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Environment News Service
January 3, 2001
SOUTH POLE SNOWPACK REVEALS CENTURY'S AIR QUALITY
SOUTH POLE, Antarctica, January 3, 2001 (ENS) - A team of
scientists will search the South Pole snowpack this January
for 100 year old air samples, to investigate what the air
quality was like during the last century.
The pockets of air trapped in the snowpack will provide
scientists with a historical record of gases that were
present in the atmosphere during this period. Researchers
will then be able to analyze this record for clues to how
human activity has influenced atmospheric processes.
With support from the National Science Foundation and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the
six investigators from Bowdoin College in Maine, NOAA's
Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, the
University of Wisconsin and Princeton University,
will draw air from the snowpack at incremental depths,
stopping at about 120 meters, at which point the snow turns
to ice.
Defense Week, January 2, 2001
DARPA Selects Quiet Supersonic Platform' Contractors
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has
announced the participants in its project to design an
airplane that can fly faster than the speed of sound without
the harsh effects of a sonic boom on the ground.
The sonic booms restrict the flight of today's supersonic
aircraft from all but the most remote air routes. If the
military were able to fly its supersonic aircraft in more
places, it could reduce the cost and increase the
effectiveness of many military operations, experts say.
...
In addition, DARPA awarded contracts to seven research
facilities, including several universities, for the QSP
technology development segment of the program, a segment
aimed at advancing certain key technologies. ...
According to a DARPA statement, contracts for the QSP
technology development segment went to:
*Princeton University, for research on off-body
energy addition combined with a strategically shaped vehicle
to attenuate ground shock signatures; ...
The New York Times, January 2, 2001
Constructing a More Plausible Universe With 'Warm Dark
Matter'
Cosmologists often turn to computer simulations in
concocting likely inventories of what the universe is made
of. ...
Over the last two decades, for instance, computer
simulations have lent increasing support for the idea of
cold dark matter. ...
But cold dark matter had some shortcomings. In
simulations, it usually produced large galaxies much as they
are in reality. But the smaller structures seemed wrong; it
produced too many dwarf galaxies everywhere, as satellites
to large galaxies and even in what are observed as virtually
empty intergalactic voids.
Computer simulations at Princeton have now tested
an alternative idea: dark matter that is not cold or hot,
but warm. ...
"It looks as if warm dark matter solves all the
problems," Dr. Jeremiah P. Ostriker, an astrophysicist and
provost at Princeton, said in an interview last week.
"Is it true? We don't know, but it's testable. All we have
to do is look at the sky and see if it looks like the cold
dark matter simulation or the one for warm dark matter."
Besides Dr. Ostriker, the research team included Dr. Paul
Bode of Princeton and Dr. Neil Turok, an
astrophysicist at Cambridge in England. The results have
been discussed at recent scientific meetings and soon will
be published in an astrophysics journal.
E, January 1, 2001
Designer People
use of genetic engineering to create gene-enriched
people
The Human Genetic Blueprint Has Been Drafted, Offering
Both Perils and Opportunities for the Environment.
THE BIG QUESTION:
Are We Changing the Nature of Nature?
Princeton University microbiologist Lee M. Silver
can see a day a few centuries from now when there are two
species of humans--the standard-issue "Naturals," and the
"Gene-enriched," an elite class whose parents consciously
bought for them designer genes, and whose parents before
them did the same, and so on for generations. Want Billy to
have superior athletic ability? Plunk down the cash. Want
Suzy to be exceptionally smart? Just pull out the Visa card
at your local fertility clinic, where the elite likely will
go to enhance their babies-to-be. ...
The Public Interest, January 1, 2001
Politics in a Brave New World.
BY all accounts, we are on the cusp of a great
technological revolution or revolutions. In the last several
months, Time, Newsweek, Wired, the New York Times Magazine,
even the stuffy, high-brow Partisan Review have run cover
stories on the technological marvels about to transform our
lives. None of this apparently is science fiction but what
leading scientists in their respective fields are predicting
as fact. ...
Lee M. Silver, a molecular biologist and neuroscientist
at Princeton University, predicts that by mid century
genetic engineering will have become sufficiently feasible,
safe, and efficient that we will possess "the power to
change the nature of humankind." ...
Financial Times, December 29, 2000
Towards a piracy high watermark
COPYRIGHT PROTECTION: Paul Talacko looks at the
initiative to create secure music standards and the digital
watermarking technology b:
...
SDMI is a response to the flood of illegally copied music
files that has swept through the internet. Its members
include large hardware, consumer electronics, software and
media companies. Most of the illegal MP3 files on the
internet have been copied or "ripped" from CDs, says
Leonardo Chiariglione, the executive director of SDMI.
...
At the heart of technologies proposed for SDMI is a
technique called digital "watermarking". This involves
subtly embedding information about, say, copyright or who
owns a file, into a digital image or music. SDMI watermarks
will also determine whether a music file can be copied. They
will be "screened" with special software included in
SDMI-compliant music players.
SDMI-compliant players will reproduce music that bears a
watermark so long as the user is observing the terms of the
licence. But they will also reproduce music without a
watermark. The hackers' task is thus to remove the watermark
and the task of SDMI to find a watermark that cannot be
removed without doing so much damage to the file that people
would rather buy their own legitimate copy than listen to
it. SDMI presented the world's hackers with four different
types of watermarking and two other non-specified files and
bid them do their worst. ...
Perhaps the most important crack and possibly the most
successful comes from a team of academics who have not yet
published full details of their research. The team is based
at Princeton University, but also includes
members from Xerox Parc and Rice University.
Edward W. Felten, of the department of computer science
at Princeton and a member of the team, claims that
they managed to crack all four approaches provided by SDMI.
It took them about a one-half-person week for each approach,
he says. Once you know a particular mechanism all other
files that use it can be easily cracked.
Presidential Campaign Press Materials, December 28,
2000
PRESIDENT ELECT BUSH NOMINATES DONALD RUMSFELD AS
SECRETARY OF DEFENCE
WASHINGTON, DC - President-elect George W. Bush today
announced his intention to name Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary
of Defense during the Ford Administration and a former U.S.
Congressman, to serve as Secretary of Defense. ...
Mr. Rumsfeld was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1932. He
attended Princeton University on scholarship
and.. from 1954 to 1957, served in the U.S. Navy as a Naval
aviator. He and his wife, Joyce, have three children and
five grandchildren. ...
The Miami Herald, December 27, 2000
Mobile-clinic doc brings preventive care to kids it
otherwise might never meet
MIAMI _ The path that led Arturo Brito to this steamy
parking lot at West Homestead Elementary School began, as so
many paths do, with parents who set a lifelong example of
giving back. ...
Brito finds it somewhat ironic that his pragmatic,
grass-roots view of health care has led him far afield again
in the past couple of years. He has attended hearings all
over the country as a member of the National Bioethics
Advisory Commission, an advisory group to the president on
the use of people in research. ...
Brito's work with this "heavy-duty, high-profile group of
folks" led by Princeton University President Harold
T. Shapiro "is thrilling for the Department of Pediatrics
and the medical school," said Dr. R. Rodney Howell,
University of Miami's chairman of pediatrics. ...
The New York Times, December 27, 2000
Colleges Are Moving to Ensure English Fluency in Teaching
Assistants
At colleges and universities, graduate-student teaching
assistants are often the backbone of large lecture classes,
especially in the sciences. They guide undergraduates
through lab assignments, set up the review sessions and
often give out grades. They are sometimes an undergraduate's
only hope of understanding incomprehensible course
material.
So when teaching assistants come from abroad and cannot
be understood in English, work that was difficult often
becomes impenetrable. The communication gap occurs because
graduate students are admitted to advanced-degree programs
based on their academic work, not their teaching ability.
...
In recent years, some of the nation's top colleges have
wrestled with the problem. This year, for the first time,
Princeton required incoming graduate students from
foreign countries to pass an oral proficiency exam in
English, before permitting them to teach this fall. ...
The Christian Science Monitor, December 26, 2000
Japan calls for joint initiative on economic ties to
US
Friendly foreign governments see a change in
administration in Washington as an opportunity to improve
their relationship with the United States.
So it is that the Japanese government is exploring the
idea of proposing closer economic integration of the
American and Japanese economies. ...
At the moment, Japan's economy shows signs of slowing.
Real growth after inflation is running about 1 percent - a
piddling pace. Another recession may lie ahead, warns
Douglas Ostrom of George Washington University.
Some economists blame this meager growth in large part on
the Bank of Japan's monetary policy. Even though Japan has
declining prices, the bank raised interest rates in August
to 0.25 percent from near zero. The fuel for economic
expansion, the money supply, is growing slowly. ...
Princeton University economist Paul Krugman has
likened the bank to a driver who runs over a pedestrian. The
driver looks back and says, "I am so sorry, let me undo the
damage" - and proceeds to back up his car, running over the
pedestrian again. ...
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, December 26, 2000
The 2000 award for Texans of the year
What Texans stood out in 2000? From global to local, here
are my nominations for this year's award:
...
RUTH SIMMONS - In November, this Houstonian was named the
first African-American president of an Ivy League
institution. Brown University's new leader grew up in
Houston's Fifth Ward, the daughter of a sharecropper. After
she left the state at age 17, she earned a doctorate from
Harvard University.
Dr. Simmons' first college presidency was at Smith
College. She moved there in 1995 after serving Princeton
University as vice provost. Like other university
executives, the Texan faces the challenging task of
expanding Brown's endowment. Since she doubled Smith's
coffers, the terrain should seem familiar. ...
Chicago Tribune, December 24, 2000
REQUIRED READING FOR STUDENTS
If anyone knows what it takes to get into a top college
it's Howard Greene.
A former Princeton University admissions officer,
a graduate of Dartmouth College and holder of master's
degrees from Harvard and New York University, Greene has
co-authored three new books aimed at helping students gain
admission to the best colleges in the U.S. ...
The Florida Times-Union, December 24, 2000
Bush takes break after working on filling his Cabinet
AUSTIN, Texas -- President-elect Bush has assembled about
half of his Cabinet despite a transition period cut short by
the recount deadlock. ...
Bush is behind where Clinton was after his election in
1992, when his core Cabinet was in place by Christmas, along
with a battery of other top administration officials.
But Clinton wasn't hampered by a five-week, postelection
stalemate.
'I think it's remarkable' how swiftly Bush is moving,
said Fred Greenstein, a Princeton University
professor of politics and author of a book on
presidential leadership. 'This guy does present the portrait
of someone who finds it easy to make decisions.' ...
The New York Post, December 24, 2000
"NICCOLO'S SMILE: A BIOGRAPHY OF MACHIAVELLI" BY MAURIZIO
VIROLI
Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" isn't exactly a
treatise on honesty, loyalty or kindness. But Princeton
University professor Maurizio Viroli sets out to prove
in his new book, "Niccolo's Smile," that the man whose name
is synonymous with artful deviousness and manipulation was
actually a charming humanitarian who loved poetry, adventure
and women. ...
Telegraph Herald, December 24, 2000
Americans celebrate Christ's birth, commercialism
Churches:Pageants range from retelling of Bible story to
Web-surfing for day's true meaning
...
Mixing the twin American pieties - sacraments and sales -
is deeply rooted American tradition, and not one that is
necessarily hypocritical, says Leigh Schmidt, a Princeton
University scholar who leads research into modern
American holidaymaking.
In his study, "Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of
American Holidays," Schmidt describes the seeming mix of the
sacred and profane as "a compelling linkage of religious,
civic, and folk celebration to modern forms of display and
retailing."
Not every culture tolerates the mix so well. The original
"mystery plays" - recountings of biblical tales dating back
more than 1,000 years - died out in northern Europe in the
Middle Ages partly because their popularity attracted
merchants, and church leaders were aghast at seeing trinkets
peddled alongside scripture.
By contrast, what Schmidt describes as "convergences of
fair and festival" has happily thrived in American at least
since the early 19th century. ...
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