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Princeton in the News
February 23, 2000
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HIGHLIGHTS• Regeneration of brain cells sparks debate
• Emory endowment down 12.2% amid coke stock drop
OTHER HEADLINES• The follower: fifteen years after first hounding brooke shields, a stalker finds himself behind bars
• Priceline.com attracts another key exec: citigroup cfo miller;
• Feud over how Port Authority spends money creates an impasse
• New Jersey governor asks New York counterpart for truce in port dispute
• Heidi Miller, former CFO of Citigroup, joins priceline.com
• Young scientists' hunches pay off
• Princeton Class of '95 establishes fund to foster student volunteerism
• Partial dorm smoking ban finalized at Dartmouth
• Ex-teammate helps bradley take his shot; Wright fills a familiar role as game shifts from basketball to fund-raising
• Pet DNA stored for future cloning
• Intel to fund varsity research projects
• Governments in latin america increase spending after years of tight budgets
• The riddle of the victor
• Smile -- ATM knows your face; security trend holds potential for s.f. company
• Human domination strains Earth's limits, 'u' scientist says
• Will politicians matter?; religion will increasingly replace electoral politics as the realm where battles for the national soul are fought
• U. Maryland students teach for america to make a difference
• When a health firm gets sick and dies; venture leaves debts, ill feelings
• Unlimited horizons: astrophysicist-author tells how his parents' faith in him helped him to succeed.
• Women added to finalists for abolitionist's statue
• Avon calling / with a savvy new ceo, 114-year-old cosmetics company gets a makeover
• Cell fusion paves the way for gays to have children
• A conservative future
• Fire walls, toledo, weddings, etc
• Strange brew
• Gene therapy called too risky
• Small act of kindness leads to nobel prize
• Working on the other side of the digital divide
• Cosmic driving force?; scientists' work on 'dark energy' mystery could yield a new view of the universe
• Schlesinger returns to Springfield
• Putting the 'liberal' in liberal arts
• Testimony february 16, 2000 louis j. freeh director federal bureau of investigation senate appropriations commerce, justice, and state, the judiciary, and related agencies internet security
• Company donates $425k to Rutgers U
OBITUAIRES• George Roudebush; practiced law for more than 50 years
• John H. Macfadyen, 76
• Edgar Norman Powers army officer
• Daniel N. Hall, 63, patent attorney with bridgestone/firestone inc
• James W. Boyd, MD of Addison
HIGHLIGHTS
Newsday (New York, NY)
Copyright 2000 Newsday, Inc.
February 22, 2000SECTION: HEALTH & DISCOVERY
HEADLINE: REGENERATION OF BRAIN CELLS SPARKS DEBATE
BYLINE: By Jamie TalanLAST FALL'S discovery of new cells, specifically neurons, in the adult brain has triggered excitement about the possibilities of reversing or preventing brain disease by harnessing these young cells and directing their growth and development. But privately, the science of adult neurogenesis continues to be hotly debated as researchers question how robust the cellular growth truly is, where in the brain it is, and the purpose of this surprising proliferation.
Over the weekend, scientists from Princeton and Yale faced off at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, arguing over the very nature of the brain cell growth and the rigor of the studies.
At the heart of the controversy is the finding in October by Princeton University's Elizabeth Gould and Charlie Gross, who studied the brains of the macaque. Their findings suggest that new neurons are born at a rate of 4,000 a day in the primate's neo-cortex. This region is equivalent to the human cortex, which is the brain's most advanced area.
In the past few years, several research laboratories, including the Yale and Princeton groups, identified a small population of new neurons in the hippocampus, an area outside of the cortex. This region is involved with learning and short-term memory, and the findings suggested that the new brain cells take part in the processing of new information experienced in adulthood.
But when Gould and Gross published their report on finding new cells in the cortex, some scientists agreed with Richard Nowakowski of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, who said at the time: "Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary proof." Indeed, Pasko Rakic of Yale University School of Medicine and others went right to work to see if they could replicate the Princeton findings.
In an interview, Rakic said he did find new cells in the neo-cortex of the primates he studied, though not nearly as many as Gould reported he had found. But Rakic said they were not neurons at all; they were glial cells, the support cells for the neurons. Under a laser microscope, the glial cells sat flat like a pancake on top of the neurons and could easily be mistaken for neurons, he said. It had been known that glial cells grow and divide throughout life. …
Gould said the brain doesn't swell under the weight of the new neurons because virtually all of them die shortly after they are born -between five and nine weeks in both rodents and primates. She has replicated her initial study of the neo-cortex in a new group of macaques.
"These are neurons," she said in an interview. She believes that this large pool of immature cells provides the brain with a heightened ability to form rapid synapses-the signal between cells that allows communication to take place. She is now conducting studies to disable these new cells to see what the impact may be. …
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 2000 The Atlanta Constitution
February 22, 2000, TuesdayNOTE CHART: Princeton endowment value rises 15.9 percent
HEADLINE: Emory endowment down 12.2% amid Coke stock drop
BYLINE: David McNaughton, Staff
The latest ranking of college endowments shows what happens when the dominant stock in a portfolio falls.
Emory University's endowment assets lost $629 million on paper --- or 12.2 percent --- for the 12 months that ended June 30. That pushed Emory down to sixth nationally in total assets, from fifth, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers survey. …
GRAPHIC:Endowment assets
Figures are as of June 30 for most institutions. Gifts since then have brought the endowment at Mercer to $222 million.
Rank..Institution1.... Harvard University
1998: $13.02 billion
1999: $14.26 billion
Pct. change: +9.5%2.... University of Texas System
1998: $7.65 billion
1999: $8.13 billion
Pct. change: +6.3%3.... Yale University
1998: $6.62 billion
1999: $7.2 billion
Pct. change: +8.8%4.... Princeton University
1998: $5.58 billion
1999: $6.47 billion
Pct. change: +15.9%5.... Stanford University (1)
1998: $4.56 billion
1999: $6.01 billion
Pct. change: +31.8%6.... Emory University
1998: $5.1 billion
1999: $4.48 billion
Pct. change: -12.2%
OTHER HEADLINES
People
Copyright 2000 Time Inc.
February 28, 2000HEADLINE: The Follower: Fifteen years after first hounding Brooke Shields, a stalker finds himself behind bars
BYLINE: Bill Hewitt, Lorenzo Benet and Pamela Warrick in Los Angeles and Bob Meadows in New York CityThe rambling 10-page letter to Brooke Shields arrived at her Los Angeles offices in October. What it contained filled the Suddenly Susan star with the sort of dread that has become the inescapable dark side of celebrity. The alleged writer, Mark Bailey, 41, was by turns coarse and incoherent in expressing his obsession with Shields, 34. But, as Shields told police, there was no mistaking the undercurrent of menace. …
On Jan. 10, after months of investigation, detectives arrested Bailey as he walked through downtown Los Angeles. At the time of his arrest he was allegedly carrying a .25-cal. automatic pistol along with a greeting card and a three-page letter for Shields, who two years ago obtained a restraining order in federal court barring Bailey from any contact with her. …
According to court records, Bailey first became fixated on Shields even before she enrolled at Princeton University. In September 1985 he was arrested for breaking into the home Brooke shared with her mother, Teri, in Haworth, N.J., and was put on five years' probation. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
February 24, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: PRICELINE.COM ATTRACTS ANOTHER KEY EXEC: CITIGROUP CFO MILLER;
BYLINE: From Bloomberg News
DATELINE: STAMFORD, Conn.Priceline.com Inc., an Internet site where consumers can bid on plane tickets, groceries and other goods, said Wednesday that it hired Heidi Miller, chief financial officer of Citigroup, the nation's largest financial services company, as its new CFO.
In quitting Citigroup, Miller, 46, is a leaving a company with 174,000 employees and a $170 billion market value for a 2-year-old business with 177 workers and a value of $7.6 billion. …
The native New Yorker graduated in 1974 from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in Latin American history and went on to get a doctorate from Yale University. After that, Miller joined Chemical Bank in 1979, holding various positions until she joined the emerging markets division in 1987. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
February 24, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Feud Over How Port Authority Spends Money Creates an Impasse
BYLINE: By RONALD SMOTHERSWhen the 12-member board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey holds its monthly meeting today, the agenda will be limited to routine capital expenditures instead of the grand bridges, tunnels, airports and development projects the agency has pursued in its 79 years.
Such initiatives exist in abundance, but a long-simmering civil war between New York and New Jersey members has made agreement on them impossible. As a result, the agency has all but halted for the last year actions that could generate billions of dollars from such things as the privatization of the World Trade Center, the leasing of air rights over the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the approval of a long-term lease meant to keep the container terminal at Port Elizabeth competitive with other East Coast ports.
Historians, former agency officials and some board members call the stalemate the worst in the history of the agency, which is the nation's oldest congressionally approved compact between two states. …
Not since the early 1970's, when New Jersey Gov. William T. Cahill refused to approve the agency's minutes and effectively stopped all its activity, have things been so paralyzed, said Jameson W. Doig, a Princeton University historian whose book on the agency is due out this year. But even then, Mr. Cahill was acting as the consummate cosmopolite, trying to pressure New York and the board into paying more attention to regional mass transit issues. He and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, a fellow Republican, eventually met secretly and negotiated a compromise.
"But everything is emerging in the public eye now and governors are digging in their heels," Professor Doig said. "In the last seven years or so I see Governor Pataki as the one who seems to care much less about regional growth issues. Whitman's problem is less a lack of understanding of those issues but a failing to take a strong position for the integrity of the Port Authority." …
The Star-Ledger
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
February 24, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: New Jersey Governor Asks New York Counterpart for Truce in Port Dispute
BYLINE: By Al FrankGov. Christie Whitman yesterday called on New York Gov. George Pataki to end a bistate feud over the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that now threatens to stall spending billions of dollars on airports, marine terminals and other transportation facilities in both states.
With a budget plan calling for almost $7 billion in capital spending during the next five years, Whitman asked Pataki to end the impasse that has prevented the bistate agency they jointly control from moving forward on most new business for the last 14 months.
"We are, once again, at a point in time where I believe it is critical for you and me to signal support for continuing initiatives and projects that are beneficial to citizens of both New Jersey and New York and the users of Port Authority facilities," Whitman wrote. …
One longtime observer said the Whitman-Pataki standoff is unprecedented in the agency's 79-year history. "I think this is some kind of record," said Jameson Doig, a professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University, who frequently writes about the Port Authority.
He recalled two previous incidents in the 1920s and 1950s where there were bistate disputes over whether the governors should have veto power over the agency and the extent of development at Port Newark-Elizabeth. But those were resolved in a few months behind closed doors. …
Business Wire
Copyright 2000 Business Wire, Inc.
February 23, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Heidi Miller, Former CFO Of Citigroup, Joins Priceline.com As Its Senior Executive Vice President, CFO And Member Of The Board Of Directors
DATELINE: NORWALK, Conn., Feb. 23, 2000Fortune's No. 2 most-powerful U.S. businesswoman will be responsible for all financial matters and strategic planning for priceline.com
Miller joins blue-chip senior management team with Chairman and CEO Rick Braddock (former president of Citibank) and President and COO Dan Schulman (former president of AT&T Consumer Services) …
Recognized as one of the top women in American finance, Ms. Miller began her career at Chemical Bank 18 years ago after receiving a B.A. from Princeton and a Ph.D. in history from Yale. She joined Travelers Group in January 1992 and became its CFO in 1995. Immediately following the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group, Ms. Miller was named CFO of the newly created Citigroup, the world's largest financial corporation, where she also served as a corporate officer. Ms. Miller serves on the boards of General Mills, Mead Packaging and The Children's Defense Fund, and is a trustee of Princeton University and NYU's Medical School. …
St. Petersburg Times
Copyright 2000 Times Publishing Company
February 23, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Young scientists' hunches pay off
BYLINE: CHRISTINE GRAEFSEMINOLE - Pinellas County's brightest young scientists recently walked off the stage of Osceola High School's auditorium with their arms full of plaques, trophies, certificates and money. Their 306 winning projects were selected for the annual Pinellas Regional Science and Engineering Fair from among 1,800 science projects completed by students this year.
In all, 355 students from the county's elementary, middle and high schools were entered into the competition's 14 categories, which included botany, biology, zoology, chemistry and team projects. Awards in special categories were donated by about 30 local businesses and special-interest groups. …
Noelle won Best of Fair in the junior division. In the senior division, Best of Fair was awarded to Brian Kindinger, a senior at Lakewood High School, and Michael Tibbetts, a senior at Palm Harbor University High School. Both first-place winners in their categories, Brian, 18, and Michael, 17, will attend the state science fair as well as the international fair in Detroit on May 7 and 13.
Michael's experiment was titled "The Evolutionary Maintenance of the Gynodioecious Breeding System in the Clonal Plant Hydrocotyle Bonariensis."
The project, which was awarded first place in the senior botany category, won Michael a U.S. Army certificate of achievement and "ultimate day pack." The study analyzed the evolutionary stability of the plant and concluded that female plants produce more seeds than plants that self-pollinate.
Michael recently placed fifth in a state speaking competition at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He began his botany project in a summer research program at Florida State University. He is considering pursuing a major in biology at Princeton University. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
February 23, 2000HEADLINE: Princeton class of '95 establishes fund to foster student volunteerism
BYLINE: By Arjun Garg, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Beginning this year, the Princeton University Class of 1995 will grant stipends of as much as $500 each to two undergraduate students to pursue public and community service opportunities during the summer.
The Class of 1995 Summer Service Fund is intended to foster a life-long commitment to volunteerism in undergraduates, according to John Smith '95, the chief organizer of the effort.
"The purpose of this fund is to encourage students to dedicate a block of their lives to service and make that selflessness part of their professional aspirations," Smith said. "I consider this a mission to provide good opportunities to undergraduates who wish to do any sort of service project over the summer." …
The summer service fund is available to all undergraduates without regard to financial need, Smith said. Interested students must complete a short application, due Mar. 15, and participate in an interview. "We wanted to make it relatively easy for students to apply so that it is not too much of a burden," he said. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Dartmouth via U-Wire
February 23, 2000HEADLINE: Partial dorm smoking ban finalized at Dartmouth
BYLINE: By Jeffrey Tanenhaus, The Dartmouth
DATELINE: Hanover, N.H.Dartmouth College is moving ahead with previously reported plans to ban smoking in the new East Wheelock building and the Ripley/Woodward/Smith cluster starting this fall, according to Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman.
These residence halls were chosen because the East Wheelock dorm, recently named McCulloch Hall, will be brand new and renovations in Rip/Wood/Smith are scheduled for this summer, Redman said. …
Harvard University recently expanded its smoking ban in freshman halls to all dormitories, and Amherst College this month banned smoking in three dorms because of student pressure. Princeton University does not prohibit smoking in regular dormitories. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
February 23, 2000, Wednesday, Final EditionNAME: RICHARD L. WRIGHT
HEADLINE: Ex-Teammate Helps Bradley Take His Shot; Wright Fills a Familiar Role as Game Shifts From Basketball to Fund-Raising
BYLINE: Barton Gellman , Washington Post Staff WriterWhen Bill Bradley became eligible for varsity basketball his sophomore year at Princeton, junior Richard L. Wright was the team's go-to man from the outside. In their first game together, Wright fought free of a defender, pivoted, sank the jumper and trotted happily to an off-court summons from coach Willem Van Breda Kolff.
"Pretty good shot," Van Breda Kolff told him dryly. "Next time you have a shot like that? Before you take it, see if Bill's free."
"I became not a shooter any more," Wright recalled ruefully. "I became a screener and a passer."
That kind of displacement does not lead inevitably to lifelong friendship. This one did. Of many confidants from college and since, Bradley relies on no one more than the man who now directs his national fund-raising operation.
When Bradley met his future bride, Ernestine Schlant, he asked Wright to escort her to the first game she saw him play as a New York Knick.
"Having known so many groupies who would have just killed to have this seat," Wright recalled, he had to laugh when Bradley asked her about her impressions at a late dinner afterward. "He said, 'What did you think?' And she said, 'It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.' "
Later, Wright and his wife Margaret shared a vacation property with the Bradleys on the Greek island of Ios. Just after Bradley made his decision to run for president, in the summer of 1998, the couples and a few other friends enjoyed a last vacation away from the spotlight. They sailed along the Turkish coast, putting ashore for ruins and restaurants. Snapshots show Bradley mugging on ancient Roman toilets and gesticulating to an imaginary crowd at an outdoor amphitheater. …
One of them is to manage a complex operation. A former assistant secretary of energy under President Jimmy Carter and chief of staff to former New Jersey governor James Florio, Wright is applying his skills to a political fund-raising operation for the first time on a national scale.
The results are stunning. Bradley has matched Vice President Gore dollar for dollar--a bit more than $29 million each to date--a feat that no one predicted for Bradley's underdog campaign. Bradley is still an underdog, but without Wright--and Wright's partner in fund-raising, Betty Sapoch--the campaign would be over by now. …
To begin with, it has not tapped party activists. The overlap between Bradley's donor base and the list kept by the Democratic National Committee is 6 percent--meaning that 19 in 20 Bradley donors have not given to a Democratic candidate before. Nor does Bradley, out of the Senate since 1996, have the kind of powerful perch--like George W. Bush's governorship or Sen. John McCain's committee chairmanship--that attracts contributions from lobbyists with interests at stake. And in personal style, Wright is by all accounts an unintimidating man who does little of the arm-twisting of most successful fund-raisers. …
AP Online
Copyright 2000 Associated Press|
February 22, 2000; TuesdayHEADLINE: Pet DNA Stored for Future Cloning
BYLINE: MATT CRENSONNot long ago, Richard Denniston found himself suffering the same anguish that millions of other pet owners have faced.
His little Scottish terrier had a brain tumor, and it would be only a matter of time before the dog died. Like most in his shoes, Denniston just wanted to end the pain.
However, he took it one step further.
An expert in mammalian reproductive physiology, Denniston collected a tiny skin sample from the dog and took it to his laboratory at Louisiana State University, where he cultured it and froze it in liquid nitrogen.
From that idea, Denniston started Lazaron BioTechnologies, which will save pet DNA for $500, plus a monthly storage fee of $10, until cloning Fido becomes a reality. …
Dog cloning may be more appropriate, oddly enough, to lovable mutts than high-quality purebreds, says Princeton University cloning authority Lee Silver.
Because mutts are unique and irreproducible creatures, cloning would be the only way to get anything like the original dog, Silver says. …
Business Times (Malaysia)
Copyright 2000 New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad
February 22, 2000HEADLINE: Intel to fund varsity research projects
BYLINE: By Stephen BoeyINTEL Corp has announced a new programme to fund research projects at prominent universities throughout the world to further extend the reach of the Intel IX architecture.
The programme is aimed at creating a community of researchers using the Intel IX architecture while giving students hands-on experience and training in building real-world network applications with it. …
The first schools to receive funding through this programme are all in the US, include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University, the Oregon Graduate Institute and the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, California. …
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
February 22, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: Governments in Latin America increase spending after years of tight budgets
BYLINE: By Kevin G. HallRIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil --Federal judges in Brazil are threatening to strike next Monday if they don't get their first pay raise in five years. In Ecuador, Indian protests over reduced social spending helped trigger a brief military coup in January. Police tear-gassed residents of Cochabamba in highland Bolivia earlier this month after they poured into the streets to protest hikes in their water rates.
To head off a growing backlash against cuts in government spending and other economic reforms made under pressure from foreign investors and the International Monetary Fund, governments in Latin America are increasing social spending after several years of tight budgets. …
And the situation in Brazil, where Cardoso conceded that his government already spends nearly 21 percent of the country's gross domestic product on social programs, also illustrates that the problem often is not how much is spent, but how.
By some estimates, the equivalent of 5 percent of Brazil's gross domestic product is spent on education. Federal universities are free, regardless of financial need.
"But it is only accessible to people who go to expensive private schools for high school," Jose A. Scheinkman, a Brazilian who teaches economics at Princeton University, said recently here, noting that he himself benefited from that system. …
The New Republic
Copyright 2000 The New Republic, Inc.
FEBRUARY 21, 2000HEADLINE: The Riddle of the Victor
BYLINE: James M. McPhersonUlysses S. Grant:
Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865
by Brooks D. Simpson
(Houghton Mifflin, 533 pp., $35)James M. McPherson is professor of history at Princeton University, and author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford University Press).
Many people with a casual interest in American history think they know four things about Ulysses S. Grant: he was a drunk; he failed at everything he tried before the Civil War; he managed to overcome Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia only by blunt, hammering tactics at enormous human cost; and his two presidential terms were riddled with corruption and cronyism. Hailed in his own time as the savior of the republic, Grant's reputation in the next half-century sank more precipitously than that of any other major figure in our history. Countless historians have quoted Henry Adams's quip that "the progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin." As Brooks D. Simpson notes with wry understatement in the first volume of his new biography, "Grant has not fared well as a biographical subject." …
"In treating Grant with empathy," writes Simpson in the preface, "I have guarded against becoming too sympathetic, let alone apologetic, although those readers who hold a negative assessment of Grant may disagree." Simpson's claims that he is neither "Grant's advocate nor antagonist," and that he analyzes Grant's "strengths and weaknesses, his virtues and his vices, " are accurate; but he finds that Grant's strengths and virtues clearly outweigh his weaknesses and vices: "Critics who question his military renown fail to appreciate just how valuable common sense, character, courage, intuition, and the ability to cope with circumstances are to the making of a great commander." …
The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 2000 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
FEBRUARY 21, 2000, MONDAYHEADLINE: Smile -- ATM Knows Your Face; Security trend holds potential for S.F. company
BYLINE: Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff WriterThroughout the history of civilization, the human face has remained the easiest method for people to identify one another.
Now, a San Francisco company believes it is poised to cash in on new technology that allows computers to recognize faces and, eventually, store gigabytes worth of information about that person.
InnoVentry Corp., a joint venture between Wells Fargo Bank and U.S. pawnshop king Cash America International Inc., is marketing an ATM that uses face-recognition technology to identify its customers.
About 180 of the ATMs, called RPM, are already in convenience and grocery stores in Texas and Arizona. Another 300 machines in a version called ATREVA are in gambling casinos in Nevada. …
InnoVentry uses a program called FaceIt, developed by Joseph Atick, CEO of Visionics Corp. of New Jersey. While he was head of Princeton University's Neural Cybernetics Group and later the Computational Neuroscience Laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York, Atick began studying how mathematical algorithms could be used to tell one person's face from another.
The program determines a face print by quickly computing the measurements between 60 possible facial landmarks, such as the center of the eyes, the bridge of the nose or the protrusions of the jaw or cheekbones. The distances between only 14 of those "nodal points" can determine a face print that won't change even if you grow a beard or wear glasses, Atick said. …
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
Copyright 2000 Star Tribune
February 21, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Human domination strains Earth's limits, 'U' scientist says
BYLINE: Jim Dawson; Staff Writer
DATELINE: Washington, D.C.In the battle between humans and nature for domination of the Earth, humans have won, and unless we realize how thorough our victory has been, we may do serious damage to the planet.
That was the underlying message delivered Sunday by a panel of environmental scientists, led by University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman, to other researchers attending the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C.
The scientists were linking human activities such as land clearing, pesticide use and inefficient farming to changes in the environment as the human population grows from 6 billion to nearly 9 billion over the next 50 years. The strains of human activity on the environment are severe, poorly understood and promise to get significantly worse, they said. …
Andrew Dobson, a land-use specialist from Princeton University, said that to support the expected population increase on Earth in 50 years, there will have to be a 98 percent increase in irrigated land, a 20 percent increase in pasture land and a 20 percent increase in cropland. While the 20 percent numbers don't seem too high, he said, they each equal "an area the size of the United States or Australia."
"The question is where is that land going to come from?" he said. The decent land for crops and pastures is already being used, so people will be forced to turn increasingly to marginal land, tearing up rain forests and other critical ecological systems in the process, said Dobson.
"Land use is a zero sum game," Dobson said. "You can't drag in more land. You can't pull in another planet." …
Time
Copyright 2000 Time Inc.
February 21, 2000HEADLINE: Will Politicians Matter?; Religion will increasingly replace electoral politics as the realm where battles for the national soul are fought
BYLINE: Peter BeinartIn the fall of 1995, Louis Farrakhan led the most celebrated African-American march in Washington since the 1963 March on Washington. A stone's throw from the spot where Martin Luther King declared, "We've come to our nation's capital to cash a check" for the "riches of freedom and the security of justice," Farrakhan voiced a new black generation's claim upon its still largely white government. And it was no claim at all.
"Freedom can't come from staying here and petitioning this great government," Farrakhan thundered. "Freedom cannot come from no one but the God who can liberate the soul from the burden of sin."
Last February, Paul Weyrich came to a similar conclusion. In an open letter to his Free Congress Foundation, Weyrich, perhaps the most influential conservative strategist of the past two decades, declared his life's work a failure. "Conservatives," he wrote, "have learned to succeed in politics. That is, we got our people elected. But that did not result in the adoption of our agenda. The reason, I think, is that politics has failed."
Two radically different leaders. Two calls for political secession. And a glimpse, possibly, of the 21st century's antipolitical response to the lessons of the end of the 20th. …
One of the reasons religion is up and government is down is that religion is increasingly doing what politics once did: offering an alternative to the values of the free market. Americans have a love-hate relationship with capitalism. It brings wealth and liberty, which they love, as well as materialism and individualism, which they fear. When government prestige is high, Americans look to it to provide the sense of common purpose that the market does not. But over the past two decades, many of the social programs meant to temper market inequality have been judged to be wasteful and counterproductive. And the money-drenched campaign-finance system often makes politicians seem like just another commodity, bought and sold by corporations. Religion, by contrast, seems to offer a principled critique of the narcissism and rootlessness of contemporary America. Polling by Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow shows that the Americans most bothered by society's materialism and lack of community are also the ones most likely to attend church regularly. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Diamondback via U-Wire
February 21, 2000HEADLINE: U. Maryland students Teach for America to make a difference
BYLINE: By Sarah Dammeyer, The Diamondback
DATELINE: College Park, Md.Last year at this time, Michael Kerr was studying government and politics at the University of Maryland, walking across McKeldin Mall and attending classes.
Since August, the 1998 graduate has been teaching kindergarten in Harlem as a member of Teach for America.
Kerr joined Teach for America because he was interested in the field of education and he "wanted to go somewhere where I felt like I could make a difference."
Despite strong recruitment efforts by technology firms, investment banks and other growing industries, many college students are giving up lucrative opportunities for a chance to serve the nation's youth. …
Teach for America was started in 1989 by Wendy Kopp, a graduate of Princeton University and president of the organization, who proposed the idea in her senior thesis. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
February 21, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: When a Health Firm Gets Sick and Dies; Venture Leaves Debts, Ill Feelings
BYLINE: Peter Slevin , Washington Post Staff WriterP. Steven Macedo, neurologist by training, tycoon by ambition, thought he had all the angles figured. His Chevy Chase management company, launched in 1995, would become a beacon for the medical establishment and a magnet for investors.
Ninety doctors, mostly in Montgomery County, handed him more than $1 million to get started. Banks delivered millions more in loans. Soon, with news releases painting the future in pastels, Macedo bought the respected Yater Medical Group near Dupont Circle and prepared to take his fledgling firm public. He predicted revenues would reach $500 million in 1999.
But when 1999 came and went, all it did was mark the death of Medi-Cen Management Inc.
Yater no longer exists. Medi-Cen is bankrupt, and so is the 38-year-old Macedo, who owes $11 million. Instead of revenues, there are huge debts. Instead of goodwill, former patients and employees feel frustrated and abandoned.
Macedo attributes his failure primarily to fickle markets and says he is sorry if anyone lost out. He still spends $13,674 a month--with help from his in-laws--and leases a BMW 540i. But he does not intend to repay his creditors because, as he puts it, "This is America." …
There were, however, warnings.
A 1995 Wall Street Journal article mentioned Macedo prominently. A Princeton University economist said he did not see how the business model would cut costs. A Salt Lake City newspaper reprinted the article beneath a headline that asked whether medical malls were "Helpful Or Just Another Gimmick." …
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
Copyright 2000 The Indianapolis Star
February 20, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Unlimited horizons: Astrophysicist-author tells how his parents' faith in him helped him to succeed.
BYLINE: DAN CARPENTER; BOOK EDITORA century after his Southern forebears followed the North Star out of bondage, a Bronx schoolboy gazed up from the roof of his apartment house and saw the lights that would loose all bonds from his ambition.
Neil de Grasse Tyson wasn't starry-eyed when he resolved to become an astrophysicist, a profession contemplated by few youngsters in the inner city or anywhere else.
He was smart. He was practical. He was industrious. He was blessed with encouraging parents to offset other, dubious, adults.
"Given the resistance around me -- the societal forces, teachers, those with control over life's path -- I had to continually tap my energy reserves," the ebullient scientist and author said recently. "What nobody but I knew was, those energy reserves ran deep. I'd wanted to study the universe since I was 9 years old."
And so he does. Having been a high school math champ, a Harvard University varsity wrestler, a dance team member at the University of Texas, Tyson in 1996 became, at 38, the youngest director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Holder of a doctorate in astrophysics from Columbia University, he also is a research scientist at Princeton University and writes a monthly column in Natural History magazine. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
February 20, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Women Added to Finalists for Abolitionist's Statue
BYLINE: By The New York Times
DATELINE: NORTHAMPTON, Mass., Feb. 18Seven years into a project to honor the rights advocate Sojourner Truth with a bronze statue, organizers are finding themselves in the middle of a dispute over fairness.
When they announced last month that they had chosen five designer finalists, all male, from a field of 49 entrants about equally balanced between men and women, local artists expressed outrage and gathered 100 signatures in protest.
Last week, the Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue Committee announced a new list of finalists, now including five women. …
Truth was no stranger to gender politics. In 1851, she spoke about her place in the women's rights movement during a meeting in Akron, Ohio.
The speech, later known as "Ain't I a Woman," has become part of the feminist canon.
But even the speech is open to dispute. "Later attempts to cast Sojourner Truth as an outsize force of nature fit well with a 1960's feminist agenda," according to Nell Irvin Painter, a Princeton University history professor, who wrote a biography of the woman. A white reformer, Frances Gage, wrote down and embellished Truth's remarks for her own polemical purposes, Professor Painter said.
Sojourner Truth was known as a fiery orator who Professor Painter says was often "an electrifying black presence in a white crowd." …
Newsday (New York, NY)
Copyright 2000 Newsday, Inc.
February 20, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: AVON CALLING / WITH A SAVVY NEW CEO, 114-YEAR-OLD COSMETICS COMPANY GETS A MAKEOVER
BYLINE: By Becky Aikman. STAFF WRITERTHE WINDOWS look out on the modern Manhattan skyline, but the advertising posters on the walls add a touch of retro charm to the conference room of Andrea Jung, the new president and chief executive of Avon Products.
The brightly colored posters date from the '50s and '60s, and the models in the pictures wear white gloves or taffeta ballgowns. They're promoting Avon products with evocative names like Cherry Ice lipstick and Persian Wood perfume.
That period was the heyday of stay-at-home moms and the army of door-to-door Avon saleswomen who catered to them. Together, they turned the company's line of cosmetics and skin creams into one of America's best-known brands.
However, when Jung herself enters the conference room today, all business in her signature pearls and designer suit, she quickly dispels any sense of nostalgia.
This is not your mother's Avon Lady. In crisp, rapid sentences, Jung lays out her plans to launch Avon's Internet business, update its image and reshape the 114-year-old company for a new era.
"Direct selling by representatives has been the heritage of the company, and we still feel strongly that it will continue to be," Jung said in an interview. But, she added, "now there is new technology. There are other options and other venues." …
Jung has made other breaks with the past. Her father, born in Hong Kong, and mother, born in China, raised Jung in Toronto, where she learned Mandarin at home. She majored in English literature at Princeton University, then made another break after graduation by starting a business career. …
Sunday Times (London)
Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Limited
February 20, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Cell fusion paves the way for gays to have children
BYLINE: Jonathan Leake
DATELINE: PORTLAND, OregonResearchers are planning to create the first primate with three parents, paving the way for gay couples to have children who carry both partners' genes.
The research involves creating two embryos and then fusing them to create an individual made up of two types of cell. Such creatures are called chimeras.
The technique has been widely applied to mice and other species but has never before been tried in primates.
American reproductive scientists at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Centre believe that such research is necessary because of the medical insights it will give into the way different areas of an embryo develop into parts of the body. …
However, Lee Silver, professor of genetics at Princeton University, believes that the technique will generate huge demand. Creating babies containing the genetic material of two men would involve obtaining eggs, ideally from the same woman, and fertilizing some with sperm from one man and some with sperm from his partner.
The resulting embryos would then be treated with chemicals designed to stick them together.
The resulting chimera, brought to term in a surrogate mother, would have three parents. …
NOTE: This story also appeared in the Calgary Herald.
The Washington Times
Copyright 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
February 20, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: A conservative future
BYLINE: Edwin FeulnerSome predictions about the future are wackier than others. In 1967, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission told a women's group that the housewife of 2000 would work less thanks to a multi-armed "robot maid" capable of sweeping, vacuuming "and picking up your husband's clothing" at the same time.
That prediction seems silly today, but it pales compared with prophecies about the decline of American conservatism. Some critics, such as Princeton University professor Sean Wilentz, say liberalism will dominate the future because conservatives have no more tax dragons to slay or evil empires to fight. "Liberalism is back - maybe not in name, but in spirit and substance," Mr. Wilentz declared in a newspaper essay last fall.
That's far wackier than a robot that sucks up the crushed Cheetos behind the couch while picking up dirty socks. Liberalism is not coming back because conservatism never left the scene. Why would it? Conservatism liberated Eastern Europe and defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. It reduced taxes and let people go as far as their dreams can take them. It made America a country the world could admire again. …
Edwin Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation.
The Detroit News
Copyright 2000 The Detroit News, Inc.
February 19, 2000, SaturdaySECTION: Editorial
HEADLINE: Fire Walls, Toledo, Weddings, etc.* INSIDE VIEW: "If one were searching for bulwarks against future eruptions of ideological extremism, the contemporary college campus would not be a good place to start." -- Princeton University politics professor Aaron L. Friedberg, in a review in the current issue of Commentary magazine.
The Economist
Copyright 2000 The Economist Newspaper Ltd.
February 19, 2000HEADLINE: Strange brew
HIGHLIGHT: The behaviour of a bizarre substance called "quark matter" is still only dimly understood. Indeed, it is not even certain that it exists at allFOR researchers interested in the workings of the subatomic and astrophysical realms, soup is on the menu. This is no ordinary soup, however, but a seething mass of elementary particles called quarks and gluons. The whole universe is thought to have consisted of just such a soup a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang that began everything. And today the soup is being sought by two groups of physicists, one lot of which is attempting to recreate it on earth using particle colliders, while the other lot searches for it in the sky, buried in the cores of dead stars.
In recent weeks both groups have reported progress, though neither has yet produced conclusive results. But definite identification of "quark matter" would have profound implications. …
(T)heorists have long wondered what might happen to the neutrons at the core of a neutron star as the pressure on them increases. This can occur in a couple of ways. Neutron stars lose energy and spin more slowly as they age, and the reduction in centrifugal force increases the core pressure. A neutron star might also steal material from another nearby star, thus increasing its mass -- and hence the gravitational pressure at its core. In either case, the pressure could eventually become great enough to crush the neutrons into a soup of free quarks.
Which is where things start to get rather strange -- literally. As the pressure increased further, the quarks would gather more energy and, as a result of mass-energy equivalence (E=mc2), some would flip to become the next most massive type of quark, called a "strange" quark. The result would be a soup containing roughly equal quantities of up, down and strange quarks.
Such a combination is thought to have some extremely unusual properties. In 1984 Edward Witten of Princeton University pointed out that a mixture of up, down and strange quarks held together by gluons might be the most stable, and also the densest, form of matter in existence. This "strange matter", as it is known, could already be lurking in the cores of neutron stars. But there is also the possibility, although it is hotly disputed, that once the quark-soup core of a neutron star has turned into strange matter, it would initiate a chain-reaction that would turn the remaining neutrons into strange matter too. The result would be a star consisting entirely of the stuff -- a so-called "strange star". …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
February 19, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: GENE THERAPY CALLED TOO RISKY; SCIENCE: CALTECH'S BALTIMORE, A LEADER IN GENETICS RESEARCH, SAYS TECHNIQUE SHOULD NOT BE TESTED ON PEOPLE.
BYLINE: TERENCE MONMANEY, TIMES MEDICAL WRITER
DATELINE: PACIFIC GROVE, Calif.Caltech president David Baltimore this week voiced one of the most ringing condemnations by a prominent scientist of human gene therapy, suggesting that it was premature to be testing the experimental technique in people.
"I disagree we've had value from gene therapy trials so far … " Baltimore said, referring to the roughly 300 human studies since 1990. No research has yet reported an entirely successful treatment, and an experiment last fall killed an 18-year-old volunteer, touching off a national debate.
"A number of us are asking, 'What the hell are we doing putting these things in people?' " said Baltimore, a Nobel laureate.
Fittingly, he made his remarks at a symposium here commemorating the 25th anniversary of a legendary gathering where genetic scientists postponed some types of recombinant DNA experiments as too risky. Baltimore was a prime mover behind the 1975 meeting and a coauthor of the influential research guidelines that grew out of it. …
Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University and chairman of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, argued that federal regulations for protecting research subjects should be both expanded and simplified.
The Vancouver Sun
Copyright 2000 Pacific Press Ltd.
February 19, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: Small act of kindness leads to Nobel prize: In a tale of an immigrant boy and a secret benefactor, the world is the final winner.
BYLINE: Pete McMartinThis story -- which is about the large consequences of small actions -- began in 1958 at Augustana College, a small liberal arts school in Rock Island, Illinois.
It was in that year that an exchange student named Daniel Tsui came to Augustana on a scholarship from Hong Kong.
Tsui, from northern China, and a Lutheran, had been sent by his parents to live in Hong Kong with his two sisters during the Chinese Communist Revolution. He was 12.
He never saw his parents again.
But he was an exceptional student and, through the recommendation of a Hong Kong missionary with connections to Augustana, he went to the college.
He was brilliant. And as a foreign student, Tsui automatically became a member of the college's Cosmopolitan Club, a club designed to encourage the fraternization of foreign and American students on campus. …
And Tsui -- who would spend three years at Augustana -- went on to greater things:
Further study at the physics department at the University of Chicago. Research at the world-renowned Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. Professorship at Princeton University.
And in 1998, he, and two other U.S. scientists, shared the Nobel Prize in physics for research in quantum theory. …
The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA)
Copyright 2000 Landmark Communications, Inc.February 19, 2000, Saturday
HEADLINE: WORKING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
BYLINE: KERRY DOUGHERTYAn irate waitress wrote to me this week. Since she failed to include a return address or phone number, my only method of reply is right here.
Sherry is bitter about my recent column that contended that all Americans, including those who work for tips or who are paid in cash, should pay their taxes. The nerve of me!
''I wonder if you have ever done physical labor?'' she asked.
Well, yes, Sherry, I have. Besides the three summers I spent waitressing at the Jersey shore, I spent a year doing something I doubt you've ever done. In 1973 I worked a giant three-knife machine in a book bindery in Trenton, N.J., while I saved money to go back to college.
The classified ad in the newspaper touted the job as paying the princely sum of $3 an hour, well above minimum wage at the time. What the advertisement neglected to say was that the job could cost me a finger or two. …
Most of the books I was cutting were for Princeton University. Once, when a particularly nice volume of poetry was piled at my feet, I asked Olive if I could take one. The forewoman had been there 20 years and said no one had asked for a book before, so she dashed over to check it out with the spoiled rich brothers who owned the bindery. They drove matching red sports cars, the sight of which nearly turned me into a Marxist.
The siblings found it funny that a worker wanted a book, and indulged me. As soon as I saved enough money to go back to college I left the bindery, leaving skid marks on the floor.
So, yes, Sherry, I have performed physical labor. It didn't kill me. It made me appreciate the value of an education and encouraged me to work hard to land a nice, safe office job. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
February 19, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: Cosmic Driving Force?; Scientists' Work on 'Dark Energy' Mystery Could Yield a New View of the Universe
BYLINE: Kathy Sawyer , Washington Post Staff Writer
DATELINE: BERKELEY, Calif.Saul Perlmutter ignored his view of a russet sunset backlighting the Golden Gate Bridge and pulled down a blue plastic shade to cut the glare. From his command post here in the bayside hills, the physicist was busy directing a quest to understand a mysterious force that seems to be taking over the universe.
As he consulted urgently by phone and e-mail with a multinational team of sleep-deprived scientists, a phalanx of the world's most advanced telescopes awaited Perlmutter's next instruction. In the basement of his laboratory complex, one of the most powerful supercomputer arrays in the country was processing cataracts of data streaming in from stars exploding in thermonuclear fury billions of light-years away.
Down the hall, engineers were drawing up blueprints for an orbiting observatory equipped with "gigacam," the biggest and most sensitive computer imager ever built. In a micro-foundry in the next building, another colleague was at work on an advanced computer chip--a detector--that will accomplish in three hours of astronomical observations what now takes 30. …
For the first time in history, as Perlmutter's operation illustrates, humanity has acquired the technology and know-how to apply scientific methods to studies of the entire known universe, addressing questions previously left to realms of religion, art and philosophy. In coming decades, researchers will mobilize powerful new instruments to probe as deep into time and space as physics will allow. Some of them will search for clearer evidence of the elusive energy in the vacuum.
The advent of a new cosmology--an altered vision of the cosmos--has sometimes radically changed the culture of its time, Joel Primack, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, told a gathering of cosmologists and theologians. The scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries helped end the Middle Ages and bring about the European Enlightenment. But it also split scientific knowledge from human meaning. …
No one knows how this latest wrinkle in the emerging picture of nature will affect 21st century civilization. It seems unlikely that citizens of this era will find totally alien the notion that something repulsive is causing the pace of change to speed up.
To some, the whole gaudy Big Bang construct sounds arbitrary and suspicious, fraught with weird coincidences and Zen-like paradoxes. It involves realms where our own senses, intuition and common sense seriously mislead us. Everything sprang from nothing, the scientists tell us. Mass and energy are interchangeable. Gravity bends light and can slow a clock. Black holes suck stuff out of the universe forever. Most of the mass in the universe remains unidentified. And now scientists have conjured some miasma of funny energy that thrives in emptiness and threatens cosmic domination.
Understanding the riddle of the dark energy "will be one of the grand challenges for the millennium to come," says astrophysicist Neta Bahcall, of Princeton University. "If it's there, why is it there? What causes it? And how does it behave? Who knows what we'll learn from it." …
Copley News Service
Copyright 2000 Copley News Service
February 18, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Schlesinger returns to Springfield
BYLINE: Jennifer Nelson
DATELINE: SPRINGFIELDIn his first trip to Springfield since 1952, renowned historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. spoke of the impact the late Gov. Adlai Stevenson II had on American politics.
''He redeemed politics with its sordid and selfish side and painted political life significant and exciting for a new generation,'' Schlesinger said in a speech Thursday evening at the Howlett Building.
Schlesinger, born in 1917, was the keynote speaker at a free event honoring Stevenson, who would have been 100 years old on Feb. 5. An exhibit on his personal and political life is ongoing at the Illinois State Museum.
The historian recalled how a mutual friend arranged for Schlesinger and Stevenson to meet in 1946 on an overnight train from Washington, D.C., to Chicago. He told the audience how immediately charmed he was with Stevenson.
''Soon after I had settled in my seat that evening an agreeable man of medium height, balding head and beguiling smile introduced himself,'' Schlesinger said. …
A former member of the faculty in the history departments at Harvard University, Princeton University and the City University of New York, Schlesinger has written and edited numerous books. He won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1946 and the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1996. …
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
February 18, 2000, FridaySECTION: COMMENTARY
HEADLINE: Putting the 'liberal' in liberal arts
BYLINE: By Kelly SullivanAs a college senior who chose to attend a "conservative" school, I always knew that most of academia was, well, liberal. But I didn't realize until recently just how hard it is to find anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy on an American campus.
This might sound odd, given the lip service many professors pay to "diversity." But consider the evidence. In a recent issue of Policy Review, a journal of the Heritage Foundation, professor Paul Kengor examines the political makeup of the social science departments at some of America's top colleges and universities.
Stanford University, for example, has 22 Democrats and just two Republicans in its history department. Cornell University has 29 Democrats and no Republicans. But the most eye-opening figure is from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Of the 190 professors polled in the social science and humanities departments, 184 are Democrats and only six are Republicans. …
The "hard" sciences do not appear to have the imbalance of the social sciences and humanities. Professor Lewis Feuer of the University of Virginia has observed that most campus opponents of Western culture tend to come from "soft" academic disciplines, such as journalism and political science, which lack the objective "reality checks" of subjects such as mathematics. "What emerges," he writes, "is a smug, unexamined, and unchallenged consensus that dismisses dissent as a rude intrusion." …
Not to be outdone, Princeton University has hired a "bioethics" professor whose ideas on infanticide are provocative, at the very least. Peter Singer has actually said "newborn infants, especially if unwanted, are not yet full members of the moral community," and therefore it's defensible to kill them.
Despite vehement protests -- including one by former GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes, a member of Princeton's Board of Trustees -- Singer's appointment was endorsed by Princeton's administration, which referred to his doctrines as "mainstream." …
Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional Testimony
Copyright 2000 eMediaMillWorks, Inc.
February 18, 2000, FridaySECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
HEADLINE: TESTIMONY February 16, 2000 LOUIS J. FREEH DIRECTOR FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMERCE, JUSTICE, AND STATE, THE JUDICIARY, AND RELATED AGENCIES INTERNET SECURITY
I am privileged to join Attorney General Reno in this opportunity to discuss cybercrime -- one of the fastest evolving areas of criminal behavior and a significant threat to our national and economic security. …
I would like to acknowledge the strong support this Subcommittee has provided to the FBI over the past several years for fighting cybercrime. This Subcommittee was the first to support resources -- back in FY 1997 -- for establishing a computer intrusion investigative capability within the FBI….
In the United States, we can subpoena records and execute search warrants on suspects' homes, seize evidence, and examine it. We can do none of those things ourselves overseas, rather, we depend on the local authorities. In some cases the local police forces simply do not understand or cannot cope with the technology. In other cases, these nations simply do not have laws against computer intrusions. Our Legats are working very hard to build bridges with local law enforcement to enhance cooperation on cyber crime. …
In another case, Peter Iliev Pentchev, a Princeton University student, was identified as an intruder on an e- commerce system. An estimated 1800 credit card numbers, customer names, and user passwords were stolen. The company had to shut down its web servers for five days to repair the damages estimated at $100,000. Pentchev has fled to his native Bulgaria and the process is being determined to return Pentchev to the United States to face charges. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 Daily Targum via U-Wire
February 18, 2000HEADLINE: Company donates $425K to Rutgers U.
BYLINE: By Ron Gambone, Daily Targum
SOURCE: Rutgers U.
DATELINE: New Brunswick, N.J.Axiva U.S., Inc. has presented a check for $425,000 to the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials, based at Rutgers University.
The funding will support a unique 14-month partnership between Axiva and the CBM for the development of a versatile new form of starch.
Axiva (formerly known as Aventis Research & Technologies) -- a wholly owned subsidiary of Axiva GmbH, a member of the Hoechst Group -- holds patents for the production of this starch and for a variety of innovative uses of the material. According to CBM Director Carolyn Dennis-Phillips, the CBM will serve as a "virtual research and development organization" for Axiva.
"We're a formal consortium of universities working with industry to help advance health care in all areas that rely on the use of specialized materials," Phillips said. "(We have faculty from) Rutgers, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Princeton University and Stevens Institute of Technology." …
OBITUARIES
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
February 24, 2000HEADLINE: GEORGE ROUDEBUSH; PRACTICED LAW FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS
George S. Roudebush, a retired lawyer in St. Louis, died Tuesday (Feb. 22, 2000) at St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield after a brief illness. He turned 91 Friday.
Mr. Roudebush, of Town and Country, was in practice here for more than 50 years. He started his career in 1934 as an associate at the law firm of Lashly, Lashly and Miller. …
A lifelong resident of St. Louis, Mr. Roudebush earned a bachelor's deg ree from Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude. He got his law degree from Harvard University Law School and served as a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps in World War II. …
Portland Press Herald
Copyright 2000 Guy Gannett Communications, Inc.
February 20, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: John H. MacFadyen, 76
DATELINE: DAMARISCOTTAJohn H. MacFadyen, 76, died Feb. 18, 2000, at Miles Memorial Hospital from complications resulting from pneumonia.
He was born in Duluth, Minn., and graduated from Princeton University, class of 1946 and earned his master of architecture degree from Princeton in 1949.
After World War II, he served with the U.S. Occupying Forces in Japan.
While on staff of Harrison and Abromowitz architecture firm in New York, he received the Rome Prize in architecture and was a fellow in residence at the American Academy in Rome from 1952 to 1953.
In 1960, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller appointed him to be founding executive director of the New York State Council on the Arts. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington PostFebruary 19, 2000, Saturday
HEADLINE: Obituaries Edgar Norman Powers Army Officer
Edgar Norman Powers, 86, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former Arlington resident, died at his home Jan. 19 in Sequim, Wash. He had pancreatic cancer.
Col. Powers, a former newspaper reporter, was a native of Oklahoma.
He attended Princeton University and graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in journalism. …
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 2000 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
February 18, 2000 FridayHEADLINE: DANIEL N. HALL, 63, PATENT ATTORNEY WITH BRIDGESTONE/FIRESTONE INC.
BYLINE: By DELL M. MOSLEY; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
DATELINE: SHAKER HEIGHTSDaniel N. Hall, a senior patent attorney with Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., died of kidney cancer Tuesday at the Kethley House in Cleveland. He was 63.
Company officials said he was recognized as an expert in his field and by co-workers and representatives of other companies.
Mr. Hall joined the company in 1981 as an assistant patent counsel and was promoted to senior patent counsel in 1984. He was responsible for patent activities of several businesses and for procuring patents throughout the world. …
Mr. Hall was born in Bronxville, N.Y., and graduated magna cum laude in 1958 from Dartmouth College, where he majored in chemistry. He earned his doctorate in organic chemistry from Princeton University in 1964 and his law degree in 1972 from Seton Hall University, where he majored in patent law. …
Chicago Daily Herald
Copyright 2000 Paddock Publications, Inc.
February 18, 2000, FridayObituaries
HEADLINE James W. Boyd, M.D. of AddisonFuneral services for Dr. James W. Boyd will be held at 8 p.m. today, at Pedersen-Ryberg Mortuary, 435 N. York Road, Elmhurst.
Born Aug. 6, 1917, in Paterson, N.J., he passed away peacefully, Monday, Feb. 14, 2000, at his home, with his wife at his side.
A member of the Class of 1939 of Princeton University, Dr. Boyd went on to graduate from Cornell Medical School in 1943 and serve his residency at New York City Hospital. Upon his graduation, he was drafted into the Army to serve during World War II. …
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