News

A sweet spot in town

A New Yorker with a proclivity toward cupcakes will probably swear by Magnolia Bakery and Crumbs. A Princetonian with that particular type of sweet tooth might now swear by the House of Cupcakes, newly open for business at 30 Witherspoon St.Behind the zebra-print partition and lime-green walls are ovens hard at work, baking nearly 30 different varieties of cupcakes from ?Coconut Snowball? to ?Brooklyn Black Out.?The House of Cupcakes, which opened in late August, already has a steady base of customers.

Discovery may lower drug costs

Deep in the bowels of Frick Lab a light bulb went on above the head of postdoctoral researcher David Nicewicz of chemistry professor David MacMillan?s group.

Former CIA administrator talks technology

Correction appended

Councilmen: Do not move the Dinky

Four hundred and sixty feet may not be a long walk for most college students. The furor of Princeton residents over the proposed relocation of the Dinky Station, however, may force the University to substantially redraw its current plans for the Arts and Transit Neighborhood.At an open house at the Arts Council of Princeton last night to discuss plans for new University neighborhood, residents and Borough Council members rose to express their vehement opposition to the move.?You are saying that this is a development for the community, but I am going to say that this is really a development that is happening to the community,? Borough Councilman Andrew Koontz told Neil Kittredge, an architect for Beyer, Blinder, Belle, the architectural firm hired by the University to lay out the new site.?There are plenty of expendable University buildings down there that have no artistic value and can go [to make room for the development],? Koontz argued.

Princeton not as green as Harvard, Yale

Princeton lagged behind both Harvard and Yale in a new Princeton Review survey ranking colleges and universities based on their environmental impact.

Borough officer faces felony charges

Sgt. Kenneth Riley, a 17-year veteran of the Princeton Borough Police Department and former Borough Police Officer of the Year, was indicted on six felony counts by the Mercer County Prosecutor?s Office last Friday.The charges brought against him are two counts of third-degree computer criminal activity, two counts of third-degree unlawful access and disclosure of computer data, and two counts of second-degree official misconduct.

University takes hit as Lehman Brothers sinks

This week, as the shock wave from the Wall Street meltdown reverberated worldwide, the University took a direct hit.University Controller Kenneth Molinaro told Bloomberg News on Wednesday that interest rates on some of the bonds issued by Princeton have more than quadrupled in the last week, costing the University about $8,000 per day.

Architects present model of U.'s arts and transit neighborhood

Architects and University administrators presented detailed plans last night for transforming the southwest portion of campus into the Arts and Transit Neighborhood envisioned in the Campus Plan.At an open house held at the Arts Council of Princeton, a team of architects ? accompanied by University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ?69, creative writing professor and director of the Lewis Center for the Arts Paul Muldoon and Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristin Appelget ? walked observers through a forest of poster boards illustrating the substantial development slated for the area south of McCarter Theatre.The centerpiece of the plan is a 130,000-square-foot arts complex that will comprise three connected buildings facing a fountain.

Crime around campus

Green HallSept. 11, 11:46 p.m.A DPS staff member reported being stopped by a student about an individual urinating in a bush outside the building.

Panel advises campus conservatives

Students packed into Robertson Bowl 001 on Tuesday evening to hear two Rhodes scholars and other conservative alumni discuss how to stay true to conservative beliefs amid a general campus atmosphere that they said is too liberal.The discussion, moderated by politics professor Robert George, included Rhodes scholars Sherif Girgis ?08 and Christian Sahner ?07, Cassy DeBenedetto ?07, Daniel Mark ?03 GS and Cason Cheely ?03.The panel members gave advice on how to overcome the ?double standard? of being conservative in a liberal campus environment, including the social concerns they faced when they arrived at school.

Professor gets $2.5 million grant

Molecular biology professor Ileana Cristea has been named one of the three inaugural recipients of the $2.5 million Avant-Garde Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which is part of the National Institutes of Health.The award grants each recipient $500,000 annually over the course of five years and is aimed at encouraging research into high-impact HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in drug abusers.Cristea?s research focuses on virus-host interactions for Sindbis fever using a methodology she developed that ?allows tracking of protein localization and elucidation of interacting partners? and can be applied to HIV as well, a NIDA statement said.Cristea, who joined the University in February 2008, will use

Veteran administrator Harmon '78 leads alumni outreach

Justin Harmon ?78 has returned to Princeton as director of development communications after spending the last eight years at Wesleyan University.Harmon was Princeton?s director of communications from 1987 to 2000, when he left for a position at Wesleyan.

Daily Princetonian Video: Alan Blinder '67 and Harrison Hong on the financial crisis

New director joins McCarter Theatre

Timothy Shields, recently named the new managing director of McCarter Theatre, will take the helm in January with plans to focus on increasing attendance in spite of the recent economic downturn.?The challenges are always ones of trying to be relevant to a broader audience,? Shields explained in an interview.

Students invest in local produce

The Princeton Farmers? Market, held Tuesday for the first time this year, is adding a new service to help bring organic food from local vendors directly to students? dorm rooms: box shares that are delivered weekly to the local market for pickup by students and other community members.Students who buy a box share for the fall season are purchasing ?shares in the bounty of the farm,? said Sherry Dudas, one of the owners of Honey Brook Organic farm, which grows herbs and vegetables and is one of the suppliers for the Farmers? Market.She explained that because the box share entitles the purchaser to part of the season?s harvest, the customer ?assumes some of the risk of farming,? noting that the contents of each week?s box will vary depending on the harvest.

Top marks fall across programs

The total percentage of undergraduate A?s fell from 40.6 percent between 2004 to 2007 to 40.4 percent between 2005 and 2008 as the University?s controversial grading policy inches closer to its target.Between 2001 and 2004, the three years before the implementation of the grading policy, A?s comprised 47 percent of the grades in undergraduate courses.In a statement during the faculty meeting Monday afternoon, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel announced the progress of the four programs ? engineering, social sciences, natural sciences and humanities ? in bringing down the number of A?s distributed.Malkiel could not be reached for comment Tuesday.According to a University statement, ?[i]n humanities departments, A?s accounted for 45.5 percent of the grades in undergraduate courses in 2005-08, down from 55.6 percent in 2001-04.

Students fear Ike’s destruction

For students hailing from coastal Texas, the start-of-classes malaise that often supplants the elation of Lawnparties weekend was overshadowed by far stronger anxieties about the state of their homes after the destruction unleashed by Hurricane Ike.The tropical cyclone made landfall early Saturday morning on the island of Galveston as a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Municipalities divided over debt issues

Monetary disputes between Princeton Borough and Princeton Township have exploded in the past month, as the Borough has sought to receive reimbursements from the Township for costs that the Borough bore in administering agencies that serve both communities.The Princeton Packet reported that in July, the Borough had received a $1.68 million payment from the Township.

Joint Borough-Township meeting reveals residents' discontent with recreation facilities

Princeton residents expressed frustration with the current status of Princeton?s recreation facilities and urged both municipal governments to take action at a meeting with Borough and Township officials last night.Teri McIntire, a Township resident, told members of the municipal governments to ?step out of the sandbox, stop kicking sand at each other and get [park improvements] done.??We have 6-year-olds peeing in the bushes,? McIntire said, noting the need for restrooms in Princeton parks and the deteriorating condition of Community Park Pool.

ORFE department welcomes new building

Though the new home for the operations research and financial engineering (ORFE) department and the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) was scheduled to hold classes this fall, the building?s construction has not been completed in time.?Even though [we] moved into the building last week, offices and hallways are cluttered with boxes, and the classrooms, studios, labs and lounges are not finished yet,? ORFE professor Rene Carmona said.Though classes and seminars could not be scheduled as planned for the building this fall, Carmona said that faculty are looking forward to ?the tremendous potential for change offered by the new synergies and interactions which the new building will enable.?Despite the delay, the University has secured funds from a soon-to-be-disclosed donor, ORFE professor and department chair Robert Vanderbei explained, adding that the donor and the building?s names will be revealed soon.Located between Mudd Library and Wallace Hall, the 46,000-square-foot structure will house offices for faculty and graduate students, research studios, conference rooms, a large lecture hall and a number of smaller classrooms.Carmona noted that this construction comes at an opportune time, as there have been unexpected increases in the number of ORFE majors over the past few years.?A good number of incoming freshmen had heard about ORFE while in high school,? Carmona said, explaining that ?some of them chose Princeton because of [the program].?Erhan Cinlar, ORFE?s founding department chair, said in an e-mail that the ?growth in the size of the faculty and research staff? was another reason for the new building.Cinlar lauded architect Fred Fisher for doing a ?superb job? in creating a design that satisfies the need for both ?private research space? and interactive commons areas.