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Princeton in the News
June 14, 2000
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HIGHLIGHTS
New Scientist
Copyright 2000 New Scientist, Reed Business Informatio
June 10, 2000HEADLINE: Out in the cold
BYLINE: Marcus ChownHIGHLIGHT: The cosmos doesn't need us any more. Marcus Chown finds a growing chorus of dissent against the anthropic principle
THE UNIVERSE is the way it is because if it weren't we wouldn't be here to see it. Profound insight or empty truism? This is the "anthropic principle", and in the past few years it has been embraced by many cosmologists to explain some of the most mystifying features of the Universe. But it leaves other scientists feeling deeply troubled.
One of them is cosmologist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University in New Jersey, who claims that the anthropic principle is sloppy and unscientific. "It's corrupting science," he says. His view is shared by physicist Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who believes that string theory will make the anthropic principle redundant. The pro- and anti-anthropic camps are debating just about the most profound question there is: why are we here ? But the final answer might not please either side.
What makes the debate more difficult is that a precise definition of the anthropic principle is hard to come by. Roughly speaking, it asserts that our existence restricts the possible values of any physical constants, because simply to be observed, the Universe must allow life to exist. If we assume that life anywhere in the Universe must be broadly like that on Earth, for example, the Universe must allow stars to form. And the Universe must be old enough for those stars to have created plenty of heavy elements - the building blocks of biological molecules - in order to allow life to evolve. …
"Either God fine-tuned the Universe for us to be here," says Tegmark, "or there are many universes, each with different values of the fundamental constants, and not surprisingly we find ourselves in one in which the constants have the right values to permit galaxies, stars and life."
Some have dubbed this the "multiverse". Inflation, one theory that aims to describe the first split second of existence after the big bang, hints that the observable Universe may simply be one bubble among an infinity of others in a vast ocean of space. Conceivably, the other universes might be distant patches of space where the fundamental constants are different. …
The cosmological constant, which is a measure of the curious repulsive force exerted by empty space, is an embarrassing 10123 times smaller than that predicted by quantum theory. Weinberg explains this by assuming that the constant takes on all possible values in all possible universes. Most universes would accelerate madly (where the constant is large) or make nothing but black holes (where it is large and negative). Only in a few freak universes where the constant is tiny would galaxies, stars and planets arise.
So why does Steinhardt so vehemently oppose the anthropic principle ? "I have several reasons," he says. "First, the anthropic principle is not testable, which means it is not science."
According to Steinhardt, a statement has scientific meaning only if it can be tested by an experiment or observation. He maintains that there is no such test for the anthropic principle. "This makes it entirely different from, say, Newton's general principle that the laws of physics are deterministic," he says. "This was tested and found to be false in the realm of the atom." …
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 2000 Asbury Park Press, Inc.June 7, 2000, Wednesday
HEADLINE: Nurturing young trees so they can stand tall for generations to come
BYLINE: ANDREW HOUCKAll around us are giant majestic trees, which seem to have significance only to those who have witnessed their beauty or sat under their shade. However, they also represent events happening beyond the edges of campus at the time they were planted. Two of the oldest trees on the Princeton campus were planted to commemorate the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766.
And the giant elm near Stanhope Hall, also within sight, was planted during the Great Depression. Many of these inexpensive trees were planted during that period, both on and off campus. Although at times we shelter ourselves from the world around us, the Princeton name is not a shield. Princeton's campus, and its students, must celebrate and suffer with everyone else.
While these trees have historical significance, they also bear the stories and memories of generations of Princeton students who have learned, loved and laughed underneath their branches. A few years ago, while removing a dying tree, the grounds crew found a woman's wallet that had been lost and buried under years of dirt and foliage. Inside was a student ID from a member of the class of 1974.
Jim Consolloy, the University's grounds manager, tracked her down, now a lawyer working in the World Trade Center, and told her, 'You're not going to believe this, but we recently found a wallet that you lost 20 years ago. It has your old student ID and driver's license, but no cash. Do you want us to send it to you?' She asked if there was a change purse in the wallet. After peeling away layers of decrepit leather, Jim found the change purse and inside, a pair of diamond earrings. These were a family heirloom, passed down from the alum's grandmother.
There is a Greek proverb, quoted by our classmate Dan Russell in this year's Nassau Herald: "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit." We celebrate today underneath the boughs of great trees; those who planted them only felt an imaginary shade as they toiled with small branches.
Maintaining all of the trees on this campus is an arduous task; Princeton currently employs 20 grounds workers and two-full time arborists. I personally was curious about what happens during droughts. The university clearly can't water every single tree; do they rank them? Do they have a "list of important trees" that get watered?
No, the university knows that older trees have deep enough roots that they can draw water from well below the dry surface. It is the young trees that are nurtured by this University. We all have benefited from this practice; the university and everyone around us have nurtured us until our roots grew deep enough for us to sustain ourselves. …
EVENING CHRONICLE (Newcastle, UK)
Copyright 2000 Newcastle Chronicle & Journal Ltd
June 12, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Your questions answered
LAST week's question from L Norman, of Wallsend - "where and what was the original ivory tower?" - really did have you climbing the walls in frustration, didn't it?
The answer can be unearthed in the Bible, in Psalm 45, which refers to an ivory palace or house belonging to King Ahab [869-850 BC].
Ivory for decoration, rather than as a building material, was used in the ancient Near East.
Other theories centre on Princeton University's graduate college tower, completed in 1913. It became known as the Ivory Tower because one of its benefactors was William Procter, of Procter , whose company manufactured ivory soap.
The tower itself is an exact replica of one at Magdalen College at Oxford.
The Princeton faculty song contains a verse written in 1926 about the first dean of the college: "Here's to Andrew Fleming West, a Latin scholar self-confessed. He lived to see a lifetime's hope, constructed out of ivory soap."
From ivory towers to sod's law. Where does the phrase come from? S Stephenson, from North Shields, wanted to know. …
OTHER HEADLINES
BILLBOARD
Copyright 2000 BPI Communications, Inc.
June 17, 2000HEADLINE: HOMEFRONT: AN UPDATE ON BBMG EVENTS & HAPPENINGS - Billboard Picks Bezos As Video Person Of The Year
Jeff Bezos, president and CEO of Amazon.com has been named Video Person of the Year by Billboard. Bezos will be honored at a Billboard reception during the Video Software Dealers Assn. convention in Las Vegas this July.
Bezos, who led Amazon.com to its $250 million in video sales in 1999, has been chairman of the board of the company since founding it in 1994 and CEO since May 1996. From December 1990 to June 1994, he was employed by D.E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street investment firm, becoming Senior Vice President in 1992. …
Bezos received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Summa Cum Laude, from Princeton University.
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
June 14, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Senators report assets, liabilities
BYLINE: By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTONTake away his $136,700 congressional salary, and Missouri Sen. Christopher Bond may have a slimmer investment portfolio than his teen-age son.
Bond definitely possesses less wealth than Missouri's junior senator, Republican John Ashcroft, whose assets are approaching as much as $3 million.
In Senate financial disclosure forms released Wednesday, Bond reported retirement accounts and mutual funds worth between $267,014 and $705,000 last year. But his son, Sam, has investments worth $388,013-$920,000, Bond reported.
The younger Bond's relative wealth didn't keep him from working. The 19-year-old Princeton University student waited tables at Washington's Cactus Cantina last summer. His earnings aren't required on the disclosure forms, which are intended to give a broad, albeit incomplete, look at members' outside earnings, assets and other financial arrangements. …
Bond, 61, is obviously keeping an eye on retirement investments, which account for his major assets. He reported pension accounts and IRAs worth at least $252,014 and as much as $655,000. And a state retirement fund from Bond's years as Missouri governor, state auditor and assistant attorney general will pay $698 a month beginning in 2004.
Sam Bond's investments, including a trust set up by his grandparents, were unharmed by the troubles that damaged his father's fortune in the early 1990s. The GOP senator, whose family money came from brick making, sued his investment manager and PaineWebber in 1993, alleging his $1.3 million trust fund had been drained. He settled with PaineWebber three years later for $900,000. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
June 14, 2000, WednesdayBYLINE: By The Associated Press
Here are highlights of 1999 personal financial disclosure forms for Missouri senators. Items are required to be listed only in financial ranges.
Christopher (Kit) Bond, R-Mo., Small Business Committee chairman
Earned income: $136,700 …
Major Assets: Retirement pension accounts and IRAs worth $252,014-$655,000; a mutual fund worth $15,000-$50,000 …
Narrative: Bond's son, Sam, who is a Princeton University student, has his own investment portfolio with assets worth at least $388,013-$920,000 and income worth $17,606-$58,000. Sam Bond also had a summer job at Washington's Cactus Cantina that earned more than $1,000. …
Birmingham Post
Copyright 2000 Midland Independent Newspapers plc
June 13, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: WHY HUMAN INTELLIGENCE COULD ADD UP TO MORE THAN SIMPLY WORDS AND NUMBERS
BYLINE: Jonathan Walker Education CorrespondentHarvard University academic Prof Howard Gardner is best known for his criticism of the idea that human intelligence involves mathematic and grammatical abilities.
These can be measured using IQ tests or traditional academic assessments such as Scholastic Aptitude Tests.
Instead he has developed the theory of 'multiple intelligences', which suggests each person's level of intelligence is actually made up of autonomous faculties that can work individually or in concert with other faculties.
Prof Gardner originally identified seven such faculties, which he labelled 'intelligences'. These include:
Musical intelligence - our ability to perform and comprehend musically.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence - the extent to which we control our movements, our balance, agility and grace.
Logical-mathematical intelligence - our ability to mentally process logical problems and equations.
Linguistic intelligence - our ability to construct and comprehend language.
Spatial intelligence - our ability to comprehend shapes and images in three dimensions. For example, when putting together a puzzle, creating a sculpture or understanding a map.
Interpersonal intelligence - our ability to interact with others, understand them and interpret their behaviour.
Intrapersonal intelligence - our cognitive ability to understand and the sense of our 'self'. …He is Professor in Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and holds positions as Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Adjunct Professor of Neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine.
. He has been awarded 14 honorary degrees, including degrees from Princeton University, McGill University and Tel Aviv University. …
THE HARTFORD COURANT
Copyright 2000 The Hartford Courant Company
June 13, 2000 TuesdayHEADLINE: JAVA
BYLINE: PAT SEREMETWire Reports Included
Whether Noor Or Far, We Love You For Who You Are
The Greenwich Polo Club hosted royalty over the weekend. American-born Queen Noor of Jordan was honored Sunday for her humanitarian work during a charity event for a New York hospital held at the polo club.
The Piaget Polo Classic was expected to raise $180,000 for a new children's hospital to be built at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
"Every child is precious," she said. "They are our future. If we fail to protect them, nothing else matters." …
Noor graduated from Princeton University and went to Jordan to work on an airport design project. She met the king in Amman, converted to Islam and became his fourth wife and queen in 1978. They had four children. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
June 13, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: COLUMN ONE;
SPY SATELLITES EVOLVE INTO PRIVATE EYE IN THE SKY
BYLINE: ROBERT LEE HOTZ, TIMES SCIENCE WRITERSince January, John Pike has been taking his own satellite pictures of the world's most secret military bases and then making them public on the Internet.
The images and the debate they have provoked are an experiment in the high technology of democracy, for anyone now can share a view from orbit once reserved solely for those with the highest of superpower security clearances.
Like the fax machine, pirate radio and encrypted e-mail, the commercial imaging satellite is becoming a tool of grass-roots political action.
Pike, an owlish policy wonk with a derisive drawl and a horselaugh, is producing detailed vistas of the classified landscape: a nuclear weapons plant in India, a plutonium production facility in Pakistan, military airfields on the China coast, a missile base in North Korea, even the infamous Area 51 at Groom Lake, Nev.--perhaps the most restricted military reservation in the Americas. …
Pike buys his images from a privately owned satellite called Ikonos, launched by Space Imaging in Thornton, Colo., last September, the first private, high-resolution imaging satellite to reach orbit safely. …
In 1998, for example, Newsweek magazine published a satellite image that purported to be an Indian nuclear test site. But what Newsweek identified as the hole left by a nuclear blast actually was an animal pen, said Florini of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.
But for those who do know what to look for, the Ikonos photos are easy enough to interpret, said nuclear weapons expert Frank von Hippel at Princeton University, a former national security advisor in the Clinton administration.
He just paid $500 for his first Ikonos image--a close-up of the two plutonium production reactors at the Indian nuclear weapons complex.
"I was interested to see that cooling water was flowing from the reactors, indicating they were operating," von Hippel said.
The biggest stir, by all accounts, is among those least likely to make their complaints public--the operators of the U.S. intelligence satellites, for whom such telling views from orbit have until now been their own exclusive specialty. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
June 12, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Queen Noor honored during Greenwich charity event
DATELINE: GREENWICH, Conn.The Greenwich Polo Club hosted royalty over the weekend.
American-born Queen Noor of Jordan was honored Sunday for her humanitarian work during a charity event for a New York hospital held at the polo club.
The Piaget Polo Classic was expected to raise $180,000 for a new children's hospital to be built at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y.
"Every child is precious," she said. "They are our future. If we fail to protect them, nothing else matters."
The widow of King Hussein of Jordan has been recognized for such humanitarian efforts as working against land mines and small arms, helping underprivileged children and advancing women's rights in the Middle East.
Born Lisa Najeeb Halaby to a Christian-Arab family and raised in Washington, Noor graduated from Princeton University and went to Jordan to work on an airport design project. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
June 12, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Clinton speaks of higher education, community in last commencement
BYLINE: By LAWRENCE L. KNUTSON, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: NORTHFIELD, Minn.In his last commencement address as chief executive, President Clinton told graduates at a private liberal arts college that he had worked very hard to prepare America for the 21st century. "It's up to you to decide what to do with it," he told them.
The president had a few suggestions, however, for the 423 graduates at Carleton College, about 40 miles south of Minneapolis. He rattled off tasks he hoped they'd tackle: Help poor people reap the benefits of a prosperous economy, deal with the nation's aging population, erase racial and ethnic barriers that divide citizens and open the door wider to higher education. …
His practice has been to speak at a military academy, a public college or university and a private institution each year. Over eight years he has spoken twice each at the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard academies and addressed graduates at a range of institutions, including New Hampshire Technical College (1993), Princeton University (1996) and Grambling State University in Louisiana (1999). …
The American Banker
Copyright 2000 American Banker, Inc.
June 12, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Likely Nominee To Housing Finance Board Is Seen as Potentially Its Next Chairman
Sen. Phil Gramm last week defended fellow Texas Republican George W. Bush's stance on Social Security reform.
Responding to critics of Gov. Bush's plan to divert a portion of Social Security payroll taxes into individual investment accounts, Sen. Gramm said the idea is working elsewhere in the government and private sector.
"Why is (an individual account) good for teachers, good for government employees but somehow wrong for Social Security?" he asked. "What we have here is the voice of the status quo, people who are committed to the past, who are unwilling to change a system that is going broke."
Sen. Gramm called Gov. Bush's critics partisan "attack dogs" working for Vice President Gore.
Front and center among Gore advisers was Alan Blinder, the former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman who is co-director of Princeton University's Center for Economic Policy Studies.
Mr. Blinder, with three others, presented a paper Tuesday on Gov. Bush's plan that argues individual investment accounts would expose workers to "substantially increased risk" from fluctuations in the stock or bond markets.
What's more, the plan would "force substantial reductions in benefits within the Social Security program in order to maintain the solvency of the system," according to the paper. …
Business Week
Copyright 2000 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
June 12, 2000HEADLINE: ICAHN: THE ONCE AND FUTURE DEALMAKER
BYLINE: By Diane Brady in New YorkHIGHLIGHT: The emblem for '80s-style takeovers is dealing again. This time he's after old-line giants with lagging stocks
James W. Kinnear, Texaco's former president and chief executive, will never forget the first time Carl C. Icahn tracked him down -- at the dentist's office. It was 1987, and Kinnear was having a tooth pulled. But Icahn was determined to get through. A Texas court had ordered Texaco Inc. to pay Pennzoil Co. a mammoth $10.53 billion for acquiring Getty Oil Co. because Pennzoil already had a deal with Getty. Texaco vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and started Chapter 11 proceedings to protect its assets. But Icahn, after snapping up a 12% stake, demanded that Kinnear take immediate action. Within a week, Pennzoil and Texaco agreed to settle for $3 billion. And Icahn went on his way with a $600 million profit. …
CARL C. ICAHN …
EDUCATIONB.A., philosophy, Princeton University, 1959. Began medical school at New York
University but dropped out because, friends say, he couldn't stand the sight of
blood.
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2000 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
June 12, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Count me a sucker for 'risky schemes'
SOURCE: Staff
BYLINE: DAVID LANGWORTHY; Langworthy, the Chronicle's Outlook editor, is a member of the Editorial Board. (david.langworthy£chron.com)I almost miss the "old" Al Gore and all his superheated talk of "risky schemes" every time George Bush cleared his throat. The "new" Gore, rolled out a few days ago, is a kinder, gentler fellow, chockful of warm, personal anecdotes and a plan a day to let government make this a better world. The new Al leaves the dirty work of hacking up Bush and his ideas to well-placed surrogates.
Count me as a sucker for at least one of those "risky schemes" Bush is peddling. I'm ready to sign on for Bush's proposal to go private with part of my Social Security contribution and a part of the match from my employer. If I ruled the world, we'd go a lot further toward remaking Social Security as an investment vehicle for individuals, as well as a social safety net.
By the "old" Gore's lights, that would make me and millions of others who agree dupes and potential victims. A leading Gore defender, Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder, wrote in last week's Outlook pages that Bush's plan "would subject Americans, especially financially unsophisticated ones, to large additional risks. "
What insulting, elitist nonsense. …
The Times (London)
Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Limited
June 12, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Reject the euro at your peril, says Turner
BYLINE: Lea Paterson Economics CorrespondentA group of eminent economists - including a former member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), a Nobel laureate and a former head of the CBI - will today give warning that the value of the pound could swing wildly unless Britain signs up to the euro.
Willem Buiter, who stood down from the MPC last month, Robert Mundell, the 1999 Nobel laureate in economics, Adair Turner, the former Director-General of the CBI, and five other economists will argue that volatility in the pound could increase as European markets develop.
In a pamphlet for the pro- euro group Britain in Europe, the economists say: "Caught between two large currency blocs, the only predictable thing about sterling is that it is likely to head off in unpredictable directions. Only by joining the euro can Britain protect itself against this danger.'' …
The Britain in Europe pamphlet emphasises a range of benefits to the UK of euro membership. The other five co-authors are Lord Currie of Marylebone, Lord Layard, Christopher Huhne, MEP, Will Hutton and Professor Peter Kenen, of Princeton University.
The Union Leader (Manchester NH)
Copyright 2000 Union Leader Corp.
June 12, 2000 MondayHEADLINE: Navy secretary: Shipyard's future is up to next President. Vice admiral comes home for bicentennial
BYLINE: JODY RECORD Union Leader CorrespondentKITTERY, Maine -- George P. Nanos got one of the biggest thrills of his life on Saturday.
Not Vice Admiral George P. Nanos, Jr., a New Hampshire native who was in town over the weekend to help celebrate 200 years of Naval history at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
No, it was George P. Nanos of Portland, Maine, who while attending the shipyard open house, had the chance to meet the other Nanos and get his picture taken with him.
"When I was in the Navy, someone told me there was a vice admiral with the exact same name and I couldn't believe it," the Portland resident said Saturday, shortly after asking the three-star admiral for a photo-op. "To meet him, I am delighted beyond measure."
Nanos approached the Naval officer at the conclusion of the ceremonies and introduced himself. After handing the camera to a passerby, the two men stood side by side. Vice Admiral Nanos asked if he could put his arm around the other man and his namesake nodded happily. …
After graduating from high school and the U.S. Naval Academy, Nanos spent two years at sea aboard the USS Glennon (DD 840) and then entered Princeton University, where he obtained a doctorate degree in physics.
Currently Nanos is commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command, a position he has held since 1998. As such he is responsible for the design, engineering, procurement, integration, construction, in-service support and maintenance of the Navy's ships, shipboard weapons, and combat systems.
THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Copyright 2000 Star-Telegram Newspaper, Inc.
June 11, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Texas-size success story; Amazon.com founder has deep roots in Lone Star State
BYLINE: Andrea Ahles; Star-Telegram Staff WriterAmazon.com founder Jeffrey Bezos keeps multiple jars of Joe T. Garcia salsa in his refrigerator.
Long before he became nationally known as the brains behind the nation's No. 1 e-commerce site, Bezos was a Texan who spent his formative years near Houston and on a family ranch in South Texas.
In recent years, Time magazine's 1999 Person of the Year made numerous trips to Fort Worth to visit a sister, and always headed straight to stand in line at his favorite restaurant in the world, Joe T. Garcia's.
"I have sat out on that patio even on days when it must have been 107 degrees," Bezos said. …
With his love of electronics and computers, Bezos' first job after graduating from Princeton University was at Fitel, a start-up company that built telecommunications networks to serve the financial industry. His last job before founding Amazon, was at D.E. Shaw, a New York investment firm where he programmed computers that made trading decisions. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
June 11, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: COMMUNITIES: Camden, That Hard-Boiled Home of . . . Rowing
BYLINE: By ROBERT STRAUSS
DATELINE: CAMDENWhen most people think of sports here, rowing does not spring to mind. Think again.
The straight and calm Cooper River -- which flows through Collingswood, Pennsauken and Cherry Hill as well as Camden -- is a mecca of rowing in the United States. And for the last three weeks, the course has been the home for the women's and men's intercollegiate championships and, ending today, the 2000 USRowing Olympic team trials.
"It's a wonderful place," said Jody Pope, the events manager for USRowing, the official governing body of the sport. "There is little that can match the Cooper River." …
Over Memorial Day weekend, the women's National Collegiate Athletic Association collegiate championships were on the river. Last weekend, it was the Intercollegiate Rowing Association championships -- the N.C.A.A. does not sanction men's rowing, so the winners of the intercollegiate event are essentially the national collegiate championships. The past several days -- including today -- rowers have been qualifying for 9 of the 14 Olympic events (the remainder will be held on Lake Carnegie in Princeton on Aug. 9 through 14). …
"It is what is called a fair course," said Brett Johnson, a USRowing spokesman. "It is a good course in terms of having relatively flat water. There is no current, so it is fair for everyone. And Philadelphia is obviously a strong rowing community, so it's a nice place to have an event." …
"Lake Carnegie in Princeton tends not to be good for six-lane racing," he continued. "The Cooper is one of only a few places that fills all the bills." …
But many of the competitors for Olympic spots drove only about 40 miles because Princeton is one of three rowing training centers around the country (the others are in Gainesville, Ga., and San Diego). Many of the competitors in the "sweep" events -- in which the rower has two hands on one oar, as opposed to rowing with two oars, which is called sculling -- train with a former Princeton University coach, Mike Teti.
"Part of the reason it's there, besides Coach Teti, is because it is a good place to find jobs," said Ms. Pope of USRowing, which has its headquarters in Indianapolis along with several other amateur sports organizations. "You're not going to make money rowing, so you'd better be working while you are training. We like coming to the Cooper, though. Any time you find a fair course, rowers love it."…
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
June 11, 2000, Sunday, Late EditionHEADLINE: EDUCATION;
For Some, Prep School Follows High School
BYLINE: By DEBRA NUSSBAUMBrian Lyons finds himself in an enviable position. On Friday, Brian will graduate from Hamilton High School West, outside of Trenton, second in his class.
The 17-year-old straight-A student scored 1570 out of a possible 1600 on his College Boards and he has been accepted at some of the country's top universities. But he won't be going to any of them in September.
In what is a longstanding but little-known phenomenon, a relatively small number of students -- usually boys -- choose to undertake a year of additional study at an exclusive prep school, including those in New Jersey, before heading off to college.
In Brian's case, he will attend the Lawrenceville School in the fall, where he will be one of a group of students who want to polish their academic or athletic resumes. Each year, schools like the Peddie School and the Hun School of Princeton as well as Lawrenceville take on from 6 to 25 postgraduate students. As good as the students may be, many come to improve their chances of getting into a better school. In addition, students headed to military academies, foreign students wanting to improve their English and others who simply need another year to mature make up some of this group. …
As for Brian Lyons from Hamilton High, he realizes that a lot of people do not understand why he is going to Lawrenceville this fall even though he was accepted by seven colleges, including the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins and Cornell. But the 6-feet-2-inch, 235-pound lineman said his dream was to play varsity football for Harvard, Princeton or Cornell. He hopes to add 20 pounds to his frame and show an excellent academic record.
"I'm young, so a year of maturing would be good," he said. …
The Ottawa Citizen
Copyright 2000 Southam Inc.
June 11, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Authors venture far afield
BYLINE: Douglas FetherlingI've been teaching a university course in literary travel-writing, the genre that flourished between the two world wars and then, thanks to Paul Theroux, revived in the 1970s and has been gathering momentum ever since.
After three semesters, I've reached certain conclusions. The first is that virtually everybody interested in this stuff has already been to all the easy places. I've yet to have a student who hasn't personally seen, for example, the floating markets of Bangkok. The second is that there are those who prefer to read about the many places they've been and those who prefer to read about the few places they'll probably never reach -- or at least about modes of transportation they're unlikely to use.
This last-named, the consumers of adventure travel, are a difficult mob to satisfy, because the number of destinations that meet their requirements is dwindling. …
I'm surprised by how, at this late date, there is still, like or not, a greater level of expectant intrigue and peril when such books are written by women rather than men. This spring's equivalent of the examples given above has been Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey by Alison Wearing (Knopf).
The title refers to the fact that Ms. Wearing, who has always travelled on her own, this time thought it was prudent to take a male companion -- and for the two of them to pretend to be newlyweds, as in some 1930s screwball comedy. I found the book especially rewarding when read alongside another Random House title, A Middle East Mosaic edited by Bernard Lewis, late of Princeton University, a prolific scholar in the field of Middle Eastern history. …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
June 11, 2000, SundaySECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: OVERLY POSITIVE
BYLINE: JO ANN SOFIS, MT. LEBANONI was greatly disappointed with the Post-Gazette's coverage of the United Nations' fifth anniversary conference on women ("Women: A Work In Progress"). I found the June 4 articles to be narrowly focused and overly positive.
The main problem was that the journalists would jump right into discussing how the United States rated on certain topics (women and poverty, women and education, women and violence) and what is being done in Western Pennsylvania to improve these issues.
You can't start discussing solutions to a problem without first establishing the details of the problem itself. For example, in the article on women and education, the author barely touched on the gender gap in math and science before talking about the positive things local teachers are doing to help girls in these areas.
As I just completed my senior thesis for Princeton University this spring, examining the gender gap in science through literature reviews, observing classrooms, distributing questionnaires and interviewing teachers on the factors which seem to be helping girls to achieve in the sciences, I can tell you that there is a huge gender gap in sciences.
And to say that there has been great improvement in girls' achievement in science is a falsehood. Although women now major in biology as often as men do, men overwhelm women in the fields of chemistry, physics and engineering, and this has been a trend that has not changed since the 1970s.
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
June 11, 2000, SUNDAYHEADLINE: LAWSUIT DELAYS PRINCETON SMOKING BAN1
BYLINE: The Associated Press
DATELINE: PRINCETONThe Princeton Regional Health Commission has volunteered to put the state's toughest smoking ban on hold, at least until a preliminary court hearing on the ordinance.
A lawsuit filed Thursday that challenges the ban prompted the move, which postpones the July 1 implementation until at least July 20, when a preliminary injunction hearing has been scheduled at the Mercer County
Courthouse.
The commission had decided that if a legal challenge to the ban were filed, it would delay the ordinance's enactment voluntarily, according to commission attorney Michael J. Herbert. …
The lawsuit claiming the ordinance is illegal was filed on behalf of the Virginia-based National Smokers Alliance and three Princeton bars and restaurants. It seeks an injunction against the ban, which was approved June 1. …
The two municipalities surrounding Ivy League Princeton University have long led anti-smoking efforts. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
June 11, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Area Rowers Nearing U.S. Spots
BYLINE: Amy Shipley , Washington Post Staff Writer
DATELINE: CAMDEN, N.J., June 10There were no real winners and losers at the U.S. Olympic rowing trials today, just some athletes who by day's end looked less distressed than others. The best-of-three racing format that will decide the U.S. team for the Sydney Games by Monday kept even today's winners feeling worried about celebrating too soon.
District single sculler Aquil Abdullah and Alexandria's Nick Peterson, competing in a quad scull, took major steps toward making the Olympic team by winning their final heats today. Each has to win only one more race--either Sunday or Monday--to claim a berth on the team. Nine spots on the squad will be allocated this weekend.
Yet neither Abdullah nor Peterson so much as pumped a fist upon crossing the finish line today, despite the elated whoops and hollers from joyous family members lining the banks of the Cooper River. A somber quiet seemed to hang over the finishing area as the day's victors mingled with the losers, packing and unpacking their equipment, nobody sure about where they stood or precisely what to say. …
Peterson, rowing with Ian McGowan, Jake Wetzel and Sean Hall, topped the Princeton, N.J.-based team of Ben Holbrook, Tom Murray, Cyrus Beasley and Phil Henry by nearly three seconds in the morning's last race.
Peterson, like Abdullah, urged reserve: "We are definitely not celebrating," he said. "It's definitely not over." …
Peterson and Abdullah, both 27, moved away from home to train for the past year. Abdullah joined the team at Princeton University under Mike Teti; Peterson went to Augusta, Ga., to train with Igor Grinko.
Teti and Grinko, U.S. national team coaches, have markedly different styles. Both are extremely demanding of their rowers. Teti, though, believes in training for rowing by rowing--rowing and rowing and rowing. Grinko, a former member of the Soviet national team, believes in heavy weight training in addition to time on the water. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
June 10, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: Briefs from Dawson Springs, Lexington, Covington, Florence, item
COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) - A Toyota executive will replace a local attorney on the Northern Kentucky University Board of Regents.
Charles Brown, 50, of Florence, will begin his six-year term on July 1. He will replace Phil Taliaferro, 62, who has served 10 years on the board, including the past two years as vice chairman.
Gov. Paul Patton appointed Brown, an accountant at Toyota Manufacturing of North America, earlier this week.
Brown graduated from East High School in Youngstown, Ohio, and has a degree in economics from Princeton University and a graduate degree in finance from Stanford.
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
June 10, 2000, SaturdayBYLINE: By The Associated Press
STANFORD, Calif. (AP) - John Etchemendy, chairman of Stanford University's philosophy department, has been named university provost, effective Sept. 1, president Gerhard Casper announced last week.
Etchemendy will succeed provost John Hennessy, who is leaving the post to become Stanford's next president.
Hennessy called his successor an outstanding chair of philosophy. "I think he brings a wonderful perspective on the humanities, but, just as important, an ability to talk broadly to his colleagues across the institution."
Etchemendy, 48, earned his doctorate at Stanford in 1982 and has been a faculty member in the philosophy department since 1983. He is also a faculty member in the Symbolic Systems Program and a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Etchemendy has also served as senior associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences, as director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information and as chairman of a commission Casper set up to explore ways to enhance teaching through technology.
Before coming to Stanford, Etchemendy taught at Princeton University.
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 2000 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
June 10, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: Barth plays role of opera vilaine
BYLINE: FREDERICK KAIMANN; STAFF WRITERTOSCA The work by Giacomo Puccini is being staged by the New Jersey State Opera at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center St., Newark
BARITONE opera singer Ned Barth must have had a tough 40th birthday.
He doesn't sing comic opera roles any more.
"Once you pass the midpoint of your life, your priorities change. You only want to spend time on things that make a difference," said Barth, 42.
But this baritone, the Scarpia in the New Jersey State Opera's "Tosca" this weekend, protests that he's had this view for about 10 years.
He's either aiming for a short-fused life or is precocious for his age.
"I wouldn't mind doing comedies, but the music of comedic operas doesn't speak to me like the music of the great dramas and tragedies," the Pennsylvania native said. "I'm much more interested in thinking about issues that come out of 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear,' than 'Charlie's Aunt' - you know, the English farce." …
The big singing part, the lyrics, the dramatic music, the plot control - in short, the power - put the Scarpia singer on top of the world for Barth.
"You're the master of destiny," Barth said. "It's a two-and-a-half hour-long exclamation point. It's just incredible."
That feeling is what attracted Barth to the stage more than 20 years ago.
A Princeton University graduate who majored in engineering, Barth had always wanted to perform. …
Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ.)
Copyright 2000 Asbury Park Press, Inc.
June 10, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: Winning words; Princeton poet finds more rewards in his work than in the prizes
BYLINE: PAUL FRANKLIN; STAFF WRITERC. K. Williams remembers the first poem he ever wrote. It was no Pulitzer.
"My first poem was to a girl. I was a sophomore," he says. "It was abominable. But it was enjoyable. I read a lot in school, but I hated English. It remains a surprise that I'm a poet."
He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
Last month the Princeton University professor won the prestigious award for "Repair," a collection of nearly 40 poems spanning such themes as love, memory, social disorder and nature.
He had been a finalist in the category twice: in 1987 for "Flesh and Blood" and in 1996 for "The Vigil."
"He's one of the very best, of any kind," says Robert Pinsky, America's poet laureate and a Long Branch native. "He combines detailed narration on one hand, with introspective abstract and philosophy on the other. I'm not at all surprised he won the Pulitzer." …
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 2000 The Atlanta Constitution
June 10, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: IN THE CATBIRD SEAT;
He's not a household name, but Richard Land is a Baptist powerhouse who helps to keep his denomination on the right.
BYLINE: Gayle White, StaffNashville
You could call them Land mines --- those issues that explode into the public consciousness as the Southern Baptist Convention meets each year.
Richard Land, head of the convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, isn't single-handedly responsible for Baptists boycotting Disney or calling for wives to be submissive, but when something happens in the country's largest non-Catholic religious body these days, he's usually near the point of impact.
His agency monitors Disney, and he helped compose the language that says husbands should love their wives sacrificially and wives should submit to their husbands' leadership. As the convention meets in Orlando June 13 and 14, he is again involved in what is expected to be the major news story --- he was on a committee that revised the denomination's statement of beliefs to include opposition to women pastors, homosexual relationships and abortion.
Land, 53, shines in the spotlight. He's appeared before congressional committees, chatted with Larry King, Ted Koppel and Lesley Stahl, and been photographed with Presidents Bush and Clinton and Vice Presidents Quayle and Gore. …
A Princeton, Oxford man
Land's goals were supported by the people who mattered --- the conservative convention leaders who were among his closest and oldest friends.
Land, the oldest son of a yellow-dog Democratic Texas welder and a rock- ribbed Republican housewife from the Northeast, was headed for Princeton University when he got a call from an alumnus who wanted to prepare him for the challenges of being an evangelical Christian at an Ivy League school. The man was Judge Paul Pressler, now known as one of the two foremost architects of the conservative movement in the Southern Baptist Convention. Land went on to graduate magna cum laude from Princeton. …
Calgary Herald
Copyright 2000 Southam Inc.
June 10, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: Princeton beckons for Kroshus: Offer from prestigious Ivy League school is irresistible
BYLINE: Sean Myers, Calgary HeraldDATELINE: LETHBRIDGE
With her last kick at the high school track-and-field can Emily Kroshus is looking ever forward.
The 17-year-old cross-country star from Western Canada high school is competing at this weekend's Alberta championships at the University of Lethbridge knowing that next year she'll be sitting pretty in Princeton.
After full-ride scholarship offers came in from several U.S. schools, Kroshus felt she just couldn't give up the opportunity to go to the prestigious Ivy League campus (located in Princeton, N.J.) when she was granted financial aid via the track program.
''I wanted to get the whole deal (athletics and academics),'' said Kroshus, who plans to study economics and finance. ''An Ivy League school is hard to pass up.'' …
Kroshus is known more for her long-distance running at 3,000- and 5,000-metre distances, but as her graduation interfered with the 3,000-metre event at the city finals, she didn't compete in it, meaning she can't run in it at the provincials.
She will, however, run in the 1,500-metre race today. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
June 9, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Prosecutors laud defendant, but jurors convict him
DATELINE: DES MOINES, IowaEven prosecutors said the world needed more people like the defendant, but they continued the Des Moines man's four-day trial. And the jury convicted him of trespassing.
Michael Sprong must complete 40 hours of community service and a year of probation for illegally entering the Iowa Air National Guard's base.
"This is not the type of guy prosecutors like to point the finger at," Assistant Polk County Attorney Fred Gay said. "Mr. Sprong is a good man, no criminal mentality. Society needs more individuals with passions for their convictions."
Sprong was among the 22 protesters arrested outside the base March 4. The protesters opposed Iowa troops' involvement in enforcing the no-fly zone over northern Iraq and the United States' nine-year economic embargo against Iraq.
"I still believe every point I argued to the jury," said Sprong, who gave his own closing statements Thursday. "I consider it a dubious victory for the state, if it's a victory at all."
Sprong and his lawyer, Sally Frank (Princeton '80), wielded international law as his defense - something of a rarity in a county courthouse.
Princeton University professor Richard Falk paid for a flight to Des Moines to back up Sprong's case. He testified for several hours that America's military mission was illegal and that Sprong was justified to prevent it. …
NOTE: Adapted from a story that appeared in The Des Moines Register.
INTELLIGENCER JOURNAL (LANCASTER, PA.)
Copyright 2000 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.
June 9, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: 2000; Warwick grads told to seek lives of meaning
BYLINE: Laura Knowles, CorrespondentBeneath a blue and rose evening sky, Warwick High School's Class of 2000 was encouraged to go out in the world to "just find happiness."
Class president John E. Ashcroft told his classmates that "today, we finished the last marking period of the rest of our lives," and invited them to feel free to rise to their expectations.
More than 330 seniors graduated Thursday at Grosh Field. …
In "Applying Lessons to Everyday Life," class valedictorian Bieber, who is headed for Princeton University, spoke out against prejudice and encouraged his classmates to live by the values they have learned. "We cannot accept stereotypes or intolerance," he said. "Our goals should be to push kids to think for themselves."
In honor of his class rank, Bieber was presented with a watch by Warwick Lions Club. He also was honored for his service as student representative to the Warwick School Board. …
CNNFN
SHOW: MARKET CALL
June 9, 2000; Friday 10:21 am Eastern TimeHEADLINE: Maverick of the Morning, CNNfn
GUESTS: Tony Dwyer, John Bogle
BYLINE: Rhonda SchafflerRHONDA SCHAFFLER, CNNfn ANCHOR, MARKET CALL: Twenty-six years ago, John Bogle created what is now one of the powerhouses in the mutual fund world. And while he retired from the board of Vanguard group last year, Mr. Bogle is more fired up than ever before. At 71, he is president of the Bogle Financial Markets Research center where he continues his fight for investors' rights. …
Talk to us first about this new role you have taken on. You have become more of an advocate here in your later years. …
JOHN BOGLE: Yes actually I have been doing this for probably the last 3 or 4 years since I have became less active at the day-to-day activities here at Vanguard, and it's basically doing some research and speaking out all across the country to investors, to advisers, to regulators, for that matter, to try and get out a message that this industry can get its act together in a much more effective way than it has in the past.
SCHAFFLER: Well what are they doing that gets you so riled up there?
BOGLE: Well, I guess really first I'd say looking back you know I have been writing about this industry actually for 50 years, beginning with my senior thesis at Princeton University on mutual funds, and I think it's an industry that lost its way honestly. And there are two ways, two things that the worst about it: one is a tremendous increase in activity, investment activity in funds. Funds come and go at an alarming rate. Half of the funds in business during the 1990's no longer exist today and that was a great decade. And portfolio managers are too active; they turn over their portfolios 90 percent a year. They hold stocks for 406 days. We have 406- day traders. And mutual fund investors at the same time are turning over their shares. This year the redemption rate, exit rate from funds, is 50 percent of the assets managed. Meaning an average holding period of just two years it is really astonishing and for that matter, shocking. …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
June 9, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: COMPANY TOWN
NADER'S GOAL: CRASH HOLLYWOOD;
CRUSADER SAYS BIG WHEELS HAVE PUT BRAKES ON FILM PROPOSAL
BYLINE: CLAUDIA ELLERFor four decades, Ralph Nader has used his smarts, chutzpah and grinding persistence to wage war against "corporate tyranny," tackling such Goliaths as the Detroit auto industry, the federal government and Microsoft, just to name a few. At 66, Nader has been able to get his name on the 2000 ballot for president as the Green Party candidate.
And yet, the imposing 6-foot-4 Nader can't get Hollywood to return his calls.
For years, the consumer advocate has crusaded to get a movie made of his controversial 1965 bestseller "Unsafe at Any Speed." The book, a stinging indictment of the U.S. auto industry for caring more about profits and style than safety, took aim at General Motors for its dangerous rear-engine Corvair. Nader called it "one of the nastiest-handling cars ever built."
Time Warner's Home Box Office cable channel thought Nader's story would make a great television movie. Under former production President Bob Cooper, HBO ordered up a script and spent $531,977 to hire three different writers and a director. While development of the project dragged on, Cooper left HBO in 1996. With that, interest in the project evaporated. …
Only in the last week, after a four-year campaign, has there been a slight hope that Nader will have his day on the screen.
For Nader, a Princeton University and Harvard Law School graduate who lives a spartan existence in a downtown Washington apartment, this has never been about money. HBO paid him a mere $35,000 each time it optioned and re-optioned his book. A lifelong bachelor who lives off what he makes from writing and lecturing, Nader says he "doesn't have much time to spend money, just raise it." …
"This is about censorship," asserts Nader, accusing HBO parent Time Warner of being afraid of yet another movie that would bash a major advertiser such as General Motors. …
The Washington Times
Copyright 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
June 09, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Campus rites of spring
BYLINE: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
America in springtime is a lively stew. The college campuses are a major source of the liveliness. As the weather heats up, college youths in desperation begin to wet their whistles with even more prodigious quantities of beer than in prior months, causing the profs grave alarm. A generation ago, many of these profs urged the legalization of cannabis and even wilder potions. Many still do, but beer drinking on campus goes too far. They esteem it even more abominable than cigarette smoking, which is another campus horror they apparently can do nothing about.
As the days lengthen and the students swelter, they begin to disrobe. This, too, the profs approved of back in their post-graduate days. Yet now with the students attending their tedious lectures in abbreviated clothing that amounts to little more than underwear, the graying, fattening profs are in despair. ….
A week or so after my trip to the Midwest, I attended Princeton University's reunion with a graduate of the very same institution, and got another insight into the problems of academe. The Princeton alumni, dating back to the 1920s, were all very dignified. Their evening ceremonies were perfectly respectable, despite the presence of booze and even tobacco. But the panels that the university put together were brazenly out of step with the behavior and interests of the graduates. Many were broadcasting New Age or politically correct orthodoxy. One even featured the university's most controversial prof, Peter Singer, the champion of euthanasia, eugenics and who knows what might come next from this crank, perhaps cannibalism? It was all unnecessarily provocative. …
XINHUA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
COPYRIGHT 2000 XINHUA NEWS AGENCY
June 9, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: Seven Scientists Elected as CAS Foreign Academicians
DATELINE: BEIJING, June 9Seven foreign scientists have been elected the fourth group of foreign academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), as they have made outstanding contributions to China's international scientific exchanges and cooperation, announced the CAS today.
The new foreign academicians are Y. Austin Chang, 69, American scientists of material sciences; Tomas Hokfelt, 59, a Swedish scientist of neuroscience; Y. C. Ho, 65, professor from Harvard University, a member of the American National Academy of Engineering; H.
Inokuchi, 72, a Japanese scientist of physical chemistry; Hartmut Michel, 51, a Nobel Chemistry Prize winner, professor from German Max-Plank-Institute of Biophysics; C. T. Sah, 67, professor with Florida University in the United States; and Tsui Daniel Chee, 60, a Nobel Physics Prize winner and professor from the Princeton University in the United States.
CAS now has 36 foreign academicians. Of the just elected academicians, C. T. Sah is also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
The Washington Times
Copyright 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
June 08, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Of mice and medicine
BYLINE: Maggie GallagherYou know that old saying, "There's more than one way to skin a cat"? Well, if you take out the feline reference and substitute "rodent neural cells," you get what I hereafter dub Maggie's Law: For every moral absolute blocking scientific progress, there's an ethical way around it.
Be patient. You don't have to raze human dignity to make way for the future.
Or at any rate, that's the lesson I draw from the dramatic announcement last week that Swedish researchers have found a way to harvest precious brain stem cells from adult mice. Actually, what those clever scientists did was take neural stem cells from adult mice and insert them into mouse and chicken embryos, whereupon the stem cells obediently converted into a variety of different tissue types. Some of the neural stem cells, for example, converted to become part of a mouse embryo's beating heart.
Why does this matter? Stem cells are potentially the key to curing hundreds of human illnesses, from diabetes to heart disease. You see, unlike most adult cells, stem cells are remarkably flexible chaps, capable of converting into any sort of tissue or organ, under proper conditions. The cells of the adult body, by contrast, are mostly fixed: A kidney is a kidney is a kidney, as Gertrude Stein would say. Stem cells by contrast are the alchemists of biomedicine: With proper nudging from DNA, scientists predict, stem cells could be used to grow any sort of body part to replace failing hearts, livers, kidneys and pancreases, and to cure brain, bone and blood disorders.
There was only one catch: Up until now the likely source of such agreeably compliant cells were the brains of aborted fetuses. Congress said "Yecch" and banned federal funding of any such research. Bad enough that so many unborn children are dying - what if we created a Frankenstein's market for the brains of aborted fetuses? Would women be offered financial incentives? Would abortion doctors create a little business on the side? …
And now it turns out that, just a few short years later, these are not the only options at all. Now, as Ihor R. Lemischka, a professor of developmental biology at Princeton University, told the New York Times, this new research, if it holds up with human cells, will "nip in the bud" the controversy now blocking federal research funds. We really don't have to consume unborn babies to live. Scientists have found a third way. …
BIOWORLD Today
Copyright 2000 American Health Consultants, Inc.
June 7, 2000HEADLINE: OTHER NEWS TO NOTE.
ImClone Systems Inc., of New York, is collaborating with Princeton University to create a database for the identification of all genes responsible for proliferation, self-renewal and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells. The project also will involve researchers from the universities of Pennsylvania and Kentucky. ImClone will have the exclusive right to negotiate licenses to the complete sequences that emerge from the research, and to the underlying expressed sequence tags.
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Copyright 2000 The Cincinnati Enquirer
June 7, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Making of the President 2000
SOURCE: Enquirer wire servicesWith 152 days until Election Day 2000, here are Tuesday's developments on the presidential campaign trail. The Democrats
Social Security plan draws critics' fire
WASHINGTON - An opposition group of private experts said George W. Bush would need to couple his proposal for new Social Security investment accounts with benefit cuts or new spending to plug the retirement program's impending cash shortage.
Mr. Bush responded with a pledge to maintain benefits for current and near retirees.
"People should not be misled," said Robert Ball, one of Social Security's first administrators, who joined the economists and academics at a news conference.
The private experts criticizing Mr. Bush included Henry Aaron, a former Carter administration official, now at the Brookings Institution; Alicia Munnell, a former member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, now a Boston College professor, and Princeton University economics professor Alan Blinder. Mr. Munnell and Mr. Blinder have made campaign appearances with Al Gore.
South China Morning Post
Copyright 2000 South China Morning Post Ltd.
June 6, 2000HEADLINE: Check In
BYLINE: Mike CurrieIf you are planning to do any high altitude climbing this summer, check out the Princeton University Web site which gives excellent information on how to avoid altitude sickness, which can strike even the fittest if they don't take precautions. Many tourists are unaware of the potential risks in places like the Himalayas. The university also gives some sound advice to those planning wilderness excursions. The Web site is www.Princeton.edu
The Nation
Copyright 2000 The Nation Company L.P.
June 5, 2000HEADLINE: Beauty and the Beast; genetic engineering; Brief Article
BYLINE: WILLIAMS, PATRICIA J.And the other thing, because no one has the guts to say it, if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we do it? What's wrong with it? --James Watson, Founder, Human Genome Project
Many people love their [golden] retrievers.... Could people be chosen in the same way? Would it be so terrible to allow parents to at least aim for a certain type, in the same way that great breeders...try to match a breed of dog to the needs of a family? --Gregory Pence, University of Alabama
Suppose parents could add 30 points to their children's IQs. Wouldn't you want to do it? And if you don't, your neighbors will, and your child will be the stupidest in the neighborhood. --Lester Thurow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
[Eventually] the GenRich class and the Natural class will become...entirely separate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee. --Lee Silver, Princeton University
Oilweek
Copyright 2000 Maclean Hunter Canadian Publishing Ltd.
June 5, 2000HEADLINE: JOUSTING WITH CARBON.
BYLINE: Stonehouse, DarrellCanadian global warming warriors take on greenhouse gases
It is a muted attack against a foe that may yet turn out to be imaginary. But make no mistake about it. Canada is at war against climate change.
Signing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was the official declaration. Participation in five further meetings as part of an international team called the Conference of Parties (CoP) helped set out the terms of engagement. Negotiations continue, with CoP 6 planned for November. But the battle will begin in earnest in 2002 -- the 10th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit that started all the action.
The oil and gas community is trying to understand this immensely complicated issue and where it fits into a campaign that all governments involved say has to be global. It is not easy for anyone, industry leaders heard at a spring Best Practices Conference held by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Canadian Energy Research Institute, a semi-official think tank based at the University of Calgary and financed by a wide range of business and government agencies. The conference was told that tackling climate change is an awkward proposition by one of the leading experts on the matter: Loren Cox, associate director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. At this point, scientists are not even sure there is an enemy.
"Right now we're working to solve a problem that may or may not exist, and that we may or may not be able to do something about," Cox said. "The scientific uncertainties about climate change are substantial." …
There is one bright side to the greenhouse-gas headache. Emission-reduction targets are spawning opportunities for inventors and technology firms. Some samples of innovative work will be on display at the 16th World Petroleum Congress in Calgary June 11-15.
Multiple potential business niches are being spawned as work advances on reducing unwanted byproducts of burning fossil fuels. Canada's Badakhshan Consulting Inc., for instance, is working on improvements for dual-fuel engines inspired by the quest for reduced emissions. In theory, a motor that uses a blend of natural gas and diesel can sharply reduce pollution. But the firm points out tht in practice "emissions of unburned methane and carbon monoxide, if not controlled, are one of the disadvantages of this technology when the engine is working on low-load. Application of a novel technique, namely 'reverse flow,' in exhaust gas catalytic converters in diesel-natural gas engines has proven to solve this problem." At Princeton University, the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies will tell the WPC how it is working on ways to distribute fuels for the gestating new generation of clean fuel-cell vehicles. "Development of refueling infrastructure is a major challenge." …
New Scientist
Copyright 2000 New Scientist, Reed Business Information
June 3, 2000HEADLINE: Second sight
BYLINE: Govert SchillingHIGHLIGHT: A revamped Hubble could reveal distant reaches of time and space
ASTRONOMERS and telescope builders have come up with a plan to give the ageing Hubble Space Telescope a new lease of life. Instead of building an entirely new space telescope, they propose sending up just huge mirrors, and then letting Hubble look through them.
According to Jim Crocker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a feasibility study has shown that it is possible to turn the 2.4-metre Hubble into a giant 8-metre space observatory. "The cost will be some dollar 250 million," says Crocker, "less than half the cost of building a new space telescope." …
An upgraded Hubble would be able to see planets orbiting nearby stars - currently these can only be detected indirectly - and search for signs of oxygen in their atmospheres. Also, with 10 times as much sensitivity and a fourfold improvement in resolution, the new Hubble could peer back in space and time to the era before the first galaxies were born. "The science case is pretty compelling," says Crocker.
To build the 8-metre telescope, the team proposes using a spare mirror "blank" left over from building the European Southern Observatory's four-mirror Very Large Telescope. After polishing the parabolic surface, the back would be ground away to leave a meniscus-shaped mirror only 2 millimetres thick and weighing less than 1 tonne. Five thousand actuators on its back would control the shape of the ultra-thin mirror. For launch, it would be cut in three, stowed in the cargo bay of the space shuttle, and installed during a number of spacewalks. Astronaut consultants say the job is feasible, and the mirror could be launched as early as 2006.
But in a recent report from the US National Research Council on astronomy priorities for the next decade, a review committee led by Joe Taylor of Princeton University, New Jersey, and Chris McKee of the University of California in Berkeley says it has "not recommended any new moderate or major missions for space-based ultraviolet or optical astronomy for the coming decade". The main reason is that infrared wavelengths offer greater research opportunities and these wavelengths will be well covered by the Next Generation Space Telescope, a dollar 500 million observatory with an 8-metre mirror due for launch in 2009 or 2010. …
New Scientist
Copyright 2000 New Scientist, Reed Business Information
June 3, 2000HEADLINE: Before the big bang
BYLINE: Marcus ChownHIGHLIGHT: How did the Universe begin ? Not with a bang but with a whimper, says Marcus Chown
WHAT HAPPENED before the big bang ? Try asking a cosmologist this and they'll usually fob you off by saying it's a meaningless question. Stephen Hawking famously likened it to asking "What's north of the North Pole ?" The big bang, the idea goes, was the ultimate beginning. Time and space came into being then. There was no "before".
But that may not be true after all. One daring physicist has come up with an answer to the question no one is supposed to ask. If he is right, the Universe began an unimaginably long time before the big bang. "Far from being the beginning of time, the big bang was merely an important turning point in the Universe's history," says Gabriele Veneziano of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva.
Veneziano's quest for the era before the big bang started in the early 1990s, when he and his colleague Maurizio Gasperini, then of the University of Turin, set out to fix some of the major shortcomings of the standard big bang model. It has plenty of them. For instance, if you imagine the expansion of the Universe running backwards like a movie in reverse, the density and temperature increase remorselessly until they skyrocket to infinity.
This infinite point, known as a singularity, is a big problem for physicists. "The singularity tells us that our description of the Universe - Einstein's theory of gravity, or general relativity - is not applicable in the earliest moments of the Universe," says Veneziano. That's because there is a point known as the Planck time - within 10-43 seconds of the big bang - when gravity is comparable in strength to the other forces of nature. Because of this, to deal with the physics of the singularity you have to come up with a quantum version of gravity - and no such theory exists.
But physicists do have some ideas about how they might apply quantum theory to gravity. Perhaps the most promising is string theory. According to this, the fundamental particles of nature are impossibly tiny "strings" vibrating in a space of nine dimensions, with all but three dimensions "rolled up" smaller than an atom. One of the fundamental vibration modes turns out to be a massless particle that looks just like the hypothetical carrier of the gravitational force, the "graviton". That's why Veneziano decided to see whether string theory could help with the singularity problem. "I was convinced that cosmology of the very early Universe was the right arena for applying and testing string theory," he says. …
What Veneziano found was that string theory can remove the troublesome singularity at time zero. Because strings have a finite size, the Universe still shrinks as time runs backwards but it never reaches zero volume so the singularity never arises. In the standard model of the big bang, the singularity acts like a brick wall. In string cosmology, there is no such wall and it is possible to venture back into the era before the big bang. …
In the standard model of the big bang, the Universe started out in an extraordinarily special state in which the temperature and density are fine-tuned to be precisely the same in 1093 separate regions. Faced with a special state, a physicist's instinct is always to look for a not-so-special state from which it evolved. In the case of a crystal, for instance, everyone recognises that the fantastically ordered arrangement of atoms evolved via a phase transition from a more amorphous, and far less fantastic, liquid state. "In the same way, the Universe must have evolved from the simplest, most ordinary state that can be imagined," says Veneziano.
The simplest possible universe, according to Veneziano is infinite in extent, empty, cold and "flat" - which means space has a very low curvature. Veneziano and his colleagues Alessandra Buonanno at Caltech and Thibault Damour at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (IHES) near Paris, call it a principle of "asymptotic past triviality".
Not everyone is happy with this. "It's equivalent to assuming homogeneity in the first place," says cosmologist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University. "Gabriele has not solved any initial conditions problems - he has 'trivially' set them by his initial conditions." …
Sports Illustrated For Kids
Copyright 2000 Time Inc.
June, 2000HEADLINE: Sports Cards!;
Meet this month's super athletes, chosen by the editors of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED FOR KIDS. To learn more about the stars and to test your brainpower, turn the page.
CHRIS AHRENS Rower Height: 6' 5" Weight: 200 lbs. Born: 7/24/76, Iowa City, Iowa
CHRIS stroked the U.S. men's eight team to its third straight world championship in 1999. Chris rows in the stroke position. He sits in the first seat and sets the pace for the team. Men's eight is one of 14 Olympic and 24 world championship rowing events. Chris graduated with honors from Princeton University in 1998. He earned his degree in history.
A ninth member of an eight-man crew doesn't row. He sits in the back of the boat and shouts directions to the rowers. Who is he?
Answer: The coxswain [COX-en]
OBITUARIES
THE BALTIMORE SUN
Copyright 2000 The Baltimore Sun Company
June 14, 2000, WednesdayEdward Dexter Chapin, 80, disabilities lawyer
Edward Dexter Chapin, a retired casualty and disabilities lawyer, died Sunday of cancer at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 80 and lived in Ruxton.
He retired about 15 years ago from the Social Security Administration, where he worked in disability claims processing. …
Born in Baltimore, he was a 1932 graduate of Calvert School and a member of the Class of 1938 at Gilman School, where he played football. He received his undergraduate degree in 1943 from Princeton University, where he was a member of the Colonial Club. He earned his law degree from University of Maryland in 1950. …
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
Copyright 2000 The Providence Journal Company
June 13, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
LOUIS J. SAYEGH, 69, of Sunset Avenue, a private tutor and former Harvard Fellow, died Sunday at home.Born and educated in Central Falls, a son of the late Louis A. and Alma (Gorra) Sayegh, he was stricken with multiple sclerosis at a young age. A cum laude graduate of Brown University, where he received a Bachelor of Science in chemistry in 1952, he went on to study at Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry in 1959, while serving on the faculty as a Harvard Fellow. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
June 11, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Kermit Roosevelt, Leader of C.I.A. Coup in Iran, Dies at 84
BYLINE: By IRVIN MOLOTSKY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 10Kermit Roosevelt, who was a member of the famous American political family but who made his contributions to the nation in the shadowy world of spy craft, died Thursday at a retirement community in Cockeysville, Md., near Baltimore. He was 84.
Mr. Roosevelt's best-known exploit was as director of the 1953 coup that overthrew the leader of Iran, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a nationalist who concerned Washington because he was supported by the Iranian Communists at the height of the cold war.
Earlier this year, the Central Intelligence Agency's secret history of the coup surfaced, providing a detailed account of the overthrow, which brought Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi to power. …
Frederic P. Hitz, the Weinberg Goldman Sachs Professor of International Relations at Princeton University, said the book "showed how covert actions were authorized in those days, without oversight. It was just a group of people sitting around in an office at the White House -- not the Oval Office."
Because of the success of the Iranian coup, Professor Hitz said, Mr. Roosevelt "was offered the opportunity to overthrow the government of Guatemala, and he turned it down."
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
June 10, 2000, SaturdayNAME: George Segal
HEADLINE: George Segal, Pop Sculptor, Dies at 75; Molded Plaster People of a Ghostly Angst
BYLINE: By ROBERTA SMITHGeorge Segal, whose rough-surfaced casts of actual people brought a new, often eerie realism to postwar sculpture and made him one of the most quietly influential artists of his time, died yesterday at his home in South Brunswick, N.J. He was 75 years old and had lived in South Brunswick for 60 years.
Along with Claes Oldenburg, Mr. Segal was often considered one of the pre-eminent sculptors of Pop Art. But Mr. Oldenburg and Pop art painters like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist found inspiration in the products of popular culture, be they comics, magazine ads, movie-star photographs or hamburgers. In contrast, Mr. Segal fixed his gaze on the ordinary consumers of that culture and through his use of the full-body plaster cast, devised a way to incorporate them into his work virtually warts and all. …
Starting in the 1970's, he sometimes painted the figures and their settings in bright, flat colors, giving them a visual vibrancy that again reflected his roots in painting. (His painting background was also manifest in the robustly worked pastels that he made throughout his career and that occasionally showed up in his tableaus). The figurative nature of his work also allowed him to revisit traditional themes, starting with "The Legend of Lott" from 1966 and including a public commission, "In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State: Abraham and Isaac" of 1980, at Princeton University. …
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2000 The Austin American-Statesman
June 8, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: UT professor was 'generous of spirit',; His psychology work included
BYLINE: Mike KelleyJim Prentice, for 35 years a member of the psychology faculty at the University of Texas, "was almost a father figure," one of his colleagues said, a man who, with degrees from Princeton and Harvard, "represented an older and more genteel time in academia."
Prentice died Sunday at age 75. A memorial service will begin at 9:30 a.m. Monday at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
A New York native, Prentice was awarded a Purple Heart for his military service in France during World War II.
Before joining the UT faculty in 1965, Prentice worked for many years at the Judge Baker Guidance Center in Boston, Mass. …
Press Journal (Vero Beach, FL)
Copyright 2000 Stuart News Company
June 7, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
Paid Obituary
MATTHEW THOMAS GEIS, JR.VERO BEACH - Matthew Thomas Geis, Jr. 81, husband of the late Dorothy Redwine Geis, formerly of Princeton and Spring Lake, NJ died Friday, June 2, 2000 at Royal Palm Convalescent Center in Vero Beach, FL.
Mr. Geis was born April 27, 1919 in New York City, NY and moved to Vero Beach in 1988.
He attended the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, NJ and was a graduate of Princeton University in Princeton, NJ Class of '43, where he was a member of the Quadrangle Club, as well as the Track and Field and Tennis Teams. He was a member of Holy Cross Catholic Church and the Riomar Bay Yacht Club in Vero Beach; and the Nassau Club, Prinecton, NJ. …
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