Princeton in the News
October 7 to 13, 1999
PrincetonUniversity
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HEADLINE: Study: primate brain regenerates thinking cells
BYLINE: PAUL RECER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
New neurons are constantly being added to the thinking, learning and memory center of the brain, according to new research that disputes the traditional view that mature brain cells are not replaced when they die.
Elizabeth Gould, head of Princeton University brain research team, said if the research conducted in monkeys can be confirmed in humans, it could lead to news ways to repair brain tissue damaged by injury or diseases such as Alzheimer's.
''This shows that there is a naturally regenerative mechanism'' in the mature brain, said Gould, the first author of a study appearing Friday in the journal Science. ''If we can understand better how it works, maybe we could use that to direct the regeneration and repopulation of neurons in damaged areas of the brain.''
Gould and her team injected monkeys with a compound called bromodeoxyuridine, or BRDU, that is taken up by cells in the process of making new cells.
An examination just hours after the injection showed that the cells in one area of the brain took up the BRDU, proving that they were dividing and making immature neurons.
An examination a week after injection showed that the new neurons had migrated, matured, and, in effect, had plugged themselves into the cortex, the thinking center of the brain.
Just how these new neurons function is not known, said Gould, adding more research also is needed to understand exactly how the brain uses the new cells.
HEADLINE: Princeton Considers Abolishing the A-Plus
BYLINE: AP
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 11
Princeton University officials want to do away with the A-plus grade, saying they are concerned that high marks have become commonplace.
A faculty committee has proposed that A-plus be replaced by a grade called "A with distinction," for truly outstanding work.
The "A with distinction" would be worth 4.0 grade points, the same as an A, instead of the 4.3 points that an A-plus is worth. In addition, faculty members would have to file written explanations with each "A with distinction" they give.
One idea is to assign a different symbol to the A, like an asterisk.
"The problem we've got with A-pluses is that there's too many of them to suggest that the students getting them are really doing exceptional work," said Justin Harmon, a university spokesman. "And they're not evenly distributed across the subjects. It's easier to get an A-plus in science and engineering than it is in the humanities. We want a common standard, and we want it to mean something." ...
HEADLINE: Universal Display Corporation Announces Election of
Larry Lacerte to Board of Directors; Dr. Stephen Forrest to be
Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of UDC
DATELINE: EWING, N.J.
Oct. 14, 1999--Universal Display Corporation (UDC) (NASDAQ: PANL; PHLX: PNL), a developer of flat panel display technology, announced today that Mr. Lawrence Lacerte, founder of Lacerte Software Corporation had joined its Board of Directors, replacing Dr. Stephen Forrest, who left the Board of Directors to become Chairman of UDC's Scientific Advisory Board. ...
"Since UDC is a technology driven company, I want to concentrate my efforts on moving OLED technology forward as rapidly as possible. Thus, I look forward to chairing the Scientific Advisory Board, which will have a very important role at UDC in determining the research directions which can most directly influence the progress of the technology," said Dr. Stephen Forrest Chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department of Princeton University and one of the principal inventors of UDC's OLED technology. ...
UDC is the exclusive licensee of all technology developed by its research partners, Princeton University and the University of Southern California, in the Organic Light Emitter Project. UDC has also signed letters of intent with its first two commercialization partners, the Materials Research Laboratory of the Industrial Research Technology Institute of Taiwan (MRL/ITRI), and Luxell Corporation of Canada, a manufacturer of high contrast inorganic electroluminescent displays for high value added applications. ...
HEADLINE: White Man Talking
BYLINE: Jason Zengerle
HIGHLIGHT: Chocolate City's vanilla candidate.
In mid-september, Bill Bradley starred in a "Spike Lee Joint." Only Bradley's cameo wasn't in a movie; rather, it was at a Washington reception thrown in the presidential candidate's honor by Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Cornel West, and a host of other African American glitterati. As the seminal D.C. go-go band E.U.--whose most famous song, "Da Butt," was featured in Lee's 1988 film School Daze--tried out a new number, seemingly titled "Bill Bradley's On the Move," and the former Washington mayors Marion Barry and Sharon Pratt Kelly danced the electric slide, members of the black establishment lined up to pay tribute to Bradley. The most effusive homage, not surprisingly, came from West, whom the Bradley campaign identifies as the candidate's primary adviser on race. "I don't just endorse Bill Bradley," the Harvard professor proclaimed in introducing the former senator. "Endorse is too weak and impoverished a term. I'm in solidarity with him because he's my brother." As the crowd cheered his remarks, West shouted, "We in a chocolate city, y'all." Shortly thereafter, the vanilla candidate took the stage. ...
It's doubtful that Bradley felt out of place. Only weeks earlier, he had paid a visit to Al Sharpton and his supporters in Harlem. During his political career, and even prior to it, during his basketball-playing days, Bradley has spent considerable time in black environs--a fact he duly noted in his speech at the Washington reception. "Whether I'm in Harlem or whether I'm in Watts, whether I'm in South Central or whether I'm in South Side Chicago," Bradley said, "it's all the same for me. We're all in this together and we're gonna move forward if it's the last thing that I do as president."
Bradley has long been a big believer in talking about race. In October 1996, during one of his last speeches in the Senate, he practically made it a requirement for anyone seeking to occupy the White House. " L et us ask people who run for president to give us their pedigrees on race," Bradley said, apparently unaware of the infelicity of that particular wording, " including the real-life experiences that led them to their present understanding." ...
It wasn't until Bradley got to Princeton University, though, that, in his words, "racial discrimination became the ultimate evil for me." He took a course on the Civil War, which broadened his understanding of the history of race in America. In 1964, as a college intern in the Senate, Bradley watched from the gallery as the Civil Rights Bill was passed; it was that vote that persuaded Bradley, until then a Republican like his banker father, to become a Democrat.
But more formative than any college course or Senate vote was Bradley's basketball experience. Although all of his Princeton teammates were white, Bradley played in all-star competitions at which his roommates were often black. Then, a few years later, when Bradley joined the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association--65 percent of whose players at the time were black--he entered into, as he puts it, a "black world" and, in his mind, at least, acquired a special understanding about race. "Nothing then, not even a careful reading of American history," Bradley wrote in his 1976 book about basketball, Life on the Run, "had prepared me for the impact my teammates have made on me." ...
HEADLINE: Canadian-Born Columbia University Economist Wins
Nobel Award
BYLINE: By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Robert A. Mundell of Columbia University, an eccentric Canadian-born economist whose influence was felt from the supply-side economics of the Reagan years to the creation of the euro, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science yesterday.
Professor Mundell, who is 66, was recognized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences not for his influence on what came to be called Reaganomics, but for his contributions to international economics as the first theorist to demonstrate how the international flow of capital could affect an individual country's ability to manage its own economy through interest rate changes and tax and budget policies. ...
But in the early 1960's, when Professor Mundell was developing his prize-winning theories, most nations except for Canada and the United States heavily regulated the flow of capital across their borders and government officials typically tinkered with their own economies without much attention to global currency movements.
"He was way ahead of his time in recognizing that capital mobility had profound effects on the functioning of a country's economy," said Peter Kenen, an economist at Princeton University. ...
HEADLINE: Chechnya Is About To Engineer A Nuclear Explosion
SOURCE: Segodnya, October 13, 1999, p.2
BYLINE: Mikhail Tolpegin
HIGHLIGHT: INSTIGATED BY SALMAN RADUEV, RUSSIAN SPECIAL SERVICES ARE STRENGTHENING THE DEFENSE OF THE COUNTRY, AS CHECHNYA HAS CONNECTED ITS HOPES WITH PARTISAN AND TERRORIST WARFARE. SECURITY MEASURES AT MAIN NUCLEAR MECHANISMS WERE INTENSIFIED.
Russian security structures have again begun to regard Salman Raduev as a potential organizer of acts of terrorism at Russian nuclear objects. Information agencies have dispersed the statement of the Defense Ministry of Russia saying that he had already "created mobile groups numbering up to 15 people, for the most part appearing Slavic" for this purpose. Raduev himself hurried to state that he "had never planned to organize acts of terrorism at atomic power stations because it might lead to a catastrophe with unpredictable consequences."
Should we believe Raduev? "We have the same information, as the Defense Ministry," officers of the Federal Security Service told our correspondent. "Groups of terrorists sighting nuclear objectives are certainly being formed." ...
The FSS prefers to keep silent in regards to the places where terrorists can turn up and to the techniques which they can use. We studied the results of the research recently conducted by scientists of Princeton University (USA) and managed to get a notion of the terrorists' possible plans. It is known that it is sufficient to damage the system by cooling the reactor to destroy its frame. According to the American scientists, the Ural region is the most attractive territory for the terrorists. Apart from the well-known Mayak plant (according to the research, destruction of its mechanisms can be compared to a nuclear explosion) there are numerous radioactive waste storages there and a storage for 30 tons of plutonium, and there is also the Beloyarsk Atomic Power Station not far from Yekaterinburg. ...
HEADLINE: Corcoran Gain Is American Art Museum's Loss
BYLINE: Ann Lewis, Special to The Washington Post
After a nationwide search, the Corcoran Gallery of Art has found its next chief curator--right in its own back yard.
She is Jacquelyn Days Serwer, 54, curator of contemporary art at the National Museum of American Art here. Widely respected for her thoughtful, quietly persuasive shows on contemporary American art and artists, she has been a curator at NMAA since 1985. The announcement will be made today.
Serwer replaces Jack Cowart, who left the Corcoran in late July to become director of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in New York. She will assume her new post at the end of December. ...
In 1968 she married her childhood sweetheart, Foreign Service officer Daniel Serwer, maintaining her studies and career as their family moved from Geneva to Rome to Brasilia and back to Rome, their last foreign posting. ...
Daniel Serwer now directs the Balkans program at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The couple have two sons, one a junior in the theater program at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and the other an architecture graduate of Princeton University.
HEADLINE: Four elected to Track Hall of Fame
BYLINE: By STEVE HERMAN, AP Sports Writer
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS
Bill Rodgers, who dominated U.S. distance running in the late 1970s and was a four-time winner of both the Boston and New York City marathons, is among four men named to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.
Rodgers, former world triple jump record-holder Willie Banks, former NCAA and Olympic hurdles champion Charles Moore, and the late Larry Ellis, longtime track coach at Princeton, will be inducted at a meeting of USA Track & Field in Los Angeles on Dec. 2. ...
Ellis, who died last year, was a middle distance runner at New York University. He coached 13 years at Jamaica (N.Y.) High School before going to Princeton in 1970, where he coached such athletes as Bob Beamon, former world record holder in the long jump, and Craig Masback, now the head of USA Track & Field.
Ellis was U.S. men's coach of the 1984 Olympic and 1998 World Cup teams and was president of USATF from 1992-96.
NOTE: This item appeared in newspapers throughout the United States, including the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, USA Today, the Hartford Courant and the Austin American-Statesman.
HEADLINE: Writers struggle to tell the story of a president
SOURCE: MIKE SMITH; ASSOCIATED PRESS VIA NBC
BYLINE: BY STEVE NEAL
Edmund Morris isn't the first presidential historian to get writer's block.
Writing about presidents and their lives has overwhelmed more than a few biographers. Indeed, there may be more unfinished presidential biographies than unfinished symphonies. Consider the following:
Arthur S. Link, a history professor at Princeton University, died before the completion of his multivolume biography of Woodrow Wilson. Link did complete the editing of Wilson's official papers. ...
HEADLINE: On-Line Presentations Boom as Colleges Compete for
the Brightest Students
BYLINE: By NICK GOLDIN
Colleges and universities are racing to provide applicants with virtual tours of their campuses, setting up on-line presentations that mirror actual campus visits.
More than 800 colleges, compared with about 200 just two years ago, now maintain Web sites that let prospective students view slide shows, roll video clips of college life and glimpse picturesque quadrangles captured live by cameras strategically placed on campus.
By doing so, they are also acknowledging that a strong presence on the Internet is vital to winning the hearts of the most qualified students.
Visitors to Princeton University's site, for example, see video and audio snippets that simulate the real tour. One of the most ambitious sites, for Washington State University in Pullman, allows computer users to navigate an interactive map, view live shots of the campus, browse a photo library of campus scenes and watch video presentations on topics like financial aid, career services and fraternity and sorority life. ...
HEADLINE: Princeton Bioethics Professor Debates Views on
Disability and Euthanasia
BYLINE: By PAUL ZIELBAUER
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 12
With none of the protests that have marked his previous appearances on campus, Peter Singer, the Princeton University professor whose support of infant euthanasia in severe cases of disability has made him a lodestone for controversy, debated his views publicly for the first time tonight before 500 students and faculty members.
The debate, sponsored by the university's Bioethics Forum, focused on two main issues: when, if ever, it would be appropriate to kill a disabled infant, and the relative worth of living with a profound disability.
Professor Singer, who was named the university's first Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics a year ago, did not break any new philosophical ground.
His most provocative statement tonight essentially repeated what has led so many of his critics to protest his appointment. And none of what he presented in the discussion, titled "Ethics, Health Care and Disability," seemed to come as much of a shock to his audience, mostly students, or his debate opponent, Adrienne Asch, a professor of ethics at Wellesley College.
"I do not think it is always wrong to kill an innocent human being," Professor Singer told the rapt audience in Harold Helm Auditorium=2E "Simply killing an infant is never equivalent to killing a person." ...
The group that led that protest, Not Dead Yet, was not in evidence tonight, nor were there other protests. Caroline Nuffort, a Princeton senior, said, "I'm not all that disturbed, because it's just philosophy.
"I'd be a lot more disturbed if he were trying to implement it," she said, referring to the professor's view that sometimes it is better to end the life a severely disabled infant.
Jed Seltzer, a senior from Philadelphia, said he came out of curiosity. "How do you judge the ethics of an ethicist?" he asked before the debate. "I feel like I wouldn't consider myself well-informed until I'd read every single one of his books." ...
SECTION: METRO EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: Children Born With Disabilities Have Value
This is a response to the article "Princeton guards defender of infanticide" (Oct. 2).
Services for Independent Living, Inc. provides services and advocacy that empowers people with disabilities to lead self-directed and productive lives in the community. As an independent living center governed by, employing and working side by side with people with severe disabilities, we are extremely disturbed by the appointment of Peter Singer to Princeton University. Our organization, along with disability advocates across the country, has made our opinion known to the trustees of Princeton, yet this person is allowed to continue to teach his philosophy to students at this "prestigious" university. His appointment and continued employment signifies a lack of value for the lives of people with disabilities and sends a message to parents and the general society that people with disabilities have nothing meaningful to offer. ...
SUSAN MURANY
Cleveland
Murany is the executive director of Services for Independent
Living, Inc.
HEADLINE: Coup Shows Limitations Of U.S. Power In Southasia
SOURCE: Wire services
BYLINE: JONATHAN S. LANDAY, Knight Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
For the United States, the military coup in Pakistan raises fresh worries about the world's newest nuclear rivalry and underscores the limitations of its influence in the tumultuous South Asia region.
The United States has long had close political and military ties to Pakistan. Despite that, the Pakistani military ignored Washington's recent warnings against a coup, the country's third since it won independence from Britain in 1947. ...
Zia Mian, a Pakistani academic at Princeton University, warned: "Militaries are paid to think only about fighting and winning wars." ...
HEADLINE: In Debate, Scholar Defends View On Infant
Euthanasia
BYLINE: FROM NEWS SERVICE REPORTS
DATELINE: PRINCETON
Badgered by protests and calls for his dismissal, Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer on Tuesday night defended his position supporting euthanasia of disabled infants.
The 53-year-old Australian scholar's most controversial works support a parent's right to euthanize severely handicapped infants.
Speaking at a debate, Singer said his arguments often are misinterpreted and that he does not support policies that require infanticide in cases of severe disability. He said doctors and parents should agree to any decision.
"Killing an infant is not equivalent to killing a person, because by a person I mean something more of a rational, self-aware being," Singer said.
Campus security guards surrounded the packed auditorium while Singer debated Adrienne Asch, a blind Wellesley College professor of human reproduction. Six anti-Singer protesters, one in a wheelchair, stood outside the campus gates wearing signs that read,"Singer and Hitler: Great together." ...
HEADLINE: Ivy endowments on the rise in last decade
BYLINE: By Jeffrey Tanenhaus, The Dartmouth
SOURCE: Dartmouth College
DATELINE: Hanover, N.H.
If the start of the 1990s bore witness to several universities raising 10-digit sums of money for the first time, it seems as though there will be no trailing off at the decade's end.
Last week, Harvard University President Neil L. Rudenstine revealed the unprecedented collection of more than $2.3 billion over a seven-year period. ...
The early years of this decade were a testament to other massive Ivy-League fundraisers. ...
According to the latest US News and World Repots on college rankings, Dartmouth ranks only behind Princeton University in percentage of alumni giving. Dartmouth, however, has targeted both the percentage and actual value of contributions. ...
HEADLINE: Volunteer teachers don't go by the book But critics say enthusiasm can't replace experience BYLINE: Stephaan Harris
It's safe to say Caitlin Wittig experienced a bit of a culture shock two years ago.
That is when the College of William and Mary graduate traded the comforts of her Arlington, Va., home for the border town of Pharr, Texas. It wasn't just the crop fields, the palm trees, the plains and the enveloping Rio Grande Valley that Wittig, 24, had to get used to. She also had to adjust to her sudden career as a teacher.
Wittig is one of nearly 1,000 people who enlisted that year in the Teach for America program, which gives recent college graduates, usually in their 20s and hailing from top schools, a chance to teach in 13 urban or rural school systems for two years. The school districts pay the salaries.
Almost all TFA participants have no formal teacher training. But all have a desire to dip their toes into the world of education.
TFA started in 1989 as the thesis of president and founder Wendy Kopp, who was a Princeton University student. Along the way, the program has grown in numbers and stature. In these days of teacher shortages and a growing demand for minority educators, some school officials desperate for new blood and diversity count on the program.
Though some educators praise the effort, others have questioned whether participants are prepared to provide quality instruction to students who sorely need the best teachers.
The genesis
In 1989, Kopp wrote 30 companies at random to solicit $2.5 million to get the Peace Corps-type venture off the ground. She pieced together money from grants, foundations and individual donors. ...
HEADLINE: ACROSS THE USA News from every state
Princeton -- Concerned that high marks have become
commonplace, Princeton University wants to do away
with the A-plus. Under a plan proposed by a faculty committee, A-plus would be replaced by a grade called "A with distinction," for truly outstanding work. Instead of being worth 4.3 to the student's grade-point average, the "A with distinction" would be worth 4.0, the same as A is currently.
HEADLINE: Clinton Chided for Spurring Yalies
BYLINE: ANNE GEARAN
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
Those old school ties are powerful. But President Clinton, a Yale Law School graduate, agreed Tuesday when a fellow Yalie predicted that in a certain upcoming endorsement Clinton will spurn his alma mater in favor of a rival Ivy League school.
Dr. Joel Alpert, president of the American Academy of Pediatricians, jokingly likened himself to Clinton as he introduced the president before a speech to the group.
''We both hold the title 'president,''' Alpert said. ''We are both Yalies.''
''When asked whom you would support for the title next, I suspect it would be a Harvardian, maybe a Princetonian,'' Alpert continued. ''But for the time being, no more Yalies.''
Vice President Al Gore graduated from Harvard in 1969. Clinton is already backing Gore as his successor.
Gore's Democratic challenger, former Sen. Bill Bradley, graduated from Princeton in 1965. Clinton would presumably back Bradley in the general election if Bradley defeated Gore. ...
HEADLINE: Princeton Trustee Attacks Forbes.
The Washington Times (10/12, Billups) reported the chairman of Princeton University's Board of Trustees "has rebuked fellow trustee and Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes for his public stance against Peter Singer, a bioethics professor who became a tenured faculty member at the school's Center for Human Values in July." Princeton board Chairman Robert H. Rawson said the trustees were 'extremely disappointed Mr. Forbes has chosen to attack publicly a faculty appointment that the trustees duly approved."
The Times reported Singer, an Australian philosopher, "has drawn widespread criticism in the United States and abroad for his provocative teachings that suggest euthanasia for terminally ill adults and certain severely disabled infants is often not wrong if it eliminates suffering."
HEADLINE: Universal Display Corporation to Accelerate
Commercialization Efforts With the Opening of an 11,000 Sq. Ft.
Facility in Ewing, NJ
DATELINE: EWING, N.J.
Oct. 12, 1999--Universal Display Corporation (UDC) (NASDAQ:PANL; PHLX:PNL), a developer of flat panel display technology, announced today that it has moved its operations and corporate headquarters to a new 11,000 sq. ft facility located at 375 Phillips Blvd, Ewing NJ 08618.
The building will include a pilot line as well as technology development and technology transfer facilities. The new telephone number is 609/671-0980 and the fax number is 609/671-0995. "Located only 20 minutes from our research partners at Princeton University, this new facility will significantly increase the resources we can bring to the commercialization of our leading edge Organic Light Emitting Device (OLED) technology," said Steven V. Abramson, President of UDC. ...
HEADLINE: Hike for low-wage workers debated Red-hot economy
takes fire from opponents of raising mimimum wage
BYLINE: Merrill Goozner CHICAGO TRIBUNE
WASHINGTON - Congress is to debate a 20-percent raise in the minimum wage this week, but the situation is far different from the last time it confronted the issue in 1997: The soaring economy has taken the sting out of most of the arguments against an increase.
Opponents have traditionally argued that giving a raise to the nation's least well-off workers will cost jobs to teen-agers and the unskilled. But since the minimum wage was last raised to $5.15 an hour in 1997, job opportunities paying at or near the minimum have soared, welfare rolls have plummeted, and unemployment among teens has plunged to its lowest level since 1969. ...
Studies and surveys by Alan Krueger of Princeton University and David Card of the University of California at Berkeley, for instance, have suggested not only that a minimum-wage increase does not cost jobs, but may actually increase employment. The implication is that businesses forced to raise wages for their least-skilled workers look for ways to become more productive, and that opens up new business opportunities for them. ...
HEADLINE: Al Leiter Comes Shining Through A Regular Guy From
New Jersey Helps Save The Met's Season
BYLINE: BY RAFAEL HERMOSO
Al Leiter is the fan in everyone. He shakes his head when he allows big hits and makes goofy faces at reporters' questions.
He never hides his feelings, and sometimes he looks as tortured as his manager.
Is he too emotional? When Rick Reed recently was pictured in a newspaper uncharacteristically pumping his fist, Leiter mockingly drew a cartoon bubble over Reed with the words, "I never show emotion," and left it in Reed's locker.
The Mets open the NLCS tonight because of the heroics of Todd Pratt and Melvin Mora and Edgardo Alfonzo and two dozen other characters=2E But it is Al Leiter who has saved them this season - from stopping an eight-game losing streak in June to Saturday's division series clincher against Arizona. ...
When Leiter led Central Regional High School's baseball team to the state championship as a senior in 1984, the town held a parade from Princeton University, where the tournament was held, back to Bayville. It was only after the celebration that Leiter learned that his father was at the game, spotted by a family friend. ...
HEADLINE: A-plus may be replaced
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Concerned that high marks have become commonplace, Princeton University might do away with the A-plus=2E
Under a plan proposed by a faculty committee, A-plus would be replaced by a grade called "A with distinction," for truly outstanding work.
In addition, faculty members would have to file written explanations with each "A with distinction" they give.
HEADLINE: Nuclear Weapons Testing May Use Supercomputer Simulation
ANCHORS: LINDA WERTHEIMER
REPORTERS: RICHARD HARRIS
LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:
Some critics of the comprehensive test-ban treaty argued that it could erode confidence in America's nuclear arsenal. But many experts say underground testing is not essential to maintaining existing weapons=2E In fact, the United States has not detonated an underground explosion since 1992. NPR's Richard Harris has that story.
RICHARD HARRIS reporting:
The US government has conducted more than a thousand nuclear tests over the years. Chris Paine, a test-ban treaty advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says in recent history almost all those tests were to develop new designs, not check existing ones. ...
HARRIS: McCoy says it's a tradeoff: Build huge new supercomputer centers to make better judgments about aging nuclear weapons or build more weapons factories in order to replace more weapons' components.
The Energy Department, which funds nuclear weapons design, is counting on the supercomputers. But Frank Von Hippel, a arms control expert at Princeton University, says the new programs aren't aimed simply at proving that existing weapons still work.
Mr. FRANK VON HIPPEL (Arms Control Expert, Princeton University): They would like to be able to design new types of weapons, variations of weapons, without testing. And they would also--they also want to keep a cadre of experts ready to start designing new weapons if the test-ban regime breaks down. ...
NAME: Ruth J. Simmons
HEADLINE: Elite College's President Takes to the Road to Attract
the Disadvantaged
BYLINE: By JODI WILGOREN
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, Oct. 9
At Hamilton High School, a grand old building in a gritty slice of West Los Angeles, Ruth J. Simmons surveyed a roomful of 35 black and brown female faces and saw her own.
Striding through the Hamilton library, with its posters of Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg announcing "Reading is Power" in Spanish and English, Dr. Simmons shook each hand and introduced herself as the president of Smith College. "You're the president?" one girl asked, incredulous.
Called the Jackie Robinson of higher education when she became the first black woman to head a top-tier college or university in 1995, Dr. Simmons has embarked upon what she calls a "personal crusade" to bring disadvantaged students to her campus and similar institutions nationwide. The 12th child of a sharecropper turned factory worker who grew up in a Houston home with neither books nor desk, Dr. Simmons is stepping out of the ivory tower to recruit at urban public schools like Hamilton, a rarity for a college president. ...
Other top-flight schools are taking similar steps. Princeton University has replaced student loans with extra grants for families whose incomes hover below the national average (this year, $42,000). Hampshire created the James Baldwin scholarships for high school dropouts who have earned their G.E.D. The former president of Dartmouth College, James O. Freedman, said he tried to send a message by giving honorary degrees to prominent black and Hispanic scholars; one recent recipient was Ruth Simmons. ...
HEADLINE: Teaching Science, Not 'Truths'
To the Editor:
Re "Science vs. Bible: Debate Moves to the Cosmos" (front page,
Oct. 10):
The Kansas school board has dropped the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins, and in fact all evidence for an old universe, from its science curriculum, in part because many feel that even well-founded scientific theories should not be regarded as sources of truth. They do their students a disservice.
The study of science in high school is not simply the study of "truths" about the natural world; it is the study of the human scientific endeavor.
The Big Bang provides the framework for all of cosmology, as evolution does for biology, and the pursuit of scientific inquiry cannot be understood without these theories.
As a teacher of physics, I teach successful scientific theories not to indoctrinate students with certain truths but to equip them with the intellectual tools necessary to make their own independent evaluations of controversial facts and theories.
DAVID W. HOGG
Princeton, N.J., Oct. 10, 1999
The writer is a lecturer in physics at Princeton
University.
HEADLINE: Forbes gets a scolding for Princeton position;
Trustees head hits stand on professor
BYLINE: Andrea Billups; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The chairman of Princeton University's Board of Trustees has rebuked fellow trustee and Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes for his public stance against Peter Singer, a bioethics professor who became a tenured faculty member at the school's Center for Human Values in July.
Princeton board Chairman Robert H. Rawson said the trustees were "extremely disappointed Mr. Forbes has chosen to attack publicly a faculty appointment that the trustees duly approved. ... "
Mr. Singer, an Australian philosopher, has drawn widespread criticism in the United States and abroad for his provocative teachings that suggest euthanasia for terminally ill adults and certain severely disabled infants is often not wrong if it eliminates suffering.
Two weeks ago, at a spirited protest at Princeton that drew more than 200 disabled rights and pro-life activists from around the country, Mr. Forbes announced that he had not given money to his alma mater since Mr. Singer was hired. While his family has donated millions to Princeton, Mr. Forbes, a billionaire, pledged to withhold all future financial support until the university rescinds Mr. Singer's appointment. ...
In a public letter written last week to four professors who criticized Mr. Forbes' actions, Mr. Rawson reiterated the Ivy League school's support for academic freedom.
"Any trustee individually is certainly entitled to express his or her opinion on any matter affecting Princeton. But the trustees collectively have a special and overarching responsibility to advance and protect the core values of the university, which include the essential principles of academic freedom," wrote Mr. Rawson, a Cleveland lawyer and Rhodes scholar in a two-page letter to Amy Guttman, director of the school's Center for Human Values, politics professor George Kateb and professors of philosophy Gilbert Harman and Mark Johnston.
"We sincerely regret that one of our members apparently is not willing to accept this fundamental responsibility of trusteeship," Mr. Rawson said.
In an interview with the student newspaper, the Daily Princetonian, the university's vice president and board secretary, Tom Wright, said Mr. Rawson's criticism of Mr. Forbes marked the first time in his 26 years as board secretary that a chairman had publicly admonished a fellow trustee. ...
HEADLINE: How Pounds 3 Can Buy You Love, Brains And Money
BYLINE: Cahal Milmo
An American craze for beads allegedly endowed with unseen powers to attract lovers and boost brain power is set to hit Britain.
Millions of the hippy-style trinkets, costing from pounds 3 to pounds 9 and modelled on Buddhist prayer beads and known variously as Power Beads, Buddha Beads or Karma Beads will hit High Streets by the end of the month after sweeping across the US.
The beads, first marketed last year by a New York designer, are fashioned from semi-precious stones - from quartz to rock crystal - with each colour claimed to bring the wearer powers ranging from long life to relief from PMT. ...
The power gem craze was started by Manhattan designer Zoe Metro, whose Stella Pace or Star Peace range boasts of benefits from courage to increased wealth for prices starting at pounds 10. ...
Metro, an art history and ancient religions graduate from Princeton University, claims the idea for her Power Beads came from seeing a man on a New York subway system train through a bag of Chinese fortune cookies. ...
HEADLINE: Casting light on Einstein's space theory:
SCIENCE GRAVITY WAVES: Several million-dollar projects to study
gravitational waves are set to come on line, says Bruce
Dorminey
The effects of gravity are grasped within the first few months of life. But its essence is as elusive today as in the age of Sir Isaac Newton. While Newton painted gravity as a static and immutable influence; in reality, it is a dynamic and variable force that moves through matter at the speed of light.
As Albert Einstein predicted, any accelerating mass, from automobiles to asteroids, should emit gravitational radiation in the form of waves.
In fact, two US physicists, Joseph Taylor and Russel Hulse, won the 1993 Nobel prize in physics for the indirect detection of gravitational waves from a pair of neutron stars in rapid orbit around each other=2E
But their direct detection remains a challenge: the final validation of Einstein's axiom that gravitational radiation ripples through nature as a fundamental distortion of space-time. Space-time is what used to be referred to as the vacuum of space but Einstein added the fourth dimension of time to what was a three-dimensional concept.
Now, after 30 years of unsuccessful, low-budget efforts at capturing such waves in contraptions constructed in the backyards of academia, gravity wave detection has become big science. Several ground-based projects are about to come on line. These are multi-million dollar international collaborations. A $400m space-based gravitational wave antenna is also on the drawing board.
The projects could open the way to a new type of astronomy that could resolve some of the biggest space controversies and even allow astronomers to "see back" in time to before the Big Bang. Looking out into normal electromagnetic radiation, astronomers can see back only to about 300,000 years after the Big Bang, some 13bn years ago.
"Gravity wave astronomy hasn't started yet," says Joseph Taylor, Princeton University's Nobel prize-winning experimental astrophysicist. "But it might give us ways of determining what happens when black holes are formed." ...
HEADLINE: Game theory: how to make it pay
Summary
Unlike many other tools devised by economists game theory should not be used to produce numerical answers to a problem. It is most beneficial, says Luis Garicano, in obtaining insights into the way players in a market interact in specific circumstances. Such an approach can not only help participants learn the "right" way to play but to understand competitor behaviour and what is likely to happen if they alter the rules. Game theory has greatly expanded the scope of analysis for business strategy, sharpening corporate competitiveness and advancing policy. It has also spilled over into fields like litigation, evolutionary biology and political science. ...
In Thinking Strategically, their excellent non-technical introduction to game theory, Princeton University's Avinash K. Dixit and Yale University's Barry J. Nalebuff propose a taxonomy of the ways in which actors can commit in advance to an action that could, after their rivals have made their move, be non-rational. They suggest, for example, writing contracts; building a reputation for never backing down; or burning your bridges and taking decisions that make it impossible to back down.
HEADLINE: Big Labour gets old-time religion
BYLINE: Stephen Franklin
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
The three elderly Catholic clergymen were reminiscing about their years at the barricades with labour, and remarking on how unions and religious leaders have found each other. Once again, that is.
''After the 1960s, labour didn't seem to need us, and that is why this movement is such a blessing, because labour needs the church and the church needs labour,'' said Monsignor Jack Egan, 83, of Chicago.
Monsignor Charles Higgins, 83, of Washington leaned forward and nodded. Not too long ago, he recalled, unions had gotten so ''high-handed'' that ''you were lucky if they read your letter. ''
But that changed, Higgins said, ''because they are desperate now, and workers are desperate, too.''
Unions and workers are looking for the same thing today as they were 34 years ago when they called on him for guidance, suggested Rev. Eugene Boyle, a long-time champion of California's farm workers. ...
But that's not the way Robert Wuthnow, a professor of sociology and an expert on religion in society at Princeton University, sees it. He says there is an across-the-board receptiveness among major religious groups for cooperation with workers.
HEADLINE: In Science vs. Bible Wrangle, Debate Moves to the
Cosmos
BYLINE: By James Glanz; New York Times Service
DATELINE: NEW YORK
Scientific lessons about the origins of life have long been challenged in American public schools, but some Bible literalists are now adding the reigning theory about the origin of the universe to their list of targets.
Nearly overlooked in the furor over the Kansas Board of Education's decision in August to remove evolution from its education standards was a decision on the much wider realm governed by the science of the cosmos.
Influenced by a handful of scientists whose literal faith in the Bible has helped persuade them that the universe is only a few thousand years old, the board deleted from its standards a description of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins, the central organizing principle of modern astronomy and cosmology. The theory, based on decades of astronomical observations and physics research, suggests that the universe originated in a colossal explosion of matter and radiation some 15 billion years ago.
But ''young Earth creationists,'' as they are generally known, have come up with their own theories to explain how cosmic history could be condensed into mere thousands of years. They are making this case in books, pamphlets and lectures, and Web sites. Mainstream scientists consider their theories to be wildly out of line with reality, although books describing them are often liberally sprinkled with references to such authorities as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
As a result, physical scientists now find themselves in a fight in which they have seldom played a public role. They have responded with a mixture of disdain, disbelief and consternation, and the reactions have not been limited to physicists and cosmologists in Kansas. ...
Hume Feldman, a cosmologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence who has worked at Princeton University and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, called the matter ''frightening.''
''When I went into cosmology,'' he said, ''I never thought I would get involved in anything like that.'' He said that developments in his state bore a distant resemblance to the difficulties of political scientists under Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and that he feared such pressures could impair the educational system. ...
HEADLINE: Washington in War of Words on Policing Nuclear Test
Ban Treaty
BYLINE: By William J. Broad; New York Times Service
DATELINE: NEW YORK
A mystery unfolded last year when India, on May 13, announced that it had set off a pair of nuclear blasts. The global network of seismometers - sensitive devices buried deep in the earth to monitor shock waves from distant earthquakes and blasts - recorded no faint rumbles emanating from India's underground test site in its northwestern desert. There was no blip, no twitch of pen or meter suggesting the awesome power of the atom had just been released.
Had India faked the explosive tests? Were they flops? Or had small blasts eluded the eavesdroppers? And if they had, what did that mean for a global ban on nuclear tests in which compliance was to be assiduously verified?
These questions have a strong bearing on the bruising battle in Washington over whether the Senate should bless Washington's participation in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which more than 150 nations have signed. ...
To police the globe for clandestine blasts, the treaty calls for 321 monitoring stations - 170 to detect underground shock waves, 80 to sniff the air for telltale radioactivity, 60 to listen for revealing sounds and 11 to track undersea booms. ...
The American Geophysical Union and the Seismological Society of America said in a statement last week that when treaty sensors are all switched on, ''no nation could rely upon successfully concealing a program of nuclear testing, even at low yields'' in which blasts are very small.
Gregory van der Vink, an earth scientist at Princeton University who helped draft the statement, said existing instruments already exceed the treaty's monitoring goals.
In fact, for such places as the underground test sites in China and Russia, Dr. van der Vink added, the sensitivity of existing seismic detectors is already hundreds of times better than necessary. ...
NOTE: This story first appeared in The New York Times.
HEADLINE: Power beads craze to cross the Atlantic
An American craze for beads allegedly endowed with unseen powers to attract lovers and boost brain power is set to hit Britain, retailers said.
Millions of the hippy-style trinkets modelled on Buddhist prayer beads and known variously as Power Beads, Buddha Beads or Karma Beads will hit high streets by the end of the month after sweeping across the US.
The beads, first marketed last year by a New York designer, are fashioned from semi-precious stones from quartz to rock crystal with each colour claimed to bring the wearer powers ranging from long life to relief from PMT. ...
The power gem craze was started by Manhattan designer Zoe Metro, whose Stella Pace or Star Peace range boasts of benefits from courage to increased wealth for prices starting at $18 [=A310]. ...
Ms Metro, an art history and ancient religions graduate from Princeton University, claims the idea for her Power Beads came from seeing a man on the New York subway searching through a bag of Chinese fortune cookies.
Denying any purely commercial basis to her enterprise, she told an American magazine: "It made me realize how much people need hope."
HEADLINE: ON THE ROAD AGAIN: Rosalyn Millman, formerly a transportation economist for the minority staff of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has been appointed as deputy administrator of the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration by Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater. Before her appointment, Millman had been a committee staffer for six years. ...
A native of State College, Pa., she graduated with honors from Pennsylvania State University in 1983 with a bachelor's in economic geography and received a master's in economics and public policy in 1988 from Princeton University, where she was a Woodrow Wilson fellow. ...
HEADLINE: FROM OUR READERS Slippery slope
To the editor:
In his recent commentary, John Leo seems upset by the suggestion of Peter Singer (of Princeton University) that parents be given a 28-day grace period to decide whether to kill a 'severely disabled baby.' Mr. Leo doesn't seem to realize that there is already a grace period in effect -- it's called pregnancy.
A woman has nine months in which to kill her unborn child, so if she decides to do it 28 days before birth or 28 days after, what does it matter? Mr. Singer's idea that a newborn baby is not a person is merely an extension of the idea of the 'pro-choice' crowd that an unborn baby is not a person. Why the surprise?
Mr. Leo writes that 'once protections no longer are assured at birth, there is nothing sacrosanct about 28 days or 56,' referring to the slippery slope notion that the 28-day grace period could easily be extended to any number of days. He, of course, is right. But the thought should go further: Once protections no longer are assured at conception, there is nothing sacrosanct about pre-birth or after-birth.
DONNA DOCKERY
Las Vegas
HEADLINE: Science vs. the Bible: Debate Moves to the Cosmos
BYLINE: By JAMES GLANZ
Scientific lessons about the origins of life have long been challenged in public schools, but some Bible literalists are now adding the reigning theory about the origin of the universe to their list of targets.
Nearly overlooked in the furor over the Kansas school board's vote in August to remove evolution from its education standards was a decision on the teaching of the science of the cosmos. Influenced by a handful of scientists whose literal faith in the Bible has helped convince them that the universe is only a few thousand years old, the board deleted from its standards a description of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins, the central organizing principle of modern astronomy and cosmology.
The Big Bang theory, based on decades of astronomical observations and physics research, suggests that the universe originated in a colossal explosion of matter and radiation some 15 billion years ago.
But "young Earth creationists," as they are generally known, have come up with their own theories to explain how cosmic history could be condensed into mere thousands of years. They are making this case in books, pamphlets and lectures, as well as on a number of Web sites. ...
As a result, physical scientists now find themselves in a fight in which they have seldom played a public role. They have responded with a mixture of disdain, disbelief and consternation, and the reactions have not been limited to physicists and cosmologists in Kansas. ...
Hume A. Feldman, a cosmologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence who has worked at Princeton University and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, called the matter "frightening."
"When I went into cosmology," Dr. Feldman said, "I never thought I would get involved in anything like that."
Dr. Feldman said that developments in his state bore a distant resemblance to the difficulties of political scientists under Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and that he feared that such pressures could impair the educational system. ...
HEADLINE: PEOPLE IN THE NEWS
PRINCETON, N.J. - Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa says it's up to the United States to guide the world into the new millennium.
''We have a new era and old regulations. That's wrong. Globalization is already happening and we are discussing whether it will happen or not,'' he said Friday at Princeton University.
The former president of Poland said U.S. leaders are not providing the world with the vision it needs to adequately ensure ''good order'' in the next millennium.
''That's why there is a great urgency for a new constitution for the world,'' he said, speaking with the aid of an interpreter.
About 500 people came to hear Walesa speak to the Princeton Millennium Project, a student-run organization.
He made the audience laugh about the number of medals and honorary degrees he has received since becoming Poland's first democratically elected president in 1989.
''I'm telling you this not to boast,'' he said. ''It's worthwhile to be determined and sacrifice for a good cause.''
NOTE: This item, carried by the Associated Press, also appeared in The Record of Hackensack.
HEADLINE: Tokens reflect pledges; Methodists meet at
Alamodome
BYLINE: John Tedesco
The largest gathering of Methodists in U.S. history ended Saturday with a giveaway.
Some 20,000 tokens were handed out at the Alamodome, each coin representing a pledge to win a person for Christ.
But for many Methodists unaccustomed to preaching God's word, the mementos also symbolized a long overdue change in the church.
"We use the excuse that you live religion by example," said FloHild, who came to the "Great Methodist Gathering" from San Marcos."Our actions are fine and good, but we need to speak up for our religion." ...
While some religions seek converts by going door to door orpreaching in the streets, Methodists tend to view such proselytizing as being too pushy.
"We're afraid of offending people," Ro Dillard said during a lunchbreak. "You feel like you're putting them on the spot."
Citing a 1988 Princeton University study, Fox said Methodistsranked almost last among the country's religions in bringing newmembers to the fold. ...
HEADLINE: False Fears About a Test Ban
BYLINE: Ray Kidder; Lynn Sykes; Frank von Hippel
More than 80 percent of the American people want a permanent ban on nuclear weapons tests, and support outside the United States is at least as high. This public support, sustained over 45 years, has powered the movement that persuaded the governments of 154 nations to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, now awaiting ratification in the U.S. Senate.
The arguments against the test ban treaty today are the same as those that opponents used to slow its progress for 40 years: the fear that other countries will cheat and be able to reap advantages from small clandestine tests, and the belief that the only way to make sure that a nuclear weapon works is to test it.
The first argument is illustrated by a continuing controversy within the U.S. intelligence community as to whether Russia is conducting small underground nuclear tests on its Arctic test site. There have been repeated leaks, based on spy satellite images, that Russia is continuing to carry out activities on the island of Novaya Zemlya identical to those that used to accompany underground tests. Russian spy satellites are presumably detecting similar activities at the U.S. Nevada test site. The U.S. government says that we are carrying out permitted and essential zero-nuclear-yield ("sub-critical") tests with plutonium. Russia says it is doing the same.
If the United States and other key countries ratify the test ban and the treaty comes into force, we can request an on-site inspection by the international Test Ban Treaty Organization. Inspectors will be able to go to the site where the suspicious activity took place and drill into the test chamber. If the drilling yields fresh fission products, a cheater will be exposed. ...
Ray Kidder, a senior nuclear weapons physicist, retired from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1990. Lynn Sykes, a seismologist, is professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. Frank von Hippel is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University.
HEADLINE: Killing Is Killing, No Matter What It's Called
The Oct. 3 News story, "Prof's euthanasia stance brings widening protest," deserves more discussion.
Why are people so upset by Princeton University Professor Peter Singer's suggestion that parents have the right to kill severely disabled infants? It is just an extention of our heritage.
Throughout our history, it has been considered legal and moral to engage in war and kill the enemy. Is not the enemy human?
In the 1950s, some states restarted the death penalty for criminals. Are not criminals human beings? Regardless who does the executing, it is still killing a person. It is legal, but is it moral?
In 1973, the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision made it legal to kill an unborn child. We made it seem a less serious killing by defining the unborn as a fetus, not a person. But this does not alter the fact that the unborn is a human being.
What is the difference in ending the life of an 8-week-old unborn child and an 8-week-old disabled infant? The only difference is time=2E ...
KENNETH A. GERSTLE Buffalo
HEADLINE: HOME OF THE WEEK GREAT ENTRANCE Antique opened doors
for Round Bay couple
BYLINE: By FRANCES JAQUES, Staff Writer
Many owners of old summer beachfront homes discovered that the easiest way to get into their house was through the kitchen.
The front of the house, facing the water usually with a wide porch, became an auxiliary entrance since it was not near the driveway. So residents as well as visitors used the nearest doorway, which invariably opened into the kitchen.
Such was the case in the home of Suzanne and Max Ochs which was built about 1910 in the Severna Park waterfront community of Round Bay as a summer home for a prominent Baltimore family.
"For 20 years, to get into the house we used the kitchen," said Mrs. Ochs.
About 10 years ago, changes were made giving the house a new wide entrance into a side room which had been converted from its former status as a utility room and before that a porch. An antique door was found for the entry that at one time was part of a dormitory at Princeton University. ...
HEADLINE: Bradley: Get Tough On Guns
BYLINE: Jonathan Roos
SOURCE: Register Staff Writer
Ankeny, Ia. -Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley called for tougher handgun laws and for keeping abortion legal during the first Register community college candidate forum.
Bradley was quizzed Friday by community college students from across Iowa who seemed generally impressed with the former New Jersey senator, but wanted more specifics in many areas. ...
The former New York Knicks star said he benefited from a kind of affirmative action in that he was accepted at Princeton University because of his basketball skills even though his college test scores weren't that high. ...
HEADLINE: Inside Washington for Oct. 9, 1999 Evangelical Males Are A Bunch of Sensitive Guys
Evangelical dads are patriarchal and not exactly easygoing, right? Wrong. By and large they act like a bunch of
latter-day Alan Aldas. Or so two sociologists maintain in a recent issue of The Responsive Community, the journal of the communitarian movement. ''Evangelical fathers are more involved with their children than other fathers,'' as in monitoring homework and bathing preschoolers, according to W. Bradford Wilcox, a graduate student at Princeton University, and Mississippi State University professor John P. Bartkowski. They point to a University of North Carolina study that found no difference between evangelical couples and other American husbands and wives in making decisions about money, work, and kids. In only one way are evangelical parents more stern, in an old-fashioned sense, than everyone else: They spank their small children more often than other parents do.
HEADLINE: Walesa urges Princeton students to create new vision
for world leadership
BYLINE: NINA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.
Former Polish President Lech Walesa told an audience of 500 people Friday that, as the remaining superpower, the United States must create a constitution to govern a globe that will continue to shrink in the next millennium.
Speaking at the request of the Princeton Millennium Project, a student-run organization at Princeton University, Walesa said the proper framework is not in place for a new era.
"This civilization of progress is pushing us towards globalization. Cellular telephones, satellite television, Internet, ecology. Some corporations are bigger than particular countries," he said through an interpreter. "We have to really come to terms and think about this."
"I don't think with our mentality we can catch up to ... technological advancements," he said, then chided politicians who don't think beyond their own constituencies and terms in office.
The Nobel laureate said that although the United States is a military, economic and cultural powerhouse, its leaders are not providing the world with the vision it needs to adequately ensure "good order" in the next millennium.
"That's why there is a great urgency for a new constitution for the world," he said. He suggested something equivalent to a second United Nations, where stable countries would have the responsibility to eradicate problems in countries where there is unrest. The United States, he said, would be at the helm of this new world order. ...
HEADLINE: Nike Identifies Plants Abroad Making Goods For
Universities
BYLINE: By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
In a significant concession to the anti-sweatshop movement on college campuses, Nike Inc. became the first large apparel company yesterday to disclose the names and sites of dozens of its overseas factories -- a move that the college groups said was vital to uncover unsatisfactory working conditions.
Student groups praised Nike for its disclosures about factories in Bangladesh, China, Guatemala, Thailand and other countries, saying that having the names and addresses would make it far easier to verify whether Nike had made good on its promises to improve working conditions.
Last spring, students held demonstrations at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and dozens of other colleges and universities, demanding that universities force companies making apparel with school logos to disclose the names and addresses of their factories. All told, manufacturers like Nike, Champion, Adidas and Gear for Sports produce $2.5 billion worth of goods each year bearing the names of hundreds of colleges. ...
HEADLINE: Small-town humor in 'Mystery, Alaska'
BYLINE: Jon Bowman
Hockey games set to good music
What does a TV wunderkind do after collecting a shelfful of Emmys? In the case of writer-producer David E. Kelley (Picket Fences, Ally McBeal), the answer is simple:
He branches out into writing and producing films, hoping to one day add a few Oscars to his trophy case.
Kelley needn't brush up his acceptance speech for his first two feature films, last summer's Lake Placid and the comedy Mystery, Alaska, now in release. He is, though, warming up to the potential of the new medium, even if he hasn't yet made a complete break from the game plan that served him so well in television.
Kelley co-wrote Mystery, Alaska with his old college buddy, Sean O'Byrne. The two played varsity hockey with the Princeton University Tigers and draw from that experience in formulating a David-vs.-Goliath saga that unfolds on ice in a slap-happy Alaskan town. ...
HEADLINE: Princeton physics profs attend meeting with Clinton
on nuclear test ban
BYLINE: By Amanda Hawn, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.
Three Nobel Prize winners in the Princeton University physics department -- Dean of the Faculty Joseph Taylor, professor Philip Anderson and professor emeritus Val Fitch -- were among nine scientists who met with President Clinton Wednesday to express support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The president hopes to see the treaty ratified by the Senate sometime this term.
According to Fitch, the treaty would prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide and provide for an increase in the number of censors around the globe used to identify and classify nuclear activity.
Anderson added that the United States, "as a nation that has already developed and tested its bombs, has a great deal to gain from the treaty. By giving up a little testing we can prevent a lot of unwanted nuclear proliferation."
The Clinton Administration has supported the treaty, as have Senate leaders from both sides of the aisle. However, a Republican contingent in the Senate that strongly opposes the test ban has complicated the approval process. ...
HEADLINE: Federal judge scaling back duties
DATELINE: HONOLULU
U.S. District Judge Alan Kay said Thursday he will retire from active duty on Jan. 2 and assume senior status on the federal bench.
His departure from the active judgeship creates a vacancy on the four-member District Court.
The vacancy must be filled by presidential appointment, which is subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
Kay, 67, was appointed to the judgeship in 1986 by President Reagan and served as chief judge of the District of Hawaii from 1991 through 1998. ...
Born and raised in Hawaii, Kay graduated from Princeton University and earned his law degree at from the University of California, Boalt Hall. He practiced law with the firm of Case, Kay & Lynch before becoming a judge. ...
HEADLINE: Putting the dancing pigs in their cyber-pen
BYLINE: Tom Regan, Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
DATELINE: BOSTON
'Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time.' - Ed Felten, Princeton University
THEY ARE CALLED TROJAN HORSES. The name says it all. An innocent e-mail lands in your mail box that seems to come from your best friend, or that joke e-mail list that you joined, and promises to show you "dancing pigs" if you click on the executable attachment included with the message. ("Executable" means it fires up once you click on it.)
And while you do get dancing pigs, you also get something else - a bit of malicious computer code that scrambles your hard drive, or sends all of your personal e-mail to everyone else in the office, or worse, sends all your business's corporate memos to someone only too happy to sell them to your competition.
And you never even knew it happened. You were too busy watching dancing pigs. ...
HEADLINE: Detectives cast light on Einstein's space theory: SCIENCE GRAVITY WAVES:
Several multi-million dollar projects which could allow gravitational waves to be studied directly for the first time are set to come on line, writes Bruce Dorminey
Its effects are grasped within the first few months of life. But its essence is as elusive today as in the age of Sir Isaac Newton. While Newton painted gravity as a static, immutable influence; in reality, it isa dynamic, variable force that moves through matter at the speed of light.
As Albert Einstein predicted, any accelerating mass, from automobiles to asteroids, should emit gravitational radiation in the form of waves. In fact, two US physicists, Joseph Taylor and Russel Hulse, won the 1993 Nobel prize in physics for the indirect detection of gravitational waves from a pair of neutron stars in rapid orbit around each other.
But their direct detection and characterisation remain an astrophysical challenge: the final validation of Einstein's axiom that gravitational radiation ripples through nature as a fundamental distortion of space-time. Space-time is what used to be referred to as the vacuum of space, but Einstein added the fourth dimension of time to what was a three-dimensional concept.
Now, after 30 years of unsuccessful, low-budget efforts at capturing such waves in contraptions constructed in the backyards of academia, gravity wave detection has become big science. Several funded, ground-based projects are about to come on line. These are multi-million dollar international collaborations. An as yet unfunded $400m (=A3242m) space-based gravitational wave antenna is also on the drawing board. ...
"Gravity wave astronomy hasn't started yet," says Joseph Taylor, Princeton University's Nobel prize-winning experimental astrophysicist. "But it might give us ways of determining what happens when black holes are formed and a lot of other phenomena that can't be studied with electromagnetic astronomy." ...
HEADLINE: PLOT TO KILL JUDGE, 1 OTHER ALLEGED;
MAN AWAITED SENTENCING
BYLINE: MARK PAZNIOKAS; Courant Staff Writer
A Griswold man awaiting sentencing in a weapons case tried to arrange from prison the murders of a federal judge in Hartford and another, unidentified person, the U.S. attorney's office said Wednesday.
Jeffrey L. St. Jean, 40, plotted to kill Alvin W. Thompson, the U.S. district judge assigned to sentence St. Jean for his illegal possession of a small arsenal, according to a grand jury indictment.
The indictment charges St. Jean with two counts: soliciting the murder of a federal officer and soliciting murder for hire. It alleges that he asked an unnamed person on June 19, presumably during a prison phone call or visit, to kill Thompson and a second person. ...
Thompson, a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, made history five years ago as the first black lawyer appointed to the federal bench in Connecticut.
HEADLINE: As Net Turns 30, the Sequel Is Still in Previews
BYLINE: By KATIE HAFNER
THIRTY years ago this fall, the Internet got its start as the Arpanet, a Government-financed computer network for universities and military sites. That network has gradually morphed into today's Internet, which 200 million people around the world use, misuse, cherish and curse.
About three years ago, a project called Internet2 began. It involves a a new high-speed data backbone connecting universities, much like the way they were connected in the original Arpanet. It is one of several attempts to steer a future course for the connected world, a reinvention of the Net meant to feed new technologies to the public eventually. But opinion is divided on whether it is the bridge to the 21st century or an expensive dead end.
Proponents of the Internet2 project, whose users are almost exclusively at universities, say it is a unique sandbox in which researchers can conduct experiments in areas like advanced videoconference techniques, virtual reality and telemedicine. They say the technological innovations to emerge from the project will quickly filter down to the "commodity" Internet, as the general Internet is sometimes called.
Critics, on the other hand, say the project is falling short of its original goals, that it has little technical innovation to show for three years of work and that much of Internet2's prodigious capacity often stands idle. ...
The promise surrounding the new network held a definite appeal for those who joined. "Internet2 was built largely on a field of dreams -- if you build it, they will come," said Ira Fuchs, the vice president for computing and information technology at Princeton University, an Internet2 member. "The hope was that you build the infrastructure, make it available, and there will be applications." ...
HEADLINE: Between Roots and Reputation; City College Struggles
to Remake Itself and Its Image
BYLINE: By KAREN W. ARENSON
By almost any measure, City College, long the flagship campus of the City University of New York, is in crisis. Morale is low. Enrollment is sliding. The education program may be closed. And despite a widely respected faculty and nationally ranked programs, a reputation is in tatters: the Harlem campus that was once lauded as the Harvard of the poor is now derided as a vast remedial factory.
But officials at the City University of New York say they are determined to remake the institution in a way that will not only bolster its reputation, but serve as a model for urban universities everywhere. ...
"I don't think the college should exist only to service the needs of students who already know that they want to be engineers or chemists," said Louis P. Masur, a history professor who joined City College in 1992 after teaching at Princeton, the University of California and Harvard. "We should provide opportunities for the full range of students who want to major in the liberal arts." ...
HEADLINE: Holday Shoppers Won't Spend It All Online
BYLINE: Mo Krochmal, TechWeb
The people building the Internet business are planning to spend online and offline during the holiday shopping season.
In an informal survey of Internet World attendees, people who work in the industry said they are ready to spend online this year, as they did last year.
This year, Lisa Schmidt, an Internet business manager at Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle, will be able to buy business-related goods online on the company intranet. But Schmidt said she can just as easily buy Oracle hats and shirts at company stores. For gifts, she said she is mainly heading to the mall.
"I like to touch and look around," Schmidt said. "Online, CDs and books are easy. I like to do my shopping at the malls." ...
Howard Strauss, manager of academic applications at Princeton University, said he has been disappointed at the amount of inventory he has seen online.
"I'm not going to buy that much," Strauss said. "I might do my shopping and compare prices, but I'm not going to buy. If they want me, they are going to have to have lots of stuff."
Debra Rundle, a project leader in Web applications at Princeton University, said she has purchased a Palm Pilot online as well as a gift for a friend's twins. This year, she said she plans to spend $100 on books and clothes online. ...
HEADLINE: Sarasota adopts decathlon Length of unique pact is
'forever'
BYLINE: Dick Patrick
After three years of searching, the decathlon has found a new, non-corporate and possibly precedent-setting sponsor.
Florida's Sarasota County will replace Visa, paying about $500,000 a year, through a fund in a charitable foundation that will rely on contributions from people, companies and other foundations.
In turn, decathletes, including 1996 Olympic champion Dan O'Brien, will train in the Sarasota area periodically, meet with student groups and become affiliated with the Special Olympics in a yet-to-be-determined way.
"It's really unique," says Fred Samara, an ex-decathlete, the Princeton University track coach and the national coordinator for the decathlon. "A community is taking an event under its wing.
"The unbelievable thing about it is this could be something other communities take hold of with other events."
Samara and other decathlon officials provided a sponsorship model once before with Visa. The relationship began in 1990 but for all practical purposes ended in '96 though the contract extended to '98. ...
HEADLINE: Rowing Renaissance man hopes to pull it off Smoke jumper, landscaper, model aims for Olympic berth
BYLINE: Gary Mihoces
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.
PRINCETON, N.J. -- He has all the tools. He pulls his weight. He won't rock the boat. He doesn't miss a stitch. And he can take the heat.
They're definitely cliches, but they define Kurt Borcherding, Olympic rowing hopeful and Renaissance man of the hands-on variety -- on water, on land or in the air.
Before joining USRowing's national team, he worked as a U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, parachuting into rugged terrain to fight wildfires.
He's handy with his heavy-duty sewing machine, making oar bags, fireproof garb, wallets and more. ...
When a deer was fatally injured on the Princeton University campus. Borcherding, an avid hunter, cleaned and cooked it. The rowers enjoyed a "deer and beer" party. ...
Borcherding is training at USRowing's center in Princeton, where there are workouts through the morning mist on Lake Carnegie. ...
HEADLINE: Ridgely Melvin Jr., 82, Special Appeals judge
BYLINE: Frederick N. Rasmussen
SOURCE: SUN STAFF
Retired Court of Special Appeals Judge Ridgely P. Melvin Jr., who was on the judicial panel that recommended the disbarment of former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, died Saturday of heart failure at his Annapolis home. He was 82.
In November 1974, Gov. Marvin Mandel elevated Judge Melvin from Anne Arundel County Circuit Court to the Court of Special Appeals, the state court that is second to the Court of Appeals in legal authority in Maryland. ...
Ridgely Melvin Jr. was a 1936 graduate of Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., and earned his bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1940. He earned his law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1947 and began his career with the Annapolis law firm of McWilliams, Evans and Melvin in 1948. ...
HEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths CAMERON, WILLIAM ALLAN
William Allan Cameron, of East Hampton, N.Y., and New York City, on October 5, 1999 at his home in East Hampton. He was 71 years old. Mr. Cameron died of lung cancer. Mr. Cameron was a graduate of Princeton University and the Harvard Law School. He spent his entire legal career at the firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn in New York City. ...
HEADLINE: Isaac B. (Ike) Grainger, 104, An Expert on Golf's
Rules
BYLINE: New York Times Regional Newspapers
DATELINE: WILMINGTON, N.C., Oct. 13
Isaac B. (Ike) Grainger, former president of the United States Golf Association who was one of the country's leading authorities on the rules of golf, died on Tuesday at his home in Wilmington. He was 104.
His nephew, Walker Taylor, recalled that a former U.S.G.A. president once told him that Mr. Grainger "was the only person he knew who went to sleep every night reading the rules of golf. And he did." ...
As president of the U.S.G.A., Mr. Grainger presented Arnold Palmer with his first amateur champion cup in 1954. He also served as president of the Metropolitan Golf Association and the United States Seniors' Golf Association.
Born in Wilmington in 1895, Mr. Grainger attended Woodberry Forest School in Virginia and Princeton University in New Jersey. ...
HEADLINE: OBITUARIES
ISAAC B. GRAINGER NEW YORK - Isaac B. Grainger, 104, a former president and director of Chemical Bank, died Monday, 11, 1999, at his home in Wilmington. He was a former resident of New York City.
The funeral will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999, in St. James Church by the Rev. Robert D. Cook. Interment will follow in Oakdale Cemetery.
A career banker, Mr. Grainger was with Chemical for 17 years and served as president from 1956 to 1960, when he reached mandatory retirement age, following which he served as a life-time advisor to the Bank. He was instrumental in developing the Bank's retail banking network, which today includes more than 600 branches in the New York tri-state area. ...
Born Jan. 15, 1895, in Wilmington, the son of John Victor and Katie Reston Grainger, he was graduated from Woodberry Forest School in Woodberry Forest, Va. He was a member of the class of 1917, at Princeton University. ...
Mr. Grainger was very active in golf circles, serving as president of the United States Golf Association, the Metropolitan Golf Association, and the United States Seniors' Golf Association. He was chairman of the USGA committee that in 1951 negotiated the first uniform code of rules with the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland, and was captain of the United States team competing for the Eisenhower Cup in World Team Matches in 1964. He had a special interest in rules, and was a former chairman of the USGA Rules Committee and vice-chairman of the Augusta National Rules Committee. In 1984, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Metropolitan Golf Association and in 1988, he was the recipient of the Bob Jones Award for Sportsmanship given by the United States Golf Association. He was inducted into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 1993. ...
HEADLINE: OBITUARIES
DR. WILLIAM F. POWELL
ASHEVILLE - Dr. William F. Powell, retired EENT physician and former tennis champ, died Thursday, Oct. 7, 1999, at Deerfield Episcopal Retirement Community. ...
Dr. Powell was graduated from Princeton University and Duke University Medical School. An eye, ear, nose and throat specialist, Dr. Powell practiced medicine in Asheville from 1946-1985. ...