News

Following a short speech at the U-Store Saturday, former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey conducted a joint interview with reporters from The Daily Princetonian, Times of Trenton and Princeton Packet.Is this your first time back at Princeton?Yes, it's wonderful.

NEWS | 09/24/2006

Spin doctors

Spin doctors

Physics professor Ali Yazdani runs a lab that literally floats on air.Deep within the basement of Jadwin Hall, powerful air pistons prop up a 35-ton room, protecting a scanning tunneling microscope from miniscule vibrations caused by seismic activity and the traffic from Washington Road.

NEWS | 09/24/2006

At colleges, glass ceiling persists

A panel led by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently claimed there are far fewer tenured female science and engineering professors than men, even though the number of female students in medical and technical fields is steadily increasing.Women earn 20 to 30 percent of the nation's doctorates in science, but they receive less than half that number of full professorships in science and engineering fields, according to the panel.Princeton's numbers are less dramatic than national figures.

NEWS | 09/24/2006

Gay ex-governor discusses memoir

James McGreevey, the former New Jersey governor and University trustee who stunned family members and colleagues in August 2004 by announcing that he was "a gay American" and would soon resign his office, told a U-Store audience Saturday that his very public and punishing admission has enabled him to at last find peace."It's been a wonderful journey, at times an excruciatingly painful journey for the individuals that I love," he said to the crowd of about 50.

NEWS | 09/24/2006

Grad student alleges blog posts are GOP dirty tricks

One year ago, Juan Melli GS founded bluejersey.com, a left-leaning blog that he hoped would satisfy his passion for political debate and grant him an occasional respite from mechanical engineering research.In the past few days, however, Melli's site has swept him into the midst of a political scandal, one that could implicate the campaign staff of a New Jersey senatorial candidate in one of the nation's most closely-watched election races.The controversy involves comments posted Tuesday on Melli's site, submitted by users claiming to be ex-Democrats disillusioned with incumbent Sen.

NEWS | 09/21/2006

Accomplished chemistry professor remembered for brilliance, energy

Edward Stiefel, the renowned chemistry professor who helped lead the cleanup of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, died Sept.

NEWS | 09/21/2006

Musical Chairs

The Muir String Quartet performs in Richardson Auditorium on Thursday evening. The group played works by Haydn, Berg and Schumann.

NEWS | 09/21/2006

Kagame: Rwanda breaking with its ugly past

"There are no easy questions and no easy answers in Rwanda, but you have to do something in any case," Rwandan President Paul Kagame told a packed audience Thursday afternoon.Traveling to Princeton during a brief interlude in this year's session of the United Nations General Assembly, Kagame described both the progress Rwanda has made and the challenges his nation still faces since the devastating 1994 genocide, which left over 800,000 people dead."Most post-conflict reconstruction tends to revolve around the restoration of [socioeconomic] frameworks," Kagame said.

NEWS | 09/21/2006

Kurtzer questions Iran role in Israel-Lebanon conflict

Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, refuted the popular theory that Iran was involved in Hezbollah's actions against Israel earlier this year as "unpersuasive" in a lecture yesterday and repeated his call for the United States to withdraw troops from Iraq.Kurtzer was in Israel when fighting broke out in July.

NEWS | 09/21/2006

Harvard's endowment nears $30 billion

Harvard's endowment reached an all-time high in the year ending June 30, growing $3.3 billion to a total just shy of a whopping $29.2 billion.But in a development that could damage its national rankings, Harvard College, the undergraduate arm of the university, said this week that the percentage of its alumni contributing to its annual fund decreased this year to 39 percent, a 17-year low.The rate was only one point below Harvard's performance last year, but it has been declining over the past five years, The Harvard Crimson reported.Princeton, meanwhile, has received steady alumni giving of between 58 percent and 60 percent, Director of Development Relations Steve LeMenager said.

NEWS | 09/20/2006

Could Gates be lured to Princeton?

The announcement Monday that the University has created a Center for African-American Studies has given new momentum to a question outstanding since 2002: Will superstar Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates finally come to Princeton?Former University provost Amy Gutmann extended a standing job offer to Gates, who was then the chair of Harvard's African and African-American Studies department.

NEWS | 09/20/2006

Senior spearheads effort to rethink P/D/F option

Students will be able to rescind a course's P/D/F grading option at any point during their undergraduate careers, if a proposal to overhaul the University's P/D/F policy is embraced by the administration.The proposal (read the full text), spearheaded by Graham Gottlieb '07, will be discussed at the first USG meeting Sunday.Certain aspects of the current policy, Gottlieb said, "don't make sense.

NEWS | 09/20/2006

Ozfest

Daphne Oz '08 signs copies of her new book, "The Dorm Room Diet: The 8-step plan for creating a healthy lifestyle that really works," which offers advice for college students hoping to escape the "Freshman 15"

NEWS | 09/20/2006

Chemistry professor wins Heroes Award for anti-cancer drug

Edward Taylor, the 83-year-old organic chemistry professor behind the new blockbuster anticancer drug Alimta, was recently awarded the 2006 Heroes of Chemistry Award for his contributions to medicine.The award, among the most prestigious in chemistry, is given by the American Chemical Society to "chemical innovators whose work has led to the welfare and progress of humanity."Alimta ? which was approved by the FDA in 2004 for treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma ? effectively protracts patient life while minimizing suffering.

NEWS | 09/20/2006

Malkiel, students spar over colleges

The Stokes Lounge of Whig Hall became a forum for student anxieties last night as Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel and Executive Vice President Mark Burstein answered questions from the Class of 2008 concerning next year's four-year residential college system.The audience of around 50 grilled the administrators for more than an hour about concerns related to the emerging colleges, particularly about whether they will divide rich and poor students, siphon potential members away from the century-old eating club system and exclude those who opt to be independent."Why create a dorm with really nice facilities that will draw attention when you can't participate if you don't want to be part of the college system?" one student asked.

NEWS | 09/20/2006

Axed policy finds support online

The University's decision to abandon early admissions has triggered mixed but impassioned reviews from students.

NEWS | 09/20/2006

Job search unaffected by deflation, report says

Though fewer students have earned A-range grades over the past two years, the new grading policy has not harmed students' post-graduation endeavors, according to a report released yesterday by The Faculty Committee on Grading.While the implementation of the grading policy is "heading in the right direction, and we are encouraged by the progress made thus far," the committee said it plans to continue collecting data and pushing grades towards the target."We will monitor our students for their wellbeing," Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel, the principal architect of the policy, said in an interview.

NEWS | 09/19/2006

Small clues amid noise: Your brain on Sudoku

Move over, crossword puzzles. Sudoku ? the addictive number-placement game first popularized in Japan ? has taken America by storm.After spawning innumerable books and websites and providing hours of entertainment for stranded airline passengers, the deceptively simple game has recently attracted an academic following.

NEWS | 09/19/2006

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