government's National Science Foundation and numerous technology and communications firms. The money will establish the Industry/University Cooperative Center for Digital Video and Media Research.
The center, whose academic partners include Princeton University and New Jersey Institute of Technology, will research the educational uses of multimedia, archiving and retrieval and new applications for new products. ...