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Princeton in the News

October 19 to 27, 1998 | Feedback


 

Time
Copyright 1998 The Time Inc. Magazine Company
November 2, 1998

HEADLINE: Enough About Slavery; Let's work on racial problems in the here and now
BYLINE: Jack E. White

Like most African Americans, I have the legacy of slavery written all over my face. My brow, for example, resembles that of my father's father, who was born a slave in northern Florida. The sponsor's slogan for the powerful series Africans in America, which aired on PBS last week, rightly insisted that the story of slavery is not just African-American history but American history. But for blacks like me, it's also family history, a link to the oppressive past so intense and personal that it stares back whenever we look in a mirror.

That may be why I wasn't moved more by the PBS series and Beloved, Oprah Winfrey's movie version of Toni Morrison's soul-searing novel. Both productions were excellent, but it's not exactly news that slavery was a horrible crime. I wish we could throw as much energy and emotion into solving the gritty racial problems that we face today as we pour into condemning the sins of the past.

For instance, in the tangled debate over affirmative action, both sides too often assume that the rationale for efforts to get blacks a fair share of jobs, government contracts and slots in elite universities is to make up for historic oppression. But that is preposterous. We don't need affirmative action because our ancestors were slaves; we need it because so many of us are still being denied opportunities because of our race.

As former Princeton University president William G. Bowen and former Harvard University president Derek Bok argue in their new book, The Shape of the River, a major justification for making sure that promising minority students can get into the best universities, even if their SAT scores are lower than those of some white applicants, is that "American society needs the high-achieving black graduates who will provide leadership in every walk of life." In other words, to make sure that our future is shaped by all our citizens, not just a few. Slavery has nothing to do with it. ...

 

Ebony
Copyright 1998 Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.
November, 1998

HEADLINE: Oprah & Danny Sizzle In Her First Love Scenes In The Powerful Film 'BELOVED'
BYLINE: By Laura B. Randolph

THE first time I saw it, I thought they were going to have to carry me out," Oprah Winfrey says of Beloved, the film based on Toni Morrison's unforgettable Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in which Oprah stars as Sethe, a mother who is haunted by the daughter she killed to keep her from being a slave. "Every single image caused such intense, deeply-felt emotions." ...

GRAPHIC: Picture 3, Set in Ohio after the Civil War, Beloved stars Academy Award nominees Winfrey and Glover in major depiction of power and mystery of the past. Nobel Prize-winning laureate Toni Morrison, professor of humanities at Princeton University, wrote the novel on which the movie is based. She joins Winfrey and other guests to discuss her book during a meeting of "Oprah's Book Club."; Pictures 1 through 3, Ken Regan/Touchstone Pictures; Picture 4, no caption, (c) 1997 HARPO Productions Inc./George Burns, Ken Regan/Touchstone Pictures

 

Ebony
Copyright 1998 Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.
November, 1998

HEADLINE: 30 LEADERS 30 & UNDER
BYLINE: Lynn Norment

THEY are assertive, resourceful and charismatic, but more importantly, they choose to use their talent, intellect and leadership qualities to make their communities and cities a better place for all residents.

The 1998 EBONY listing of young leaders shines a spotlight on 30 of the nation's most talented movers and shakers who are age 30 and younger.

Though perhaps considered "kids" by some in the established political and civic circles, they are proving with their actions, deeds and hearts that they have much to offer. ...

EBONY asked established leaders in civic, political, religious and creative arenas to recommend young people who are already leaders or who have the potential to be great leaders. Among those recommended and selected by EBONY's Editorial Board are Richard Boykin, chief of staff to Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., in Washington, as well as Theron Jackson, a pastor and candidate for mayor of Shreveport, La. We also feature Dr. Cynthia Williams Turner, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois who is involved in numerous community organizations, and Gregory Williams, president of the Barristers' Association of Philadelphia.

The 30 young adults featured here are by no means the only African-Americans age 30 and younger who are making waves and giving back to their communities. However, they are representative of the wealth of talented young people who are giving back to their communities and preparing to move to the forefront of American society.

Picture 27, Jason J. Tyler, 27, assistant vice president, American National Bank, Chicago; manages credit underwriting and maintenance of $120 million portfolio; board member, Stone Family Emergency Fund for Needy People; member, Young Leaders' Forum of Chicago Community Trust; mentor, Chicago Schools Committee, Princeton University; motivational speaker to youth groups

 

Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company
October 27, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: ALUMNI REPORT
A weekly update on the progress of former Orange County prep athletes now in college.

PRINCETON VOLLEYBALL

* County connections: Rose Kuhn and Erika Hansen of Laguna Beach, Melissa Ford and Sarah Petry of Corona del Mar and Sabrina King of Santa Margarita

* Worth noting: Kuhn, a senior outside hitter, leads the team in kills and digs.

Ford, a junior setter, leads the team in assists. Hansen, a junior outside hitter and King, a sophomore outside hitter, are starters. Petry is a freshman outside hitter. Princeton, the defending Ivy League champion, is 13-10, 3-2 in league.

 

The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp.
October 27, 1998

COLUMN: OBITUARIES
BYLINE: The Record

LAWRENCE ROBERT CARUSO, 77, of Bethesda Md., formerly of North Bergen, died Sunday. He was a partner in Caruso & Caruso, a Washington, D.C., law firm. Previously, he was a lawyer for General Electric Co., Washington, for 10 years. He was general counsel to Princeton University until 1971. He was an Army veteran of World War II. He earned a law degree from George Washington University, Washington.

 

The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
October 26, 1998, Monday, BC cycle

BYLINE: By The Associated Press
NAME - Jim Leach.

BORN - Oct. 15, 1942, in Davenport.
EDUCATION - He graduated from Davenport High School in 1960 and received his Bachelor of Arts (cum laude) in political science from Princeton University in 1964.

From 1964 to 1966, he attended the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, where he received his Master of Arts degree in Soviet politics. He attended the London School of Economics, where he researched economics and Soviet politics.

QUOTE - "I believe in steady representation. I try to work where I can, as cooperatively as possible. The mood in my time in public life has gotten increasingly uncomfortable. I have tried in all my elections to emphasize the positive. I tell high school kids to give the benefit of the doubt to people that are more positive than negative."

 

Business Week
Copyright 1998 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
October 26, 1998

HEADLINE: HE SAW THE CRISIS COMING -- BUT IT DIDN'T HELP
BYLINE: By Bruce Einhorn in Bangkok

HIGHLIGHT: Banthoon's Thai Farmers Bank is still in a severe crunch

Ask Banthoon Lamsam about Thailand's banks, and you see why he's such a controversial figure. The 45-year-old president of Thai Farmers Bank, the country's second-largest private bank, Banthoon isn't shy about pointing out the failings of Thai bankers -- himself included. For instance, 30% of his loans are nonperforming, and that will rise to 40% by mid-1999. So how does that compare with other banks? ''I don't know,'' he says. ''I don't know who is telling the truth.''

Candid talk, when you consider that Banthoon chairs the Thai Bankers Association. He has irked unions and bankers alike with his calls for reform. ''We have to face up to reality,'' he explains. He says Thailand needs bankers who are honest about their losses, regulators who have the courage to shut bad banks, and lawmakers who can pass tough laws on bankruptcy and foreclosure. ...

This is all quite a comedown for a scion of a top Thai-Chinese family. Banthoon, whose grandfather founded the bank, received the best U.S. education money could buy. High school at Exeter. College at Princeton University, where he dabbled in soccer before joining Tiger Inn, the rowdiest -- and one of the wealthiest -- of the university's eating clubs. Then on to Harvard business school for his MBA. ...

 

International Herald Tribune
Copyright 1998 International Herald Tribune (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France)
October 26, 1998, Monday

HEADLINE: Compare : The Great Depression and Today's Dominoes
BYLINE: By Harold James; International Herald Tribune

DATELINE: MUNICH

The risk of a new Great Depression is greater now than at any time in the last 20 years. One indication is the outbreak of financial panic in a wide variety of geographic and economic settings: Asia first, then South Africa, Russia and Venezuela. Brazil or another large Latin American economy may be next.

Then where? The frightening lesson of the depression of the 1920s and 1930s is that the dominoes simply go on falling. In the end, nowhere is safe from contagion.

Yet the big industrial countries (except Japan) until recently thought that they were safe. Initially, stock markets in industrial countries treated the Asian crisis and the associated commodity price collapse as good news, partly because it tamed the risk of domestic inflation. Now they are more uncertain. ...

This is false comfort, based on a false reading of history. It is an illusion to think that a bad crisis can easily be isolated or confined in a globalized, integrated world.

The reassurances that are frequently given to explain why the leading industrial economies are unlikely to be hit by the Asian flu, or by other crises in emerging markets, are based on calculations of the trade impact. Yet one important result from an analysis of the Great Depression is that trade is not the only, and not the primary, transmission mechanism for international shocks.

It is impossible to explain the collapse of output at the end of the 1920s in the industrial countries by looking at their collapsing export opportunities; by itself, trade does not explain enough. What made the depression the Great Depression was a series of financial panics. They erupted in capital-importing countries in South America and Central Europe. These emerging markets were not interconnected through trade contacts or financial linkages that might have spread contagion directly. ...

The writer, a professor of history at Princeton University, is currently a fellow at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich. This comment was adapted by the International Herald Tribune from a longer article in the latest issue of Fleming's Global Emerging Markets Focus, a publication of the Jardine Fleming financial services group.

 

The Washington Times
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
October 26, 1998, Monday

BYLINE: John McCaslin; THE WASHINGTON TIMES

RAINING ON THE LEFT

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, and don't think some Americans aren't celebrating.

The Center for the Study of Popular Culture notes that the anniversary was recognized by a "rave review" in the New York Times by Steven Marcus, the former dean-turned-professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

"Professor Marcus hailed a tract that calls for civil war against the democracies of the West, and that has inspired the murder of 100 million people in the Third World as 'a prophetic array of visionary judgments on the modern world,' " says the CSPC.

"According to Professor Marcus, 'A century-and-a-half afterward, it remains a classic expression of the society it anatomized and whose doom it prematurely announced.' "

The center is now responding by sending a pamphlet called "Marx's Manifesto: 150 Years of Evil," to every member of the faculty at Columbia. It also took out a full page ad in the Columbia Spectator, and with the help of Columbia students it distributed the pamphlet around the campus.

The center is also sending the pamphlet to every member of the faculty at Harvard, Barnard/Columbia, Georgetown, Princeton, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, UCLA, Brandeis, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, Williams College, Hillsdale College, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina, and Duke.

In addition, David Horowitz, who grew up in a Communist household but now heads the conservative CSPC, offered to debate Mr. Marcus and other faculty at Columbia on the subject, "Is the curriculum at Columbia University a captive of the left?"

 

The Weekly Standard
Copyright 1998 The Weekly Standard
October 26, 1998

HEADLINE: KILLING THE BABIES AND SAVING THE HALIBUT;
Peter Singer Writes the Life of His Disciple

BYLINE: By Wesley J. Smith;

Wesley J. Smith is attorney for the International Anti-Euthanasia Taskforce and author of Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder.

Peter Singer is a major player in the world of ideas. The Australian moral philosopher is probably best known as the ideological father of the modern movement for animal rights. But among academics and members of the intelligentsia, he is equally famous for being a stark utilitarian, one of the premier voices calling for the destruction of the traditional Western ethic that views all human life as having inherently equal moral worth.

All this makes Singer a very busy man. He is a philosophy professor. He lectures throughout the world. He publishes frequent articles, both in academic journals and the middle-brow press. He has written several books, including Practical Ethics, a standard text in many college philosophy departments. His name made the news most recently when the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers howled in outrage at the appointment this summer of Singer -- author, for instance, of a notorious 1995 London Spectator article entitled "Killing Babies Isn't Always Wrong" -- to a prestigious chair of bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values.

Thus, when Singer took the time and effort to write a book-length biography of the late animal-rights agitator Henry Spira, it seemed reasonable to assume that there must be something special about Spira: his personal qualities and his ability to inspire others, perhaps, or the lasting significance of his work. Instead, despite the author's obvious affection for the man, Spira comes across in Ethics Into Action as a lonely misanthrope whose burning passion for the rights of animals (ignited by Singer's own 1973 essay "Animal Liberation," published in the New York Review of Books) proves only a rather sad substitute for the human intimacy he seemed to lack. ...

 

Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company
October 25, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: PEACE: THE NEXT STEP; NEWS ANALYSIS;
AFTER BUDGET DEAL, MIDEAST PACT CEMENTS CLINTON'S POLITICAL CLOUT;

LEADERSHIP: HE LEAVES DIPLOMATIC STAGE FOR ELECTION FUND-RAISER HAVING PROVED HE'S STILL A POTENT PLAYER GLOBALLY AND DOMESTICALLY.

BYLINE: JAMES GERSTENZANG and JANET HOOK, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

After more than a week of intense diplomacy, President Clinton returned Saturday to the political stage, all the while touting the successful outcome of the Middle East peace talks, prodding Israelis and Palestinians to do more and pledging a continued U.S. role.

"We're not out of the woods yet. The agreement still has to be implemented," he said at a fund-raising reception in Beverly Hills for Democratic congressional candidate Janice Hahn.

To the extent that Clinton was central to the Israeli-Palestinian agreement, his diplomatic work at Maryland's Wye River Conference Center demonstrated this tenet of American political life in 1998: The president still is very much a player on the world stage.

Likewise, the final passage of the new federal budget Wednesday, which left many conservative Republicans in Congress howling, was the work of a president--impeachment threat notwithstanding--whose political authority at home remains considerable. ...

In the long run, said the Republican, an expert on the nitty-gritty of presidential power, Clinton was focusing "on surviving, not governing."

But perhaps more significant was the demonstration of the president's standing provided by the budget fight's endgame: He turned scandal to his advantage.

"The Republicans caved on so many things in the hope Clinton wouldn't be able to take control of the agenda and they'd keep the scandal in the foreground," said Fred I. Greenstein, a political scientist and scholar of the presidency at Princeton University.

 

MAIL ON SUNDAY
Copyright 1998 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
October 25, 1998

HEADLINE: THE MATHEMATICS PROBLEM;

Maths is cool, the subject of an Oscar-winning film and bestsellers. Yet one British adult in five can't multiply 21 by six, and one in two training posts for maths teachers goes unfilled

BYLINE: Malcolm Macalister Hall

Two quick questions. You have some flagstones, 3ft by 1ft. Can you show there are four different ways to lay them to make a path 5ft long and 3ft wide? And, when you've done that, can you prove that xn + yn = zn is impossible if 'n' is any number larger than 2? Hurry up. We haven't got all day. These two problems might seem like any you would find in a school test-paper. And, in a schoolroom in Staffordshire last month, even the class of low-ability 'special needs' teenagers got the answer to the first question within a couple of minutes - even though their teacher said that their maths was so poor that they were probably unable to check their change in shops. But what about the second one? Done it yet?

If you have, congratulations - on being the most astounding mathematician in history. One of the greatest living maths geniuses - Briton Andrew Wiles - wrestled with this apparently simple problem day and night for almost eight years in his house near Princeton University, emerging in late 1994 with 100 pages of closely scribbled calculations - which only a handful of people could understand.

The problem is called Fermat's Last Theorem and, until proved by Wiles, it had been regarded as one of the hardest number problems ever conceived. It was set by a 17th Century maths genius, Pierre de Fermat, and has maddened and eluded the greatest mathematicians on the planet for more than 300 years. Don't feel bad - or surprised - if you didn't get it.

What is surprising is the reaction Wiles's achievement provoked. In 1996, Simon Singh directed an award-winning BBC documentary about Wiles and his quest. Then he wrote the book, Fermat's Last Theorem. This became an unexpected hit, uncovering for the first time a deep seam of passion for arcane maths. Riding the top of the UK bestseller lists for a year, it has been sold to almost 30 countries. ...

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
October 25, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

HEADLINE: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: NEW YORK ONLINE;
Gargoyles, 'Creepy and Cute'

BYLINE: By ANTHONY RAMIREZ

"The Monsters of Wall Street" is not an expose of predatory capitalism. Rather, it's part of a Web site about Amelia Wilson's fascination with New York City gargoyles, those decorative, often grotesque human and animal figures on buildings.

Ms. Wilson, 30, a Web site developer in Manhattan, has taken pictures of them with a home video camera and put the images on the site, with commentary. "I like that gargoyles are creepy and cute at the same time," she said.

Ms. Wilson first became interested in gargoyles as a girl, during visits to the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West near 81st Street. She started noticing the gargoyles on the museum and on nearby buildings.

The word gargoyle comes from the French gargouille, meaning throat, a reference to gargoyles' early function as spouts projecting from gutters to carry rainwater away from the roofs of cathedrals. Why gargoyles took on their distinctive shapes is unclear, but one theory is that the figures were an attempt by the early church to incorporate elements of pagan animist religions to win converts. ...

LINKS A score or more, including one for the Gargoyles of Princeton University (http://www.princeton.edu/Mapfiles/gargoyles/) and a link to a Chicago gargoyle sculptor, Walter S. Arnold (http://www.stonecarver.com/).

 

The Palm Beach Post
Copyright 1998 Palm Beach Newspaper, Inc.
October 25, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: HOME BANKING VIA INTERNET RISES WITH COMPUTER BOOM

BYLINE: Danielle Herubin, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

DATELINE: BOCA RATON

Internet banking is no longer an option, it's a necessity, according to literature passed out at the American Banker newspaper's on-line conference last week in Boca Raton.

The number of Internet users worldwide is expected to reach 200 million by 1999, and companies, not banks, will complete 25 percent of all business transactions on the Internet, according to Princeton TeleCom Corp., a home banking company in Princeton, N.J.

Princeton TeleCom, which handles home banking for First Union and Fleet Bank, is one of the earliest home banking systems.

A group of students at Princeton University created it. The students started it in class, and their professor, Don Licciardello, ended up quitting his job to run it. The students eventually went to software giant Microsoft for help, said Peggy Weeks, a spokeswoman for Princeton TeleCom Corp.

The home banking industry was "chaos" in 1983, when Princeton TeleCom was founded, Weeks said.

"The biller didn't know what to do," she said. "They were getting (electronic garble) or (inaccurate) checks," Weeks said.

Princeton TeleCom focuses on electronic transfers of money, especially for reoccurring bills such as for utilities. But if a customer needs a paper check, say for the gardener, the system will write one and mail it.

Princeton TeleCom has 80 employees and about 700 business customers.

 

Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1998 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
October 25, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: OBITUARIES
VanRensselaer Tippett

VanRensselaer Tippett, 82, Sarasota, died Oct. 23, 1998.

He was born Oct. 31, 1915, in New York City and came to Sarasota 31 years ago from Pelham Manor, N.Y. He was a wholesale stamp dealer. He graduated from Princeton University in 1937. He was a veteran of the Army Quartermaster Corp. He was a former member of the Field Club, the Princeton Club and the ACBL, a stamp-collecting club. ...

 

Sunday Times (London)
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Limited
October 25, 1998, Sunday

HEADLINE: Rebel baby maker plans the first human clone
BYLINE: Steve Farrar, Science Correspondent

A PICTURE hangs in Severino Antinori's office of his hero, Robert Edwards, the man who jointly produced the first test-tube baby. Now Antinori wants to make history as the man who creates the world's first human clone.

It is a controversial ambition but Antinori, a 53-year-old Italian embryologist, is used to such ethical challenges: his in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) techniques enabled a 62-year-old woman in 1994 to become the oldest to have a baby.

The disclosure of her assisted conception, using a donated egg, provoked a moral outcry. The Vatican - which is no more than 500 yards from Antinori's private clinic in Rome - accused him of a "horrible and grotesque" act. He countered by describing it as a "great act of love". ...

There is no shortage of people willing to be cloned. Lee Silver, a molecular biologist at Princeton University in America, said he had heard that more than 100 individuals had aproached the Raelian cult after it declared its cloning plans: "Half of these were infertile couples and they were willing to spend lots of money." ...

 

The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
October 24, 1998, Saturday

HEADLINE: Former Butte legislator dies after surgery
DATELINE: BUTTE

Dave Brown of Butte, a former state legislator, died Friday at University Hospital in Madison, Wis., of complications following surgery. He was 49 and had a history of health problems. ...

Brown was born and raised in Pompeys Piller, northeast of Billings, where he parents farmed and ranched. He received a bachelor's degree in religion and political science from Princeton University, where he played junior varsity basketball. While working in Washington, he received a master's degree in legislative affairs from George Washington University. ...

Survivors include his wife and their son, Mac, a senior at Princeton, and daughter Merideth, a sophomore at the University of Montana.

 

The Economist
Copyright 1998 The Economist Newspaper Ltd.
October 24, 1998, U.S. Edition

HEADLINE: Money rules

In setting interest rates, should a central bank follow a pre-set rule or use its discretion? Many economists seem to say one thing but believe another

WHEN the Federal Reserve decided to cut American interest rates by a quarter of a point on October 15th, it took everybody (including The Economist) by surprise. Nothing in its earlier announcements had prepared markets for the move. Economists, by and large, were impressed by the ambush: Alan Greenspan, timing his move to perfection, had shown his mettle once more.

But should they have been so impressed? The academic literature on monetary policy tends to frown on "discretion"--that is, on an approach to setting interest rates that trusts the central bank to weigh lots of evidence, think hard, and arrive at an ad hoc conclusion suited to the particular circumstances. When it comes to monetary policy, economic theory tends to prefer "rules". ...

Even if such rules could be unambiguously defined, following them rigorously would sometimes carry a cost. Extraordinary circumstances arise from time to time. The best policy in these special circumstances might be looser (or tighter) than the rules dictate. At such times it is implausible, economically and especially politically, to argue that the central bank ought to show no "flexibility".

In reality, then, policymakers are obliged to choose not between the stark alternatives of pure rules and total discretion, but among a range of possibilities in between. "Inflation Targeting", a forthcoming book by Frederic Mishkin, of Columbia University, and others, makes the case for one such middle way--a kind of "constrained discretion". Central banks, it argues, should steer interest rates by reference to an announced inflation target.

"Inflation Targeting" by Ben Bernanke, Thomas Laubach, Frederic Mishkin and Adam Posen will be published shortly by Princeton University Press.

 

The Irish Times
Copyright 1998 The Irish Times
October 24, 1998

HEADLINE: The Footnote, by Anthony Grafton (Faber & Faber, (pounds) 7.99 in UK)
BYLINE: By ARMINTA WALLACE

If a historian has the imagination to propose a history of the bits at the bottoms of the page, you'd be entitled to suppose he'd have the imagination - and the information - to do the job properly. And so it is with this marvellously illuminating little book, which, having turned literary and historical scholarship upside down to examine its underwear, proceeds to tell all - the deviousness of academic writers, the tricks by which they manipulate and undermine each other's theses and the role footnotes have played, as a result, in the development of Western academic thought. Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton University, is witty without being flippant, informative without being pedantic, and hugely, consistently entertaining.

 

New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
October 24, 1998

 HEADLINE: A perfect excuse

BYLINE: Gabrielle Walker

HIGHLIGHT: If America's trees soak up its carbon, climate deals may be off

THE US pumps around 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. But a new report claims that the nation's trees could be sucking up just about all this pollution. Critics say the results are unreliable. But their publication in a leading journal could be seized on by politicians who don't want to meet the US's commitment to reducing CO2 emissions.

Fossil fuel burning and deforestation bump up CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but around 2 billion tonnes of CO2 disappears every year into an unknown sink. To try to locate it, a team of American researchers called the Carbon Modeling Consortium divided the world into four regions - Eurasia, the southern continents and North America above and below 51 degrees N. They used models to work out how atmospheric CO2 should be distributed between these regions, based on the known carbon sources and sinks and estimates of how air moves between sites. To see where the extra carbon goes, they compared their simulations with measurements of CO2 taken between 1988 and 1992 from 63 sites around the world.

To the researchers' surprise, almost all the carbon was being taken up by North America south of 51 degrees N ("Science", vol 282, p 442). They suspect that some of it is being absorbed by young trees in areas cleared in the Victorian era that have since been reforested. The rest could be due to improved fire prevention.

But Stephen Schneider of Stanford University in California cautions that neither of these sinks would be long-term: when a forest matures, its emissions of carbon can grow to exceed the amount it absorbs. ...

Steve Pacala of Princeton University in New Jersey, a leading member of the Carbon Modeling Consortium, admits that it's hard to understand why American forests should take up so much carbon. He points out that there are many uncertainties; in particular, data for Eurasia are more sparse than those for America. "I will be very surprised if at the end of the day the sink turns out to be all in North America." ...

 

New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
October 24, 1998

HEADLINE: Into the vortex
BYLINE: Charles Seife

HIGHLIGHT: Splitting the electron scoops the big prize

PARTICLES that shouldn't exist have won scientists in the US the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics. Horst Stoermer, Daniel Tsui and Robert Laughlin are honoured for their discovery of weird "quasiparticles" that carry a seemingly impossible amount of charge.

In 1909, Robert Millikan measured the charge of the electron. Usually labelled "e", this is the fundamental unit of charge. At first it seemed that no measurable particles could have a charge less than "e". But then physicists discovered a bizarre exception.

The oddity begins with a century-old phenomenon known as the Hall effect: when a magnetic field is perpendicular to a stream of electrons in a conductor, the magnetic field pushes the electrons to one side. In 1980, Klaus von Klitzing, now at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany, discovered that in flat, cold conductors placed in a strong magnetic field, the Hall effect does not increase smoothly as the magnetic field increases. Instead, it jumps, the size of the jumps being related to "e", the charge of the electron.

It was when scientists tried to reproduce von Klitzing's experiments in a variety of materials that the real weirdness started to show. Stoermer, a physicist currently at Columbia University in New York, and Tsui, a physicist now at Princeton University in New Jersey, were using a high-quality crystal of gallium arsenide when they noticed that there were too many jumps. ...

 

The Jerusalem Post
Copyright 1998 The Jerusalem Post
October 23, 1998, Friday

HEADLINE: Greenhouse Gases and Hot Air
BYLINE: Ralph Amelan

IS THE TEMPERATURE RISING? The Uncertain Science of Global Warming by S. George Philander. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. 262 pp. Price not stated.

We remember childhood as a time of warmth and sunlight. Nostalgia helps, of course, but occasionally memories serve people well: the summer of 1914 was unusually fine throughout Europe, and those trapped in the muddy charnel houses of the First World War rightly contrasted the golden time of peace with the sodden filth of battle.

But is our imagined past fated to be the future some climatologists imagine for us? They claim temperatures are on the rise all over the world.

Glaciers are in retreat, our summers are becoming hotter, diseases are likely to spread and our crops are under threat.

And who is to blame for this? Homo sapiens, of course. Our industries have been producing gases such as carbon dioxide to the extent that the composition of the earth's atmosphere has been affected. As a result more heat is being absorbed from the sun, and we are in danger of upsetting the invisible thermostat that has kept temperatures more or less stable, thus enabling life to flourish.

Some theorists even claim that the result will not be global warming but global cooling. Either way, we lose. The Kyoto protocols of 1997 gave quasi-official recognition to these theories, calling on all countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, and setting timetables for these reductions. And any hot spell, such as the one Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean endured this summer, is promptly ascribed to this form of industrial pollution.

The only trouble is, we have no idea if this is true. ...

The truth is that the factors that influence or can potentially influence climate are many, and it is exceptionally difficult to disentangle them. S. George Philander is professor of geosciences at Princeton University, and it is a merit of his book that he makes this clear. The composition of the earth's atmosphere is plainly an important element in the equation; no less important is the role played by the sun (the cold spell that affected England and Europe in the 17th century coincided with a period of low sunspot activity), the ocean currents, such as El Nino and the Gulf Stream, and the earth's rotation.

Furthermore, not all greenhouse gases are, like carbon dioxide, man-made.

As Philander notes, "the problem still remains enormously complex because the atmospheric concentration of one very important greenhouse gas, water vapor, cannot be specified." ...

 

U.S. Newswire
Copyright 1998 U.S. Newswire, Inc.
October 22, 1998

HEADLINE: REVISED: Black Students Receive $13.6 Million in College Aid Offers at Project Excellence/Freedom Forum Scholarship Day

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 22

At an event that is unparalleled in the country, some of Washington's brightest African-American students were awarded $13.6 million in college scholarship offers today. The sixth annual Project Excellence/Freedom Forum Scholarship Day produced 403 on-the-spot scholarship offers.

"This is another marvelous expression of faith in both a great group of youngsters and in the future of the United States," journalist Carl Rowan, founder of the event, said. "We are all blessed at this marriage of young brainpower and colleges and universities that care."

Presidents, deans and admissions officers from 40 of the nation's African-American seniors in the Washington area. Rowan said Scholarship Day is one of the most successful college fairs in the nation. ...

Among the schools participating this year in Scholarship Day were American University, Ball State University, Cornell University, DePauw University, Duke University, Hampton University, Hood College, Howard University, Ohio State University, Princeton University, Rutgers, United States Naval Academy, University of Notre Dame, University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University, Washington and Lee University, Washington College and Xavier University. ...

 

The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 1998 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
October 22, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Current and past Nobel winners
SOURCE: Houston Chronicle News Services

The 1998 Nobel Prizes were awarded in six categories to 12 people, including Houston's Ferid Murad and seven other Americans. The following list includes this year's winners and a mention of well-known winners of the past. ...

Physics

Robert B. Laughlin of Stanford University, Horst L. Stormer of Columbia University and Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton University won the physics prize for discovering how electrons can change behavior and act more like fluid than particles.

In 1921, Albert Einstein won for contributing to mathematical physics and stating the law of the photoelectric effect.

Literature

Jose Saramago, one of Portugal's most popular contemporary writers, has seen his work translated into more than 20 languages. His books include "Baltasar and Blimunda and Blindness."

In 1993, American writer Toni Morrison won for her body of work. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Beloved" is now a movie starring Oprah Winfrey.

 

M2 PRESSWIRE
Copyright 1998 M2 Communications Ltd.
October 22, 1998

HEADLINE: UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
Greece Arcadia teacher honored by university

Chemistry teacher David Crane of Greece Arcadia High School has received the 1998 Inspirational Science Teacher Award from the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). Crane accepted the award, which consists of a small glass sculpture and $1,000, at a recent symposium where area high school students showed off the research they performed at LLE this summer. ...

Crane was recommended by a former student and an alumnus of the summer program, Robert Dick, who went on to pursue his doctorate in computer science at Princeton University. ...

 

The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC)
Copyright 1998 The News and Observer
October 22, 1998 Thursday

HEADLINE: Rules eyed for mental illness research
BYLINE: Usha Lee McFarling, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON -_ A presidential commission is poised to approve rules that would protect people with mental disorders who take part in potentially risky medical research.

Federal guidelines protect other research participants who are deemed especially vulnerable, including children and prisoners, but no rules specifically protect those with illnesses such as schizophrenia, manic depression and Alzheimer's disease - people who could be abused if their ability to make good decisions is compromised.

Some widely publicized cases have highlighted potential problems. In 1991, a 23-year-old man with schizophrenia in a University of California at Los Angeles research trial committed suicide during a study in which his medication was withdrawn to see if he would retain his improvements without medication.

Although such cases remain rare, members of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission said rules are needed to ensure that all subjects are adequately protected. ...

"We have to face up to the fact that researchers - who have the best intentions and are wonderful people in my opinion - nevertheless have multiple conflicts of interest," said Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University and chairman of the commission.

The new rules, Shapiro said, are intended to protect patient rights without hindering research. The guidelines are especially important now, he said, as new discoveries and potential treatments for brain disorders continually tumble from neuroscience laboratories. ...

 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1998 P.G. Publishing Co.
October 22, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: A DESCENDANT CRAFTS A DARKLY HUED BIOGRAPHY OF HENRY CLAY FRICK.
BYLINE: DONALD MILLER, POST-GAZETTE ART AND ARCHITECTURE CRITIC

"Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait" By Martha Frick Symington Sanger

Abbeville Press. $50.

A great-granddaughter of Henry Clay Frick, once "the most hated man in America," has unleashed a 600-page biography that is, culturally speaking, a psychological thriller of Johnstown Flood proportions.

That seems only right since Frick was a primary originator of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. When its earthen dam broke in 1892, 2,200 people drowned.

But "Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait" is really a double portrait, not only of Frick but also of his daughter, Helen Clay Frick (1888-1984). This dark saga ends with her death at Clayton in Point Breeze. The public has long needed such a book in order to understand what motivated this family. ...

 Henry Clay Frick and daughter Helen's philanthropy was considerable, benefiting many people and organizations in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Yet their lives in very different ways were filled with feelings of remorse and grief. As true mourning Victorians, the Fricks could never relinquish the memory of Martha, Frick' s elder daughter who died at age 6. Both Frick and Helen carried the dead girl's portrait on their personal checks.

Frick's early interest in fine things was stimulated by prints that he hung in his live-in work shack in Connellsville. Soon he was buying more prints and paintings to adorn his room in Pittsburgh's posh Monongahela House.

His interest in art led to an eye-opening tour of European museums with his younger friend and banker Andrew W. Mellon, who was similarly impressed and would form the National Gallery of Art. Frick' s interest in beauty and luxury led him to enlarge and further decorate his Point Breeze mansion, Clayton. But he established a finer life, a finer palace and a greater gathering of art, the Frick Collection, one of the world' s most impressive, in New York City.

In bequeathing it to the nation, Frick assured for himself the highest form of immortality that the modern world offers. He also gave Frick Park to Pittsburgh as well as millions to Princeton University. ...

 

Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1998 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
October 22, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: FRISBEE ENTHUSIASTS GO FOR ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE;

FIFTY TEAMS WILL PURSUE NATIONAL ULTIMATE FRISBEE TITLES STARTING TODAY AT THE SARASOTA POLO GROUNDS.

BYLINE: Brian Evers McGee CORRESPONDENT

Ultimate frisbee has come a long way from its origin in the late 1960s at Princeton University where students used to swipe Mother Frisbie's cookie jar lids to use in a game of toss.

When the 18th annual Ultimate Players Association National Championships opens today at the Sarasota Polo Grounds, there will be 50 teams and more than 800 players from the U.S. and Canada vying for national titles in four divisions in the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. ...

 

The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
October 22, 1998, Thursday, Final Edition

HEADLINE: Not an Academic Question
BYLINE: Bill McAllister

It probably will come as a surprise to many lawmakers, but the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that only 75 of the nation's top 475 private colleges and universities told the Internal Revenue Service that they spent any money on lobbying.

Many academics find IRS guidelines on reporting "fuzzy and confusing," the publication said. But it also suggested that many colleges "try to reveal as little as possible because they seem embarrassed to be doing it [lobbying]." ...

The smallest expense the Chronicle unearthed came from Southern Methodist University, which listed only $600 in expenses. Princeton University, which the Chronicle said maintains a five-member staff in Washington, listed its expenses at $35,000. A Princeton spokesman said the dollar figure is correct but the Washington staff numbers only three. ...

 

The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
October 22, 1998, Thursday

HEADLINE: Washington Lawyer Lawrence Robert Caruso Dies at 77

Lawrence Robert Caruso, 77, a Washington lawyer and partner in the firm of Caruso & Caruso, died of complications related to heart ailments Oct. 18 at Sibley Memorial Hospital.

Mr. Caruso, who lived in Bethesda, was born in Hoboken, N.J. He served in the Army during World War II, then graduated from George Washington University, where he received a law degree and a master's degree in law.

He was a lawyer in the general counsel's office of the Air Force from 1950 to 1957, and then moved to New Jersey where he became general counsel for Princeton University. He served at Princeton until 1971. ...

 

AP Online
Copyright 1998 Associated Press
October 21, 1998; Wednesday

HEADLINE: Doctor Defections From HMOs Grow

BYLINE: PHIL GALEWITZ
DATELINE: NEW YORK

In what is believed to be the largest mass exodus from one HMO, more than 400 doctors in North Texas are calling it quits with Aetna-US Healthcare this month.

They're not alone. Tired of complaining about the interference HMOs have over their medical practices, more and more doctors seem willing to strike out on their own. ...

Princeton University health economist Uwe Rheinhardt said that as long as employers and the federal government insist that HMOs hold down premiums, the HMOs will be forced to place heavy restrictions on care on doctors. Since 1993 the slowdown in the rise in health costs has helped improve the national economy.

''Managed care and economic boom times are not compatible,'' he said.

 

The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
October 21, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: Soaring Endowments and Big Spending
BYLINE: By KAREN W. ARENSON

If there is a commonly followed barometer of the wealth of universities, it is surely Harvard's endowment, which, thanks to generous donors and the long stock market boom of the 1990's, stood close to $13 billion at the end of June, more than the gross national product of most developing countries.

No other college or university comes close. Still, the University of Texas system (the second richest, with $7.6 billion) and other wealthy colleges and universities like Princeton and the University of California have seen their endowments soar. A dozen now have $3 billion or more, up from six just two years ago.

Despite the recent market slump -- including losses taken on some hedge funds and other investments -- many of these institutions are beginning to loosen their purse strings and spend some of their newly acquired bounty. Tuition increases are being moderated. Financial aid packages are being sweetened. Faculty members are getting more money for research. Academic initiatives are bursting forth, frequently with new laboratories or classrooms. ...

The 10 wealthiest educational institutions, based on the market value of their endowments. In billions. Comparing June 1997 to June 1998.

Harvard -- $10.9, $12.8
U. of Texas -- 6.7, 7.6
Yale -- 5.7, 6.6
Princeton -- 4.9, 5.6
Stanford -- 4.7, *
Emory University -- 4.3, 5.0
U. of California -- 3.2, 3.9
M.I.T. -- 3.0, 3.7
Columbia -- 3.0,3.4
Washington U. (Mo.) -- 2.8, 3.5

 

National Public Radio
SHOW: NPR MORNING EDITION
OCTOBER 21, 1998, WEDNESDAY

HEADLINE: Medical Research Guidelines
BYLINE: Joanne Silberner, Washington, DC; Bob Edwards, Washington

HIGHLIGHT: NPR's Joanne Silberner reports that the National Bioethic Advisory Commission is trying to establish ethical guidelines for medical research involving mentally ill people. The commission is trying to ensure protection for people with mental disorders who participate in research trials.

BOB EDWARDS, HOST: Ethics in the treatment of the mentally ill is coming under increasing examination. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission met yesterday to discuss medical research done on people with mental illness. There have been reports of questionable studies monitoring the brains of patients given drugs to cause symptoms of schizophrenia or taking people off medication to see how they would react. The commission is trying to develop a policy to prevent unethical research without disrupting work that could lead to new treatment for the mentally ill. ...

JOANNE SILBERNER, NPR REPORTER: There are plenty of rules regarding research on human subjects. Researchers have to make sure people know what they're getting into. But some people with diseases like schizophrenia or manic depression have impaired judgment, so how can they give truly informed consent?

Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University, chairs the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.

HAROLD SHAPIRO, PRESIDENT, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, CHAIR, NATIONAL BIOETHICS ADVISORY COMMISSION: A simple solution would be to say: you cannot use people in medical experiments. That would seem to be morally satisfying. But it undermines your ability to ever help them, now or in the future. ...

 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1998 P.G. Publishing Co.
October 21, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: MICROSOFT TELLS ANTITRUST TRIAL IT'S FIERCE BUT FAIR COMPETITOR;
DISPUTES U.S. CLAIMS THAT IT ILLEGALLY TRIED TO DOMINATE MARKETS

BYLINE: DAVE WILSON, KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON

Microsoft's legal team failed to draw blood yesterday as it began its cross-examination of Jim Barksdale, chief executive of Netscape Communications Corp., which is alleged by the government to be the principal victim of unfair business practices by the software giant.

Barksdale, who was by turns combative, cooperative and jocular, seemed to score some points for the prosecution during his cross-examination.

In one exchange, he noted as an aside that, when consumers compare the Web-browsing software distributed by the two companies, they tend to prefer Netscape's. Referring to Microsoft's increasing market share of Web-browsing software - coming at the expense of Netscape, whose share is declining Microsoft's lead attorney, John L. Warden, shot back, ''If they don't prefer it, why do they use it?''

Barksdale seized the opening and underscored the government's contention that Microsoft built its Web browser into its Windows operating system, which is installed on 90 percent of desktop computers, largely to damage Netscape. ''Because it came with the machine,'' Barksdale snapped. ...

Warden derided some of the witnesses who will testify for the government, including Edward Felten, a computer science professor at Princeton University, and David Farber, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Felten, he said, will testify about his efforts to remove Microsoft's Web-browsing software, Internet Explorer, from the new operating system, Windows 98. He couldn't do it, Warden said. ''In the process of trying, he did manage to screw up the operating system.''

Warden mockingly called Farber ''the ultimate semanticist,'' and said the widely known computer expert would try to tell the court what defined an operating system. The point could be important, since Microsoft does not concede there are separate markets for computer operating systems and Web-browsing software. Warden dismissed the testimony of both men - which remains under seal until later in the trial - as ''musings from the academy.'' ...

 

The Times
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Limited (London)
October 21, 1998, Wednesday

HEADLINE: Missing gas

BYLINE: Nigel Hawkes

Climate change

JUST in time for the climate meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a team in America has come up with a finding that is bound to muddy the waters.

The research, led by Dr Jorge Sarmiento of Princeton University and published in Science, was aimed at finding an answer to a longstanding puzzle. Human activity generates 7.1 thousand million million grams of carbon dioxide a year, but only half turns up in the atmosphere. There seems to be a "sink" of carbon dioxide that prevents global warming from going even faster.

Dr Sarmiento used mathematical models of carbon flow to try to sort it out, and found that carbon dioxide levels fell off from west to east in North America, even though the main production sources are in the east. This implied that the continent must contain a larger carbon sink than previously allowed for. What shocked the researchers is the size of this sink, for if they are right, it is large enough to absorb all the carbon dioxide produced in North America.

That defies belief in the doubters' eyes, especially as no similar effect is observed in the forests of Eurasia. Confusion is compounded by a second study in Science, this time from a team including scientists from the universities of Edinburgh and Leeds. They have studied the rainforests of South America and conclude that the trees are growing faster, and larger - accounting for about 40 per cent of the "missing" carbon dioxide. The study uses data from 150 tropical forests plotted over 20 years, rather than a mathematical model.

Both studies cannot be right. Nevertheless, it seems certain that the Sarmiento study will be used by critics of the climate change convention. Already Steven Crookshank, of the American Petroleum Institute, has claimed that it "calls into question the scientific basis on which we are making these decisions, when we still don't know if the United States is even emitting any carbon". ...

 

The Boston Globe
Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company
October 20, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: NOT SO BIG NOT ALL MEN ON CAMPUS
The notion of a BMOC is well, old school. Now there's a leader for practically every race, creed, and cause

BYLINE: By John Powers, Globe Staff

No heads turn when the football captain strolls across Harvard Yard to his government class. "None," Brendan Bibro testifies. "That's the total truth."

Bibro is a big man - 6 feet, 250 pounds sans cleats and pads - but he is not a Big Man, not the way he would have been back when the gridiron king was a tin god around Cambridge.

Even though Harvard is coming off its best season in three decades and Bibro is the first man in modern times to be captain for two years, he's just another passing face. "I would say 99 percent of people here have no idea who I am," Bibro says. "And the other 1 percent play alongside me."

What used to be called the BMOC - the Big Man on Campus, the stereotypical football star with Betty Coed on his letter-sweatered arm at a fraternity party - has vanished, certainly at colleges around Boston.

With student bodies now coeducational and dramatically more diverse than they were in the '50s and '60s, the Big Man has been supplanted by a dozen or more mid-sized BMOCs (and increasingly, BWOCs) who operate in decidedly narrow orbits. ...

Hobey Baker, Princeton University's blond and graceful demigod, was the model for the BMOC. "There at the head of the white platoon marched Allenby, the football captain, slim and defiant," Fitzgerald wrote in "This Side of Paradise," "as if aware that this year the hopes of the college rested on him . . . ."

Baker was Princeton (and America) in 1914, just as Pete Dawkins was West Point (and America) in 1958. Dawkins, a dentist's son from Detroit, was football captain, class president, first captain of the cadet corps, and a Rhodes scholar. Everyone wanted to be Pete Dawkins - until Vietnam turned campuses upside down. ...

 

THE ELECTRICITY DAILY
Copyright 1998 Elsevier Science

October 20, 1998, Tuesday

HEADLINE: Land Absorption of CO2 High, Say Researchers

A study by government and university scientists indicates that the land mass in North America is absorbing a large amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. During the past decade, evidence had already suggested the existence of a large land "sink" of atmospheric CO2 at temperate latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. In an article appearing in the Oct.16 issue of Science magazine, scientists from the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton University, and Columbia University say that they have now tentatively identified that sink as being mostly in North America, at least during the period studied, from 1988-1992. The term "sink" refers to areas where greenhouse gases are absorbed either by land or ocean processes. ...

The researchers are not sure what is causing this decline of CO2. But they theorize that it is partly due to the regrowth of plants and vegetation on abandoned farmland and previously logged forests, and may be enhanced by human-induced nitrogen deposition -- a diluted form of acid rain -- and increasing CO2 levels, which can act as fertilizers for plants. While the actual cause remains unknown. The researchers do believe that plants and soils are a major factor in CO2 absorption and will continue to exert considerable influence on atmospheric CO2 in the future.

Electric power industry sources are excited by the report. As one source puts it, "Sounds like us North Americans are sequestering more CO2 than we're producing, thus not adding to the global increase. Think of the ramifications for the Kyoto Protocol. We're the guys in the white hats."Jerry Mahlman, director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and a co-author of the paper, explains that "While the North American sink may prove important in worldwide management of atmospheric carbon absorption, its value will come at a global level, not a regional one. Excess CO2 in the atmosphere/ocean system lasts more than a hundred generations." ...

 

The Plain Dealer
Copyright 1998 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
October 20, 1998 Tuesday

HEADLINE: ARTHUR BLOOMFIELD, EXPERT IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE
BYLINE: FROM WIRE REPORTS

DATELINE: BETHESDA, MD.

Arthur I. Bloomfield, 84, an author, educator and specialist in international trade and finance, died Oct. 6 of degenerative neurological disease.

Bloomfield wrote many books on economics, including "Capital Imports and the U.S. Balance of Payments," "Monetary Policy Under the International Gold Standards, 1830-1914" and "Essays in the History of International Trade Theory."

From 1949 to 1950, while at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he served as financial adviser to the Bank of Korea, helping create the foundation of the country's central bank. He later served as financial adviser to the Korean Ministry of Finance and the United Nations Reconstruction Agency.

In 1958, Bloomfield left his position as senior economist and consultant at the Fed to become a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He retired in 1985 and also was a visiting professor at colleges including Columbia University, Princeton University and the University of Melbourne in Australia.

 

The Straits Times
Copyright 1998 The Straits Times Press Limited (Singapore)

October 20, 1998

HEADLINE: HK brims with pride for old boy
NOBEL ACHIEVEMENT

The sixth ethnic Chinese to win the Nobel Prize, Professor Daniel Tsui Chee has Hongkong all excited

BALDING, bespectacled and seen mostly dressed in a woolly jumper, 59-year-old Daniel Tsui Chee does not exactly look like your average pin-up boy.

But the professor of physics at Princeton Unversity has sent the regional media -in particular, Hongkong newspapers -into a tornado of excitement, after winning the Nobel Prize for Physics last Tuesday.

Over the past week, quietly-smiling photographs of the scientist whom colleagues call a "shy man" have been splashed across feature articles, to be devoured by jubilant Hongkongers. ...

Previous ethnic Chinese winners include physicists Yang Chen-ning and Lee Tsung-dao, who won the award in 1957.

That, by sheer coincidence, happened to be the same year Prof Tsui graduated as one of the top boys from his Hongkong alma mater, the Pui Ching Middle School.

The soon-to-be scientist left Hongkong for further studies in the United States a year later.

Prof Tsui, who used to spell his name as Tsuie Chye, was born in China's Henan province and emigrated to Hongkong in the '50s.

He joined the Chinese-stream Pui Ching school in 1953, obtaining an education bursary because his family was too poor to pay for his fees.

During his six years there, he was known for his "very high scores in almost all subjects", according to school records. ...

But beyond admiration, Prof Tsui's win has sparked off new discussion on the territory's current campaign on mother-tongue education.

Pui Ching has traditionally used Chinese as the main medium of instruction, a policy which became unpopular in the '70s due to a lack of adequate Chinese textbooks.

The re-introduction of the campaign appears to have been vindicated by the old-boy's success -ironically in a world where English is the main language medium.

Prof Tsui is married to an American with whom he has two daughters, but he has also maintained close ties with Asia.

He flies to Taiwan regularly for lecture-demonstrations, and still has relatives living in Hongkong. ...

 

Xinhua News Agency
OCTOBER 20, 1998, TUESDAY

HEADLINE: People in central Chinese city love to learn English
DATELINE: Wuhan

When an American teacher opened an English school in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei province, last year, he had no doubt about the market. Since its establishment in October 1996, the school has drawn 3,000 students for its various English classes. David Perrie, the 60-year old Ph.D. of English literature from Princeton University says that more Chinese in the city are interested in studying English because it gets them better job opportunities. ...