Princeton in the News
October 21 to 27, 1999
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HIGHLIGHTS
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Newsweek
Copyright 1999 Newsweek
November 1, 1999
HEADLINE: The Worthless Ivy League?
BYLINE: By Robert J. Samuelson
HIGHLIGHT: It's no guarantee of success. Podunk's competent grads will beat Princeton's incompetents.
We all know that going to college is essential for economic success. The more prestigious the college, the greater the success. It's better to attend Yale or Stanford than, say, Arizona State. People with the same raw abilities do better and earn more by graduating from an elite school. The bonus flows (it's said) from better connections, brighter peers, tougher courses or superior professors. Among many parents, the terror that their children won't go to the right college has supported an explosion of guidebooks, counselors and tutoring companies to help students in the admissions race.
The trouble is that what everyone knows isn't true. Going to Harvard or Duke won't automatically produce a better job and higher pay. Graduates of these schools generally do well. …
Evidence of this comes in a new study by Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton, and Stacy Berg Dale, a researcher at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Until now, scholarly studies had found that elite colleges lifted their graduates' incomes beyond their natural abilities. The bonus was about 3 percent to 7 percent for every 100 points of difference in SAT scores between schools. Suppose you go to Princeton and I go to Podunk; Princeton SAT scores average 100 points higher than Podunk's. After correcting for other influences (parents' income, race, gender, SAT scores, high-school rank), studies found that you would still earn a bit more. If I make $50,000, then you might make $53,500 (that's 7 percent).
But Dale and Krueger suspected that even this premium--not huge--might be a statistical quirk. The problem, they write, is that students who attend more elite colleges may have greater earnings capacity regardless of where they attend school. Characteristics important for admission may also be rewarded in the labor market. What might these be? Discipline. Imagination. Ambition. Perseverance. Maturity. Some exceptional ability. Admissions officers may detect these characteristics from interviews or course difficulty (different from grade average). But earlier studies didn't capture these factors. …
Dale and Krueger then compared graduates who had been accepted and rejected by the same (or similar) colleges. The theory was that admissions officers were ranking personal qualities, from maturity to ambition. Students who fared similarly would possess similar strengths; then, Dale and Krueger compared the earnings of these students--regardless of where they went. There was no difference. Suppose that Princeton and Podunk accept you and me; but you go to Princeton and I go to Podunk. On average, we will still make the same. …
NOTE: This column first appeared in The Washington Post.
HEADLINE: Order of Culture award winners announced
The government on Tuesday announced this year's winners of the nation's Order of Culture.
The awardees of the noted government prize are novelist Hiroyuki Agawa, 78; Japanese-style painter Fuku Akino, 91; Masami Ito, 80, an expert on U.S. and British laws; Takeshi Umehara, 74, a Japanese culture researcher; and Saburo Tamura, 82, a biochemical science expert.
Fifteen other scholars and artists were named the awardees of "persons of cultural merit." They include novelist Shumon Miura and Marius B. Jansen, professor emeritus at Princeton University who has studied Japanese history.
Jansen, 77, is the first foreign national to receive the award, officials said.
Jansen said that he thinks he was chosen to receive the award as one of those in the United States who began studying Japan some 50 years ago.
NOTE: This award received extensive coverage in Japan; more citations appear below.
HEADLINE: Secret police search American's apartment
DATELINE: MOSCOW
Russian security agents searched the apartment of a U.S. researcher from Princeton University, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday.
The FSB, a successor agency to the KGB, searched Josh Handler's apartment in Moscow and carried away notebooks and a computer, the report said.
Handler was doing research on environmental hazards posed by nuclear facilities in Russia for a PhD thesis.
He had been invited to Russia to do the research by the U.S. and Canada Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The institute's director, Alexei Yablokov, protested the search, and denied that Handler had done anything wrong, Interfax reported.
The report did not say if Handler was present when the search occurred, or if he had been questioned or detained.
Yablokov said the search fits a pattern of harassment against environmental researchers in recent years. …
Handler had been gathering material about the Russian navy's policies in handling nuclear material. His dissertation was on how non-governmental groups like Greenpeace can force governments to solve environmental problems.
Such groups have revealed that the navy has put spent nuclear fuel rods in cracked and leaky drums in open fields. …
HEADLINE: Student Advantage's FANSonly Network Increases Reach With Record September Traffic; Leading College Sports Destination Sees Traffic Increase to Nearly One Million Unique Visitors During the Month of September
DATELINE: BOSTON, Oct. 28
The FANSonly(TM) Network (www.fansonly.com), owned and operated by Student Advantage, Inc. (Nasdaq: STAD), saw traffic increase to 911,000 unique visitors, according to recently released Media Metrix figures. This rapid growth further solidifies FANSonly's position as the largest college sports network on the Internet.
"With a reach comparable to top brands such as Major League Baseball and Fox Sports, FANSonly has established itself as the top collegiate sports destination on the web," said Jeff Cravens, Vice President and General Manager of the FANSonly Network. Cravens went on to say, "As we continue to rapidly roll out new Official Athletic Sites for schools such as the University of Miami (hurricanesports.com) University of Massachusetts (umassathletics.com), Princeton University (goPrincetontigers.com), University of Oklahoma (soonersports.com), and the University of Illinois (fightingillini.com), we develop unique and proprietary content and services that cannot be found elsewhere on the Net, giving us confidence that our traffic will continue to escalate at a rapid pace. These assets also allow us to create innovative new relationships like the ones recently forged with Microsoft and ESPN.com." …
HEADLINE: Warming Up
BYLINE: Gregg Easterbrook
HIGHLIGHT: The real evidence for the greenhouse effect.
It got dry, and that must be the influence of global warming. Wait--then there were downpours, which proved the greenhouse effect. A monster hurricane crossed North Carolina; global warming must be the cause. No, wait--out comes a book about the most deadly hurricane in U.S. history, which hit in 1900, long before there was greenhouse gas buildup. Snowfall has decreased some in recent years, and that must prove global warming. …
As cable TV channels and extended local newscasts increasingly fill airtime by reporting weather details-- and even the national networks send their reporters to hurricane areas to scrunch up inside designer slickers and shout, "I think I just felt a raindrop!"--the notion has taken hold that every barometric fluctuation must demonstrate climate change. This anecdotal case for global warming is mostly nonsense, driven by nescience of a basic point, from statistics and probability, that the weather is always weird somewhere. …
Resources for the Future (RFF), the centrist Washington think tank that designed and championed the acid rain emissions trading program, has now thrown its weight behind a similar approach to global warming reform. …
It might also trigger new energy technology that would create the next great economic boom category. … Robert Socolow, a professor of engineering at Princeton University, notes that it is even becoming technologically realistic to "decarbonize" fossil fuels, using them with little or no greenhouse emissions. …
HEADLINE: 30 Leaders
BYLINE: Lynn Norment
SOME say that today's generation of young people is narcissistic and consumed with petty pursuits. But that is not the case with the impressive group of young leaders that EBONY introduces on these pages. These 30 leaders of the future are assertive, resourceful and charismatic, and they are using their talents and leadership abilities to uplift and inspire those around them. …
Picture 15, JENNIFER L. BASZILE, 30, Ph.D., assistant professor, Yale University, Department of History and Program in African-American Studies, New Haven, Conn.; former instructor, University of Connecticut; recipient, Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Princeton University President's Fellowship and Harold W. Dobbs Honorific Fellowship;
HEADLINE: 'The Great Gatsby' in a Different Key
BYLINE: SCOTT HELLER
F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the summer of 1924 on the French Riviera, furiously composing the novel that would be published as The Great Gatsby. On October 27, he sent a final copy of the typescript by transatlantic mail to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, in New York.
"The novel is a wonder," Perkins replied the next month. But certain aspects didn't work as well as he thought they could. The title character was "somewhat vague," he wrote. "The reader's eyes can never quite focus upon him." He suggested that Fitzgerald sketch in more detail about Gatsby, dispensing nuggets about his mysterious past and the sources of his wealth.
Fitzgerald took many of his editor's suggestions to heart. Working from galleys that had already been typeset, he drastically revised the novel at the last minute. He cut and pasted whole sequences, disclosed more information about Gatsby earlier on, and subtly reshaped the supporting cast of characters.
Scholars have known of the late revisions, which weren't all that unusual for Fitzgerald, who went through 17 drafts of the 1934 novel Tender Is the Night. But next year, for the first time, readers in general will be able to compare the versions when Cambridge University Press publishes what it calls the "ur-text" of Gatsby, under the title Trimalchio, one of many that the author considered and discarded in the months preceding publication. …
Fitzgerald's revised text was the version published as The Great Gatsby. The original typescript was lost. But because it had been rushed into galleys to meet a publication deadline, the unedited first version of what would be revised to become Gatsby was saved.
That clean copy is held at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. Mr. West worked primarily from the copy that Fitzgerald had marked up, now held at Princeton University. All signs indicate that the typeset text is the same in the two versions. But Mr. West says he was given only a short time to look at the South Carolina copy. This month, as the publication of Trimalchio nears, he will spend a week in the university's archives, double-checking that the text of the galleys is exactly the same. …
HEADLINE: Looking back at 1,000 years of discovery
BYLINE: Compiled by Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
DATELINE: BOSTON
*'Language of modern science'
John Bahcall is professor of physics at The Institute for Advanced Study and a lecturer with rank of professor at Princeton University.
1. The discovery of calculus provided the language of modern
science.
2. The Copernican revolution removed man and the earth from the
center of the universe.
3. Newton's theory of gravitation revealed the macroscopic world
as understandable and describable quantitatively.
4. Discovery of the laws of electricity and magnetism transformed
human life by making possible nearly all the gadgets for
communication and convenience that dominate modern society,
including such special cases as the pacemaker, the microwave
heater, the computer, and the television set.
5. The discovery of quantum mechanics provided the description of
the submacroscopic world and showed human understanding at its
greatest.
6. The discovery of the expansion of the universe showed how vast
is the cosmos and how insignificant man is in the scheme of
things.
7. The understanding of DNA holds the key to understanding
ourselves and other living creatures.
8. The development of nuclear bombs threatens the existence of
civilization.
9. Publication of the "Origin of the Species" established the
framework for understanding the evolution of the species and the
development of complex forms of life.
10. The understanding of the periodic table opened the window to
the world of atoms and the countless scientific and technological
advances based upon a correct appreciation of chemical processes
and bonds.
HEADLINE: Levin Fills D.C. Office Openings
BYLINE: By Lauren W. Whittington
Michigan Rep. Sander Levin (D) recently bulked up his staff by promoting one aide, assigning new duties to another and hiring three staffers in his D. C. office.
Ted Posner has been hired as trade and tax counsel. Formerly, he had been an associate at the law firm Howard, Smith & Levin, in New York, since January 1998.
Before that, he was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley & Austin for almost two years and was a law clerk to 2nd District U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Wilfred Feinberg in New York for a year prior to that.
Posner is a 1990 graduate of Princeton University, where he received a bachelor's from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. After that, he studied for one year at the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva, Switzerland, where he received a Certificat d'Etudes Internationales in 1991. The 31-year-old native of New York also has a 1994 law degree from Yale University. …
HEADLINE: American among recipients of cultural awards
BYLINE: Yomiuri
Five recipients of the Order of Culture and 15 Persons of Cultural Merit, including historian Marius Berthus Jansen, a U.S. citizen, were announced by the government Tuesday.
The Order of Culture recipients are novelist Hiroyuki Agawa, 78, artist Fuku Akino, 91, jurist Masami Ito, 80, cultural researcher Takeshi Umehara, 74, and scientist Saburo Tamura, 82. …
Jansen, 77, who was born in the Netherlands, is a professor emeritus of Princeton University in New Jersey, and is well known as the leading scholar of Japanese history--especially the period around the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
According to the government, the only other non-Japanese citizen to receive the award was theoretical physician Yoichiro Nanbu, who was chosen as a Person of Cultural Merit in 1978 after he obtained U.S. citizenship.
HEADLINE: Without Buchanan, Forbes Aims To Be GOP's Mr. Right; Politics: Candidate Argues He's Conservative Alternative To Front-Runner Bush. A Strategic Crossroad Looms.
BYLINE: RONALD BROWNSTEIN and Lamar Alexander, TIMES POLITICAL
WRITER
DATELINE: COLUMBIA, S.C.
When Patrick J. Buchanan quit the Republican presidential race Monday, Steve Forbes moved one step closer to uniting the Republican right against George W. Bush--the cornerstone of his uphill bid to seize the GOP nomination.
For months, Forbes has tried to rally the right by arguing he is the one conservative with a chance to stop Bush, the acknowledged front-runner. Now, with the Republican field dwindling, Forbes suddenly is looking at a window of opportunity that could decide whether he will emerge as a serious factor in the contest--or remain a well-funded curiosity. …
"Most Republican primary voters, whether they be strong conservatives or not . . . want someone who has demonstrated success as a political leader--and that's a fundamental liability for Steve Forbes," said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster unaffiliated in the race.
Those doubts may be most daunting for Forbes in Southern states such as South Carolina, where this New Jersey Episcopalian who starred on the chess team at Princeton University faces a potentially formidable cultural gap with rank-and-file voters. If Forbes is still viable when the GOP race arrives here in February, his fate may turn on whether Southern Republicans will vote for a candidate with Barry Goldwater's message but Nelson Rockefeller's pedigree. …
HEADLINE: BULLETIN BOARD
BYLINE: By Anemona Hartocollis, Tina Kelley, Karen W. Arenson and
Lynette Holloway
Genomics at Princeton
CARL C. ICAHN, left, the corporate takeover specialist who is used to placing multimillion-dollar bets on companies like Trans World Airlines and RJR Nabisco, is putting up $20 million to pay for a new laboratory building at Princeton University to study genes and their functions. The "genomics" building will be named for Mr. Icahn, who graduated from Princeton in 1957 as a philosophy major. He said he was drawn to genomics because it offers "new insight into the nature of life itself." In June, PETER B. LEWIS, an insurance executive, gave Princeton $35 million for an Institute for Integrative Genomics, which will be housed in the new laboratory.
HEADLINE: First Lady Tries to Put Mayor on Defensive Over the
Minimum Wage
BYLINE: By ELISABETH BUMILLER
On Sept. 28 in Washington, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he would be against raising the minimum wage "until I saw that it had no impact on jobs." But by last Sunday, he said he expected to "eventually support" raising the minimum wage, although he wanted to see some studies first.
To Hillary Rodham Clinton's busy campaign spinners, the Mayor's comments were a classic "flip-flop." To the Mayor, it was the natural evolution of his position. Calling it a flip-flop, he said with irritation on Monday, "was one of the biggest canards I ever heard."
Whatever the point of view, Mrs. Clinton, who favors the wage increase, seems to have put the Republican Mayor on the defensive as he has tried to find a balance between following his party's orthodoxy and appealing to voters statewide. "The Mayor is now trying to climb out of the box, and we intend to make it difficult for him," said Howard Wolfson, the spokesman for Mrs. Clinton's unannounced Senate campaign. …
A recent study by Alan B. Krueger of Princeton University and David Card at the University of California at Berkeley found that increasing the Federal minimum wage has not hurt job growth, and Mr. Krueger said in a telephone interview yesterday that he did not expect raising the wage to $6.15 to hurt jobs, particularly in New York. …
HEADLINE: Jansen Wins Culture Award
DATELINE: TOKYO
Marius B. Jansen, professor emeritus at Princeton University, will receive this year's award for cultural merit, becoming only the second foreign national to be so honored, the government announced on Oct. 26. The award will be given in November.
Jansen, 77, is regarded as an expert on the history of modern Japan, having written widely on the subject. His works include ''Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration,'' which was published in 1961.
He is the first foreign recipient since physicist Yoichiro Nanbu, who held U.S. citizenship, won the award in 1978. …
The Order of Culture awards will be presented by Emperor Akihito at the Imperial Palace on Nov. 3, which is Culture Day.
HEADLINE: PeopleSoft Delivers Grants Management Solution for Higher Education; Web-Enabled Solution Boosts Productivity At Every Stage of the Grants Life Cycle
DATELINE: PLEASANTON, Calif.
Oct. 26, 1999--PeopleSoft, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise applications for colleges and universities, today announced the release of a Web-enabled technology solution that higher education institutions can use to more effectively manage sponsored research projects.
From proposal to award administration, PeopleSoft Grants boosts productivity at every stage of the process in support of both grantor and grantee requirements.
PeopleSoft Grants, part of a complete suite of financial management solutions for education and government, is integrated with PeopleSoft Financials for Education and Government and PeopleSoft Human Resources Management. PeopleSoft Grants provides comprehensive support for both proposal and award administration components and delivers a "cradle to grave" solution for managing the grants process.
The secure Web-enabled system's built-in flexibility makes it easy to follow sponsors' budget rules and compliance requirements, while working to effectively link proposal and award data within other systems.
"We sought an application that would facilitate the process of effectively developing grant proposals," says Michelle Christy, associate director, office of research and project administration, Princeton University. "PeopleSoft Grants will enable us to develop proposals for many different agencies using the same process, as well as accumulate proposal data from as close to the source as possible."
PeopleSoft Grants was developed with input from leading colleges and universities across the United States, including Cornell University, Princeton University, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt University, University of California - San Francisco, University of Colorado, and Ohio State University. …
HEADLINE: Storyteller's scary sagas to add spine-tingling
Halloween twist
BYLINE: JEAN BOLDUC The Chapel Hill Herald
CARRBORO - As fifth-grade teachers all over Carrboro get their flashlights ready for a scary classroom reading of "The Raven," the merchants at Weaver Street Market are preparing for a captivating thriller as they present their annual ghost stories on the lawn. Ghosts and goblins can collect on the lawn outside the market Friday afternoon and await nightfall and the spooky presence of those who have gone to "the world beyond."
So, who's that tap tap tapping at your door? It's yet another spine-tingling session of scary sagas offered this year by the town of Carrboro and the Weaver Street Market. Only this, and nothing more. …
This year, the event features an internationally known artist and award-winning master storyteller, Milbre Burch. Best known for her telling of folk fairy tales, Burch won the 1999 Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Network. Burch is considered the pre-eminent spoken word interpreter of the stories of Jane Yolen.
For the last three years, Burch has traveled around the country interviewing storytellers and recording their performances on video for the Cotsen Children's Library Storytelling Project, which is associated with Princeton University. …
HEADLINE: Teach for America turns 10 -and thrives
BYLINE: Gail Russell Chaddock, Staff writer of The Christian
Science Monitor
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
HIGHLIGHT: After a rocky period, the organization finds success
placing top
Teach for America started out as one of those brash, outside-the-box ideas that foundations and corporate sponsors love. Its premise was simple: that America's brightest graduates should teach its poorest children.
Soon, top college graduates were signing on for two-year stints in some of the toughest classrooms in the nation. But the venture was difficult to sustain. It ran into severe criticism and nearly floundered after its first few years.
Now, 10 years later, TFA is refocused and thriving - and challenging conventional wisdom that you just can't get top people into poor rural and inner-city schools. …
TFA founder Wendy Kopp seems puzzled by the controversy. "What's important is the impact corps members have on children's lives. The challenges facing [poor] students are so extreme, and it's so difficult for school systems to find talented, committed people," she says.
Her 1989 senior thesis at Princeton University in New Jersey, which launched the proposal, morphed into awards, offices, and a payroll in a just a few short months. But Teach for America only made it to the decade mark by heeding its own advice to beginning teachers: When a lesson plan isn't working, change it.
"A few years ago, it was not clear we could go on. Start-up funds had dried up and the organization's $8 million annual budget had to be completely converted to new sources. We had $1.2 million in debt," Ms. Kopp says. …
In response, Teach for America cut the budget and dropped 60 staff in local offices. It developed closer ties with local teachers colleges and local funding sources to support professional development. Kopp shelved speeches on reforming teacher education, launching systematic change, and creating better citizens.
"We had gotten diverted by well-intentioned things that would be good for the world but not our core mission," she says. …
HEADLINE: Can You Buy Beauty and Brains for Your Baby?
GUESTS: Lee Silver, Lori Andrews, Darlene Pinkerton, Shari
Dworkin- Smith, Lisa
BYLINE: Bobbie Battista, Anne McDermott
HIGHLIGHT: Lee Silver of Princeton University, attorney Lori Andrews, egg search coordinator Darlene Pinkerton, and two-time egg donor Shari Dworkin-Smith discuss the practice of selecting egg donors on the basis of genetic characteristics.
BILL HANDEL, EGG DONATION, INC.: There are some very good-looking people out there that produce some pretty homely kids, and so it's going to be quite a crap shoot.
BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: Eggs for sale -- some fashion models agree to sell their eggs online. Can you buy beauty and brains for your baby?
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to TALKBACK LIVE.
How important is beauty? "Playboy" photographer Ron Harris figures he can get as much as $150,000 for an egg produced by a gorgeous model. Harris is behind an auction Web site that offers eggs that he says will help parents create the next generation of attractive people. …
BATTISTA: All right, joining us now Lori Andrews, an attorney who specializes in reproductive technology law. She is the author of "The Clone Age, " which includes a chapter on selling eggs over the Internet. Also, Dr. Lee Silver, a molecular biologist and professor of genetics and public policy at Princeton University. He is the author of "Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family."
Lee, let me start with you. Do you have a problem with this in any way, shape or form?
LEE SILVER, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Well, I think as long as the women who are offering up their eggs understand all of the risks involved, understand what the consequences are, I think it should be up to the woman or women to make the choices for themselves as to whether they want to do this or not. I'm talking about the women who are going to be giving the eggs to infertile couples.
BATTISTA: Do you have a problem with the way that this is being done, by the fact that this Web site has been set up by someone outside the medical community?
SILVER: No, I don't think so. I think that in 1979, when sperm were first offered by sperm banks for profit, there was a huge uproar, and people were very, very upset about it, but then people got used to it. I mean, we have to understand, this is for infertile couples that those are going to be the people who want to or need to use sperm or eggs from somebody else in order to have a baby. And in a situation where somebody is infertile, I don't see why that person shouldn't be able to choose what sperm or egg they want to use in the formation of their child. …
SECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: Uconn Needs A Hotel; Our Towns; Greater Hartford
Opposition to building projects has become somewhat of a blood sport in the Storrs section of Mansfield, where the University of Connecticut is located. Now that Pfizer, Inc. has packed its bags and taken its $35 million research laboratory elsewhere, the natives are restless over a proposed hotel to be built on UConn land by a private developer.
There's nothing wrong with healthy debate. But enough is enough. If there's one thing the university sorely needs, it's a decent place to put up visiting scholars, parents and guests. The nearest hotel is many miles from campus. It isn't right for conferees to be stuck in second-rate quarters that exist piecemeal on campus. Connecticut has invested in a first-rate university. First-rate universities have hotel-conference centers where knowledge can be shared undistracted by domestic concerns.
UConn plans to lease a plot of land next to the new South Campus dormitory complex for a 120- to 150-room hotel. It will be built by a company that manages hotels and conference centers nationally at prestigious campuses such as Princeton University. A walkway is envisioned to connect the hotel to existing meeting space and a dining hall.
The community should be cheering for this long-awaited addition. Alas, not everyone is happy. As always, there are rumblings of dissent about increased traffic and disruption of neighborhood peace. …
HEADLINE: Anthropologist Takeshi Umehara to receive cultural
award
DATELINE: TOKYO, Oct. 26 Kyodo
Anthropologist Takeshi Umehara and four others will receive this year's Order of Culture from Emperor Akihito at the Imperial Palace on Culture Day on Nov. 3, government officials said Tuesday.
Umehara, 74, head of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, is known for his hypotheses on the origin of Japanese civilization that came about as a result of his study of the Jomon period (10,000 to 300 B.C.).
The four others named recipients of the prize are novelist Hiroyuki Agawa, 78, Japanese-style painter Fuku Akino, 91, Masami Ito, 80, an expert on British and American law and on the Japanese Constitution, and organic chemist Saburo Tamura, 82.
Princeton University professor emeritus Marius Berthus Jansen, an expert on modern Japanese history, became the first non-Japanese to be commended as a person of cultural merit.
Jansen, a 77-year-old native of the Netherlands, is a leader in Japanese studies in the United States. …
HEADLINE: Desktop Feline Represents New Breed Of
Advertising
BYLINE: TIM BLANGGER; The Morning Call
Felix, a very cute desktop cat, made a visit to several of my colleagues last week.
His creators at AdTools, a Boston company that specializes in computer-generated advertising, call him a MessageMate, an attention-getting form of promotion that can be sent as an attachment to an e-mail message or downloaded from a company's site.
Once a user downloads the Felix MessageMate and launches it, the cartoon cat prances around the screen and, occasionally, peeks around any active windows that are open. …
According to Eve Harris, a spokeswoman for AdTools, Felix was created to promote a brand of cat food sold in the United Kingdom and Europe. But, after watching Felix's antics, it's easy to see how and why he made it across the Atlantic Ocean, far from the shops and stores where the cat food he promotes can be bought.
Harris wouldn't say too much about what makes Felix and other MessageMates tick, only describing them as "desktop marketing tools." The company also makes what they call "ScreenMates," which tend to have longer screen lives and work in a way that is similar to a screensaver -- once they're launched, they "live" on the user's screen for as long as the user wishes. MessageMates such as Felix have a more limited time-frame, although users can relaunch them as many times as they wish.
At about the same time that Felix the cat was romping across my colleagues' screens, I stumbled upon a quote from Ed Felten, who works at Princeton University's Secure Internet Programming Lab, where scientists look for flaws in computer code and software.
"Given the choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time," Felten said. …
HEADLINE: Excite deal has special provision for La Jolla-based
Proflowers.com
SOURCE: STAFF WRITER
BYLINE: Bruce V. Bigelow
The $780 million deal that folded Blue Mountain Arts and its 9.2 million-a- month online visitors into Excite£Home included a special provision for La Jolla-based Proflowers.com.
The provision means that Proflowers.com, a La Jolla Web business that sells flowers direct from growers, will continue to operate as the exclusive flower company at the Bluemountain.com Internet site for the next three years.
"It had to happen or else we would've been left out in the cold," said Barbara Bry, a Proflowers spokeswoman. Proflowers has been operating as part of Blue Mountain's popular greeting card site for more than a year, Bry said.
Similar arrangements were made for Lucidity Inc., a San Francisco Web business that sells gift certificates on the Blue Mountain Web site, and Dan's Chocolates, a Boston-based Web business also affiliated with Blue Mountain.
As part of the deal, the three businesses agreed to pay Excite£Home $34 million to preserve their e-commerce presence with Bluemountain.com and to advertise through Excite£Home. More than half of the amount was kicked in by Proflowers, Bry said. …
"Blue Mountain is the largest greeting card site on the Internet," said Bry, who added, "When people send greeting cards and flowers, they're in a giving mood."
Such sentiments could help explain why Jared Schutz, 24, also started Proflowers in late 1997. Jared, who attended La Jolla Country Day School and Princeton University, established ProFlowers.com in La Jolla to be closer to the California-based growers who fulfill orders for his direct-sales Web site. …
HEADLINE: ESSAY QUESTIONS
BYLINE: Knight Ridder Newspapers
Essay questions posed to applicants to some colleges and universities:
Strive for simplicity and clarity.
Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.: Discuss something (anything) you just wished you understood better.
HEADLINE: CollegeHire.com Announces Relationship With Tellme Networks for Recruiting Services; Company's Recruiting Specialty Provides Attractive Reach and Results to Start-Ups
DATELINE: AUSTIN, Texas
Oct. 25, 1999--CollegeHire.com today announced that it has signed an agreement with Tellme Networks, Inc. (www.tellme.com), a Silicon Valley-based start-up company, to manage a college recruiting program to attract leading information technology graduates.
The agreement, which follows a successful 7-month pilot program, illustrates that CollegeHire.com's services are valuable not only to large corporations but also to a growing list of upstart companies developing leading-edge technologies. …
"Facing the post-graduate job market can be a daunting prospect for any college student," Howard said. "But CollegeHire.com was an excellent resource for me, getting my resume in front of key decision-makers at Tellme. Before long, I was packing my bags for Silicon Valley."
Under terms of the new agreement, CollegeHire will use a combination of on-campus visits and proprietary online services to recruit candidates for Tellme from schools such as Carnegie Mellon University, Princeton University, Dartmouth University and Cornell University. …
HEADLINE: WASHINGTON OUTLOOK; NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE;
Unwed Pregnancies, a Midwife of Poverty, Are Battled From Right, Left;
It may not be possible to vastly reduce childhood poverty without reducing the number of children born outside of marriage.
BYLINE: RONALD BROWNSTEIN, Ronald Brownstein's column appears in this space every Monday
Without anyone explicitly organizing it, the United States has embarked on a vast social experiment to test the favorite theories of left and right for reversing the generation-long rise in out-of-wedlock births.
Reducing the number of children born outside of marriage remains one of the country's most pressing social needs. Despite enormous efforts by most single parents (almost all of them mothers), children raised without the support of two parents are more likely to use drugs, drop out of school or become unmarried parents themselves. …
It is difficult to find a direct cause-and-effect link between these broad economic and policy changes and the trends in unwed pregnancy. Former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, who last week released the new edition of "The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators," a book tracking American social trends, notes that the share of children born out of wedlock has increased in four of the five states where the welfare caseload has fallen fastest. And programs directly targeting teen pregnancy have mostly fizzled, notes sociologist Sara McLanahan, who directs the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University. …
HEADLINE: Irrational Exuberance
BYLINE: Jonathan Cohn
HIGHLIGHT: When did political science forget about politics?
During the early '80s, Harvard University's James Q. Wilson was a role model for the political science profession: a leading specialist in organizational behavior and public administration and a bona fide expert on urban affairs, crime policy, and government reform. The winner of his discipline's most prestigious awards, he wrote several books that today remain standards for the profession …
Today, this generation has nearly vanished from the scene. Shklar passed away in 1992. Wilson and Neustadt have retired (in Wilson's case, after leaving Harvard for the University of California at Los Angeles), with Hoffman, Huntington, and Mansfield likely to follow soon. Although a handful of younger faculty aspire to emulate these elder statesmen, the future of the Harvard Department of Government--and, quite possibly, the future of political science in general--lies in the hands of a different breed, which is epitomized by a man named Kenneth Shepsle.
Shepsle, too, is considered among his generation's leading scholars of American government; he is credited with advancing new theories about why Congress operates through a committee system, unlike the legislatures in other developed democracies. …
If you ask Shepsle, Krehbiel, or their fellow rational choicers how they've gotten so far so fast, they will tell you it's simply because they are that good--and because they are the only ones in the field who carry out work that qualifies as science. …
He may be right: The next generation of political scientists looks increasingly like Shepsle and less like Wilson. …
In person, Shepsle presents an affable, unassuming face that hardly seems commensurate with his reputation as the Genghis Khan of the Harvard government department. But, if it's hard to imagine Shepsle as an intellectual marauder, it's easier to comprehend why so many political scientists hyperbolically call rational choice a "cult." Cults are notable for the almost hypnotic reverence that subsumes their members when they talk about their leaders and the histories of their movements. And it would be only a slight stretch to compare this reverence with the way rational choicers talk about their movement's founder, the late William Riker, and the intellectual compound he built at the University of Rochester. "Rochester is the mother ship," Shepsle says. "Its founder ... was William Riker. 'Commander Riker,' as we like to refer to him. And 'Starship Rochester.'" …
An extraordinary teacher, Riker was no less adept when it came to promoting his program and his intellectual progeny. By 1970, the department--unrated by the American Council of Education (ACE) in 1965--had leaped to fourteenth place. Rochester was second only to Yale in job placement, landing nearly 60 percent of its graduates teaching posts at ACE-accredited departments. Still, the first wave of rational choice evangelists didn't initially shake the academic world. They mostly found their way into second-tier institutions, many of which were best known as engineering schools, such as Cal Tech and Carnegie-Mellon. "Harvard or Yale or Princeton wouldn't give us the time of day," recalls Shepsle, whose first job was at Washington University in St. Louis, a pre-med haven. "They weren't interested in us. We weren't interested in them. So we ended up on minor tributaries.... It was big news if one of us landed a job at a major Big Ten university." …
In 1974, Riker became one of the first political scientists elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences followed shortly thereafter. Such recognition was crucial not only because it impressed fellow political scientists but also because it gave the Rochester School broad credibility with other disciplines closer to the hard sciences. Appointments at top universities often required the recommendation and assent of experts from other fields; insofar as deans, provosts, and other administrators came from economics and the hard sciences, many of them recognized rational choice as something close to their own ideals of legitimate scientific research. It wasn't long before rational choice began to crack walls at elite institutions--the University of Michigan, Stanford, Princeton University, and Harvard. …
BYLINE: By Spencer E. Ante, Staff Reporter
DATELINE: October 25, 1999 10:20 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO -- Picture Gordon Gekko doing business with Jerry Garcia.
It's an extreme image, but it cuts to the heart of the challenge that awaits Excite@Home (ATHM:Nasdaq) as it tries to integrate the touchy-feely electronic greeting card company Bluemountain.com. Excite£Home's goal is to transform the folksy card seller into a commerce bonanza, but if it moves too aggressively, it could alienate a lot of users.
High-speed ISP Excite@Home agreed to buy the Web site of Blue Mountain Arts Publishing for $780 million in stock and cash. The acquisition, which does not require a shareholder vote, is expected to close in 30 to 45 days. Bluemountain.com could also gain an extra $270 million in stock if it meets certain performance criteria.
One potential benefit from the merger is eyeballs. …
Excluding the overlapping audience, says Excite£Home President George Bell, the acquisition will give Excite£Home another 6 million unique visitors. That may be enough to help Excite£Home, the sixth most-frequented site in September, nudge past Disney's (DIS:NYSE) Go Network into fifth place.
Another benefit is advertising and e-commerce. When Excite£Home looks at Bluemountain.com, a site that has been aggressively noncommercial, it sees a monumentally untapped opportunity to sell advertising and all sorts of products to its loyal users. After all, Bluemountain.com gives its cards away for free. The site didn't start selling ads until a year ago. And even now, it's hard to find a banner ad there. …
But to capture and convert those users into ad-viewing, consumption-crazy customers, Excite£Home will have to navigate a tricky tightrope. Bluemountain.com has been that rare case of a successful Web site that refused to ram ads down the throats of its users. Rather than cashing out through an IPO or milking its audience for money, the site has aimed, in its own words, to help "people communicate their feelings through poetry and art."
Based in Boulder, Colo., Blue Mountain Arts Publishing was founded by writer and activist Susan Polis Schutz and her husband Stephen Schutz, who has a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. The two got their start in publishing by printing poetry posters in the basement of their tiny apartment in the early 1970s.
After turning that passion into a small card and book publisher, the Schutzes created the Blue Mountain Arts Web site in September 1996 to reach more people. It took off instantly, and the Schutzes were soon turning away investment bankers. …
HEADLINE: Models' eggs auctioned on web
DATELINE: WALTHAM, Mass., Oct. 25
A new Internet site offering the eggs of beautiful models to the highest bidder is coming under fire Monday as ''unethical.'' California fashion photographer Ron Harris launched the site with models putting their eggs up for sale at bids starting at $15,000 and going as high as $150,000. According to the site, www.ronsangels.com, the models receive the full amount bid while bidders have to pay Harris a 20 percent service fee. Harris said those fees will be donated to charities for children. Access to the web site is free, but anyone wanting to get information on the models themselves must pay an additional $24.95 fee. …
This is just the latest site to offer human eggs for sale, but it's the first to offer them through an auction and the first to feature eggs from models. The furor over high-priced eggs first made headlines a year ago, when an advertisement in the Daily Princetonian at Princeton University offered $50,000 for eggs from Ivy League women with specified height, SAT scores, and other attributes. An advertisement carried by the paper in early October still offered up to $50,000 to qualified egg donors. Lee Silver, Princeton University professor of genetics and public policy, cautioned, ''There's no guarantee of anything. It's gambling by pushing the odds in your favor.'' Silver told United Press International the practice simply reflects the rest of the culture, where the best of anything often goes to the highest bidder. ''If we accept it in the rest of our lies, why not here?'' …
HEADLINE: Supply-side Godfather
BYLINE: By Jack Egan
HIGHLIGHT: The influential and controversial Robert Mundell wins
the Nobel in economics
Robert Mundell's theories provoke acrimonious debate among economists, but his name has barely raised a ripple in the public consciousness. That changed last week when the Canadian-born Columbia University professor received this year's Nobel Prize for economics. Mundell won the honor for his pioneering work some 30 years ago on the potential benefits of substituting a single currency within a geographic region for a system of constantly adjusting, or "floating," exchange rates. His work presaged the creation of the European Union and this year's launch of a common currency, making him, in his own words, the "Godfather of the euro." …
Critics claim the policy was instrumental in creating a string of record budget deficits during Reagan's two administrations. His fans say it set the stage for the unprecedented expansion of the American economy. …
Yet, in citing Mundell's work, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences primarily focused on his earlier work on the international economy. "Bob was modeling the world of the 1990s through the work he did in the 1960s," says Peter Kenen, an economist at Princeton University.
HEADLINE: Good Doctor Toils Tirelessly Out Of Love For His
City
BYLINE: Guy Friddell
In a civic gathering Wednesday, Dr. Mason C. Andrews was saluted for helping Tidewater Community College to become ''a national model'' for a comprehensive community college.
''Our journey in realizing this vision is already richer, better, more fulfilled because of Mason Andrews,'' said TCC President Deborah M. DiCroce.
''He's been our collaborator, friend and visionary. He's indeed our Don Quixote,'' she said.
In the ceremony in downtown Norfolk at the Thomas W. Moss Jr. Campus, Andrews and members of his family unveiled a portrait of him by photographer Andrew Carney. It will hang in the new science building named for Andrews.
In 1988, Andrews became co-chairman with Joe Green of a task force advocating a community college in the Norfolk region. …
Andrews' concern for the city's well-being stems from boyhood.
His father, Dr. Charles J. Andrews, won the City Council's approval of the pasteurization of milk. Another time, he sought to dissuade a politician from trying to fire a gifted city manager, Tommy Thompson.
At his father's behest, prior to attending Johns Hopkins Medical School, Mason went to Princeton University, where he met and wooed Sabine Goodman. …
HEADLINE: Study: Hot areas to be hit hardest by global
warming
SOURCE: Newhouse Service
BYLINE: KITTA MacPHERSON
Global warming will be far worse for some parts of the country than others, says a new study by researchers at Princeton University.
Regions that are already hot and humid in the summer will be especially vulnerable to the effects of predicted temperature increases, reported scientists at Princeton's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
"From Newark to New Orleans - that is, any place along the shore that suffers from high humidity in the summer - the heat effects are going to be magnified in the future," said Jerry Mahlman, one of three authors of the study. The scientists are based at the Princeton climate-research lab, funded by the federal government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The scientists noted that while the more humid areas of the United States are expected to experience smaller [adj 2]temperature increases than other parts of the country under a global-warming scenario, these regions will suffer greater "heat index" effects because of increased moisture in the air. The heat index is a meteorological tool that measures the stress placed on humans by elevated temperature and humidity levels. …
HEADLINE: What we read
BYLINE: GEORGE GURLEY, The Kansas City Star
Writer Whitney Terrell, whose novel The Vineyard Keepers will be published next year, recently finished John McPhee's Annals of the Former World, a compilation of his writings on geology.
"Try selling that to someone," he said. "It doesn't sound interesting, but it's fascinating, like reading War and Peace."
Terrell, who studied under McPhee at Princeton University, uses his work in English composition classes he teaches at Rockhurst University. …
HEADLINE: Ideas & Trends: Think Again; How Much Give Can
The Brain Take?
BYLINE: By GEORGE JOHNSON
WHAT makes the brain unique among bodily organs is that its cells are arranged in a very specific manner -- in delicate constellations that somehow reflect the knowledge gained from being alive. The result is a world of individuals, a place where the very idea of a brain transplant is absurd. You are what you think, and what you think is laid out in your own neural structures.
But just how malleable is this cellular filigree? How easily can a person overcome the forces -- genetic and environmental -- that shape a creature from birth? Over the last few weeks, evidence has emerged from several laboratories that throws these questions into a new light. …
Earlier this month, researchers at Princeton University issued a report that threatens (or promises) to upset what has been one of science's seeming certainties: that the adult brain cannot form new neurons. Common wisdom holds that people are born with a fixed allotment of these cells, which then die off one by one. While the brain continues to form new connections, or synapses, between the pre-existing components -- a process long believed to be the basis of memory -- once a neuron is lost it is gone.
Backed by experimental evidence, the principle also seemed to have logic on its side: If the essence of a brain is the precision of its wiring, then generating hordes of new neurons might gum up the works.
Earlier experiments had begun chipping away at the certainty that the ban on adult neurogenesis, as it is called, is absolute, at least in lower vertebrates or in the human brain's more primitive regions. (Birds apparently generate neurons to encode new songs.) But the Princeton findings went further: Dr. Elizabeth Gould and Dr. Charles G. Gross found that thousands of new neurons a day were being formed in the brains of monkeys, migrating to areas including the prefrontal cortex, the seat of intelligence and decision-making. …
HEADLINE: The Nation: There's Something About A Candidate in
Uniform
BYLINE: By FRANK BRUNI
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
ALTHOUGH Al Gore has been on the national political stage for decades, there is much that many voters still do not know about him, and he has recently been drawing attention to one of those blind spots: his military service in Vietnam.
In campaign ads that began broadcasting last week, Mr. Gore highlighted that service. And for an article in the current issue of Talk magazine, Mr. Gore gave hours of interviews on his decision to go to Vietnam.
These portraits seem designed to flesh out a man often seen as wooden and perhaps to distinguish him from other Presidential candidates -- most notably, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, who has long faced questions about whether his family pulled strings so he could spend the Vietnam years as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in Houston. But they raise a question, especially in the context of the Oval Office's current occupant: Are voters impressed much by a politician's military record or lack of one? …
Fred Greenstein, a Presidential historian at Princeton University, said voters' reaction to a candidate's military background depends on the type and details of the service. The political historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. added, "It depends on the war." In the case of Vietnam, the conflict most relevant for the largest number of politicians today, Americans' ambiguity toward the war translates into a willingness to forgive men who avoided it. …
HEADLINE: Bradley Relies On Wall Street To Raise Funds
BYLINE: By JOHN M. BRODER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 23
One of the biggest surprises of this campaign year has been former Senator Bill Bradley's ability to be competitive with the Vice President in the campaign cash sweepstakes. Mr. Bradley has raised nearly $20 million this year and has more cash in the bank than Vice President Al Gore.
But Mr. Bradley's fund-raising prowess should come as no surprise, despite his claim to be running as an insurgent candidate who espouses an overhaul of campaign finance.
He was a legendary fund-raiser in the Senate -- raising $9 million a full year before his last Senate campaign, in 1990, and outspending his opponent, Christine Todd Whitman, now New Jersey's Governor, 15 to 1. He was one of the top Congressional recipients of money from corporate political action committees before forswearing their donations this year. He was called "king of the bundlers" in 1990 by the Center for Responsive Politics for his ability to gather scores of $1,000 contributions from individuals employed by top investment banks, insurance companies, media concerns and law firms. …
So what accounts for Mr. Bradley's popularity on Wall Street?
Partly it is geography: Mr. Bradley attended Princeton University, represented New Jersey in the Senate and still lives in northern New Jersey. Partly it is familiarity with the people and the lingo of the Street -- J. P. Morgan hired him as a $300,000-a-year consultant within weeks of his leaving the Senate in 1997. Partly it is his position as the only Democratic alternative to Mr. Gore. …
HEADLINE: Once-Soaring Index Funds Come Back Down To Earth; For
S&P 500 Investors, '99 Unlikely To Match Gains Of Prior
Years
BYLINE: MATTHEW LUBANKO; Courant Staff Writer
Mediocrity ain't what it used to be -- not in 1999.
This year, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index is up only 6.97 percent. In the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, the S&P 500 fell 6.5 percent. Investors who hopped on the index horse in October 1994 can still point to annual returns approaching 25 percent.
But in 1999, investors who hold mutual funds that track the S&P 500 must now sit in the middle -- and not at the front -- of the class. Recent drops in high-technology stocks, and a yearlong drought for drug stocks, have robbed the S&P 500 of its once reliable engines for growth. Banks and financial service companies, despite Friday's surge, have also held down the index….
"The S&P 500 has experienced some regression to the mean," added Burton G. Malkiel, a professor of finance at Princeton University and author of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Best Investment Advice for the New
Century." Malkiel also sits on Vanguard's board of directors.
This regression, Malkiel said, may have, in part, come about because S&P 500 stocks became extremely popular -- and perhaps a bit overpriced.
"Any investment idea that becomes extremely popular can become overvalued," Malkiel explained. …
HEADLINE: Shifting Scene In Chinese Art; Expatriates Take Over
in West
BYLINE: By Souren Melikian ; International Herald Tribune
DATELINE: NEW YORK
Slowly, irresistibly, the Chinese art scene in the West, from auction houses to museums, is passing into the hands of the multifaceted expatriate Chinese elite.
Last month, during Asia Week, the Chinese presence was felt as seldom before at New York auctions. At Sotheby's, the biggest scores on Sept. 15 were made courtesy of the Chinese whose weight grows fast in the market for imperial porcelain identified as such by underglaze reign marks. The ultimate symbol was a set of 12 ''month'' cups exquisitely decorated during the Kangxi reign (1662-1722) with blossoms and rock patterns on one side and a poem in blue characters on the other. …
The growing presence of Chinese academics on the American scene indirectly encouraged Chinese collecting. Its roots go far back in time. Wen Fong, a Princeton University professor, for years ran the Chinese art department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A scholar in Chinese painting, he was a linchpin between some expatriate collectors and the Western museum world. At the Met, the Brooke Russell Astor senior research curator of Chinese art goes by the name of James Watt. His real name is Qu Zhiren, and he is the scion of a mandarin family that emigrated to Hong Kong. Watt left for America in 1982.
He is one of many bicultural Asians who played a role behind the scenes in the development of Chinese art collecting. …
HEADLINE: The creatures time forgot
BYLINE: Lynn Dicks (Lynn Dicks is in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. She was recently named the BASF/Daily Telegraph Young Science Writer of the Year)
HIGHLIGHT: Some animals and plants haven't changed since the days before dinosaurs. Lynn Dicks goes in search of living fossils
IT IS EVENING. In the depths of the ocean, off the coast of Africa, something is stirring. From a cave, 200 metres below the surface, a group of about ten fish emerge. It's murky, but if you could see them clearly they would be cobalt blue, speckled white and about the length of a person. Slowly, steadily they swim away, each heading off to the deeper ocean for a night of solitary hunting. Such a scene is not unusual. Something similar has been happening every evening for the past 400 million years. For these fish are coelacanths, and they are among the planet's supreme survivors.
Coelacanths were roaming the oceans when their close relatives became the first vertebrates to venture onto land. In the early days, they shared their watery home with trilobites and a few primitive molluscs. The coelacanth group reached its peak around 200 million years ago. …
These ancient fish are among a select group of species that have so spectacularly out-survived their evolutionary peers that Darwin called them living fossils. …
Countdown to oblivion
THE average lifetime of a species is somewhere between one and fifteen million years, depending on who you ask. It is also different for different types of organism . Marine species tend to persist for longer than terrestrial species, for instance, perhaps because the marine environment is less changeable. Mammals are the jet set, with species being created and lost at a high rate.
Michael Novacek from the American Museum of Natural History, thinks he can explain this finding. He points out that mammals have a short generation time and high reproductive rate compared with, say, bivalve molluscs. "Small mammals show very rapid genetic change," he says. So they change into new species more quickly.
So, how long can we expect us humans to last ? Physicist J. Richard Gott of Princeton University has predicted that "Homo sapiens"will survive between 0.2 and 8.1 million years. His calculation was based on the time we have already been around. Since most science works on a 95 per cent level of confidence, he assumed that the current point in time is not in the first 2.5 per cent or the last 2.5 per cent of the total duration of the human species. So if the 200 000 years since we evolved is somewhere between 2.5 per cent and 97.5 per cent of our total time on Earth, we should have at least 5100 years to go. But then you know what they say about statistics.
HEADLINE: Powerbeads Attract The Masses
Semi-precious stones circle wrists of celebrities and schoolgirls in New Age craze
RACHEL BECK NEW YORK - Searching for happiness, wealth and willpower?
Check out the latest New Age craze: powerbead bracelets. These are touted as doing everything from boosting intelligence to relieving PMS.
From giant department stores to street vendors, merchants can't keep enough of these brightly coloured bracelets in stock. Everyone is buying them: the young and old, men and women. Madonna and Richard Gere have been spotted wearing them. And as prices have dropped, they found their way on to the wrists of the masses, from schoolgirls to corporate executives. …
She began her line with wooden beads last fall, then moved into semi-precious stones in January. By August, they were flying off store shelves at many big department stores and pricey boutiques in New York. Their popularity has spread to other cities.
''People were laughing when they first saw them. They didn't get it,'' says the 30-year-old Princeton University graduate, who sells her $20 to $40 (U.S.) bracelets under the Stella Pace brand. …
HEADLINE: Your health
BRAIN
PHILADELPHIA, (Knight-Ridder Tribune) -You can teach an old monkey brain new tricks, scientists have reported.
The "trick" is the ability of adults to grow new cells in the part of the brain used for the most advanced mental functions, like learning and making decisions. Because monkeys' brains are very similar to humans', it's possible that the same is true for people.
For years, scientists had thought that no new cells could grow in the brains of adults. Studies in the last few years have overturned that notion with findings that some areas of the brain could generate new cells.
But those areas govern primitive functions, like the sense of smell and the formation of memories. In a new study in the latest issue of the journal Science, researchers from Princeton University show that adult macaque monkeys continually produce new cells in the cortex.
This region of the brain gives more advanced animals their higher mental abilities.
The new findings add to the idea that the adult brain might be capable of repairing itself. If scientists learn enough about this, they might be able to exploit these natural abilities in treating brain diseases.
The new study also raises questions about how the brain can store memories if it is always growing new cells.
HEADLINE: Stalking Wilde Game
BYLINE: GRETCHEN C. VAN BENTHUYSEN; THEATER WRITER
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST McCarter Theatre 91 University Place, Princeton Opens at 8 p.m. today and continues through Nov. 7 $27 to $39 (609) 258-2787
DIRECTOR Daniel Fish brings a unique vision to classic plays and he plans to do just that with the McCarter theater production of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," opening tonight in Princeton.
That is why, on a recent, brilliant fall afternoon, Fish, actress Laurie Williams, movement director Jess Goldstein, a reporter and a driver piled into a van at McCarter for a drive across the university campus to check out a zebra.
Most likely, previous productions of "Earnest" never included a zebra. Or a penguin.
This one does. Both are "stuffed."
The goal of the "safari" to the prop shop was to make sure Williams, who plays Gwendolyn, would be able to mount the zebra, where she receives a marriage proposal from Jack (Henry Stram), in this 1895 comic masterpiece about social manners.
The zebra was moved outside in the shadow of the university's Palmer football stadium. As Fish described what he wanted Williams to do, Goldstein worked with Williams to make sure she could jump - and stay - on the zebra's back.
Fish talked about how, although he had been asked to stage this play before, he waited until he could work at a theater that had the resources to stage it the way he wanted. McCarter filled the bill. …
HEADLINE: Brown University becomes member of opposing
groups
DATELINE: PROVIDENCE, R.I.
Brown University said it will continue its membership in the Fair Labor Association, despite the fact the school has recently joined a similar group with a conflicting view point.
In March, the school joined the FLA, a nationwide organization of apparel manufacturers, retailers and non-governmental agencies aiming to improve the working conditions in impoverished countries.
This week, the school said it will also become a founding member of the Worker Rights Consortium, a national, student-led organization which targets poor working conditions, but opposes including manufacturers in the process. …
Robert Durkee, a Princeton University spokesman involved with the FLA, said his group is not company-controlled. And he is not adverse to joining the WRC, but said it would not replace the FLA.
"There's a lot still to learn about the WRC," he said. "We are interested in learning more, but not if anyone thinks it's an alternative to the FLA."
HEADLINE: Races at a glance; 1999 Regatta / Head Of The
Charles
BYLINE: Compiled by John Powers
You could fill Fenway Park 10 times over with the number of spectators who are expected to line the Charles River for this weekend's annual spectacle. More than 300,000 people will be watching the regatta and what follows is a brief description of the 20 races with teams and individuals to look for. (Men's starting times are followed by women's times.)
SUNDAY
Youth fours (8:45 a.m., 8:58 a.m.): Princeton goes after its third straight men's title, with Syracuse, Ontario high schools Peterborough and Hanlan, and Connecticut's Gunnery School the prime barriers. The Princeton women, upset by Hanlan last year, chase their eighth title in 10 years. …
Lightweight eights (2:18 p.m., 2:28 p.m.): Look for the Princeton Training Center (i.e. the US national crew) to knock off defender Rowing Canada for the men's title, with Princeton University also in the hunt. ARCO Training Center (i.e. US nationals) should win their third straight women's crown ahead of Bayside RC of Ontario, Princeton, Villanova, and Radcliffe.
HEADLINE: Take Ten; A musical treasure
BYLINE: Behn Cervantes
Rey Paguio, or "Dean'" to the Conservatory of Music to the students in the University of the Philippines, was simply "Sir" to the many hundreds of alumni from the multi-awarded UP Concert Chorus (UPCC). The UPCC and the Philippine Madrigal Singers are most prestigious choral groups the academic institution has produced in the past three decades.
The UPCC has garnered international awards for its fine singing, youthful exuberance and considerable pizzazz when it performs. Rey is the founder, conductor and moving spirit of the Concert Chorus.
The group has been the training ground for many musical personalities who have enriched the cultural scene. …
I remember him along with other Protestant church conductors like Viola Rich Smith, Lois Florendo Bello, Sally Cuadra Salcedo and even National Artist Antonio Molina, who conducted the Central Church Choir for a number of years. Like Mrs. Smith, Lois Florendo was a product of Princeton University. Rey was the new guy on the block. …
HEADLINE: Scientists Find On-Off Switch In Brain Cells; Yale Research May Help Explain Effects Of Aging
BYLINE: WILLIAM HATHAWAY; Courant Staff Writer
In a feat science thought was out of the reach of all but children, Yale University scientists have induced adult brain cells to grow as they do only in our formative years.
The discovery of an "on-off" switch that governs the rapid growth of brain cells in children may one day help scientists understand how people get Alzheimer's disease as they age. It also has fueled an ongoing debate about how we remember things.
Dr. Pasko Rakic, chairman of neurobiology at Yale Medical School and co-author of a study published today in the journal Science, said that our memories -- the foundation of human individuality -- are not replaceable as brain cells now appear to be.
"We should work with the cells we have. That's where our long- term memories are stored," said Rakic, whose work with primate brains in the mid-1980s long has been accepted by his peers as proof that adults do not grow new brain cells. "We should work to preserve the cells we have."
Rakic's comments came exactly one week after the journal Science published a heavily publicized Princeton University study that contradicted Rakic's 1985 finding that new brain cells do not form in the cerebral cortex of monkeys.
The Princeton scientists reported that new brain cells migrate daily from more primitive sections of the brain to areas of the cerebral cortex, which governs high-level functions such as learning and memory. They suggested the new cells may play a role in storing memories.
While the new Yale study does back the concept that the brain cells can be stimulated to grow, Rakic said he remains skeptical that new cells form naturally in the cerebral cortex. And, he said, memories can only be stored in existing connections between brain cells. Once diseases such as Alzheimer's erase those connections, memories are irretrievably lost, he said.
Dr. Charles Gross, co-author of the Princeton study, said he had not read the Yale paper and declined to comment. …
HEADLINE: Princeton University Paper Shows That The Brains Of Adult Primates Can Actually Generate New Nerve Cells; Enzyme Necessary For The Development Of Alzheimer's Disease Found
ANCHORS: IRA FLATOW
IRA FLATOW, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.
As I mentioned earlier, this hour we have brain on the brain. So we're going to talk about a lot of interesting new brain research. A little later, we'll talk about a new study that could overturn the long-held belief that the adult brain cannot generate new cells. …
Welcome back to TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about the latest in brain research. And we're now going to turn to a study that was reported in the journal Science last week. A team of researchers from Princeton University say they've got proof that adult primate brains do generate new brain cells. That is something. That's like the holy Grail. It's thought to be impossible. And for the rest of this hour we'll talk about this research and other studies trying to demonstrate that the brain can make new cells either in response to disease or injury or just in the course of normal activity. We'll also talk about how these findings could translate into treatments in the years ahead. And if you'd like to join our discussion, you're welcome. Our number is 1 (800) 989-8255; 1 (800) 989-TALK.
I'd like to reintroduce one of my guests. Evan Snyder rejoins us. He's an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Also in the departments of neurology, pediatrics and neurosurgery at Children's Hospital in Boston. And joining us now is Charles Gross, a professor of psychology in the Princeton Center for study of mind, brain and behavior at Princeton, in New Jersey. And he's talking with us today from the campus there. …
Professor CHARLES GROSS (Princeton Center for the Study of Mind, Brain and Behavior): Hello.
FLATOW: Your research overturns a lot--you know, this belief that brain cells cannot--you can't make any new brain cells. Tell us what you found.
Prof. GROSS: Well, we found that in adult monkeys, that thousands of brain cells, of neurons, are added each day to the cerebral cortex, specifically to three regions of the cerebral cortex that are well-known to involve in higher mental activity, cognition and decisionmaking. We know that they migrate up there. We know that they put out connections and we do not know anything about their functions.
FLATOW: So you just know they're there. You don't know if they're being useful or not.
Prof. GROSS: Well, since they're putting out axons, that they're making connections, we assume that they are functional and we would speculate that they're playing some role in the normal function of each of these parts of the brains. …
Prof. GROSS: But it remains to be seen how they're different from the older neurons and what their specific roles may be.
FLATOW: How come you didn't care (technical difficulties) the old dogma that brain cells can't regenerate or that new cells can't be formed.
Prof. GROSS: Well, this work was done by a collaboration with my colleague, Professor Elizabeth Gould, and she has been working for some years on neurogenesis in the hippocampus. So this is an older brain structure and for about 10 or 15 years it's been known that new cells are formed there. Indeed, she was one of the pioneers in showing the conditions under which new cells were formed in the hippocampus. And so she came to me one day and she wanted to collaborate by seeing if these new cells are also formed in the hippocampus of monkeys. She had already shown it in, well, primitive monkey and rats, tree shrews and so she wanted to show it again in the sort of monkeys that I normally work with. …
HEADLINE: STM/Business Book Sales Up 52.3% In August 1999
STM/business book sales increased 52.3% in August 1999 compared with August 1998, according to data tracked by the Association of American Publishers. Year-to-date sales increased 17.1%.
University press hardcovers posted a 4.5% sales increase in August 1999 compared to August 1998, while university press paperbacks posted a 3.1% decline in sales in August 1999 compared to August 1998. Year-to-date sales for university press hardcovers increased 8.7% while year-to-date sales for university press paperbacks rose 1.1%.
Returns were up for all three segments in August 1999 compared with August 1998. STM/business book returns increased 6.7% in August 1999 and had a 18.5% increase in year-to-date returns. University press hardcover returns increased 12.9% in August 1999 and had an 11.5% increase in year-to-date returns. University press paperbacks posted a 23.2% increase in returns in August 1999 with a 0.7% increase in year-to-date returns.
The data reflects results from 12 professional publishers, including McGraw-Hill, Harcourt and John Wiley & Sons, and results from 39 university presses, including Johns Hopkins University Press, MIT Press, Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press and Yale University Press.
HEADLINE: Icahn Donates $20M To Princeton
COLUMN: BUSINESS REPORT
BYLINE: Compiled from staff, Associated Press, and Bloomberg News
reports.
DATELINE: PRINCETON
New York financier Carl C. Icahn has donated $20 million to his alma mater, Princeton University, to build a research facility that focuses on the study of genes. The new Carl C. Icahn Laboratory will include classrooms and high-tech laboratories designed to support pioneering research on genomics and related biological studies. Construction will begin next summer and be completed by early 2002.
HEADLINE: Senators again vote to bar late abortions; 63-34
margin still short of veto-proof
BYLINE: Dave Boyer; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Senate last night passed a ban on partial-birth abortion, but again failed to get enough votes to override President Clinton's certain veto.
In another vote, the chamber narrowly endorsed the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that made abortion a constitutional right.
The partial-birth bill's sponsor, Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, said the 63-34 vote to ban the procedure shows that pro-life advocates retain their clout in Congress and sends a message "to the Peter Singers of the world."
Mr. Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University, has drawn fierce criticism for teachings that suggest euthanasia is acceptable for some disabled infants. …
HEADLINE: Chargers' Chrysts Would Make Dad Proud
BYLINE: Tom Oates
Geep and Paul Chryst, second-generation football coaches, know exactly what their father would be doing if he were here today.
''He'd be bugging us,'' Geep Chryst said.
That's because George Chryst would be in football heaven. The former UW-Platteville coach, who died unexpectedly in 1992, would be thrilled that his sons are not only coaching football but that they are on the same NFL staff. Geep is the offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach and Paul is the tight ends coach for the San Diego Chargers.
It would make George very proud to look up in the coaches box when the Chargers host the Green Bay Packers Sunday and see Geep and Paul sitting side by side, plotting offensive strategy.
Geep, an assistant coach for the Chicago Bears from 1991 to '95, already knows that because he's seen it. He remembers his dad coming to Soldier Field to watch the Bears and Packers two weeks before he died and spending time on the field with two old friends, Packers assistant coaches Tom Lovat and Jim Lind, before the game. …
What the Chryst brothers are doing is helping turn the Chargers into one of the bigger surprises in the NFL this season. After winning only nine games the previous two years, the Chargers are 4-1 under first-year coach Mike Riley.
San Diego is a defense-oriented team -- it led the NFL in defense last year despite a 5-11 record -- that lacks playmakers on offense. As a result, Riley has been forced to develop a conservative offensive approach designed to minimize mistakes and capitalize on field position. Helping him plot that course are the Chrysts, together again after a decade of bouncing around the coaching world. …
The Chryst reunion in San Diego would have been hard to predict. The brothers each coached in college and in the World League, but never together. Paul also spent some time coaching in the Canadian Football League.
Geep, who played football at Madison Edgewood High School and Princeton University, reached the NFL in 1991, when he was hired by Bears coach Mike Ditka as director of research/quality control. …
OBITUARIES
HEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths LUBANKO, WALTER A.
Walter A. Lubanko -- Of Brookville, NY, husband of Mary Anne Lubanko, died on October 24, 1999. He was a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard University Law School. He started his career at the law firm of Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett in New York. He later joined Lehman Brothers and F. Eberstadt and Co, where he worked as an investment banker. In 1976 he started his own investment banking firm, W.A. Lubanko and Co., Inc. Among his many achievements, one of his proudest was helping launch Mitchell Energy and Development Co. as a publicly traded company. The loves of his life included Mary Anne, his four sons, skiing,golf, the state of Texas and a good home cooked meal. He was especially proud he skied until age 73 the last year of his life. In addition to his wife Mary Anne, Mr. Lubanko leaves behind four sons, David, Stephen, Mark and Matthew. Funeral arrangements have yet to be made. In lieu of flowers please make a donaton to the Salvation Army.
HEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths
GOLDENSON, ROBERT M., PH.D
Robert M. Goldenson, Ph.d 91 A Memorial Service was held October 23 at Princeton University. A Westchester resident for 40 years, he was Chief Psychologist of United Cerebral Palsy of Westchester, and the author of ten books. He is survived by his wife, Irene, of Jamesburg, NJ, two sons and daughters-in-law, Daniel and Suzanne of Princeton, NJ, and Ronald and Ellen of Cohasset, MA, a brother William, and two grandsons, Andrew and Jeffrey.
HEADLINE: Rourke, Matthew D.
Matthew D. Rourke, 82, of Park Boulevard, died unexpectedly Saturday, October 23, 1999 at his residence. Born in Troy, he was the son of the late Matthew F. Rourke and Jane Murphy Rourke, and the husband of Margery Cahill Rourke of Troy. A lifelong Troy resident, he was a graduate of Catholic Central High School and attended Princeton University. Mr. Rourke worked for the NY State Department of Labor in Albany for 36 years. …
HEADLINE: He Took The Time He Needed; And Never Rushed To An
Ending
BYLINE: JIM BECKERMAN, Staff Writer
The genius of Jean Shepherd, who died Oct. 16, is that he broke the cardinal rule of storytelling, he did not get to the point.
The writer, radio raconteur, and humorist who created the movie"A Christmas Story"liked to dawdle, lollygag, and sidewind his way through tales that were funny precisely because they took their time getting to their destination.
Years ago, at one of his annual shows at Princeton University, he even stretched the act of walking onto the stage into a two-minute routine, complete with a punch line that brought down the house.
The show was at Alexander Hall, a vast Romanesque pile with massive stonework, arched windows, 60-foot vaulted ceilings, looking less like an auditorium than a set for a Dracula movie. Showtime came, but no Jean Shepherd. The minutes ticked by, the audience of close to 1,000 was becoming restless. All the while, a chubby man in nondescript clothes was wandering around the stage, casually looking up, down, and around at the giant brooding archways. Finally, Jean Shepherd finished his inspection and spoke.
"This place would make a great john,"he announced. …
SECTION: OBITUARY
HEADLINE: PESI MASANI; PITT Mathematician With International
Reputation
BYLINE: BILL SCHACKNER, POST-GAZETTE STAFF WRITER
Friends and colleagues will gather in St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland today for the funeral of Pesi Masani, an accomplished mathematician at the University of Pittsburgh whose career in academia spanned more than half a century.
A colleague yesterday remembered Mr. Masani, 80, as a patient and precise problem- solver whose work gained attention internationally within his discipline.
Even after retiring in 1989, he remained a fixture on campus and in Thackery Hall, pursuing a discipline he loved until he died of a heart attack on Oct. 15….
Mr. Masani was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and a math instructor at Princeton University. …
NAME: Leonard E. Boyle
HEADLINE: Leonard E. Boyle Dies at 75; Modernized Vatican
Library
BYLINE: By WILLIAM H. HONAN
The Rev. Leonard E. Boyle, the former keeper of manuscripts and chief librarian of the Vatican Library, who was dismissed from his post in 1997, died on Monday in Rome. He was 75.
Father Boyle died of cancer, said Ambrogio Piazzoni, vice prefect of the Vatican Library.
The library is one of the world's greatest storehouses of ancient books and manuscripts. Whether because of carelessness, shadowy ecclesiastical politics or plain bad luck, Father Boyle, a highly respected Oxford-trained paleographer, or student of manuscripts, became involved in several imbroglios toward the end of his 13-year tenure as keeper that tarnished an otherwise sterling reputation and led to his dismissal.
Vatican officials refuse to discuss the circumstances surrounding Father Boyle's departure. Mr. Piazzoni would only say: "Everyone has to leave some time."
Others outside the Vatican were more forthcoming. "What goes on inside the Vatican is anybody's guess, but Father Boyle's opening of access to materials in the library must have played a role in his departure," said James H. Marrow, an emeritus professor of art history at Princeton University who has worked at the Vatican Library. "He had a great impact on the place." …