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Princeton in the News
November 29, 2000
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Newsday, December 1, 2000ELECTION 2000
THE PRESIDENCY / TWO LEADERS, TWO STYLES
Whether it is George W. Bush or Al Gore, their actions in these trying weeks since the election-their decision-making, demeanor, personality traits and leadership skills-provide unmistakable clues as to how each would organize the White House and preside over the nation, presidential scholars say...
Still, Bush, as the presumptive winner, in the last week has been faulted for not doing more to introduce himself to an American people still getting to know him.
"It's going to be really important for him to establish a presence. At this point, I haven't seen that at all. . . . There is a 'Where's Waldo?' sort of thing out there," said Fred Greenstein, a political scientist at Princeton University who has written a book on presidential leadership style. "After a while, it does almost seem as if he's hiding..."
The Times Higher Education Supplement, December 1, 2000Czech Institute Wins US Credit
A training ground for the new generation of Eastern European economic chiefs has become the first postgraduate school in the former Soviet bloc to gain a United States stamp of approval.
Prague's Centre for Economics Research and Graduate Education and Economics Institute, founded in 1991, has won accreditation from the New York State Education Department after an inspection by leading US economists and academics.
The evaluation, by a team that included Chicago University economics professor and president of the American Economic Association Sherwin Rosen, and Michael Rothschild, a Princeton University economics dean, said the economics PhD programme was "on a par with very good US programmes" and commended the institute "for its flexibility and innovation and for the acuteness of its leaders in understanding its market niche and problems..."
The Times, November 30, 2000Has Oxford missed the boat?
... Oxford leaked the good news that it is "on the verge of setting up" a Pounds 100 million link with the impossibly rich Princeton University in the United States. According to the Princeton side, the deal will allow Oxford to become Princeton's "gateway to Europe". The prospect of being regarded as the academic equivalent of, say, IBM's branch office in Birmingham won't gladden every Oxford heart...
The Associated Press State & Local Wire, November 29, 2000Two scholars share Grawemeyer Award for study of admissions policies
Two former presidents of Ivy League schools will share the 2001 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education for their study of race-based admissions at colleges and universities.
The study by Derek Bok and William G. Bowen produced a book published in 1998 that injected statistical facts into the national debate about affirmative action in higher education. Bok is a former president of Harvard University. Bowen is a former president of Princeton University.
The Grawemeyer award, announced Wednesday, carries a $200,000 prize...
Their book, "The Shape of the River," found that racial preferences at top colleges and universities helped minorities advance.
Bowen and Bok found that minorities admitted to selective schools under affirmative action policies were as likely to succeed as other students. They said ending racial preferences would reverse the outcome.
Financial Times, November 29, 2000INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY: EU tax harmony 'could cause damage'
Tax harmonisation between countries is both unnecessary and potentially damaging, according to a study about to be published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, an influential European think-tank.
Richard Baldwin of the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and Paul Krugman of Princeton University, have used the techniques of "new economic geography" pioneered by Professor Krugman to assess the question of tax harmonisation, which has recently re-emerged as a contentious issue in Europe...
Prof Baldwin and Prof Krugman ... argue that a more economically integrated EU does not require a harmonised tax system. It is often argued that tax harmonisation is necessary to prevent a "race to the bottom", in which countries compete to attract investment by offering ever lower tax rates, as Ireland has done with great success...
The New York Times, November 29, 2000GETTING OUT
Often, Parole Is One Stop On the Way Back to Prison
Because states sharply curtailed education, job training and other rehabilitation programs inside prisons, the newly released inmates are far less likely than their counterparts two decades ago to find jobs, maintain stable family lives or stay out of the kind of trouble that leads to more prison. Many states have unintentionally contributed to these problems by abolishing early release for good behavior, removing the incentive for inmates to improve their conduct, the experts say...
Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, has found that even when paroled inmates are able to find jobs, they earn only half as much as people of the same social and economic background who have not been incarcerated...
Financial Times, November 27, 2000Oxford extends US college links
Oxford University is in the early stages of talks with Princeton University over a research partnership - particularly in technology and biomedicine. Oxford is already in an alliance with the US Ivy League university to construct an internet college for alumni with several other elite partners.
While Oxford is not looking for an exclusive link with Princeton, it is becoming clear that they are forming a broader relationship...
The Houston Chronicle, November 27, 2000Yale expands aid plan to help foreign students
With competition for top students spilling over into the international arena, Yale University said this month that it was expanding its financial aid for foreign students and will accept them regardless of their need.
The move comes as Yale and other universities seek to make their student bodies more diverse and increase their reputations as global institutions. Other leading universities, including Princeton and Columbia, said they have begun similar plans or are considering them...
Don M. Betterton, director of financial aid at Princeton University, said the school had effectively extended need-blind admissions to foreign students on an ad hoc basis last year, and would do the same this year, even though it did not have a formal policy.
Betterton said the average scholarship for international undergraduates at Princeton was about $ 27,000, or about 50 percent more than the $ 18,000 average for American students. Many of the foreign scholarship students, he said, come from such areas as Eastern Europe, China and India...
The New York Times, November 26, 2000Expert Opinion; Or Not to Vote
Amid all the debate about the presidential election -- how important is the graphic design of a ballot? how soon should election results be announced? -- surprisingly little has been said about whether voting itself, at least voting American style, is the best way to canvass the nation's political will. Herewith, a collection of statisticians, political scientists and economists discuss some of the leading alternatives...
Robert Shimer, associate professor of economics at Princeton University
"Single transferable vote -- where you vote for your first-choice candidate but in the event that your first-choice candidate was not one of the leaders, you would have a second choice, and your vote would be allocated instead to your second choice -- is an option. This would make people more willing to take a chance on voting for candidates who better reflect what they believe in but don't have a real chance of winning. Or run-offs -- so if no candidate receives the majority of the votes, there'd be another election." ...
The Record, November 24, 2000URBAN DECAY SLEUTH ;
PROFESSOR SEARCHING FOR1 ELIXIR TO LET BUILDINGS REACH OLD AGE
George Scherer walks swiftly around the campus of Princeton University, looking to walls and the stones beneath his feet for signs of decay.
To his delight, he finds it nearly every time: pockmarks on limestone tiles in a plaza outside the Woodrow Wilson School, acid rain damage that has obliterated carvings on an 80-year-old sundial, and crystallized salt streaked on 1 nearly every stone wall.
Scherer, a professor in Princeton's civil and environmental engineering department and a former researcher for DuPont, spends his days looking to refine a chemical compound that will restore crumbling buildings and strengthen structures before deterioration begins.
"As soon as a building gets to be 20 years old, you begin to see signs of deterioration,"he said."If you understand the details of what's going on, you can make a more intelligent decision about how to fight it."
Scherer is seeking a compound that will change the structure of building materials such as stone so they are protected from salts. The compound would seep into stone like water, coating the areas most vulnerable to damage...
The Christian Century, November 15, 2000Why has Halloween become a bigger deal than it used to be?
THE ORANGE Halloween lights went up early this year. And in our neighborhood, there seemed to be a lot more of them--along with tiny ghost dolls hanging from trees, cobweb-like fabric stretched across porches, plastic spiders perched on roofs, and bloody plastic hands emerging from cardboard gravestones. For some reason, Halloween seems to have become a bigger deal than it used to be.
It's not just an impression. In 1999 Halloween became the second-biggest American holiday, based on the amount of money spent on decorations. According to Unity Marketing, Americans spent $ 659 million on Halloween stuff in 1999, pushing it ahead of Easter into the No. 2 spot...
Leigh Schmidt of Princeton University, who has studied the development of holidays and their intimate connection to commercial forces, says that the market always works to expand and extend holidays, encouraging more elaborate ways to celebrate.
Federal Technology Report, November 2, 2000WHITE HOUSE CITES YOUNG SCIENTISTS FROM FEDERAL LABS, UNIVERSITIES
President Clinton last week named 59 young researchers as recipients of the fifth annual Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers. The researchers received their awards Oct. 24 in a White House ceremony.
The awards, established by Clinton in 1996, reflect the high priority the administration places on producing outstanding scientists and engineers in all sectors of the economy, officials said. Eight federal departments and agencies join together annually to nominate young scientists and engineers for the award...
The scientists and engineers receive up to a five-year research grant to further their study in support of critical government missions. The federal agencies involved include: the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs, NASA and the National Science Foundation.
The recipients are:
...
-- Department of Energy: David Bahr, Washington State University; Aaron Odom, Michigan State University; Jonas Peters, California Institute of Technology; Richard Lehoucq, Sandia National Laboratories; Zhihong Lin, Princeton University; Zheng-Tian Lu, Argonne National Laboratory; Andrey Zheludev, Brookhaven National Laboratory.
...
Technology Review, November, 2000 / December, 2000Print your next PC
...
Pentium Challenge
THIS IS ALL A MIGHTY ATTRACTIVE VISION. BUT CAN PRINTED electronics actually compete with multibillion-dollar fabs in making the exacting circuitry needed for high-quality logic? Sigurd Wagner, for one, doesn't think so. A professor of electrical engineering at Princeton University, Wagner is also pursuing research into printed inorganic logic, but he sees its promise in cheap electronics that can be used over large surfaces, not in taking on high-quality microprocessors.
His goal, says Wagner, "isn't competing with integrated-circuit technology, it's to go into an area that traditional integrated circuits can't handle.' Attractive applications include wallpaper that acts like a giant display screen, electronics woven into textiles-even "electronic skin" covering an aircraft that is able to respond mechanically to changing conditions...
Inside Energy ... with Federal Lands, October 30, 2000DRESSELHAUS REQUESTS REPORT FROM FUSION PANEL ON BURNING PLASMAS
DOE's Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee will study issues associated with burning plasmas and release a report on the subject by next July.
Science Director Mildred Dresselhaus ... asked FESAC to focus on two areas, including the scientific issues associated with a burning plasma facility. Specifically, she asked ''what are the different levels of self heating that are needed to contribute to our understanding of this issue?'' Self heating is a process necessary to maintain the energy of a burning plasma...
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Director Rob Goldston said in an interview Wednesday that the FESAC review is important because it will help to define DOE's future role in burning plasma r&d. ''There needs to be a consensus in the department regarding this research,'' Goldston said...
Separately, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced that DOE and Princeton University will negotiate a five-year extension of the school's contract to manage PPPL. That contract now is scheduled to expire in September 2001. Goldston said the planned extension shows that DOE is pleased with the research taking place at the lab. ''This is a partnership that is very close and one that we want to continue,'' he said.
The university, which has managed the lab since 1951, receives an annual fee of $ 10,000 from the department.
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