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Princeton in the News
April 26, 2000
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The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
April 26, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Krugman leaving MIT for Princeton
DATELINE: BOSTONPaul Krugman, an economist admired for making complex economic theories understandable to a mass audience, is leaving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Princeton University.
Krugman, who left MIT for Stanford in 1994 and returned in 1996, will begin a joint appointment this fall at Princeton's economics department and its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Krugman, a twice-weekly columnist for The New York Times, has written 16 books, including "The Age of Diminished Expectations" and "The Accidental Theorist and Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science."
"He is an economist extraordinaire," Michael Rothschild, dean of the Wilson School, said Wednesday. "He has made more original contributions to basic economics than almost anyone in the profession. At the same time, he writes sharply, freshly, controversially, presciently about economic policy."
Krugman, who is on leave from MIT this year, could not immediately be reached for comment.
NBC News Transcripts
Copyright 2000 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.
SHOW: DATELINE NBC
April 21, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: THE BEAT GOES ON; 16-YEAR-OLD GIRL'S INSPIRING JOURNEY OF THE HEART
REPORTERS: MARGARET LARSONTHE BEAT GOES ON
JANE PAULEY: Had she been the girl next door you could have mistaken her for a typical teen-ager. The qualities of character that make our next story compelling and inspiring don't necessarily show in everyday life. But to look at 16-year-old Jessica Melore, you wouldn't have seen anything to suggest this girl is about to have a massive heart attack either. How could this happen to someone so young? More importantly, could doctors save her? Tonight, a remarkable journey of the heart. Here's Dawn Fratangelo with Jessica's story.
Ms. ELLEN MELORE: She was your typical teen-ager, very outgoing, very involved in school. A real love-of-life person, and I used to tell her, 'Jessica, I have a feeling this is going to be your year.'
DAWN FRATANGELO reporting: (Voiceover) And it was supposed to be. Sixteen-year-old Jessica Melore, a New Jersey high school senior, was a National Honor Society member, the co-captain of her tennis team, and an active member in her school's musical program. And she was looking forward to singing in more performances with her friends before graduating. …
FRATANGELO: (Voiceover) She ended up being much more than that. When the next day her blood count normalized, that night with a date waiting, a dress altered to accommodate her driveline, and a bag for her batteries, tinted of course to match her dress, Jessica Melore was crowned prom queen. It was a shimmering moment but Jessica still needed a new heart.
It had been more than nine months since her heart attack, and there was a concern a suitable donor may not be found in time. At the same time, Jessica was focusing on the future with much anticipated plans to attend Princeton University soon after her high school graduation, but four days before she was set to graduate, the Melores got a call. There was a heart for Jessica. The parents of an 18-year-old girl who had died had generously given permission for her heart to be donated, a gift for which the Melore family was eternally grateful. …
FRATANGELO: (Voiceover) This fall, as more then 1500 freshman entered Princeton University, there was one remarkable student among them. Where all may be smart, talented and special in their own way, perhaps none was as courageous or determined or strong in their capacity to live as Jessica Melore. …
OTHER HEADLINES
Sky & Telescope
Copyright 2000 Sky Publishing Corp.
May 1, 2000HEADLINE: White Dwarfs Hiding in the Halo?
One suggestion for what makes up the Milky Way's dark-matter halo, at least in part, is a population of dim white dwarfs, the roughly Earth-size balls of atomic nuclei that low- and moderate-mass stars leave behind at the ends of their lives. If the dwarfs are distant and faint enough, they would qualify as "dark" as far as Earthly telescopes are concerned. But by and large, astronomers have failed to find white dwarfs in anything like the numbers required.
But this failing may have been colored by the wrong expectations. Didier Saumon (Vanderbilt University), Bradley M. Hansen (Princeton University), and others have calculated that the atmospheres of "cool" white dwarfs -- cooler than about 4,000[degrees] Kelvin -- should be rich in molecular hydrogen. The molecules should efficiently absorb red and near-infrared light, making the white dwarfs appear relatively blue in visible-light surveys. Most seekers have expected cool, aged white dwarfs to appear reddish. Hence the stars may have been overlooked.
Evidence has surfaced that cool white dwarfs indeed have unusual colors. A group led by Hugh C. Harris (U.S. Naval Observatory) has scrutinized LHS 3250, an 18th-magnitude mote just 100 light-years distant in Draco. The group reports (in the October 20, 1999, Astrophysical Journal) that LHS 3250 indeed would appear unusually blue in a visible-light survey, and that its near-infrared brightness has been suppressed -- much as if hydrogen molecules are cloaking it. A similar infrared deficit was also announced in Nature for January 6th, where Simon T. Hodgkin (University of Leicester, United Kingdom) and his colleagues present spectra of a cool white dwarf in Aries. Its speedy across-the-sky (proper) motion identifies it as a visitor from our galaxy's halo. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
April 27, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Economic Scene: Children smart enough to get into elite schools may not need to bother.
BYLINE: By Alan B. Krueger; This column appears here every Thursday. Alan B. Krueger is the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and editor of The Journal of Economic Perspectives. Four economic analysts -- Professor Krueger, J. Bradford DeLong, Jeff Madrick and Virginia Postrel -- rotate as contributors.
YOUR son or daughter has just been accepted to both the University of Pennsylvania and to Penn State. The deadline for decision is May 1. Where should he or she go?
Many factors should be considered, of course, but lots of parents and students are particularly interested in the potential economic payoff from higher education. Until recently, there was a consensus among economists that students who attend more selective colleges -- ones with tougher admissions standards -- land better paying jobs as a result. Having smart, motivated classmates and a prestigious degree were thought to enhance learning and give students access to job networks.
But is it true?
A study that I conducted with Stacy Dale of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College" (available online at http:// papers.nber.org/), has unintentionally undermined this consensus.
It is easy to see how one could think that elite colleges enhance their graduates' earnings. According to the College and Beyond Survey, data collected by the Mellon Foundation, the average student who entered a highly selective college like Yale, Swarthmore or the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, earned $92,000 in 1995. The average student from a moderately selective college, like Penn State, Denison or Tulane, earned $22,000 less.
The problem with this comparison is that students who attend more selective colleges are likely to have higher earnings regardless of where they attend college for the very reasons that they were admitted to the more selective colleges in the first place.
Trying to address the problem, earlier studies compared students with similar standardized test scores and grade point averages who attended more and less selective schools. But this approach takes account of much less information than admissions committees see. There is no guarantee that all the relevant differences among students have been held constant. …
To overcome the problem, Ms. Dale and I restricted the comparison to students who applied to and were accepted by comparable colleges. Some students chose more selective schools; some less selective ones. …
Our research found that earnings were unrelated to the selectivity of the college that students had attended among those who had comparable options. For example, the average earnings for the 519 students who were accepted by both moderately selective (average College Board scores of 1,000 to 1,099) and highly selective schools (average scores greater than 1,275), varied little, no matter which type of college they attended.
One group of students, however, clearly benefited from attending a highly selective college: those from lower-income families -- defined approximately as the bottom quarter of families who send children to college. For them, attending a more selective school increased earnings significantly. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
April 27, 2000HEADLINE: Clearest Picture of Infant Universe Sees It All and Questions It, Too
BYLINE: By JAMES GLANZScientists yesterday released the clearest pictures yet taken of the infant universe, before stars and galaxies had formed and when space was filled with hot turbulent gases. The images confirm one major prediction of the leading theory of the explosive birth of the universe, but they failed to reveal another crucial feature that scientists had hoped would buttress that theory.
It is uncertain how sharp a revision, if any, will be needed to account for the new evidence.
The images -- actually imprints of sound waves that cause ripples in the cosmos' temperature -- were collected using a balloon-borne telescope named Boomerang by a multinational collaboration led by Dr. Andrew Lange of the California Institute of Technology and Dr. Paolo de Bernardis of the University of Rome.
The images, released at a NASA briefing yesterday, are being published today in the journal Nature. …
In trying to understand how the universe came about in what they believe was a giant explosion, called the Big Bang, some 13 billion years ago, scientists focus on ripples, or variations, in the temperature of the primordial gas. These can be used as a measuring stick to gauge the large-scale geometry and overall contents of the universe.
The size of the ripples observed by the Boomerang experiment indicates that the universe contains just the right amount of matter and energy to make space "flat," meaning that parallel rays of light never cross or diverge, just as predicted by the reigning "inflation" theory of how the Big Bang started. A preliminary analysis by Boomerang and other experiments first revealed that flatness last fall. …
Just as an organ pipe resonates with its main note and higher harmonics, the early universe should have contained the smaller ripples, according to inflationary theory. Scientists had regarded Boomerang as the first experiment that could see the smaller ripples, but it did not produce clear evidence of them.
The mixed results have turned the images into a sort of cosmic Rorschach test, with some scientists seeing confirmation of existing theories, and others seeing the first dark hints that those theories are -- if not entirely wrong -- at least in need of serious revision. …
Dr. Lange cautioned that the team was presenting only 5 percent to 10 percent of its data in the Nature paper and that the theoretical implications were still subject to revision. But cosmologists said that if the higher harmonics did not eventually emerge clearly from the data, all bets would be off.
"That, I think, would require a radical revision of cosmology as we know it," said Dr. David Spergel, a cosmologist at Princeton University.
Universal News Services
Origin Universal News Services Limited, 2000
April 27, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: GENERAL PRIZE SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED AVENTIS PRIZES FOR SCIENCE BOOKS 2000
A history of the internet, the unravelling of the human genome, the acceleration of human evolution and the quest for the 'theory of everything' are among the subjects covered in the shortlist for the General Prize of the Aventis Prizes for Science Books 2000 (formerly the Rhone-Poulenc Prizes).
The shortlist for the £10,000 Prize, selected from a record-breaking 117 entries submitted this year … (includes)
TIME, LOVE, MEMORY
- A Great Biologist and his Quest for the Origins of Behaviour
by Jonathan Weiner (Faber & Faber £20)Time, Love, Memory is the story of one of the unsung heroes of our time - Seymour Benzer one of the founders of molecular biology. Back in the 1950s and 1960s he was the first biologist to map the interior of a gene. In his fly room at the California Institute of Technology, Benzer and his students began breeding flies for strange behaviour. Today, Benzer, his students and their rivals can actually dissect and inject instincts into flies and mice. Benzer and his school are among the first biologists to explore the physical foundations of our behaviour, dissecting and rebuilding time, love and memory from their genes up.
Jonathan Weiner is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Beak of the Finch. A full time science writer, he has been Senior Editor of The Sciences, the magazine of the New York Academy of Sciences. He was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and McGraw Professor in Writing.
What the critics said: "Time, Love, Memory is an absolutely compelling, beautiful book... It tells a hugely important story and makes for wonderful reading. It catches you in its magic, and changes your perception of life and even of your own mind." - Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone
Agence France Presse
Copyright 2000 Agence France Presse
April 26, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Experts challenge US claims of N Korean missile threat
BYLINE: Robert Holloway
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS, April 26Nuclear physicists on Wednesday disputed a claim by US officials that North Korea was close to developing a missile capable of hitting the United States with atomic weapons.
The claim has been used to support arguments that the United States needs a missile defence system to intercept and destroy missiles fired against it by "rogue states."
David Wright, a weapons expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a telephone interview that a rocket like the one North Korea tested in 1998, "might be capable of reaching Alaska with a very small payload of no more than 100 kilogrammes (220 pounds)."
He doubted it could reach Hawaii, and added that such a missile would be incapable of reaching either state, let alone the continental United States, with a nuclear warhead weighing between 500 (1,100 pounds) and 1,000 kilos (2,200 pounds).
"All the North Koreans have done is fire a few things into the air," said Zia Mian, of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University.
"That is a long way from developing an ICBM" or Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, he said in a telephone interview. …
AP Online
Copyright 2000 Associated Press
April 26, 2000; WednesdayHEADLINE: Bush Meets Russian Foreign Minister
BYLINE: GLEN JOHNSON
DATELINE: WASHINGTONGeorge W. Bush met today with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, talking of peace and progress though still disagreeing over U.S. proposals to build a national missile defense system.
Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said the two men discussed boosting U.S. investment in Russia and spoke of ''our dreams and aspirations for our respective countries.''
''It's time to redefine relations. It's time to think differently,'' Bush said, noting that he and Ivanov were among the oldest people in the meeting room and suggesting the future of the next generations is at stake.
Ivanov, in town to meet with Clinton administration officials, came to Bush's hotel for the hour-long meeting. The foreign minister has repeatedly requested a meeting with Bush through the Russian ambassador. …
Some critics have called (Bush) too inexperienced in international matters.
''You reverse an image by starting to do things that create a counterimage,'' said Fred Greenstein, a Princeton University politics professor.
''I think what they need is more than a couple of photo ops of that sort. Anything that can be done to say, 'Now I'm going to start diving in and laying out some major programs' will be helpful to his image,'' the professor added. …
CNNfn
SHOW: BUSINESS UNUSUAL
April 26, 2000; WednesdayHEADLINE: Visionics CEO & Pres, CNNfn
GUESTS: Dr. Joseph Atick
BYLINE: Beverly SchuchBEVERLY SCHUCH, CNNfn ANCHOR, BUSINESS UNUSUAL: A New Jersey-based company has new technology that allows computers to recognize faces, raising all sorts of questions and possibilities. Joseph Atick is CEO of Visionics and he joins me now to talk about that brave new world. Indeed it does remind me of Orson Wells a little bit here and tell me a little bit about what this technology does.
DR. JOSEPH ATICK, CEO & PRESIDENT, VISIONICS: Well faces is actually software that is able to all allow a computer to detect faces and recognize who they are just like humans have done over the ages. Just at a distance and without you participating or doing anything.
SCHUCH: So what's the application for this?
ATICK: Well it's interesting it's a wide range of applications that go from security, access control, e-commerce authentication, to law enforcement applications where you would be on the look out in the airport for suspected terrorists and convicted criminals. …
ATICK: Originally the founders of the company came from academic research I was actually a professor at Rockefeller and before that at Princeton University where we did research on how the human brain actually functions. …
Daily News (New York)
Copyright 2000 Daily News, L.P.
April 26, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: NEW EDITOR NAMED AT MAXIM Ivy Leaguer has lofty goals for mag
BYLINE: By CELIA McGEE DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITERMaxim has a new pinup, and this one's a boy of the Ivy League.
The journal of babeology's American edition yesterday announced the appointment of Keith Blanchard - a 1988 Princeton grad - as editor in chief, starting June 12.
He succeeds Mike Soutar, an Englishman on the job just a year, who's returning to the U.K. for a top post with British media giant IPC's music and sport publishing division. IPC is a competitor of Maxim's London-based parent, Dennis Publishing.
Blanchard, group creative director of Dennis, has been with Maxim since its American launch in September 1996, starting as deputy editor. …
Financial Times (London)
Copyright 2000 The Financial Times Limited
April 26, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: SURVEY - BRAZIL : 500 YEARS: Brazil, a discovery waiting to happen In 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral, a well-known Portuguese navigator, leading a fleet of 13 ships, encountered the coastline of Brazil
BYLINE: By KENNETH MAXWELLCommemorations are tricky things especially for former colonies. They tend to tell us more about the present than they do about the past, which, as far as colonialism is concerned, may be no bad thing.
Last Saturday (April 22), Brazil and Portugal celebrated, in their different ways, the 500th anniversary of what the Portuguese are discreetly calling the achamento, which, literally, means the "finding" of Brazil. Although, for Brazilians, achamento can also mean "a bargain", which, in many respects, Brazil was - at least as far as the Portuguese were concerned.
It was also an accident. Following Vasco da Gama's dramatic voyage to India (1497-1499), a second powerful fleet of 13 ships and 1,500 men had been sent out from Lisbon under the command of Pedro Alvares Cabral.
It was Cabral's fleet, in the year 1500, which first encountered the coastline of Brazil in the vicinity of Porto Seguro. …
It was only a matter of time, thereafter, before the Portuguese, on this westerly route, would touch land on the Atlantic coast of South America. So Brazil was an accident waiting to happen. …
By 1590, however, Brazil did replicate the early pattern of European settlement in the Caribbean where the decimation of the native inhabitants by disease and exploitation was followed by the introduction of sugar cane worked by slave labour imported from Africa.
In Brazil, this pattern of intrusion, pestilence and population substitution took place in a territory of continental dimensions, and it was to influence permanently the composition of Brazilian society, the possibilities for economic development, as well as Brazil's integration into an export-oriented, monocultural, Atlantic facing commercial system. …
Kenneth Maxwell holds the Nelson and David Rockefeller chair in Inter-American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He previously taught at Columbia, Yale and Princeton universities.
THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Copyright 2000 Star-Telegram Newspaper, Inc.
April 26, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: COLLEGE NOTES
UT in Preseason NITDuke, which finished No. 1 in the final regular season poll, and Temple, which was ranked No. 5, lead the field for the 2000 Preseason National Invitation Tournament.
No. 15 Texas and No. 22 Indiana are also in the 16-team field.
Pepperdine was the only other school in the field to play in last season's NCAA Tournament.
The other teams selected were Fairfield, Mississippi State, George Mason, Navy, South Alabama, New Mexico, California, Princeton, Villanova, Marquette and Delaware.
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
April 26, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: The Price of Health Care
To the Editor:It is not evident, as one expert states in your April 21 front-page article, that home health care is cheaper than inpatient care.
The national average hospital occupancy ratio is about 65 percent. Having armies of home care workers traveling to geographically disparate locations to visit patients requires more resources than would be needed to care for the same patients, if they were concentrated at half-empty hospitals.
And quality of care can be more effectively assured in a hospital than in a home care setting, where health workers cannot easily be supervised.
Careful economic analysis is apt to show that the cost of home care typically exceeds that of inpatient care at half-empty hospitals. The added cost can be justified only if home care yields patient and family a commensurately higher quality of life.
UWE E. REINHARDT
Princeton, N.J., April 22, 2000
The writer is a professor of economics at Princeton University.
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
April 26, 2000HEADLINE: BULLETIN BOARD Foundation Ventures Into Cyberspace
BYLINE: By EDWARD WYATT and KAREN W. ARENSON
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, one of the largest supporters of research on higher education, is about to take a leap into cyberspace. It is hiring an Internet technology expert, IRA H. FUCHS, a Princeton University vice president, to help the foundation find new uses for digital technologies in research, teaching and learning.
Mellon's president, WILLIAM G. BOWEN, left, said that Mr. Fuchs would work on improving JSTOR, a Mellon-initiated computerized archive of thousands of issues of scholarly journals back to the 19th century.
Other projects on the agenda include the creation of a digital archive of high-quality art images and a survey of academic activity in cyberspace.
University Wire
Copyright 2000 Brown Daily Herald via U-Wire
April 26, 2000HEADLINE: Brown chapter of ACLU continues push for disciplinary reform
BYLINE: By Maha Aziz, Brown Daily Herald
DATELINE: Providence, R.I.With the recent outcry over controversial disciplinary cases on campus, the Brown Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is pushing the University administration -- for the third time in five years -- to consider its reform proposal for the University Disciplinary Council (UDC).
Since UDC's creation in 1990, the ACLU has submitted at least three proposals to the administration, resulting in limited changes to the UDC process. …
… Within the next two weeks the ACLU will present its proposal to members of the administration, including Interim President Sheila Blumstein, Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Janina Montero, UDC Chair and Professor of Medical Science Dr. James McIlwain, and Dean of Student Life Robin Rose. …
She added that members of the ACLU met with Montero on two occasions this semester to discuss their UDC reform proposals.
"Montero seems amenable to more notifications," Musher said, adding that at Princeton University, where Montero previously served, students would receive such notifications in their post office boxes on a regular basis. "Hopefully, that was not just lip service on her part," she added. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 Brown Daily Herald via U-Wire
April 26, 2000HEADLINE: Freshman counseling programs vary in focus, purpose across the country
BYLINE: By Adam Singer, Brown Daily Herald
DATELINE: Providence, R.I.While Brown is currently considering how to alter the residential counseling program to best fit the needs of the student body, one of the most central questions being asked is what roles the residential counselors (RCs) should take in the community. Across the Ivies, other systems range from strict, discipline-oriented programs to information and mediation systems. …
Princeton University has a residential advising system similar to that of Yale, with resident advisors for both first-years and sophomores serving as information sources within a residential area.
The Dallas Morning News
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
April 25, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: Drug abuse studies focus on how areas of the brain interact
BYLINE: By Tom SiegfriedSAN FRANCISCO -- Few 4-year-olds are drug addicts, but most have a similar problem -- lack of willpower. You can prove it with Oreo cookies.
Sit a typical child of 4 at a table with Oreos and offer a choice -- one cookie right now, or two if the kid is willing to wait while the adult in charge leaves the room for a while.
Usually, kids say they'd prefer to wait and get two cookies. So the adult leaves. But an Oreo remains on the table. Most kids cave in and go for the cookie -- in less than a minute.
The capacity to defer gratification -- and to exert better control over behavior -- generally improves with age….
Six-year-olds can wait for the adult to return. But drug addicts seem to exhibit the willpower of a 4-year-old, with the self-control of adulthood utterly defeated by a chemical conspiracy inside their brains. …
Various studies have shown that dopamine release can activate chemical reactions linked to learning. Furthermore, blocking dopamine action can impair certain forms of learning. Drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, nicotine and even opiates, such as heroin, can affect the dopamine systems related to learning and memory. …
Ultimately, the messages that reach the prefrontal cortex -- the region of the brain directly behind the forehead _ influence the brain's choice of behaviors. Addiction presumably disrupts the brain's ability to make sound choices.
But the decision-making process is complicated, notes Jonathan Cohen, a psychologist and psychiatrist affiliated with Princeton University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Good decision-making requires control over competing possibilities, Cohen said at the neuroscience meeting. But it also requires monitoring choices to see whether they produce the desired result. Perhaps addiction involves problems with the monitoring system as well as the control system. …
Financial Times (London)
Copyright 2000 The Financial Times Limited
April 25, 2000HEADLINE: SURVEY - MASTERING RISK 1: The enlightening struggle against uncertainty
BYLINE: By PETER L BERNSTEINSummary
In this introduction to Mastering Risk Peter L. Bernstein charts the extraordinary advances that humankind has made in seeking to control its own destiny. Controlling risk depends on understanding it, measuring it and weighing its consequences. During most of human history people have had no more than gut instinct and superstition to guide them when facing uncertainty. The first breakthrough came in 1654 when Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat used mathematics to analyse a simple game of chance - and thus created the basis for probability theory. The discoveries that followed - including sampling techniques, utility, regression to the mean and diversification - gave solid foundations to the insurance industry and catalysed economic growth generally. Businesses could finally make rational assessments of risk and plan their operations accordingly. …
The consequences of a bad outcome must always outweigh the expected probability of that outcome. "Bad outcomes" need not always be losses - they can also be opportunity costs. Suppose you are considering a modest investment in a cross-section of internet stocks. This is a risky bet, with a good chance that you will lose even though the smaller probability of winning could bring you a fortune. The consequences of not investing and being wrong are far more damaging than the consequences of investing and being wrong. When we place numbers on those kinds of calculations, we end up with what has come to be known as utility theory.
Strategy or chance
The star in the firmament of utility theory is John von Neumann, a quirky Hungarian and nuclear scientist who spent most of his active life at Princeton University in the US. He is perhaps best known for the theory he formulated in the 1930s concerning games of strategy, as distinct from games of chance. Von Neumann's key insight in the theory of games of strategy was to recognise that men and women are not Robinson Crusoes - each individual isolated from all other individuals. He brought decision theory into modern times by recognising that the source of uncertainty was no longer to be found predominantly in nature and the weather - it lies instead in people. When decisions are made by intense interaction among all the players in the great game of life, maximising one's objectives may no longer be possible. Real life is a sequence of compromises with our fellow human beings. That is not the case when throwing dice or betting on the roulette wheel, but it is true of bridge and poker.
As von Neumann and his Princeton collaborator Oskar Morgenstern point out in their masterpiece, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, there is a profound distinction between a genuine economy and a Robinson Crusoe economy (italics added):
"Crusoe is confronted with a formal problem quite different from the one a participant in a social economy faces ... (Crusoe) controls all the variables exclusively - to obtain maximum resulting satisfaction ... In order to bring (the rules of the game) into the sphere of combat and competition ... it is necessary to consider n-person games with n 2 and thereby sacrifice the simple maximum aspect of the problem." …
Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
Copyright 2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
April 25, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: List of U.S. colleges and universities with more than 100 Chinese students.
The figures below identify, state by state, the U.S. colleges and universities that had more than 100 students from the People's Republic of China attending in the 1998-99 academic year.
The data were provided by the nonprofit Institute for International Education in New York. Institute officials, noting that the figures had been provided voluntarily by schools, declined to provide the number attending each institution.
The data are in the following order: state ... school. Within each state, the schools are in rank order, with the institution having the most Chinese students listed first.
NEW JERSEY -- Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Princeton University, Rutgers University-Newark.
Newsday (New York, NY)
Copyright 2000 Newsday, Inc.
April 25, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: LACROSSE NOTEBOOK / FOR PRINCETON, IT'S BIG GAIN AND BIG PAIN
BYLINE: MIKE CANDELIt was one of those moments when a team doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.
On one hand, Saturday seemed to be a wonderful day for Princeton. Playing before a standing-room- only crowd of 4,412 at Class of '52 Field, the Tigers beat Cornell, 9-5, to clinch a share of their sixth straight Ivy League title. They increased their Ivy winning streak to 30 games and locked up an automatic berth in the NCAA playoffs. Not a bad afternoon's work.
But the postgame celebration was muted. What should have been a glorious victory turned bittersweet-perhaps more bitter than sweet-because of costly injuries to sophomore attackman B.J. Prager (Garden City) and defenseman Brian Lieberman (Syosset). Prager, who had a team-leading 23 goals, including at least one in 20 consecutive games, tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. Lieberman, the team's top freshman defender, suffered a first-degree separation of the right shoulder and needed seven stitches above his eye after a nasty collision.
Both are likely to be out for the remainder of the regular season. Lieberman could be back in two to three weeks, but the prognosis is not as optimistic for Prager. "The loss of B.J. is really devastating," Princeton coach Bill Tierney said, "both on our regular offense and our extra-man offense. I'll bet he's scored 50 percent of our extra-man goals."
Just how devastating was made clear 24 hours later. On Sunday, Princeton hosted Syracuse before another SRO crowd in what was expected to be a tight game between two of the country's elite teams. The shorthanded, fourth-ranked Tigers (8-2) never had a chance, losing 16-4 to the No. 2 Orangemen (9-1). …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Diamondback via U-Wire
April 25, 2000HEADLINE: U. Maryland campus veteran finds home in chapel
BYLINE: By Brianne Warner, The Diamondback
SOURCE: U. Maryland
DATELINE: College Park, Md."I feel like I've been going to college ever since I went to college," Nick Kovalakides says. This is no exaggeration.
In his 34 years at the University of Maryland, Kovalakides has scheduled weddings, taught physical education classes, founded the campus visitor center, announced Terp stars before major games, coached track teams to ACC championships year after year and directed Campus Recreation Services.
His official position now is the campus visitor advocate, which includes roles as the director of the Campus Visitor Center and scheduler of hundreds of chapel weddings each year.
The former campus track coach and assistant professor graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor's degree in 1961 and a master's degree in 1968, both in physical education.
But why come back? Why stay for 34 straight years?
"I enjoyed college," he answers. And, it becomes clear, he still does. …
A track scholarship first drew Kovalakides to Maryland from his Princeton, N.J., home. …
The Georgian architecture at the University of Maryland also appealed to the New Jersey teen. Princeton University, down the street from his childhood home, was "a mixed bag of modern buildings and old buildings," he says. With building after building cloaked in red-brown brick and decorated with white columns, Maryland was different. "It looked like a unit," Kovalakides says. "It looked like it had a purpose." …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 Daily Orange via U-Wire
April 25, 2000HEADLINE: Sweatshop monitors to visit Syracuse U., try to gather support
BYLINE: By Beth Braverman, Daily Orange
DATELINE: Syracuse, N.Y.Representatives from the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium will speak this week with Syracuse University's Trademark Licensing Advisory Board to discuss the organizations' role in sweatshop monitoring.
The board will meet Wednesday morning with Robert Durkee, vice president of public affairs at Princeton University and the representative of all universities to the FLA, said Kevin Morrow, an SU spokesman.
It will meet Thursday morning with David Unger, a Cornell University student who represents the WRC.
"I was invited by both the advisory anti-sweatshop group on campus and the advisory council to essentially be a WRC representative and answer as many questions as the advisory board has," Unger said. "I am going to go in there and make it perfectly clear that I am not an expert on this issue, I am merely a student who has been involved with this for two years now."
The meetings are in response to student concerns regarding SU selling goods manufactured in sweatshops, Morrow said. …
Both Unger and Durkee will attend a breakfast roundtable during their visits, in which they will gather privately with campus media to discuss reasons the university should support their organizations, Morrow said. After the roundtable, the representatives will meet privately with members of the licensing board, he added. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Guardian via U-Wire
April 25, 2000HEADLINE: Teach For America an attractive option for some grads
BYLINE: By Malavika Gangolly, The Guardian
SOURCE: U. California-San Diego
DATELINE: La Jolla, Calif.In 1998, Marshall senior Emily Green knew she was interested in pursuing a career in teaching, but she did not know what steps to take in order to achieve her goal. Then, a friend told her about Teach For America, a national corps comprised of recent college graduates who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools that have minimal resources. Curious about the program, Green attended an information session and knew right away that she was interested in participating. Two years later, Green is teaching at Willowbrook Middle School in Compton, Calif.
"I felt lost in terms of how to begin my teaching career," Green said. "Teach for America seemed like a great, organized way to be introduced to the field of teaching."
Green is one of over 6,000 people who have participated in TFA since its creation in 1989. TFA began as an idea of Wendy Kopp, then a senior at Princeton University. Driven by the concern that children in this nation do not have equal access to an excellent education, Kopp used her senior thesis to propose her idea of a national teacher corps. Shortly thereafter, the Mobil Corporation approved a $26,000 grant to start the organization, and Wendy Kopp began making her thesis a reality. …
The American Prospect
Copyright 2000 The American Prospect, Inc.
April 24, 2000HEADLINE: CHECKING PANDORA'S BOX;
The Pitfalls of Census 2000
BYLINE: BY JONATHAN TILOVECensus Director Kenneth Prewitt officially launched the 2000 Census effort in January by riding a dog sled into Unalakleet, Alaska, where he was feted by residents of this tiny fishing village on the Bering Sea with a potluck dinner of moose liver and muktuk (whale skin) and entertained by enumeration-minded cheerleaders who chanted, "Census, census, count us first!" The next morning Prewitt obliged, knocking on the door of an aged Inuit couple and filling out the very first census form. It was a bright beginning for America's demographic Iditarod, but the singular clarity and good cheer of that moment may seem quite quaint by the time the government reports to America the final census outcome.
Clouding the horizon are two large questions, both centering on race:
First, the Census Bureau right now is on track to produce two separate and different counts of the American people. One will be the actual head count it makes of census day, April 1, the day in the life of the American people that the decennial census is supposed to record. The other population count will be adjusted, based upon the results of a statistical sample to be done over the summer, in order to correct for the usual undercount in the field, which especially tends to miss Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians. Because blacks and Hispanics -- who in sheer numbers are the ones most undercounted -- tend to be Democrats, Democrats almost universally see the wisdom in sampling and adjusting the totals, while Republicans, with very few exceptions (Senator John McCain was one of them), do not. But even if the Census Bureau, as now seems likely, produces both adjusted and unadjusted numbers, it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will permit adjusted numbers to be used for what, in the political realm, is their most important purpose -- redistricting.
The counting issue is difficult because it precisely locates the tenderest spot of American and, more particularly, liberal ambivalence on race. Up close, the individual's desire to break out of the straitjacket of racial categories is compelling. The whole notion of requiring people to officially identify themselves by race, or even races, is at some level noxious. And yet, whatever its origins, counting by race is the only way to understand and calibrate how race is in fact experienced, and to fashion methods of amelioration.
"We agreed upon the convenient fiction that we would classify people as if they were a single race because we saw a larger goal that would be addressed," says Joshua Goldstein, an associate professor affiliated with Princeton University's Office of Population Research. Goldstein's own analysis of census data suggests that the bureau may be underestimating how many people will choose more than one race. He suggests it may be two or three times the 2 percent of the population that the Census Bureau projects. And, of course, in some places, the numbers will be much higher. At the 1998 dress rehearsal census in Sacramento, California, 5.4 percent of the population -- and in some parts of town 20 percent of the population -- chose more than one race. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
April 24, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Parkersburg H.S. football coach wins state honor
BYLINE: By DAVE POE, The Parkersburg NewsPARKERSBURG, W.Va. - Marshall Burdette, who guided Parkersburg High School's football team to a 14-0 season and the Class AAA state championship, has been named West Virginia High School Coach of the Year.
In one of the closest votes in the history of the West Virginia Sports Writers Association, Burdette edged out last year's winner, Alan Fiddler, who led Moorefield High School to its fourth straight Class A state football title.
Burdette became the head coach at Parkersburg in 1991, inheriting a program that hadn't reached the state playoffs since 1985. After failing to make the playoffs in his first three seasons at the Big Red helm, Parkersburg has been a playoff qualifier in each of Burdette's past six seasons. …
Burdette's teams are known for their suffocating defense. Parkersburg has produced three of the last five winners of the Sam Huff Award, given annually to the top defensive player in West Virginia.
They were Nathan Kirby in 1995, Eric Grimm in 1998 and Al Hammell in 1999.
Kirby signed to play football for the University of Pittsburgh, Grimm is a starter on West Virginia University's baseball team and Hammell intends to play football for Princeton University next fall. …
Agence France Presse
Copyright 2000 Agence France Presse
April 24, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: UN conference on disarmament to open Monday
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS, April 24Representatives from 188 nations were to gather in New York Monday for a major review of a 1970 treaty seeking to stem the development of nuclear weapons around the globe.
The ultimate goal of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is to completely eliminate weapons of mass destruction.
The NPT prohibits non-nuclear nations from developing nuclear weapons, while requiring that nuclear powers take steps towards the elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
United States and the other acknowledged nuclear powers say they are committed to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, and vow not to threaten the use of such devices against non-nuclear countries. …
Israel likely will come under close scrutiny during the conference, which is held once every five years and which runs this year through May 19.
Experts said the growing international isolation of the United States is another factor increasing pressure on Israel.
"The erosion of US leadership makes it much more likely that there will be pressure to name Israel" in a resolution calling for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, said Zia Mian, a physicist and nuclear policy analyst at Princeton University. …
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 2000 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
April 24, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Ocean Township principal singled out for special studies
BYLINE: STAFF REPORTJOHN LYSKO, THE PRINCIPAL of Ocean Township High School, has been named a 2000 Fellow of the School Leadership Program for public school principals. The fellowship is sponsored by the Principals' Center for the Garden State and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
The award provides Lysko a $5,000 grant to support his study of neuroscience and the applications of brain research to teaching and learning. Lysenko will attend a six-day conference this summer in Boston that will focus on using the latest brain research to enhance classroom techniques.
The high school principal also will take part in a summer leadership institute at Princeton University that will explore how administrators can best adapt to the new century's changes.
Lysko said neuroscience - a relatively new field, the study of how the brain works - is driving massive shifts in educational methods, and called the turn of the 21st century an exciting time to be active in education. …
Business Week
Copyright 2000 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
April 24, 2000HEADLINE: Backlash: Behind the Anxiety Over Globalization
BYLINE: BY AARON BERNSTEIN; With Elisabeth Malkin in Mexico City and bureau reports
HIGHLIGHT: Many fear that free trade harms wages, jobs, and the environmentAsk David K. Hayes about the impact of globalization on his life and you'll hear the story of a painful roller-coaster ride. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. factory in Gadsden, Ala., where he has worked for 24 years, decided to shift most of its tiremaking to low-wage Mexico and Brazil early last year. The plant slashed its workforce from 1,850 to 628. The 44-year-old father of two was lucky and landed a job paying the same $36,000 salary at another Goodyear plant 300 miles away. Hayes's wife didn't want to quit her $30,000-a-year nursing job, so Hayes rented a small apartment in Union City, Tenn., seeing his family on weekends. Then in October, Goodyear reversed course and rehired nearly 700 people in Gadsden, including Hayes. It's good to be home, he says, but he is constantly fearful that the company will switch again. ''It has been nerve-wracking,'' he says. ''We try to be cautious on spending, because I don't know if I'll have a job in six months.'' …
Of course, with jobs plentiful today, losing one is less disastrous than it was back in 1992. But it's still a traumatic experience. About 25% of all job-losers still aren't working three years afterward, according to Princeton University economist Henry S. Farber, who analyzed government survey data through 1997, the latest year available. Some simply retire early. The 75% who do get another job still face that 6% gap, plus the income lost if they're unemployed until they find new work. …
Medical Industry Today
Copyright 2000 Medical Data International, Inc.
April 24, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Many Patients Lack Adequate 'Health Literacy' Skills, Experts Say
By Toni Vranjes
The problem can take many forms. It can range from inability to comprehend a consent form for a medical procedure, to failure to understand when a medical appointment has been scheduled.
Even tasks that some people take for granted--such as reading the label on a prescription bottle--can be a daunting task for those who face the problem.
The common theme in all of these situations is "health illiteracy," defined as an inability to read, understand and act correctly on health information, according to experts who are trying to address the issue. And although it is a serious matter, the experts say, health illiteracy is not getting the attention it deserves. They stress that the ramifications of the problem are very serious, in terms of patient health as well as healthcare costs. …
Although no study has measured directly the health literacy skills of the U.S. population, the number of people with low health literacy skills can be estimated using findings from the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey, according to the Center for Health Care Strategies (Princeton, NJ). …
It is "safe to assume" that these approximately 90 million adults have difficulty understanding healthcare information, according to Stephen Somers, president of the Center for Health Care Strategies, a nonprofit policy and resource center affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. …
National Post
(formerly The Financial Post)
April 24, 2000 MondayHEADLINE: The art of making a business: Once a corporate lawyer, now Kristina Larson brokers paintings on the Internet
BYLINE: Marty Klinkenberg
DATELINE: NEW YORKNEW YORK - Kristina Larson worked as a corporate finance attorney for a Manhattan firm and enjoyed the spoils that come with such a high-brow position.
The money was terrific, but the price she paid was having little time to pursue outside interests. In particular, her job left her little time to pursue her interest in art.
'I was fortunate because, with the type of work that I did, I could afford a piece of nice artwork for my office,' the former Toronto resident says.
'But I didn't have the time to go looking from gallery to gallery. I was surrounded by bright, motivated people at work, and liked what I was doing. But after a while, I realized that being an attorney wasn't my passion.'
Art is her passion, and ArtAdvocate.com, an Internet site through which fanciers can peruse and purchase pieces, or arrange to see one in Ms. Larson's private gallery, is the result. …
A graduate of Columbia Law School, Ms. Larson has done pro bono work for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts as well as for the Museum of Modern Art. As an undergraduate, she took numerous art history classes and held a position as a docent at Princeton University's McCormack Art Museum. At Columbia, she studied both law and the visual arts. …
New Technology Week
Copyright 2000 King Communications Group, Inc.
April 24, 2000HEADLINE: Corporate Research Tempts Universities
BYLINE: SCOTT NANCEWhile providing the intellectual capital for corporations developing new technologies and products provides research universities with revenue and other benefits, a collision course of sorts is emerging between academia's traditional search for knowledge and its more recent pursuit of profits.
Former and present university leaders and others debated the budding culture clash in a day-long program on the role of American research universities, held April 17 in Washington, D.C., to mark the centennial anniversary of the Association of American Universities.
"The dangers are real," noted Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Charles Vest.
He and others harkened to a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine titled "The Kept University," which argues that reliance on corporately funded research puts at risk a university's core mission of independent inquiry. …
Rampant commercialism has already begun to affect the character of universities and their faculties, argued William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton University
"As dot.coms dot the landscape, they create new temptations for institutions-and perhaps especially for their faculties-and they make it harder to control the 'How do I get mine?' mentality," he said. "Everything and everybody seems for sale, and it isn't always pretty."
Commercialism also has changed what others expect from a university, Bowen argued.
"Private funders...ask with increasing insistence whether the college is sufficiently business-like or entrepreneurial, rather than perhaps some larger questions," he said. "Governments who want practical results also want to see earned income increase relative to more general sources."
Such profit-motivated trends make it harder for institutions to sustain activities that do not have financial or market appeal, Bowen said. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
April 24, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Bush Insists to Voters His Blood Is Red, Not Blue
BYLINE: By FRANK BRUNI
DATELINE: AUSTIN, Tex., April 20It is the message behind the words he chooses, from his references to undecided voters as "tire kickers" to his promises, from the podium, to get to the next point "right quick."
It is the signal embedded in his appetites, which veer toward Cheez Doodles, Fritos and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and in his attire: unfussy suits, plain neckties and, from time to time, cowboy boots as big and brash as the state of Texas.
Gov. George W. Bush is constantly letting people know, in one way or another, that he is a regular, down-home kinda guy. Trendy television shows? Doesn't watch 'em. Fancy-schmancy vacations? Doesn't take 'em. Literary novels? Doesn't read 'em. Who has the patience for all that showy verbiage, especially if there's a good baseball game on the tube?
Of all the claims the Texas governor is making in his quest for the presidency, this is one of the most central: I am not a snob, not an egghead, not a slave to any kind of fashion -- sartorial, aesthetic or intellectual. …
"There's a danger of not being taken too seriously," said Fred I. Greenstein, the author of the book "The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style From F.D.R. to Clinton" (The Free Press, 2000).
"There's a tension there," Mr. Greenstein, a historian at Princeton University, added. "There needs to be a sensible balance between being elevated and being accessible."
Mr. Bush and his advisers are clearly conscious of that. At regular intervals, Mr. Bush lets drop the title of the current book he is consuming.
"Lenin's Tomb," a study of the Soviet Union by David Remnick, a former correspondent in Moscow and now editor of The New Yorker, was the selection two weeks ago, and it continued a trend: ever since a certain pop quiz on foreign leaders last fall, Mr. Bush's reading list has had distinctly global dimensions. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
April 24, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY;
Princeton Protesters Seek Ouster of Bioethicist
DATELINE: PRINCETONAbout a dozen protesters who rallied at Princeton University on Saturday said a bioethics professor should be dismissed because of his views regarding developmentally disabled newborns.
Protesters condemned the professor, Peter Singer, for his view that parents should be allowed the choice of euthanizing infants with debilitating conditions within a month of their births. The protesters said his opinions are outside the bounds of academic freedom.
Dr. Singer, an Australian philosopher and bioethicist, was named to the university's Ira W. DeCamp Professorship of Bioethics at the Center for Human Values in 1998.
The protest was led by Mary Wilt, the mother of a child with Down syndrome. The protesters also gave a university official a petition calling for Dr. Singer's ouster.
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Copyright 2000 The San Diego Union-Tribune
April 24, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: San Diego case escalates war over small-job bid method
BYLINE: Ed Mendel; STAFF WRITERSACRAMENTO -- Harry Mellon, who attended SDSU in the 1970s while in the Army, went on during his military career to develop a system that can save government agencies time and money when they issue contracts for small jobs.
Now he has a firm based in South Carolina, the Gordian Group, that sells a streamlining service to governments at all levels that helps them cut through the knot of bureaucratic red tape.
It's called job order contracting, a method of bundling small jobs into one master contract to reduce the number of bids.
Mellon's firm is dominant in the new field. After his Gordian Group helped push through legislation authorizing job order contracting for California counties and the California State University system, nearly all of the agencies that have issued contracts under the new laws have purchased the Gordian system….
Mellon developed the job order contracting system for the military while in serving with the Army in Europe. He had received a college degree from SDSU, advanced degrees from George Washington University and Princeton University, and eventually made job order contracting a business. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
April 24, 2000HEADLINE: Princeton graduate students demand University dental plan
BYLINE: By Sonia Fernandez, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.After a semester spent responding to University-imposed restrictions on the Debasement Bar and speculation over the possible location for a sixth residential college, graduate students have taken a proactive stance on another issue -- securing dental benefits for University employees.
The charge has been led by Graduate Students for Local Activism -- a group that earlier this month held a rally in Firestone plaza during which 149 students, faculty and staff pledged their support for the dental benefits campaign.
According to Karthick Ramakrishnan GS, the group's president, no University employees are granted dental care under their health benefits plans. "We're working to get dental benefits for all. Undergraduates could purchase into a plan once it is available," he said. "We're hoping to get faculty and employees on board."
TOO EXPENSIVE
The University blocked past efforts to secure dental coverage because it was deemed too expensive, Ramakrishnan said. He added, however, that the University's recent record-breaking fund-raising campaign should help absorb the costs.
"It's strange that Princeton portrays itself as cash-strapped when it's getting millions every day. Making sure the quality of life for employees is good is just as important as putting up a new building," he said. …
University Wire
Copyright 2000 The Daily Princetonian via U-Wire
April 24, 2000HEADLINE: Princeton students debate merits of interdisciplinary majors
BYLINE: By Sophia Hollander, The Daily Princetonian
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.Eric Bolesh, a senior at Harvard University, scanned his college options four years ago and saw the majors he expected to see. He scoured through the standard descriptions - English, history, biology - but the different subjects blurred into one, and became indistinguishable from one another.
As he searched through the materials, however, something caught his eye, a different kind of major and maybe a new academic experience - Harvard's department of folklore and mythology.
It was something he had never seen before. Intrigued, he visited the department as a senior in high school. And now, in just a few months, Bolesh will graduate as a double concentrator in folklore and mythology and history.
"It's really made me happy about being here at Harvard," Bolesh said. "I honestly can't think of any other option that would have given me a more fulfilling experience in college." …
Among Ivy League schools, Princeton stands alone in offering interdisciplinary studies primarily as certificate programs rather than as majors. At Yale, undergraduates can major in a variety of programs including Renaissance studies, humanities, African studies, computer science and psychology. …
"In some respects, I think Princeton has maintained the position that it's important for a student to have a firm foundation and grounding in a single discipline and with that grounding can move into interdisciplinary studies by having a certificate," Associate Dean of the College Hank Dobin said. "I think there is perhaps some concern that some interdisciplinary majors don't provide foundations in a kind of single disciplinary perspective in sufficient depth. I do believe that's important." …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
April 23, 2000HEADLINE: Critics of Princeton bioethics professor call for ouster
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.About a dozen parents who rallied at Princeton University said bioethics Professor Peter Singer should be dismissed because of his views regarding developmentally disabled newborns.
Protesters on Saturday condemned Singer for his view that parents should be allowed the choice to euthanize infants with debilitating conditions within a month of their births. They said his opinions are outside the bounds of academic freedom.
Singer, an Australian philosopher and internationally recognized bioethicist, was named to the university's Ira W. DeCamp Professorship of Bioethics at the Center for Human Values in 1998.
The protest was led by Mary Wilt, a founding member of United Parents Protesting Singer. She traveled from her Virginia Beach, Va., home with her 10-year-old daughter, Emily, who has Down syndrome. The protesters also presented a university official with a petition calling for Singer's ouster. The petition had been signed by 1,500 people worldwide. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
April 23, 2000HEADLINE: FIFTY FIVE PLUS / ATTITUDE PLUS;
BRAIN POWER DETERMINATION LED STROKE VICTIM TO SELF REHABILITATION
BYLINE: BY DALE KOPEL, GLOBE CORRESPONDENTIt was Oct. 10, 1990, and Lynn Lazarus Serper had just spent a typically difficult week with her 89-year-old father who was recovering from a heart attack in New York, where he lived alone. She boarded the plane that was to take her to the Worcester airport near her home, but because of bad weather the flight had to be diverted to Boston. If she hadn't felt so extraordinarily tired that night, she probably wouldn't have minded - at least not as much. The change would mean an extra hour riding in a van from Logan Airport to her home.
At 48, she couldn't remember ever feeling so stressed. It wasn't just trying to take care of her father, it was also the rest of her life. She had separated from her husband 10 months earlier and was cultivating a new romance; had decided to stop teaching learning disabled children so that she could complete her doctoral dissertation on human cognitive development at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; was helping her oldest daughter plan a June wedding, and was desperately trying to make time to bond with her son and daughter-in-law's new baby, her first grandchild.
As she sat waiting for the airport van to take her home, she felt an odd pain over her right eye. It was an ache that moved in slowly, almost imperceptibly.
"At first it felt like a gentle wave spreading over sand," she says. "Then the wave started pounding, the intensity and pain so great, my entire head began to throb."
By the time she got home, the van driver had to help her to her door. The next thing she remembers is waking up in a hospital bed almost a month later. Her family and doctors filled her in on what happened in between, how her son, Jay Serper, found her in her bed - nearly 24 hours after the van driver dropped her off - an overturned telephone on the floor, an unopened bottle of Bufferin in her hand. She was rushed to the hospital where it was determined a brain aneurysm had ruptured and surgery was required. The following day, she suffered a cerebral stroke and remained in a coma for three weeks. …
Her doctors told her family to take her home, provide her with love and long-term care, hire people who would bathe her, dress her, cook for her, prop her up in a wheelchair in front of the television. They said that she would never recover.
Now, 10 years later, Serper has her doctor of education degree. (She competed and defended her dissertation in 1994.) She is a frequent speaker at colleges and universities; heads her own Boston-based company, Brain Enhancement Services, Inc., and has developed The Serper Method of Brain Regrowth and Vitality, a program based on her own self-rehabilitation that she uses with others who have suffered a stroke or other cerebral trauma, or who have been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's disease. …
In October 1999, as Serper was making the final changes to her book, the journal Science reported that Elizabeth Gould and Charles G. Gross, research biologists at Princeton University who were experimenting using macaque monkeys, found that thousands of freshly born neurons arrive each day in three areas of the cerebral cortex where memories are known to be stored. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
April 23, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: HONORS SET FOR FLUTIE, BELLINO
The Eastern Massachusetts Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame will honor Heisman Trophy winners Doug Flutie and Joe Bellino at its 25th anniversary banquet at Lantana's Restaurant in Randolph May 8 at 7 p.m.
Flutie, a quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and a former All-American at Boston College, will be presented the chapter's Distinguished American Award. Bellino, a former Boston Patriot whose 18 touchdowns in 1960 guided Navy to a 9-1 record, will receive the Contribution to Amateur Football Award.
Dick Kazmaier, the 1951 Heisman winner from Princeton University, also will be in attendance, as well as former Boston Patriot Ron Burton.
The chapter will honor 22 high school scholar-athletes as well as the Eagles from Everett, the 1999 Pop Warner New England champions. …
The Buffalo News
Copyright 2000 The Buffalo News
April 23, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: DR. CHARLES F. BECKER DIES; PATHOLOGIST, MEDICAL INNOVATOR
BYLINE: TOM BUCKHAM; News Staff ReporterDuring his 40 years in medicine, Dr. Charles F. Becker was an innovator as well as a leading pathologist.
When a group of gynecologists complained that hospital laboratories were too slow to report Pap smear results, he set up one of the area's first private cytology labs.
After a businessman friend approached him about reinventing the autopsy table, he helped design one that became the standard for pathology laboratories worldwide. …
Becker graduated with honors from Nichols School and cum laude from both Princeton University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1934, and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree in 1938. …
The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT)
Copyright 2000 The Deseret News Publishing Co.
April 23, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: A novel look at Marilyn
BYLINE: By Dennis LythgoeDeseret News staff writerHer new novel is "Blonde."
Joyce Carol Oates has always been interested in memorializing people and "bearing witness" for those who can't speak for themselves. Maybe it was only a matter of time before she set her sights on the tragic life of the enigmatic sex goddess Marilyn Monroe.
At the age of 62, Oates has accumulated an impressive legacy of books, including several volumes of short stories, novels, poetry and plays. Her most widely acclaimed novels are "Wonderland," "A Garden of Earthly Delights," "Expensive People" and "Them."
Married to Raymond Smith, she lives in New Jersey, where she teaches creative writing at Princeton University. Yet, she has managed for most of her professional life to produce two or three novels a year. Almost offhandedly, she said, "I have always lived a very conventional life of moderation, absolutely regular hours, nothing exotic, no need, even, to organize my time." …
The Detroit News
Copyright 2000 The Detroit News, Inc.
April 23, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Easter, animal rights and human life
BYLINE: Thomas J. Bray / The Detroit NewsThe papers Friday brought news of the death of Michael, who had collapsed at the age of 27 from unknown causes.
Michael, in case you didn't know it, was a gorilla. Since 1976, researchers at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, Calif., had been working to teach him sign language. He was said to have mastered more than 500 signs. It was never quite clear whether Michael was using the signs to communicate thoughts or just to -- so to speak -- ape his handlers.
But, declared Dr. Francine Patterson, who cared for Michael since he was imported from Cameroon, "He has been an inspiration to us all." …
Traditional humane societies, with millions of members, are embracing versions of animal rights. Law students at Harvard, Duke and Georgetown universities can now take courses in animal legal rights. Princeton University recently hired as the first occupant of a new chair in bioethics an Oxford-trained scholar named Peter Singer, who is perhaps best known for a book, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, which was published in 1975 and has reportedly sold an astonishing 500,000 copies. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
April 23, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Suddenly This Summer;
The Arrival of a Flock of Minor League Teams Brings Urban Renewal, But Some Nesting Areas Are Crowded
BYLINE: By ROBERT HANLEY
DATELINE: CENTRAL ISLIPTHERE will be speeches. A politician or two will limber up rusty arms to lob ceremonial first pitches. An umpire will shout the traditional command, and minor-league baseball will come to Long Island, following a trend that has swept the New York region.
The debut of the Long Island Ducks this Friday night, in a gleaming new $19.9 million stadium here, will follow a script that has played out several times in just the last six summers in New Jersey, Connecticut and the Hudson Valley. Last year, it happened in Newark and Bridgewater, N.J. The year before it was Bridgeport, Conn., and Atlantic City. Next year, under current plans, it will be Camden.
A decade ago, the region had only one minor-league team, in New Britain, Conn. This season, with the arrival of the Ducks and new teams in Queens and the Catskills, there will be 16 teams playing in four leagues within 100 miles of Times Square. …
Cultural experts say something deeper than gimmickry has spurred the resurgence. Sean Wilentz, director of the American studies program at Princeton University, cites "baby-boomer nostalgia."
"You feel closer to the players, closer to the other fans," he said. "It's a more human feel. And then there's all this cornball stuff, the little contests. It's much more community-oriented. And there's none of the drunkenness and vulgarity you see at some major-league stadiums." …
The Ottawa Citizen
Copyright 2000 Southam Inc.
April 23, 2000, Sunday
HEADLINE: Reviving a reputation
BYLINE: Douglas FetherlingA few weeks ago, a visiting writer came across Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Journals of Aaron Burr and Mary-Jo Klein's magnificent Political Papers of Aaron Burr on my shelves. My friend naturally asked, ''Who the hell is Aaron Burr?'' I answered, a little mischievously, ''He was the brains behind Thomas Jefferson.'' My guest looked puzzled. Who wouldn't?
Why would anybody in Canada have the slightest interest in Burr (1756-1836), a hero of the American Revolution on the wrong side (he helped to invade Montreal) and third vice-president of the United States, under his arch-enemy Jefferson, who defeated him for the presidency by the barest of margins? The answer briefly is that Burr represents the lost ideal of intellect in politics, the idea that progressive, tolerant, well-educated and perfectly rounded figures can play a role in public life that splits the difference between European snobbery and American populism. Burr should have been a model for Canada's politics. He stands for what the system should have been like but isn't, not in the least.
Instead, he is unknown here and is vilified in his own country. This latter situation may be traced to the fact that Burr, provoked beyond reason, killed his arch-rival, Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the Treasury, in a duel in 1804. Later, in an unrelated matter, he was tried on a trumped-up treason charge orchestrated by Jefferson. …
For 150 years, both scholars and popular writers have tried to restore Burr's rightful reputation, as Mr. Kennedy attempts to do in his pleasurably written and wide-ranging triptych, comparing his skill, daring, vision, complexity and liberality of spirit with those of Jefferson, the supposedly polymathic genius -- in fact, a southern hypocrite and a hater of the first order -- and with Hamilton, Burr's exact contemporary, an ambitious upstart who tried to wring every advantage from what he rightly saw as the life-denying spirit of republican zealotry.
Burr resembled neither. He was an urban aristocrat, rather than a country squire like Jefferson. His father and grandfather were both presidents of what is now Princeton University, and he was one of the most civilized people of his time and place. He was an early champion of feminism, especially as regards equality of education, and for much of his adult life wore an amulet of Mary Wollstonecraft on his wrist. …
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
April 23, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: EASTER MEANS CHURCH AND CHOCOLATE
BYLINE: Renee Stovsky; Of The Post-Dispatch* A hybrid of the secular and the sacred, this holiest of holy days in the Christian calendar is also one of the most important for the candy companies and other retailers.
The Easter Bunny may have left more than a basketful of jelly beans, chocolate rabbits and marshmallow eggs at your house today.
Holiday bounty for kids this year included giant $99 plush ducks, 3-D puzzles, "Pat the Bunny" musical pillows and "Bowling for Bunnies" games.
Baskets for adults ranged from sports-themed (fitness lozenges and "All-Century Team" baseball videos) to New Age (stress mints and "50 Simple Ways to Pamper Yourself" paperbacks).
And serious collectors could have added new German papier mache eggs or handmade Beatrix Potter jewelry to their caches.
"Never underestimate how innovative American merchandisers can be," says Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of "Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays."
Despite the growing commercial marketplace, though, Easter continues to be a crucial religious celebration, says Schmidt, who is also a Princeton University professor of religion.
"Though some see the superabundance of rabbits, chicks and candies as a trivialization of the holiest of holy days in the Christian calendar, Easter today is a definite hybrid of the secular and the sacred," he says. "It may be a major retailing event, but it is also a major church-going occasion." …
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
Copyright 2000 Star Tribune
April 23, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Portman has a burgeoning career - and a life
BYLINE: Sean DalyNatalie Portman has a secret. Or at least she thinks so.
In just over an hour, the young actress best-known as Queen Amidala from "Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" will check out of her posh Beverly Hills hotel and begin a cross-country journey to her freshman dormitory at an undisclosed university in a city she would rather not reveal.
The only problem is that despite her efforts and bargaining with reporters -- "I'm counting on you guys not to say anything," she pleads -- the secret has pretty much been out since she arrived on a certain Ivy League campus in Cambridge Mass., in September.
It's not that she's trying to be difficult, she insisted. She simply wants to protect her privacy.
"I really just don't want visitors," said the actress, who also keeps her real surname under tight wraps (Portman is her grandmother's maiden name). "I talked to people who handled Brooke Shields when she was in college [at Princeton University] and they said she had hundreds of unwanted visitors a year. I haven't officially said where I'm at school because I just don't want to advertise it."
Like it or not, the public's interest in Portman, who will turn 19 in June, is likely to rekindle this week when she appears with Ashley Judd, Stockard Channing and Joan Cusack in the drama "Where The Heart Is." …
The Sunday Star-Times (Auckland)
Copyright 2000 Independent News Auckland Ltd.
April 23, 2000HEADLINE: Historical coup for Coetzee
BYLINE: SHARP IainSOUTH African writer JM Coetzee has now entered literary history. Not only is he the first person to win the Booker Prize twice (1983 and 1999), he has also pulled off the rare coup of claiming both the Booker and the prestigious 2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize with the same novel, Disgrace. His latest book The Lives of Animals will be released in New Zealand in early June. An unusual blend of fiction and philosophy, it began as a series of lectures he delivered at Princeton University in 1998. …
Wisconsin State Journal
Copyright 2000 Madison Newspapers, Inc.
April 23, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: SIX ELEMENTS OF POSITIVE MENTAL HEALTH
Researchers have developed six key elements of positive mental health. They apply to the elderly and the general population.
According to Carol Ryff, director of the UW-Madison Institute of Aging, and her colleague, Princeton University researcher Burton Singer, positive mental attitude helps keep the body healthy when hit with the inevitable difficult challenges in life.
Ryff and Singer's six elements of psychological well-being are:
*Self acceptance -- Holding positive attitudes toward oneself.
*Positive relations with others -- Warm, trusting relations with others.
*Autonomy -- The regulation of behavior from within. ''The fully functioning person is described as having an internal locus of evaluation, whereby one does not look to others for approval, but evaluates oneself by personal standards.''
*Environmental mastery -- ''The individual's ability to choose or create environments suitable to his or her psychic conditions.'' Included is participation in a sphere of activity outside of oneself.
*Purpose in life -- Beliefs that give one the feeling that there is purpose and meaning to life. ''One who functions positively has goals, intentions, and a sense of direction, all of which contribute to the feeling that life is meaningful.''
*Personal growth -- Continuing to develop one's potential, to grow and expand as a person, to remain open to experience.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
April 22, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: LOOKING AHEAD
CAPITALS NOTEBOOK*Raised with stars and stripes: Washington isn't exactly known as a hockey hotbed, but the Capitals do have one player who was raised wearing the team colors. Rookie C Jeff Halpern is a native of nearby Potomac, Md., and grew up idolizing Capitals greats such as D Rod Langway and C Dale Hunter. He attended Princeton University and was such a hit in Washington's training camp last September that he made the team. Halpern, 23, scored two goals in the series, including the Game 4 winner, prompting GM George McPhee to declare, "He's been our best player."
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
April 21, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Dartmouth officials announce changes to residential life
BYLINE: By REBECCA MAHONEY, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: CONCORD, N.H.A plan to tame the social lives of students at Dartmouth College, the Ivy League school that inspired the movie "Animal House," appears to be in sync with policies at elite schools around the country.
The plan, announced Wednesday, calls for the removal of bars and taps from fraternity and sorority houses and the creation of a new residential living system. The goal of the "cluster housing" will be to create space for social gatherings to form a core of student life outside the classroom.
Though the plan means sweeping changes for Dartmouth, the college is just one of many elite schools that are revamping campus social scenes and alcohol policies. …
At Princeton, trustees launched an expansive social agenda designed to reduce binge drinking on campus by sponsoring events on Thursday and Saturday nights. …
Agence France Presse
Copyright 2000 Agence France Presse
April 21, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: US and Israel likely to be isolated at UN nuclear conference: experts
BYLINE: Robert Holloway
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS, April 21Israel will be exposed to intense pressure to renounce nuclear weapons at month-long talks starting here Monday, partly because of the international isolation of the United States, experts said.
Zia Mian, a physicist and nuclear policy analyst at Princeton University, forecast "an anti-US feeding frenzy" at the five-yearly review conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which runs until May 19.
The decision on April 13 of the Russian parliament to ratify the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) with the United States had "created a new dynamic in NPT proceedings," Mian said.
The START treaty is a bilateral agreement which commits each side to cut its nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, to 3,500 American and 3,000 Russian warheads.
The Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, had waited seven years to ratify it.
But, Mian said, its decision would contrast sharply in the eyes of delegates to the NPT review with the refusal last year by the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). …
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 2000 The Baltimore Sun Company
April 21, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Dividend boosts point the way to winning stocks
BYLINE: Julius WestheimerMONEY MATTERS: "Whether single or married, more women now invest on their own, and discuss their strategies (either with a financial planner or broker) for creating future financial security." (Black Enterprise)
"When stocks are overpriced, the event that triggers a downturn is often unexpected. You probably won't see it coming -- and won't react fast enough when it occurs. Lesson: Allocate for a downturn. A broad portfolio softens the landing." (Burton Malkiel, Princeton University)
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE)
Copyright 2000 Bangor Daily News
April 21, 2000 FridayHEADLINE: Camden-Rockport High School
CAMDEN -- Valedictorians for 2000 have been named at Camden-Rockport High School. They are Theodosia Munroe Howell, Amanda Paige Smith and Charlotte L. Withey. .
Howell, the daughter of Jay and Antonia Fischer of Camden and the late Alleyne Howell III, is a three-year member of the National Honor Society, member of the student council … was accepted to the High School
Diplomats Program at Princeton University, created and completed an independent study on Japan and its history and culture …
International Herald Tribune
(Neuilly-sur-Seine, France)
Copyright 2000 International Herald Tribune
April 21, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Market's Slide Appears Unlikely to Damage U.S. Economy
BYLINE: By Louis Uchitelle; New York Times Service
DATELINE: NEW YORKUnless the rout on Wall Street resumes in earnest, the recent blow to wealth from the market's downturn is likely to knock the U.S. economy only partly off its stride.
From early January through last Friday, sell-offs destroyed an estimated $2 trillion to $3 trillion in total wealth, including $1.5 trillion in household savings. Most of that loss came in last week's steep decline. Spread the household decline over the roughly half of the U.S. population that owns stocks, and the loss averaged more than $12,000 a person What if that turned out to be long-lasting, and each foray upward in stock prices soon gave way to another slide? …
But for all the talk, the damage to the overall economy is likely to be minimal - unless markets take another severe dive, pushing stock gauges well below their lows so far this year. If the market merely fails to rebound, the growth rate of the economy should slow by this summer to about 3.6 percent, compared with growth of 4.6 percent last year, according to estimates by Macroeconomic Advisers of St. Louis, Missouri. The company makes computer simulations of the economy's expected behavior that are widely followed by government officials and economists. …
But if growth slows to around 3.5 percent, partly in response to weakness on Wall Street, that could bring the increase in economic output within the range that many say is sustainable without serious inflation risk. In that case, the Fed may not have to lift interest rates very much.
''To the extent the stock market takes this purchasing power away, the Fed has less to do,'' said Alan Blinder, a Princeton University economist and a former vice chairman of the Fed. …
NOTE: This story first appeared in The New York Times.
PR Newswire
Copyright 2000 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
April 21, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: A Guide to Understanding & Reducing Global Warming;
Denis Hayes, CEO of Earth Day 2000, Lets People Know What They Can Do To Make a Difference in the Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 21Island Press -- Many speculate that recent extreme weather patterns are due to global warming and the increase of carbon dioxide in the air. In his new book, Hayes quotes a report by the International Federation of Red Cross Societies:
"Extreme weather events have become more common. Unprecedented hurricane damage, winter floods, and summer droughts are wreaking serious havoc. More such disasters are expected, according to a report by the International Federation of Red Cross Societies."
"Unless we swiftly undertake several bold initiatives, global CO2 levels are likely to triple or even quadruple those from preindustrial times," says Hayes. "The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University recently modeled as best it could, a scenario in which CO2 quadruples. It concluded, among other things, that soil moisture could drop by 50 percent or more, wiping out much of agriculture in the Northern Hemisphere. The forces of nature that we have sought to master -- wild rivers, tropical storms, gale-force winds, extremes of heat -- would all increase in intensity." …
OBITUARIES
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
April 22, 2000, SaturdayOBITUARY
Gerald Garvey, 64, who wrote extensively on the inner workings of government as a professor of politics at Princeton University, on April 9 at Princeton Medical Center of cancer. Mr. Garvey focused on American politics, public policy, public administration and political theory, writing about these subjects in 11 books and numerous articles. His most recent book titles, as author or co-author, include "Public Administration: The Profession and the Practice" (St. Martin's, 1996), "Facing the Bureaucracy" (Jossey-Bass, 1993), and "Improving Government Performance: An Owner's Manual" (Brookings Institution Press, 1993).
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