Featured Stories Archive – February, 2007
Katz embraces dynamic approach to convey richness of languages
By Jennifer Greenstein Altmann · Posted February 27, 2007; 10:39 a.m.
Associate Professor of Classics Joshua Katz likes to start the first day of class in "Origins and Nature of English Vocabulary" with what he calls his "party trick."
"I ask students to stand up and say a few words, and then I tell them where they're from," said Katz, who is an expert in historical and comparative linguistics. He follows up by revealing one or two of his secrets to deriving hometowns from people's speech. "The students are amazed that it's possible to get all that information from how a person speaks."
Alumni award winners stress value of public service
By Eric Quiñones · Posted February 24, 2007; 08:00 p.m.
Princeton's top alumni award winners, former U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes and Africare President Julius Coles, emphasized the need for people to engage in public service, from the local to the global level, in their Alumni Day addresses Saturday, Feb. 24. Sarbanes and Coles also joined Princeton scholars in a panel discussion exploring the global response to the genocide and humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. The panel featured unscheduled comments from former U.S. Senate majority leader and Princeton alumnus Bill Frist, who was in Darfur just days earlier.
Black Arts drama troupe presents 'Flyin' West,' Feb. 23-March 3
By Eric Quiñones · Posted February 22, 2007; 03:29 p.m.
The Black Arts Company: Drama troupe will present Pearl Cleage's "Flyin' West," a tale of four African American women in search of freedom, on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 23-24, and Thursday through Saturday, March 1-3. Performances will be held at the Matthews Acting Studio, 185 Nassau St. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, and 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays.
Playground project benefits day care center and Princeton students
By Eric Quiñones · Posted February 19, 2007; 10:29 a.m.
In transforming a small vacant lot into an imaginative playground, Princeton architecture students are revitalizing a Trenton day care center while developing their own creative and analytical skills.
Archives exhibition tuned to the times
By Staff · Posted February 15, 2007; 01:34 p.m.
A new exhibition, "Tune Every Harp and Every Voice," at the Mudd Manuscript Library draws upon the library's rich holdings to document more than two centuries of musical life on campus. On view from Feb. 19 until July 27, the display demonstrates that the history of music at Princeton bears witness to the changes of the University as a whole.
Collaborations with students fuel Benziger's drive
By Hilary Parker · Posted February 12, 2007; 10:52 a.m.
All of the fuel cells developed in Jay Benziger’s lab run on hydrogen, but much of his research is powered by the chemical engineering professor’s collaborations with undergraduates. Benziger is an expert in the design of fuel cells, which use hydrogen to make electricity with only water and heat as byproducts. Though these devices have attracted much attention as a clean alternative to fossil fuel-burning energy sources, there are many obstacles to their widespread use.
With eye on global warming, students analyze campus emissions
By Eric Quiñones · Posted February 8, 2007; 05:00 p.m.
Princeton students concerned about global warming are taking a close look at how the University can contribute to solving the problem.
Participants in a student-initiated environmental studies seminar spent the fall semester combing the campus for ideas on how to enhance the University's efforts to mitigate its emissions of carbon dioxide, the major culprit behind global warming. The students worked to develop various scenarios for environmentally friendly strategies, ranging from upgrading to more energy-efficient windows and lights to broader ideas such as expanding the use of geothermal or solar heat around campus.
Investigating clues to a life, Biehl discovers larger reality
By Karin Dienst · Posted February 5, 2007; 12:47 p.m.
While doing fieldwork for his Ph.D. in his native Brazil in 1995, anthropologist João Biehl was taken on a detour by a local activist who told him there was a place he "just had to see."
That place was Vita, a site in Porto Alegre not far from where Biehl grew up, that is populated by the sick, mentally ill and poor who have passed beyond the care of families and social institutions. Vita is a place where individuals are left behind in what Biehl calls a "zone of social abandonment."
Scientists build a world in a grain of silicon
By Chad Boutin · Posted February 1, 2007; 11:22 a.m.
Ever since Charles Darwin proposed that animals adapt to their environment, scientists have dreamed of experimenting with this theory in a real-world landscape. Holding them back was the difficulty of creating a complex ecosystem that could be manipulated and controlled without placing wildlife at risk.
Now, Princeton scientists have found a way around this problem by fashioning a living, changeable ecosystem out of a tiny chip of silicon. Their creation is one of the strangest and smallest environments ever seen, but it could provide a valuable model to help researchers better understand how organisms survive in the natural world.