Princeton in the News
January 28 to February 3, 1999
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Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 1999 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
February 3, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
CLARENCE E. REID JR., 92, of Little Springs, whose son lives in LITTLE SILVER, died Monday at King James Nursing Home, Highlands. He worked for the Charms Candy Co. in several locations, including Freehold, and retired in 1978 as vice president and director. He was a member of the First Congregational Church, Westfield, for 75 years. He attended Westfield High School and was a 1929 graduate of Princeton University. Born in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., he lived in Westfield and in Mountainside before moving to Little Springs three years ago. ...
Associated Press
February 3, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Markets react calmly to second central banker in as many months
BYLINE: By STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press WriterDATELINE: SAO PAULO, Brazil
Brazilian stock markets and currency transactions were slightly weaker Wednesday following the naming of the country's second central bank president in as many months.
Instead of shaking investors' already jittery nerves, Tuesday's appointment of market insider Arminio Fraga appeared to have brought Latin America's largest economy a measure of credibility. ...
The 42-year-old Fraga, a former associate of billionaire investor George Soros, replaced Francisco Lopes, who allowed the real to float freely on international markets. During Lopes' three-week rule, the real lost more than 40 percent of its value.
Most analysts welcomed Fraga's nomination, saying his experience on international financial markets - he also has a doctorate in economics from Princeton University - will help him ward off speculative attacks on the real. ...
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
February 3, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Lindsey upset that students have been involved in her trial
DATELINE: HONOLULUA tearful Bishop Estate Trustee Lokelani Lindsey testified Tuesday that she is upset that Kamehameha Schools students were called as witnesses in her civil trial.
"I don't think students should be used that way," she said of the legal effort by fellow trustees Oswald Stender and Gerard Jervis to have her removed as a trustee for allegedly misusing her power as a trustee. ..
When he testified in late December, Kuala'au, who attends Princeton University, said he and another student wrote a letter in support of Chun.
He said Lindsey called him to her office and told him not to send the letter to the media or the state Supreme Court, which appointed the trustees.
He said Lindsey told him, "I'm not going to do this, but how would you feel if I wrote to Princeton and told them you are a rabble-rouser?" He said he considered this a "scare tactic" to get him not to print the letter, and said it worked.
The Buffalo News
Copyright 1999 The Buffalo News
February 3, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: BLUNTING THE STING OF A DIVORCE
BYLINE: ANN LANDERS
Dear Readers: I just read a terrific booklet titled "Stepping Back From Anger." The booklet was printed by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers to help parents protect their children from some of the harmful effects of divorce. Here is an excerpt:
Every year, more than 1 million American couples get divorced. For those men and women, it is often the most emotionally exhausting and expensive experience they will ever have. For their children, it can be even worse. ...
Long after the divorce is final, children of divorce often have trouble entering into committed relationships of their own, fearing their relationships will end as their parents' did. In addition, a Princeton University study showed that children who live apart from one of their parents are more likely to drop out of school, become unmotivated and have a child before reaching the age of 20. ...
Business Wire
Copyright 1999 Business Wire, Inc.
February 3, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Minolta and MetaCreations Announce MetaFlash Licensing Agreement; Minolta to Develop 3-D Photo Capture Device Enabling Scaling, Streaming of 3-D Web Imagery
DATELINE: CARPINTERIA, Calif.
Feb. 3, 1999--MetaCreations Corp. (Nasdaq:MCRE) and Minolta Co. Ltd. (Tokyo Stock Exchange:7753) Wednesday announced that Minolta will produce and distribute a 3-D digital camera utilizing MetaCreations' recently announced MetaFlash(tm) technology.
This revolutionary camera will enable Web developers to easily and affordably capture photo-realistic 3-D images for interactive use on the Internet and in other applications. ...
The MetaFlash(tm) technology was developed under the leadership of Dr. Sasha Migdal, who heads the MetaCreations Princeton Internet development facility. Migdal is a world-renowned theoretical physicist and an expert in the fields of quantum gravity and quark confinement. He left a Princeton University professorship to pursue full-time his vision for acquisition, streaming transmission and use of 3-D objects via the Internet.
This vision was based largely on the unique dynamic triangulation theories Migdal had developed during his research of quantum gravity at Princeton and as head of the Laboratory of Computational Physics in the Cybernetics Council of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. These concepts have already resulted in the development of the MetaStream(tm) open file format and viewer, licensed by Microsoft and others. ...
CNNfn
SHOW: BUSINESS UNUSUAL
February 3, 1999HEADLINE: CEO, ZEVCO, CNNfn
GUESTS: Nick Abson
BYLINE: Beverly SchuchBEVERLY SCHUCH, CNNfn ANCHOR, BUSINESS UNUSUAL: Journalists are often warned not to allow themselves to get too close to a story, but for my guest the advice fell on deaf ears. A director of the British science TV program, Nick Abson was introduced to a novel technology developed for the European space program. So taken with the technologicals potential he says he had no choice but to buy the company.
Joining me now is Nick Abson founder and CEO of Zevco and welcome to the program. ...
SCHUCH: Now tell me what you see, what your vision is for these fuel cells and this kind of clean energy.
ABSON: Well, the first thing and the most important thing is it freeze hydrogen as a fuel. So, you can use hydrogen as a fuel. Hydrogen is an enormously value fuel. It's very cheap to manufacture. You can make it out of organic waste, for example, which means in the city of New York a study was done by Princeton University where the city of New York could provide 80 percent, I'm sorry, 40 percent of the total vehicle miles in hydrogen at a negative cost. In other words, less they could pay you to take it away. So, here we freed this very clean fuel that solves all kinds of pollution problems in its manufacturer and then you put it into fuel cells and make it generate electricity, again, cleanly. ...
Health Line
Copyright 1999 The National Journal Group, Inc.February 3, 1999
HEADLINE: MANAGED CARE: MARKET PENETRATION IMPACTS FFS PATIENTS
Managed care is impacting the way physicians treat all their patients, even the ones not enrolled in managed care plans, according to a study published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Laurence Baker of Stanford
University examined Medicare expenditures over a four-year period in 802 regions with high HMO market penetration. He predicted that "(p)hysicians conditioned to function in a managed care environment may find themselves" operating with a "managed care mindset." ...
In an accompanying editorial, Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhardt notes that the findings can be explained by the fact that "the typical physician will have settled on a preferred practice style that is applied to all patients, regardless of their insurance status." ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
February 3, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths MILLER, MILDRED BAYLIS
MILLER-Mildred Baylis. Age 96, on February 2, 1999. Wife of the late Robert Carter Miller. Survived by son, Robert C. Miller, Jr., and daughter, Nancy Baylis Miller and two grandchildren. Memorial service 2 P.M. Saturday February 6th at Princeton University Chapel, Princeton, N.J.
News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
Copyright 1999 News & Record
February 3, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: NATION NEVER TIRES OF BOOKS ON CIVIL WAR
The Civil War remains one of the most discussed and controversial events in our national history. Even today, 138 years after it began, an average of one book a week is published about the war. Personally, teaching and writing about it has been an exciting and fascinating experience.
I am often asked to recommend books for anyone who wants to learn more about this most tragic of wars. Here is a list of books that I have found especially helpful in not only telling the history of the war, but also in explaining why things happened as they did.
BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM - The Civil War, by James McPherson. This is the best single volume text I have found about the war. McPherson, professor of history at Princeton University, understands that the war was not only about events, it was about people. And he brings to life the good and bad characters who made the war the glory and tragedy it was: President Abraham Lincoln, of course, and an exceptional portrayal of his opposite number, President Jefferson Davis, explaining why Davis was the wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong job. ...
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
February 3, 1999, WednesdayHEADLINE: RETIRED EPISCOPAL PRIEST DIES; WILLIAM BUTTRICK KNOWN FOR PASTORAL CARE
BYLINE: Ellen Robertson; Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Pastoral care was the hallmark of the ministry of the Rev. William Buttrick, said his wife of 32 years, Mary Flook Buttrick. "Countless parishioners have come to me and told me what a fine pastor he was to them in their times of grief."
Mr. Buttrick, a retired Episcopal priest who served in the Diocese of Virginia for 21 years, died of congestive heart failure Monday in a local hospital. ...
A Concord, Mass., native, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from Princeton University. After earning his master of divinity degree from Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., in 1960, he was ordained a priest in Cincinnati. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Pennsylvanian via U-Wire
February 3, 1999HEADLINE: College Board mulls financial aid
BYLINE: By Catherine Lucey, Daily Pennsylvanian
SOURCE: U. Pennsylvania
DATELINE: PhiladelphiaUniversities across the country may soon see changes in how financial aid is calculated, as the College Board is considering modifying its institutional methodology -- the formula used to determine student financial need.
College Board spokesperson Jack Joyce said that an advisory committee is reviewing the current formula used by the College Board's financial aid division to assess student need. The group has developed several modifications which will primarily benefit middle-class families, he added.
Hundreds of institutions -- including Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities -- currently use information collected by the College Board's financial aid division to evaluate student need. Those schools will be directly affected by the changes. ...
Both Princeton and Harvard -- along with Stanford University, Dartmouth College and a slew of other top schools -- recently overhauled their financial aid programs to attract low- and middle-income students, most frequently by replacing the loan portion of aid packages with additional grants. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 3, 1999HEADLINE: Princeton A.D. sorts trivialities from issues during long days
BYLINE: By Oliver Williams, Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Gary Walters sits down at his desk, morning coffee in hand, and checks his e-mail. He scans the messages quickly.
Jane Doe is disgruntled with her seat again. John Smith thought another fan was rude to him. Al Jones claims the stadium Coke was too flat.
The names vary from week to week, but the amount of frivolous feedback never does. And when you're the Director of Athletics of a Division-I university like Princeton, that can be a major problem. ...
So when you're managing 38 varsity sports and working weekends half the year, evaluating the soda machines in Jadwin Gym isn't exactly a high priority.
"More often than not today," Walters says, "the public tends to direct its complaints to the president or to the executive officers within an organization in ways that are just unbelievably time-consuming. There's not enough time today to sit back and think of the Big Picture. There's too much time that's taken up in trivia." ...
Walters is quick to point out, however, that not everyone's opinion necessarily carries the same weight.
"There's an axiom in sales that 80 percent of your revenue comes from 20 percent of your clients," he says. "You have to make sure you're not dragged down into the minutiae of that (other) 80 percent (of clients). You want to focus on the 20 percent (of clients), where it's the significance of that small difference that creates the meaningful difference in the lives of everybody associated with the program." ...
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
February 2, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Government says Microsoft's video evidence was false
BYLINE: By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press WriterDATELINE: WASHINGTON
The government accused Microsoft on Tuesday of offering a false video as evidence during a court demonstration by the software company that purported to show severe problems resulting from the government's efforts to modify the company's Windows 98 software.
"I believe from what I've seen here is, they filmed the wrong system," said James Allchin, a senior vice president and Microsoft's top computer scientist. He later added: "I'm not sure they would do anything like that" to mislead the judge.
In one of the most dramatic moments of the antitrust trial against giant Microsoft Corp., Justice Department lawyer David Boies stopped a video demonstration in midframe to show a subtle inconsistency: the border showing the program's name was different in one part of the video than in another. ...
An outside expert, computer scientist Edward Felten of Princeton University, previously testified for the government that he was able to disable Microsoft's Internet software included within Windows.
Allchin responded that government efforts slowed some functions and prevented other programs from running at all. He derided the Felten's attempts as a "Rube Goldberg mechanism" that made Windows "effectively useless in a commercial sense." ...
Innovator's Digest
Copyright 1999 Merton Allen Associates
February 2, 1999HEADLINE: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF POLYMERS AND THEIR FLOW PROPERTIES IN THE MELT STATE.
This (Princeton University) research was undertaken to discover, and to advance, the fundamental understanding of the quantitative relationships between the molecular structure of polymers and their flow properties in the melt state. Such relationships are important in the design of polymer structures for efficient processing and optimal combinations of final-use properties.
One project focuses on molecular weight distribution, resulting in new procedures founded on molecular theories, for connecting distribution with the linear viscoelastic behavior of the melt. Another project deals with the effects of branching and blending on both macromolecular diffusion and linear viscoelastic response. Though widely encountered in polymer processing, the branching and blending effects are poorly understood; this project uses model materials to establish some basic guidelines about them for application to the more complex systems of commercial interest. ...
Innovator's Digest
Copyright 1999 Merton Allen Associates
February 2, 1999HEADLINE: THE RELEVANCE OF DROPLET COLLISION TO SPRAY COMBUSTION.
This (Princeton University) study addresses the relevance of droplet collision to spray combustion, which intimately influences the spray characteristics in the dense-spray region. The study gains a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms governing the observed phenomena of permanent coalescence, bouncing, and separation upon collision.
A computer code is developed for droplet collision, allowing study of: the extent of droplet deformation; the dynamics of inter-droplet flow; the relative importance of the gas resistance force as compared to the collisional inertia; and the relevant rheological properties of the gases and liquids. A criterion is derived for the transition from permanent coalescence to coalescence followed by separation.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
February 2, 1999, TuesdayHEADLINE: Foreign Affairs; The Invisible Men
BYLINE: By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
DATELINE: DAVOS, Switzerland
U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers joked the other day that he had a new idea for solving the problem of Brazil's collapsing currency, the real. He suggested the Brazilians rename their currency -- "real.com." Judging from U.S. stock markets, it would double in value every 90 days.
Mr. Summers' joke, though, actually captured the most interesting aspect of this year's Davos World Economic Forum, the annual gathering in the Swiss Alps of world leaders, business executives and bankers. Every year at Davos someone stands out as the trend-setter. This year the stars of Davos were invisible: one was Amazon.com and the others were the leaders from so many developing countries who used to come here regularly, but this year didn't show. And therein lies a story.
Every panel discussion here on the Internet economy was sold out, and the panel where experts discussed whether the Internet stocks were "a bubble" about to burst was standing room only. The Princeton University economist Alan Blinder kicked off that discussion by observing that there was probably some bubble quality to the Internet stock craze, or as he put it: "I have a general rule: Whenever something becomes worth more than the whole state of California, sell it." ...
About Women & Marketing
Copyright 1999 About Women, Inc.
February, 1999HEADLINE: Women Focus Their Charitable Giving;
Allocate more money to women's and girls' causes, say women, flexing their philanthropic muscle.
As women continue to grow their careers and their earnings, their charitable giving is on the rise. Statistics cited by Working Woman in 1998 illustrate this connection. Between 1992 and 1995, the number of women with net worth above $600,000 rose by 28%, according to a study by Princeton University visiting fellow Mary Ellen S. Capek. Meanwhile, per a separate survey by Independent Sector, annual charitable contributions by female donors rose 26%.
Women's commitment to philanthropy is even more evident in light of the fact that women still make less money than men do. American Benefactor recently reported that in 1995, women's average gift to charities totaled $498 to men's $557. In that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women earned an average of 75.5 cents for every dollar earned by men. American Benefactor corrects for this wage disparity by calculating what men's average yearly contribution would be worth if their dollars were worth only 75.5 cents apiece. This shrinks men's donation to only $420.54. ...
American City & County
Copyright 1999 Intertec Publishing Corporation, a PRIMEDIA Company
February 1999HEADLINE: Who'll Pay for the Christmas Goose?
BYLINE: Rachel X. Weissman and Josh GalperThe season of brotherly love and charity is upon us once more, when all the Scrooges outthere must be convinced to unclasp their purses and fork over the cash for Tiny Tim's Christmas goose. Though Dickens' Scrooge (before his epiphany) is a far cry from a likely donor to charity, by most measures he's got the main ingredient to make him a good prospect: a lot of dough. ...
Counties in which both economic and social capital are high were rated highest. But there are some counties where per capita income is not terribly high, yet they rate high in the likelihood to give category. A pink swath in the near Midwest that runs through northern Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota is a case in point. "One theory for why these areas are high in social capital," says Julian Wolpert, a professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, "is that they were settled by Germans and Swedes coming from a social democratic tradition in Europe. The areas are also homogeneous with few minorities, and people may be more generous when they're giving to people like themselves." ...
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
February 1, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Princeton University finds efforts to cut student drinking ineffective
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.Increased efforts by Princeton University to curb excessive drinking have had little effect on student behavior, according to a study issued Monday.
According to the survey, 43 percent of Princeton undergraduates reported binge drinking at least once in the two weeks prior to the survey.
That figure represents no change from a 1995 survey and a slight increase from 40 percent in 1993.
Binge drinking rates at Princeton are comparable to those at schools nationwide, according to the study, which was conducted by Princeton University Health Services. "Binge drinking" is defined as consuming five or more drinks at one sitting. ...
Business Week
Copyright 1999 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
February 1, 1999HEADLINE: FOR ECONOMISTS, THE POLITICS IS WHAT COUNTS AFTER ALL
Every American undergraduate should read ''Even economists can't wait to spend a surplus'' (Economic Viewpoint, Jan. 18) about how to dispose of budget surpluses. Barro recalls the time when Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman was president of the American Economic Assn. (AEA). Friedman, too, had worried that his colleagues on the board might divert the then-budget surplus to ''someone's vision of a socially desirable activity.''
As Barro puts it, Friedman ''solved the problem by providing the members with an expensive new journal.'' Evidently, then, Friedman was not really worried about spending the surplus on a new benefit-in-kind. He merely worried that it would be spent on a vision other than his own. ...
Uwe E. Reinhardt
Professor, Princeton University
BUSINESS News New Jersey
Copyright Snowden Publications Inc.
February 1, 1999HEADLINE: A young company tackles aging
BYLINE: Dan GoldblattDATELINE: Princeton; NJ; US; Middle Altantic
We all age. As we age, a lot of our biological functions deteriorate. Then we die." Ain't that the truth -- for plants as well as people. This wisdom comes from Alan B. Bennett, associate dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Bennett was recently named to the scientific advisory board of Senesco Technologies, a Princeton-based biotech start-up.
Senesco's first day of trading as a Nasdaq Bulletin Board company was last week and 516,100 shares changed hands. The stock closed at $7.56, giving the little start-up a market capitalization of just over $20 million.
Senesco -- the name is a reference to senescence, the process of aging -- aims to make its fortune by commercializing a technology for staving off aging in plants, thus improving the shelf life of produce and potentially increasing crop yields. It was invented by Senesco's CEO, John E. Thompson, an expert in plant cell membrane science who is dean of science at Ontario's Waterloo University. While Thompson toils in his Canadian lab to prove the utility of his discovery, the young company -- it was founded last June -- is being run by a couple of 23-year-old graduates from Princeton University's class of 1997. .
Phillippe O. Escaravage, Senesco's chairman and COO, and Princeton classmate Sascha P. Fedyszyn, the vice president for corporate affairs, learned about Thompson's work through Escaravage's brother, Michael, a student at the University of Waterloo. The Escaravage brothers had already gotten into the business of funding seed-level technology firms. "We started doing projects right after my graduation," Phillippe says. They quickly brought pal Fedyszyn on board. ...
The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 1999 The Christian Science Publishing Society
February 1, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Argentina to adopt the dollar? Not likely
BYLINE: David R. Francis, Staff writer of The Christian Science MonitorDATELINE: NEW YORK
The greenback's popularity abroad is a bonanza for Uncle Sam.
It will become even more lucrative if Argentina actually implements its talk late last month of "dollarizing" its economy.
At present, there's roughly $320 billion of $100 and smaller bills circulating around the world. That's about two-thirds of total US currency. ...
Since Brazil is a major trading partner of Argentina, there has been increased fear that Argentina will devalue to remain competitive. Talk of dollarization aims at dispelling that concern.
"If you don't have a currency of your own, you can't be subject to a speculative attack," notes Peter Kenen, an economist at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Dollarization would be "a boon" to the US, notes Wayne Ayers, chief economist at BankBoston, a bank with a $8.1-billion subsidiary in Argentina. It would mean more seigniorage and bigger interest-free financing. ...
Commentary
Copyright 1999 American Jewish Committee
February, 1999HEADLINE: Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy; Review
BYLINE: Friedberg, Aaron L.
Vox Pop?
Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy by Eric Alterman Cornell. 224 pp. $25.00
In 1992, Eric Alterman, then a left-wing scourge of right-wing pundits, published Sound and Fury, a vitriolic if often funny assault on such conservative luminaries as George F. Will, William Safire, and Charles Krauthammer. Today, as a columnist for the Nation, an occasional contributor to Slate and the New York Times, and a commentator on MSNBC, Alterman has himself become a member in good standing of the "punditocracy" he once blamed for "the collapse of American politics."
Despite his recent success in the sound-bite business, however, Alterman clearly still craves intellectual respectability. His new book, Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy, is crammed with footnotes, freighted with citations from the works of heavyweights like John Dewey, John Smart Mill, and the German political philosopher Jurgen Habermas, and anchored by dust-jacket endorsements from sympathetic scholars. The result is a book that, lacking the gossipy verve of Alterman's earlier work, manages to be both leaden and superficial at once.
Alterman's thesis in Who Speaks for America? is that our diplomacy has become the exclusive preserve of a "foreign-policy establishment" made up of an arrogant, internationalist elite that is shielded from scrutiny by a collusive media. The members of this establishment regard ordinary Americans as ignorant, irrational, and irresponsible. At its direction, the United States has been following a course that reflects neither the public's true wishes nor its underlying values. ...
AARON L. FRIEDBERG teaches politics and is the director of the research program in international security at Princeton University.
Database
Copyright 1999 Online Inc.
February, 1999HEADLINE: The Scholarly Hothouse
BYLINE: Arnold, Stephen E.PUBLISHERS OFFER E-JOURNALS
The reasons for e-journal versions of peer-reviewed scholarly journals are many. Publishers have become more informed about Internet usage among the authors, contributors, and reviewers upon whom they depend for validation of proposed articles. Customers are requesting electronic "instances" of STM journals. Prices for many of these STM e-journals have not declined, although different pricing models have been introduced. Considerable experimentation continues in e-journals with a mind-boggling number of options and programs available to libraries, corporations, and individuals. To sum up pricing in a nutshell you can say, "Under construction. Still expensive." ...
SURPRISING ALTERNATIVES BLOSSOM
One of the more interesting developments in STM is the strong showing universities and not-for-profit foundations are making as providers of e-journals. Services are not restricted to students and faculty: for a fee, those outside academia can also gain access. Examples of new aggregators include High Wire Press (a functional unit of Stanford University's Green Library) and JSTOR (an online service that began at the University of Michigan, funded in part by a foundation). ...
GERMINATION OF A JOINT INITIATIVE
In early 1998, JSTOR launched an important joint initiative between JSTOR and the Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFC). The Joint Information Systems Committee will oversee the JSTOR initiative for the HEFC. The first objective of the JISC/JSTOR collaboration was to establish a mirror site of the JSTOR database at the University of Manchester, in the U.K., which enables faster access to the collection. Both parties hope that additional scholarly publishing opportunities will emerge from this relationship. The deal theoretically gives arts and social science academics and students a new electronic resource.
JSTOR will be made available to higher education institutions in the United Kingdom for fees designed to cover the costs of building and maintaining the collection. These distribution efforts will be overseen by Manchester Information Datasets and Associated Services (MIDAS), a national research support service based at the University of Manchester, specializing in online provision of strategic research and teaching datasets, software packages, training, and large-scale computing resources for the U.K. academic community.
In order to add content, JSTOR has set up a production facility at Princeton University to convert paper journals to electronic form. This facility, which will supplement a similar operation at the University of Michigan, doubles JSTOR's capacity to gather journal runs, organize them for scanning, and load them into JSTOR's database. Through grants from JSTOR, Princeton University currently houses a duplicate of the JSTOR database and, in conjunction with the University of Michigan, works to enhance the JSTOR system's technical capabilities. JSTOR makes use of a proprietary image format that offers smaller file sizes for page images than Adobe's Portable Document Format. ...
Natural History
Copyright 1999 American Museum of Natural History
February, 1999HEADLINE: Bookshelf; new science books; Brief Article
Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics By John A. Wheeler with Kenneth Ford (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1998; $27.95; illus.)
Now in his ninth decade, the eminent physicist Wheeler recalls in this book a life centered around his discipline's greatest discoveries and continuing mysteries. He describes the scientists he worked with (almost every major physicist of the twentieth century), black holes (of which he was a leading theorist), and the study of relativity, or gravitational physics (with which he inspired generations of students and colleagues at Princeton University and at the University of Texas in Austin).
Natural History
Copyright 1999 American Museum of Natural History
February, 1999HEADLINE: Pluto's Honor; Pluto named the favorite planet
BYLINE: Tyson, Neil de GrasseHailed as the newest member of the solar system in 1930, the smallest planet now rices expulsion.
According to the latest orbital data, on Tuesday, February 11, 1999, at 11:29 A.M., eastern standard time, the planet Pluto will regain its distinction as the most far-out planet in the solar system. For the last twenty years of its 248-year orbit, it had been closer than Neptune to the Sun.
In an informal poll of ten thousand junior-high-school children, Pluto was the overwhelming favorite among the nine planets. The poll was simply a measure of how much noise the children made during a tour of the solar system in a live planetarium show I presented to five hundred children at a time. They consistently cheered the loudest for Pluto, especially when I recited the planets in sequence, aided by the time-honored mnemonic My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. ...
Neil de Grasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, is the Frederick P. Rose Director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium and a visiting research scientist at Princeton University, where this semester he is teaching introductory astrophysics.
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
February 1, 1999, MondayHEADLINE: Art Museum Attendance Keeps Rising In the U.S.
BYLINE: By JUDITH H. DOBRZYNSKIIf there was any doubt that American art museums were experiencing a boom, it is no longer in question. The annual survey of visitors to art exhibitions in North America, Europe and Australia by The Art Newspaper, a widely read London-based international monthly, concludes that "the keenest exhibition visitors" in 1998 were "the Americans by far."
That is the same verdict The Art Newspaper reached after its 1997 survey, and Anna Somers Cocks, the editor, said that the gap between American museumgoers and their counterparts in other countries seemed to be widening. ...
"The museum plays an incredible role in American cities: it's a focal point, a place for entertainment, for shopping," Ms. Cocks said, explaining the attendance gap. "I don't think any European museum has that same presence."
Paul DiMaggio, chairman of the sociology department at Princeton University and an expert on public participation in the arts, agreed. "Art museums in the United States have really made it in the last 15 to 20 years," he said. "It is the only art form that has dramatically increased attendance of people of every kind, not just the intellectual elite. It is the great arts institution success story of the last 20 years." ...
Popular Mechanics
Copyright 1999 Hearst Corporation
February 1, 1999HEADLINE: Whither The Big Bang?grand universe theory of creation
BYLINE: WILSON, JIMAstronomy's most fundamental idea, the notion that everything in the universe--including time itself--originated in a spontaneous "big bang" that occurred 10 billion to 20 billion years ago, is being quietly challenged by a simpler theory of creation. This new grand universe (GU) concept claims that the observational data long considered to be proof of the fiery birth of the universe is actually unambiguous evidence of a past collision between already existing formations of matter and antimatter.
"Everything concerning a fireball beginning is wrong and leads the standard cosmological model to deadlock," says Anatoli A. Vankov, the Russian mathematical physicist who developed the GU concept. He spoke with POPULAR MECHANICS during a visit to the United States.
Vankov has detailed his GU concept in the draft of a scientific paper titled "Baryon asymmetry of the observed universe as a clue to resolution of dark matter, galaxy formation and other standard model problems." Behind this imposing title is a radical new view of both the universe and its creation. The baryons to which he refers make up a class of subatomic particles--including protons and neutrons--that combine to form the ordinary matter that makes up our world. Asymmetry, in this case, refers to the apparent absence of matter's theoretically predicted counterpart--antimatter. Now comes the controversial part. "The only way to save baryon symmetry is to suggest that the observed universe is not the whole unique universe," Vankov says. "Our observed universe is a huge matter-made fluctuation that is representative of a multitude of typical universes evenly made of matter or antimatter and chaotically dispersed in infinite flat 3D space."
As radical as Vankov's multiple universe concept may seem, it is attracting attention from leading Western scientists. Among these is Princeton University's James E. Peebles, who with his colleague Robert Dicke predicted that the distant glow of the big bang would appear as ubiquitous cosmic microwave radiation. Vankov, who is now a visiting professor at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, credits Peebles with helping him make contacts among Western scientists. ...
Runner's World
Copyright 1999 Rodale Press Inc.
February, 1999HEADLINE: WARMUPS; stories from runners; Brief Article
BYLINE: BURFOOT, AMBY; POST, MARTY
In memoriam: Larry Ellis, the 1984 U.S. men's Olympic track-and-field coach and USATF president from 1992-1996, died last November at the age of 70. Ellis coached for 13 years at Jamaica High School in Queens, N.Y., and 22 years at Princeton University.
T H E Journal
(Technological Horizons In Education)
Copyright 1999 T.H.E. Journal
February 1, 1999HEADLINE: Campus-Wide Computing Initiatives; Technology Information
BYLINE: Buchsbaum, TomHigher education is undergoing an amazing transformation. Computer technologies are enabling schools to reengineer how faculty members deliver curricula and how students learn. With students demanding greater and more productive access to computer-enabled educational resources, leading higher-education institutions are responding by implementing programs that help ensure all students have access to computers configured for their computing environment. These programs -- called campus-wide computer initiatives, or universal access programs -- are creating dynamic teaching and learning environments that enhance students' educational experiences. ...
Schools like Princeton University have taken other steps to increase affordability. Princeton officials felt it was important for students to have computers, but didn't want to make computer ownership a requirement. Instead, Princeton provided a purchasing incentive -- starting in the fall of 1998, the university began to subsidize undergraduates' computers purchased from Dell or Apple. According to Ira Fuchs, vice president for Computing and Information Technology at Princeton, approximately 75 percent of all first-year students have purchased computers through the program. ...
Town & Country Monthly
Copyright 1999 Hearst Corporation
February 1, 1999HEADLINE: RARE, RARER, RAREST; rare-book market; Abstract
BYLINE: BRANDT, ANTHONYIf anyone is setting the standard in today's fast-changing world rare books, a dealer in New Haven named William Reese.
William Reese and I are sitting across from each other at his desk, which is big enough to land a helicopter on, in his messy twin town-house offices in New Haven, directly across the street from the Yale campus, and he's telling me in his plain Yankee, matter-of-fact way about his second great coup, the one that gave him the confidence to become a major player in the rare-book market at the astonishing age of 19. ...
Reese has a lot to grin about. Just 43, he owns the top of the mountain in the rare-book trade. ...
He is, furthermore, respected not just for his marketing acumen, which is considerable, but for his scholarship and personal integrity as well. He maintains old-fashioned standards about his personal life: to wit, it's private. He is married and childless, and that's all he will say. "There are dealers who are excellent businessmen" says Cheryl Hurley, president of the Library of America and a book collector herself, "and Bill is one of these, but he's also a gentleman. And his passion for books has shaped the field. He's deeply scholarly. He serves on the Council of the American Antiquarian Society. Not many dealers would be trusted enough for such a role." Another well-known collector, Leonard Milberg, a major donor to the Princeton University Rare Book Library, calls Reese "a man of integrity and intelligence. He'd be a rarity in any field." ...
UNESCO Courier
Copyright 1999 UNESCO (France)
February 1, 1999HEADLINE: Custom-built solutions for international disputes; What Price Water?; includes related articles on Nile, Jordan, Mekong and Danube Rivers; use of customary laws in resolving water sharing problems in international river basins; Cover Story
RELATED ARTICLE: Four international rivers
The Jordan
The river: The 93-km-long Jordan drains part of the territories of israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, four of the states most involved in regional hostilities in the last half century. It rises in four tributaries, the Yarmouk in Syria, the Banias in the israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the Hasbani in israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, and the Dan in Israel. By virtue of the 1967 war and the "security zone" created in south Lebanon in the early 1980s, Israel is the upstream riparian on the upper Jordan system; Syria is upstream on the Yarmouk.
Problems and prospects: Jordan and the Palestinians, as downstream riparians of Israel and Syria, are in the worst position in the basin. Jordan's dependence on the river system is particularly great, since apart from a few wadis - watercourses that are dry except in the rainy season - it has no other important sources of fresh water. Three attempts have been made to establish an international water management regime (in 1953- 55, 1976-81, and 1987-90) but each came to a halt because of an inability to include all riparian states in the proposed arrangement. A water resources working group was set up as part of the Middle East peace process in 1995 and 1996, but water politics specialist Miriam R. Lowi of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University notes that "the implementation of a water agreement will not be effected until the political conflict has reached closure."
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 01, 1999HEADLINE: Princeton U. trustees support the prohibition of the Nude Olympics
BYLINE: By Rich Tucker, Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Despite the lull in national media attention and the departure of many students from campus for Intersession, discussion regarding the future of the now virtually banned Nude Olympics continued among members of the administration and the Princeton University Board of Trustees.
Following their Jan. 23 meeting, the trustees released a statement calling for an end to the event. ...
"We concur with President Shapiro's judgment that it would be irresponsible to permit any event of this nature to continue. Therefore, we strongly endorse the president's call for decisive action to assure that future generations of students are not placed at this kind and level of risk." ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Daily Pennsylvanian via U-Wire
February 1, 1999HEADLINE: Ivy schools see more early applications
BYLINE: By Joshua Karetny, Daily Pennsylvanian
SOURCE: U. Pennsylvania
DATELINE: PhiladelphiaMore students applied early to the eight Ivy League schools this year than ever before, according to early-application statistics from the elite group.
Of the six schools with a binding early-decision round -- Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and Yale universities and Dartmouth College -- Penn received the most applications. The University's Admissions Office sent out acceptance letters last month to 920, or 42 percent, of the 2,165 early-applicants. Those accepted early decision will fill 39 percent of the Class of 2003.
Since early decision is binding, a school can raise its overall yield rate by accepting a larger portion of its class early decision. A higher yield rate can allow a school to lower its overall acceptance rate.
Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Princeton and Yale filled a larger portion of their incoming freshman classes with early applicants than they did for the Class of 2002: ...
* Princeton accepted 557, or 30 percent, out of a record 1,832 applicants, who will make up 49 percent of the Class of 2003.
CBS News Transcripts
SHOW: 60 MINUTES
January 31, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: TONI MORRISON; AMERICAN WRITER TONI MORRISON TALKS ABOUT HER LIFE, CAREER AND BOOKS
ANCHORS: ED BRADLEY
Toni Morrison is one of those writers many people have heard of, and know almost nothing about, which, by the way, is just fine with her. As we said when we first broadcast this report last March, she is one of the most intensely private people we've met, and at the age of 67, she is also the reigning diva of American literature. Her novels are required reading from high school to college, and her public appearances are major literary events. For more than 30 years, she's been writing stories about life in black America, stories that reflect the world that she grew up in.There are no major white characters in your books.
Ms. TONI MORRISON (Author): No. The black narrative has always been understood to be a confrontation with some white people. I'm sure there are many of them. They're not terribly interesting to me. What is interesting to me is what is going on within the community. And within the community, there are no major white players. Once, I thought, 'What is life like if they weren't there?' Which is the way I--we lived it, the way I lived it. ..
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) It's hard to accuse Toni Morrison of ever wasting time. She spent two decades working in publishing. She teaches at Princeton University, runs an arts program there, and writes lyrics for two of the world's great opera stars, Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman. Hers has been a full life, full of awards, memories and mementos. Almost all of those were destroyed on a Christmas morning less than two weeks after she accepted the Nobel Prize, when her house accidentally burned to the ground. Also lost in the fire were most of the original manuscripts to her books. ...
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1999 The Dallas Morning News
January 31, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Mergers trigger standoff in health-care industry Hospitals, insurers struggle over balance of power
SOURCE: Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning NewsBYLINE: Charles Ornstein
A standoff is developing in the health-care industry.
Health insurance companies are merging to secure an edge over doctors and hospitals. In response, doctor groups and hospital systems are consolidating to keep their seats at the bargaining table.
"It's a power play," said Sandy Lutz, an analyst with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dallas. "You want to be larger than the guy across the table from you so you can draw the line in the sand, and the other guy has to give up at some point."
With both sides getting bigger simultaneously, health-care experts say, no one is gaining an upper hand. If anything, less competition and increased market tension have translated into higher costs and reduced service for consumers, experts say. ...
Patient impact
But when two power blocks agree to work together, consumers suffer, said Princeton University health-care economist Uwe Reinhardt.
"Let's face it, all of this is about money," he said. "This has nothing to do with patients. It has nothing to do with giving better care or cheaper care. It's all about how much money you can extract from this process called health care. It's a game."
Consumer advocates also doubt whether health-care companies consider their constituents before merging. ...
The Denver Post
Copyright 1999 The Denver Post Corporation
January 31, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: Bluntly stated: A conversation with Bill Coors Brewery patriarch marks 60 years with look at company's past, future
BYLINE: By Jeffrey Leib, Denver Post Business Writer
He's 82 and still chairman of two billion-dollar companies.
Recently, The Denver Post sat down for two hours with Bill Coors at his office in Golden's Coors Technology Center to hear his views about business, politics, religion, life, the universe and more.
Coors heads Adolph Coors Co. and its operating subsidiary Coors Brewing Co., which had revenues of more than $1.8 billion last year, as well as ACX Technologies Inc., an independent company spun off from Adolph Coors in 1992. ACX reported revenues of $988 million in 1998. ...
ACX has written off, and is in the process of selling, its third business, Golden Aluminum Co. Yet Bill Coors, trained as a chemical engineer at Princeton University in the 1930s, put many years into the aluminum business and, as he reveals in the interview, is still having a hard time reconciling himself with the family's exit from that business.
Because Bill Coors helped introduce the aluminum can to the beverage industry 40 years ago, his contribution to the industry echoes every time a consumer pops the top on a can of beer or pop. Today, 100 billion beer and soda cans are filled in the United States every year. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 31, 1999, SundayPoetry in Motion: Bill Would Establish Laureate
A bill that cleared the Assembly State Government Committee last week would add a position to the state bureaucracy: poet laureate. A New Jersey poet would be named every two years by a panel of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and would receive the newly created Williams Carlos Williams Citation of Merit and $10,000. The laureate would be required to give at least two public readings a year and to otherwise promote poetry throughout the state.
Robert Brown, an editor at Princeton University Press, likes the idea. "One of the problems with poetry is that it hasn't been promoted enough," said Mr. Brown, who edited poetry books by Robert Pinsky, the United States poet laureate and a native of New Jersey. STEVE STRUNSKY
News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
Copyright 1999 News & RecordJanuary 31, 1999, Sunday
HEADLINE: GIFT TO UNCG HONORS FORMER MUSIC TEACHER
The late Florence Hunt, who was a well-known music teacher in Greensboro for many years, has been honored with a $100,000 gift to UNCG. The gift was made by Edward Cone of Princeton, N.J., one of her former students, who went on to become a concert pianist, composer and a professor of music at Princeton University.
The money will be used to purchase pianos - including a concert grand piano and a baby grand piano - for the UNCG School of Music. ...
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
January 31, 1999 SundayHEADLINE: A MAN OF VALUES;
THOMAS MURRAY TACKLES WEIGHTY ISSUES, ENJOYS SIMPLE PLEASURESBYLINE: By CONNIE SCHULTZ; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
Ask Thomas Murray to describe himself and he will likely list, in his soft-spoken, wide-eyed way, that he is a husband and father of four, a bioethicist and a guy who likes to cook a little. Then he'll fold his hands in his lap and smile, adding that he rides a bike.
All true. But hardly the truth.
Ask those who know Murray well, and what emerges is a complex man who embodies Henry David Thoreau's urgent desire to "suck out all the marrow of life."
For the last 11 years, Murray has been director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Case Western Reserve University. At 52, he is an internationally recognized leader in his field, an astute observer in an increasingly dizzying world of scientific and medical firsts. His expertise has steadily expanded to include ethical issues surrounding care of imperiled newborns, genetic testing, health-care reform, organ transplants and illicit drug use by athletes. He is best known for helping run the president's commission on bioethics, which wrestled with human cloning. ...
Some of the research techniques commonly used in the field, however, troubled him, particularly the practice of deceiving subjects and then analyzing their reactions.
"The first study I did [at Princeton University], I had to set up a fake emergency and then interview those who didn't try to help a man they thought they had just seen be electrocuted. So long as I have a memory, I will never forget the faces of some of the people I had to interview. They thought they had seen a guy accidentally electrocuted - these were 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds - and they were shaken, some of them were trembling. I felt terrible. That experience disheartened me. I wanted nothing to do with those techniques, no more deception studies. My studies in social psychology got me thinking about ethics." ...
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
January 31, 1999 SundayBehind the design
Target stores recently made headlines by commissioning architect Michael Graves to design a line of high-style housewares including clocks, small apppliances and furniture.
"This collection is innovative and contemporary, yet draws on everyday objects, architecture and history for inspiration," Graves said. "The story behind the design is almost as important as the finished product. Designing home accessories is a natural extension for me because I believe that good design has no boundaries."
Products range in price from about $4 to $120 in the home collection, and from $13 to $480 in the accessories and patio sets in the lawn and garden division.
Graves received his architectural training at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard University. In 1960 he won the Rome Prize and studied at the American Academy in Rome. He is the Schirmer Professor of Architecture at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1962. ...
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 1999 Bergen Record Corp.
January 31, 1999; SUNDAYHEADLINE: DO COLLEGE AID FINDERS REALLY HELP?
COLUMN: YOUR MONEY'S WORTHBYLINE: KEVIN DEMARRAIS
Thank-you notes and letters outlining the thousands of dollars its clients have received fill the bulletin boards at American College Planning Service in Lyndhurst. Similar testimonials adorn the Web sites of dozens of other companies that help students pay for their college educations.
But college financial aid officers and high school guidance counselors paint a different picture.
They say many of the guarantees the companies offer are virtually worthless, and that most of what they provide is readily available for free, at the schools or over the Internet. ...
That's a key part of his company's appeal, he said."There are people who can't do the form; people come in and look at the form and panic."
But Don Betterton, director of financial aid at Princeton niversity, said that most families should be able to do the work themselves.
"It's not a complicated process,"said Betterton. He compared it to a "simple income tax return without a lot of schedules,"adding: "It was not designed to have to need external help." ...
St. Petersburg Times
Copyright 1999 Times Publishing Company
January 31, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: Oates' style nothing less than enviable
BYLINE: MARGO HAMMOND
"If you told me a year ago that I would be working on a novel about Marilyn Monroe, I would not have believed you," Joyce Carol Oates says.
"And here I am already on page 850."
Oates has just spent the morning working on the new novel about the blond superstar. It's an icy day in New Jersey, and I have called Oates to talk about her upcoming appearance at the Suncoast Writers' Conference Feb. 4-6 in St. Petersburg, where she is to give the keynote speech. Looking out the window of her Princeton home set in a semi-rural area of deer and pine trees, she reflects rather wistfully on the work in progress. "It's going to be a long, deep look at this person," she says, drawing out the word long. ...
Literary success came early to Oates. While still an undergraduate at Syracuse University, she won the Mademoiselle fiction award. After graduating valedictorian of her class, she went on to get an M.A. in English at the University of Wisconsin, marry Raymond J. Smith (with whom she now edits The Ontario Review), teach (first at the University of Windsor in Canada, just across the river from Detroit, and currently in Princeton University's creative writing program) and write. ...
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
Copyright 1999 The Hearst Corporation
January 31, 1999, SundayHEADLINE: His sights are set skyward
BYLINE: KIMBERLY MARTINEAU; Staff writerBethlehem From billions and billions, Cullen Blake picked one.
A star so obscure it had a number instead of a name: V830.
The high school senior would spend the next seven months observing the variable star, larger than the sun and one of about 300 Delta Scuti stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. By photographing the star and crunching millions of numbers, Blake learned the length of the star's pulsation cycle, which could offer valuable clues about the star's evolutionary life cycle.
Blake's observations landed him a spot among the 40 finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, the nation's oldest and most prestigious high school science competition, also known as the Junior Nobel Prize. He is the first student from Bethlehem Central High School to make it to the finals in the contest's 58-year history.
As a finalist, Blake won a $3,000 scholarship toward his tuition at Princeton University, where he will study astronomy next fall. Top prize in the finals, scheduled between March 3 and March 8 in Washington, D.C., is a $50,000 scholarship. ...
The Gazette (Montreal)
Copyright 1999 Southam Inc.
January 30, 1999HEADLINE: There's gold on the Net, but for how long?
BYLINE: JAY BRYANThe Internet gold rush has been gaining ground at an accelerating rate for the past three months, fueled by the unbridled enthusiasm of those who think the Internet will revolutionize the economy and by huge deals like this week's $5-billion (U.S.) takeover of a medium-sized Internet company, GeoCities Inc., by a giant one, Yahoo! Inc.
As of yesterday, Yahoo!, whose name is a perfect symbol for the attitude that fuels today's Internet speculation, was valued at $34.5 billion, based on a stock-market price of about $350 per share. This is a company whose earnings over the past 12 months were a minuscule 23 cents per share, which means that investors are willing to pay $1,599 for each dollar of earnings. ...
To find a parallel to such a speculative mania in an advanced economy, you need to go back several years. There was the biotechnology stock fad of the 1980s, for example, when companies with no earnings, and in some cases nothing but optimistic guesses about what their eventual products might be, were selling at astronomical prices.
Burton Malkiel of Princeton University, a distinguished scholar of financial markets, notes that by the late 1980s, most of these companies had lost three-quarters of their stock-market value and by the mid-1990s, the biotech industry as a whole was still losing more than $4 billion U.S. per year. ...
New Scientist
Copyright 1999 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
January 30, 1999HEADLINE: Survival of the weakest
BYLINE: Bob HolmesHIGHLIGHT: When a rainforest tree dies, the unexpected happens
PARADOXICALLY, the rich diversity of tropical rainforests may have its roots in a scarcity of seeds and young plants to fill the gaps left when mature trees die, say researchers in the US and Panama. Their conclusion, based on a 15-year study of more than 300 000 trees, may help resolve a question that has vexed ecologists for decades.
Tropical rainforests are among the most diverse habitats on Earth, with hundreds of tree species often living within a few hectares. For more than two decades, some ecologists have suggested that this diversity was helped by the mosaic of gaps formed as trees die and fall. Different conditions created by temporary gaps in the forest were thought to allow new species to flourish.
If the species present in such gaps change as the forest canopy regenerates, they reasoned, then a forest with gaps of many different ages should hold many species mixes, resulting in high diversity.
The rainforest on Barro Colorado Island in Panama has just such a pattern of different-aged gaps, making it an ideal place to test the theory. Ecologist Stephen Hubbell of Princeton University in New Jersey and his colleagues studied a 50-hectare patch of forest in which every tree with a trunk diameter greater than 1 centimetre was repeatedly measured from 1980 to 1995.
To their surprise, the researchers found no evidence that tree falls and other disturbances boosted diversity: the gaps created by fallen trees contained exactly the same mix of species as unbroken forest, and sites that were disturbed more frequently did not contain more species than less disturbed ones. ...
New Scientist
Copyright 1999 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
January 30, 1999HEADLINE: "I" is the law
BYLINE: Robert Matthews (Robert Matthews is science correspondent of "The Sunday Telegraph")
HIGHLIGHT: It's the ultimate big idea, the source of everything we know about the physical world. And it all comes from one simple question, says Robert Matthews
WHERE do the laws of physics come from ? It's the sort of question only children and geniuses ask - certainly most physicists are far too busy putting the laws to work.
Take quantum theory, the laws of the subatomic world. Over the past century it has passed every single test with flying colours, with some predictions vindicated to 10 places of decimals. Not surprisingly, physicists claim quantum theory as one of their greatest triumphs. But behind their boasts lies a guilty secret: they haven't the slightest idea why the laws work, or where they come from. All their vaunted equations are just mathematical lash-ups, made out of bits and pieces from other parts of physics whose main justification is that they seem to work.
Now one physicist thinks he knows where the laws of quantum theory come from. More amazingly still, Roy Frieden thinks he can account for all the laws of physics, governing everything from schoolroom solenoids to space and time. Sounds incredible ? You haven't heard the first of it. For Frieden believes he has found the Law of Laws, the principle underpinning physics itself.
The laws of electricity, magnetism, gases, fluids, even Newton's laws of motion - all of these, Frieden believes, arise directly from the same basic source: the information gap between what nature knows and what nature is prepared to let us find out. Using sophisticated mathematics, Frieden has shown that this notion of physics as a "quest for information" is no empty philosophical pose. It can be made solid, and leads to a way of deriving all the major laws of fundamental physics - along with some new ones. ...
Frieden's information-based methods provide a stunningly clear interpretation of the laws of physics: they represent the best we can possibly do in our quest to extract information using our inevitably error-prone methods. "Through the very act of observing, we thus actually define the physics of the thing measured," says Frieden. He adds that while unfamiliar, the idea that "reality" - or, at least, the laws of physics - are created by observation is not new. During the 18th century, empiricist philosophers such as Bishop Berkeley were raising similar ideas. Much more recently, John Wheeler, a physicist at Princeton University who is widely regarded as one of the deepest thinkers on the foundations of physics, has championed remarkably similar views. "Observer participancy gives rise to information and information gives rise to physics," he says. ...
The Washington Post
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
January 30, 1999, SaturdayHEADLINE: G.H. Mattison, Officer in Diplomatic Corps, Dies
Gordon H. Mattison, 84, a retired Foreign Service officer who had wide experience in the Arabic world, died Jan. 27 at Carriage Hill nursing home in Bethesda. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage two years ago. ...
He then went to Princeton University and to Cairo for Arabic language training. Subsequently, he served in Beirut and Damascus, Syria. In the late 1940s, he was chief of the State Department's Division of Near Eastern and South Asian affairs. ...
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Copyright 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education
January 29, 1999HEADLINE: American Campuses in Beirut Strive to Restore Quality
BYLINE: DEBORAH MESCEBarbed wire still tops the stone wall around the seaside campus of the American University of Beirut, but the most visible damage from Lebanon's 17-year civil war is now gone. The university's oldest building, College Hall, which was destroyed by a bomb in 1991, has been rebuilt, and its clock tower once again defines the campus's skyline.
The institution, however, is still trying to recover from many other effects of the long war, during which its president was assassinated and several top administrators were kidnapped. The fighting and lawlessness in Beirut led many faculty members to leave, including almost all of the Americans, who before the war had made up about one-fifth of the instructional staff. ...
Eight years after the fighting ended, the university's leaders are still reassessing programs, procedures, and facilities. The rebuilding process had already begun when John Waterbury was named president, in January 1998. But his decision to live full time on the campus here -- the first president to do so since one of his predecessors, Malcolm H. Kerr, was assassinated outside his office, in 1984 -- is seen as a reaffirmation of the university's American identity.
Being on site also enables Mr. Waterbury to work more closely with administrators and faculty members. After Mr. Kerr was killed, the university's presidents worked out of its offices in New York City, meeting with administrators during trips overseas.
Mr. Waterbury came to Beirut from Princeton University, where he was director of the Center for International Studies. He says that A.U.B.'s 132-year history enabled the university to hold onto its American "philosophy and ethos" despite the fighting. What was lost, he says, stemmed not so much from the absence of Americans but from the disruptions brought on by the war.
"Survival above all" was the mindset, he says. "Just keep the place functioning somehow, even if we have to cut corners in a whole range of procedural areas. Rules and regulations were taken with a grain of salt." The emphasis, he adds, was on making sure that classes were held and degrees were awarded. ...
The Jerusalem Post
Copyright 1999 The Jerusalem Post
January 29, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Unsettled business
BYLINE: Moshe KohnA View from Nov
A fellow mediacrat who writes for a Jewish newspaper in the US has given me an interesting explanation why Jews living in parts of Eretz Yisrael outside the June 4, 1967, borders of the State of Israel must be designated as "settlers."
First, let us understand that there is nothing pejorative implied in the term "settlers" as such. It means simply people who establish residence in a new place. One would assume, then, that after the newcomers have settled into what they plan as their permanent homes, they cease to be "settlers" and enter the category of "residents."
In the minds of many people, however, including my journalistic colleague, this is not so where the 170,000 Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District are concerned. ...
JUST AS there was never sovereign "Palestine," neither was there ever a sovereign "Palestinian people," or any ethnic or cultural entity of that name. For both of these assertions we have the testimony of distinguished Arab spokesman, some of them "Palestinian," such as Princeton University professor Philip K. Hitti, Jerusalem communal leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, and PLO founder Ahmed Shukairy. ...
The Richmond Times Dispatch
Copyright 1999 The Richmond Times Dispatch
January 29, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: PROFESSOR DEFINES CHALLENGE OF RACIAL COALITION BUILDING
BYLINE: Michael Paul Williams; Times-Dispatch Staff WriterWhites identify with blacks more than with Asians and Hispanics. Blacks, on the other hand, see little in common with whites and identify closest with Hispanics.
Hispanics and Asians, meanwhile, say they have most in common with whites and least in common with blacks.
Those survey results, according to a Princeton University political scientist, demonstrate the challenge in forming coalitions that focus on race and discrimination.
"Each group feels least in common with the group that identifies itself as feeling most in common with them," said Jennifer L. Hochschild last night during Virginia Commonwealth University's annual Community Learning Week program.
Hochschild is the William Stewart Tod professor of public and international affairs at Princeton, an expert on school desegregation, and the author of seven books, including "Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of a Nation."
During her lecture at VCU's Performing Arts Center, Hochschild suggested that the key to more stable political coalitions is for groups to blur racial emphasis and focus on distinct issues. ...
St. Petersburg Times
Copyright 1999 Times Publishing Company
January 29, 1999, FridayHEADLINE: Lounge Lizards, band with a bite
BYLINE: LOGAN NEILLConrad Deisler remembers the man with the snow cone very well.
The patron listened to the Austin Lounge Lizards' afternoon performance at a small Kentucky bluegrass festival, and took offense to its ditty Gingrich the Newt, and the way the song skewered the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. He followed the band backstage after the show.
"He just stood there staring at us, with that snow cone melting in the heat," Deisler says. "He didn't even say a word, but you could tell he was livid."
Although it's rare for the five-man bluegrass outfit from Texas to elicit such a reaction to its decidedly tongue-in-cheek humor, Deisler says the band's satirical repertoire occasionally does miss its mark. ...
"That sort of goes with the territory," says Deisler, a Princeton University graduate who formed the band nearly 20 years ago. "Sometimes we aren't all on the same page when it comes to humor. But we understand that, and it doesn't really bother us." ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Brown Daily Herald via U-Wire
January 29, 1999HEADLINE: Brown U.'s dorm closure policy lingers from era of energy conservation
BYLINE: By Jeremy Brown, Brown Daily Herald
SOURCE: Brown U.
DATELINE: Providence, R.I.In the final days of December, after every exam had been taken and the bustle of taxicabs had subsided, a sprinkling of students could still be seen lugging suitcases across campus.
But not all of them were leaving Brown University. Instead, some were moving from one dormitory to another, where they would spend their winter recess.
This type of familiar, between-semester shuffle stems from the University's long-standing policy to shut down most of its dorms 24 hours after the last scheduled exam and to keep them closed until the weekend before the first day of second-semester classes. ...
Gallagher said that the current policy has worked pretty well since it was implemented in response to a change in Brown's calendar about fifteen years ago. Before the change, classes ran until Christmas, when students took a short break before returning for exams.
This type of schedule was commonplace at the time at campuses across the country, but now it is an anomaly, seen most notably within the Ivy League at Harvard and Princeton Universities.
Brown's dorm-closing policy is not entirely unique within the Ivies, however. ...
Dartmouth College, meanwhile, keeps all of its dorms open but requires students to submit an application for housing during the winter break. At the other end of the spectrum, Princeton University keeps all of its dorms open, and students do not need to notify the administration.
"They come and go," said Joseph Palksa, Princeton's associate director of housing. ...
Anchorage Daily News
Copyright 1999 Anchorage Daily News
January 28, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: SHARING A 'SECRET' PILL;
HEALTH-CARE PROVIDERS WANT MORE WOMEN TO KNOW ABOUT POST-SEX CONTRACEPTIVE
BYLINE: Sonya Senkowsky; Daily News ReporterWorking with rape victims was what first sold Anchorage doctor Jan Whitefield on the concept of emergency contraception -- a way to prevent pregnancy as much as three days after intercourse.
As a member of a New Mexico hospital's sexual-assault response team during his medical residency, Whitefield's job included counseling and treating rape victims. The availability of emergency contraception -- then known as ''the morning-after pill'' -- allowed him to offer something more than hope to patients who were afraid of becoming pregnant. ...
Though the pills already are available in Alaska (a Princeton University web site lists 25 clinics in Alaska offering ECPs), Murphy wants to make sure patients aren't stymied by doctors reluctant to provide them or other barriers. She's working to introduce a law that will make it possible for women to get them directly from a pharmacy. ...
Business Wire
Copyright 1999 Business Wire, Inc.
January 28, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: MeriStar Hotels & Resorts to Reflag The Forrestal at Princeton Hotel & Conference Center to the Doral Forrestal
DATELINE: WASHINGTONFirst New Property Flagged to Doral Brand
MeriStar Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: MMH), the nation's largest independent hotel management company, today announced that it will reflag the Forrestal at Princeton Hotel & Conference Center to the company's newly acquired Doral brand. The 290-room conference center, owned by MeriStar Hospitality Corporation (NYSE: MHX), recently completed an $11 million renovation and will be renamed the Doral Forrestal. ...
The four-story conference center has five wings and overlooks a 25-acre wooded setting in Princeton University's master-planned Forrestal Center Business Park. The IACC certified executive conference center offers approximately 35,000 square feet of dedicated conference space wholly contained in one of the property's wings. The center has 33 meeting rooms, including two board rooms, 22 breakout rooms and nine conference rooms. ...
Federal News Service
Copyright 1999 Federal Information Systems Corporation
JANUARY 28, 1999, THURSDAYHEADLINE: PREPARED STATEMENT OF PROFESSOR WILLIAM H. LASH, III
BEFORE THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEESUBJECT - HEARINGS ON UNITED STATES TRADE POLICIES , LABOR AND ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS
My name is William H. Lash, III and I am Professor of Law and Director of International Business Law Programs at George Mason University School of Law and Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of American Business, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. ...
I am delighted to join you to discuss the inter-relation of international trade with labor and the environment. For nearly a decade, these mutually compatible issues have been viewed as an either/or proposition. Some environmental and labor activists have joined in a coalition to use the carrot of trade privileges or the stick of trade sanctions as the carrier for their agenda.
Trade is the most potent force for promoting environmental quality and labor rights. But this force must be used in a spirit of cooperation, not coercion. Instead of utilizing trade as a hammer to achieve labor or environmental goals, we. should strive to further liberalize trade. Trade is the engine for improving the quality of life around the globe. By allowing goods and services to flow freely across borders, we will export opportunities and hope. When firms export into developing states, they transfer technology, best practices and new higher standards. ...
Leading economic studies substantiate this assertion. According to a report by Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger, a nation's environmental quality improves after it reaches an annual per capita income of $4,000 to $5,000. This study by Princeton University and the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed air pollution in urban areas of 42 nations. Unsurprisingly, Grossman and Krueger demonstrate that pollution is directly correlated to low per capita income. An agenda which promotes free trade will produce a world which is more prosperous and more environmentally sound. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
January 28, 1999, ThursdayNAME: Lisa Yuskavage
HEADLINE: A Painter and Her Art Trade Places;A Change in Style, and Provocative Works Find Success
SERIES: Artist at Work: An Inside Look -- This is the first in a series of articles examining the creative process.
BYLINE: By JUDITH H. DOBRZYNSKI
After more than an hour of art talk one recent day, Lisa Yuskavage, 36, a painter whose often shocking work deals with sex, misogyny and self-loathing, got up from the couch in her studio above a used-furniture warehouse in TriBeCa and fetched the secret of her latest success.
She held up two plaster sculptures of oddly misshapen, fleshy female nudes, each about 10 inches high. She described how she had made them and three similar statuettes and used them to experiment with composition and lighting. She would find poses she liked, take photographs, make drawings from the photographs and paint small studies from the drawings. Only then did Ms. Yuskavage put pigment on canvas.
And what paintings they are: provocative depictions of loose, blase women in colors that glow or sometimes scream. Many have salacious titles. Critics have described the works, usually in praise, as "anatomically impossible bimbos, nymphets and other female travesties" and "demonically distorted Kewpie-doll women" that are "perversely entertaining" and "visual spectacles." Ms. Yuskavage once said she captured the "far-out extension" of male sex fantasies. To question prevailing views about women and sex is not enough; she wants a reaction, as so many artists of her generation do. ...
It was in the art classes she sometimes teaches at Princeton University and Cooper Union, as she told her students how Tintoretto placed wax sculptures in a box and used candles to play with the light, that Ms. Yuskavage was inspired to embark on her new way of working. ...
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Copyright 1999 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
January 28, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: SARASOTA ROWERS HAVE PIPELINE TO PRINCETON; SCULLERS DEVELOPING TREND FOR SELECTING IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL.
BYLINE: Brian Evers McGee CORRESPONDENT
For four area former Sarasota Scullers, rowing has provided a pipeline to Princeton University.
Princeton seniors Dan Newman (Sarasota High class of 1995) and Kevin O'Neil (Cardinal Mooney, '95) decided to take their rowing and academic talents to the south New Jersey campus after being introduced to the sport by Northeastern's Grant Earl, a former Sculler.
''Rowing was a great part of the reason I wound up at Princeton,'' said Newman, a history major. ''We had contact with a lot of college coaches and I flew to a number of schools with Kevin and the Princeton coach (Curtis Jordan) made us feel at home.''
Newman said that the decision to attend Princeton was the right one and that he was sending resumes to banks and might pursue a career in journalism. ...
Telegraph Herald
Copyright 1999, Telegraph-Herald
January 28, 1999, ThursdayHEADLINE: Academics, economists sign on to Social Security plan
BYLINE: Associated PressU.S. budget surplus: Lott says the GOP wants 10% tax cut
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton summoned approving academics and economists to the White House on Wednesday to endorse his Social Security rescue plan, push for Medicare reforms and argue against tax cuts.
In order to shore up Social Security and Medicare for retiring baby boomers, Clinton said, "we will simply have to have a bipartisan process."
But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott made clear from Capitol Hill that Republicans, who want a 10 percent income tax cut, will not just hand over the budget surplus to Clinton, no matter how much assent he collected in the East Room of the White House. ...
The White House estimates the federal surplus at $4.4 trillion over the next 15 years. Clinton has proposed using the biggest chunk, 62 percent, to bolster Social Security and dedicating another 15 percent to increase the solvency of - and add a prescription-drug benefit to - Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly and disabled.
Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhart, a familiar voice of support for Clinton on health issues, said it would be a sin not to adopt it. ...
University Wire
Copyright 1999 Yale Daily News via U-WireJanuary 28, 1999
HEADLINE: College Board to upgrade financial aid formula
BYLINE: By Jeff Herzog, Yale Daily News
SOURCE: Yale U.
DATELINE: New Haven, Conn.In a move that will change how schools across the country calculate financial aid, next month the College Board will consider updating its institutional methodology, the formula it uses to assess a student's need, Yale Director of Financial Aid Donald Routh said.
Many colleges, universities and scholarship programs use the information collected by the College Board to distribute non-federal financial aid funds.
But the College Board's institutional methodology has not been updated for 20 years and does not reflect recent radical changes in financial aid made by leading universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth.
Last year Princeton, by changing its financial aid awards to attract more low- and middle-income students, caused a chain reaction in the Ivy League. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and other schools followed with financial aid changes of their own to ensure competitive financial aid packages. ...
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