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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…YOUR 2012 MARSHALL SCHOLARS: ‘THEY’RE JUST LIKE US!’ EDITION. THEY LAUGH, CRY, AND EAT CAKE. BELOW, READ MORE ABOUT THE FIVE PRINCETONIANS WHO WILL BE STUDYING AT VARIOUS BRITISH UNIVERSITIES NEXT YEAR.

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Name: Christina Chang/Alice Easton/Kyle Edwards/Sam Dorison/Emily Rutherford

Age: 21/24/21/23/21

Major: Chemistry/EEB/Woodrow Wilson/Woodrow Wilson/History

Hometown: Austin, TX/Chicago, IL/Pasadena, CA/Longmeadow, MA/San Diego, CA

Upperclass Eating Club/Res College/Affiliation: Butler/Independent/Terrace/Tower/2D-Coop and Rocky RCA

Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional?

SD: Sam Seaborn.

KE: Tough call between Bruce Wayne and Chad Edwards ‘79.

ER: My mom, primarily because she is awesome, but secondarily because together she and I manage to defy every ‘legacy’ stereotype.

What’s the best meal you’ve had at Princeton?

CC: Penne integrale at Teresa Caffe followed by mascarpone-flavored ice cream at Bent Spoon.

AE: I often had cravings for Frist sushi when I was in Delhi. Sushi in a box is such a good idea.

KE: Post-finals chicken souvlaki at Hoagie Haven, which is awkwardly about a fifth the size of anything else they serve.

In one sentence, what is it you actually do all day?

SD: Eat breakfast, go to work, eat second breakfast, do some work, eat lunch, work, eat second lunch, work, go to the gym, eat dinner, watch TV with my roommate, eat second dinner, all while being addicted to gmail. It’s amazing how much you can fit in one sentence when it’s a run-on.

AE: Listen to a book on tape on the Green Line, help healthcare companies think about how to improve their performance, eat dinner with my parents and Skype people in other cities.

KE: I’m either a) in class, b) studying, c) procrastinating on a and b at Terrace meals, or d) singing with the Tigressions.

What is your greatest guilty pleasure?

CC: I’m addicted to eating muffins. If I ever see a muffin type I’ve not yet tasted, it’s my rule that I have to try it.

SD: Obscure competitive TV shows (Top Shot on the History Channel)

ER: Buying samosas from the U-Store at midnight.

What kind of research are you pursuing with the Marshall?

SD: The intersection of international security and human rights: How can countries work together to uphold human rights while protecting their citizens in the 21s century?

AE: The optimal design of intestinal worm treatment and control programs in India.

ER: I’m doing an MPhil in Modern British and European History at Oxford. I’ll be extending my current research on the intellectual history of male homosexual identity in late 19th and early 20th century Britain and America.

What is your biggest fear?

CC: Falling out love when it really matters.

SD: Being boring.

ER: Not finishing my thesis.

Continue reading…

Dec 13, 2011

21 Questions With…the Marshall Scholars

By Shirley Gao
Posted in 21 Questions, Alumni Also tagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

open accessPrinceton University joined MIT and Harvard in adopting an open access policy for all scholarly publications.

At the most recent meeting of the Faculty of Princeton University, members voted unanimously to grant “The Trustees of Princeton University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same.”

Translation?

Basically, professors are no longer allowed to give up all rights to their work when publishing, as some academic journals now require – especially in fields like English, history, and chemical engineering. Professors usually publish without expecting compensation, but journals still charge readers around $30 per article, as anyone who’s tried to do research off campus knows. The change would let the university make their work freely available.

While professors can request waivers to the policy if a publication refuses to budge, the faculty hopes that the policy will give them extra leverage to push to retain their rights. Professor Andrew Appel, a member of the committee studying open access, said the Provost is also planning to create a public repository for their work to make it more accessible.

So, why do you care?

It’s a win for the “information wants to be free” camp, but even if you’re not an open access advocate, you can still get excited about never again needing to pay for a Pequod version of any article by a Princeton faculty member.

Appel has the full report here.

Sep 28, 2011

Information Wants to be Free

By Lauren Zumbach
Posted in Faculty, Goings On Also tagged , , One comment

CHURCHILL SCHOLARSHIP WINNER EMMA YATES ‘11 SNEAKS CANDY INTO LIBRARIES, PUTS TOFU ON HER PIZZA, AND KNOWS MORE ABOUT AMYLOID-BETA OLIGOMERS THAN YOU DO

20110126__YatesE_0130Name: Emma Yates
Age: 22
Major: Chemistry
Hometown: Coconut Creek, Florida
Eating club/residential college/affiliation: Charter/Forbes

What was your initial reaction when you found out you won the scholarship?
Immediately, it was realizing that I’d won the Churchill based on the fact that the director of the Churchill Foundation had just asked me to withdraw from the Gates. After that, it was, SCORE!

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
Obtain some sort of caffeinated beverage.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten at Princeton?
I actually eat the same special order soy, whole wheat pizza at Charter every day for dinner. My friends laugh, but honestly, it’s delicious! Thanks Tom and Ramon! :)

When was the last time you pulled an all-nighter and why?
Honestly, I’ve never been able to figure out how people actually do that. I can’t function as a productive person if I don’t sleep at all, but with finals, papers, and fellowship interviews all clustered within a few day stretch, I averaged around 3 hours a night for a week or two. Before that it was graduate school applications: I had 5 due on the same day.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
So _________, “I mean…”

What magazines do you read?
Allure and Lucky.

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Feb 3, 2011

21 Questions With…Emma Yates

By Shirley Gao
Posted in 21 Questions Also tagged , , Leave a comment
Chargin up their lazer (sic) Photo credit. Frank Wojciechowski

Princeton researchers are chargin' up their lazer (sic). Photo credit: Frank Wojciechowski

That’s right. Take that, Austin Powers.

Princeton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering has developed a new laser that can detect and identify trace chemicals in the air, which is 1000 times more sensitive than the laser technology being used today.

With funding from the Office of Naval Research, Princeton’s engineers expect that this laser could eventually produce a remote, bomb-scanning military device small enough to be mounted on a tank. As professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Richard Miles told TG Daily:

“In general, when you want to determine if there are contaminants in the air you need to collect a sample of that air and test it…but with remote sensing you don’t need to do that. If there’s a bomb buried on the road ahead of you, you’d like to detect it by sampling the surrounding air, much like bomb-sniffing dogs can do, except from far away.”

Oh, it can also detect pollution. Technology that both the army and the peace-loving environmentalists can agree on? Science, you amaze me.

Read more about our super awesome lasers here.

Feb 1, 2011

Princeton Unveils Bomb-detecting Lasers

By Vivienne Chen
Posted in In the news Also tagged , , , Leave a comment


Are you lazy and stressed? Do you want to be “biochemically, molecularly, calm?” Then run!

Scientists have long known that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells, and some believe that’s the reason working out tends to have an antidepressant effect. A study by Princeton scientists has found that cells that are created from running don’t respond to stress in the same way regular ol’ lazy-people cells do, according to an article in the New York Times.

These “exercise-created” cells express fewer stress genes than regular cells do in stressful situations. If you’re a rat.

Continue reading…

Nov 21, 2009

In which I motivate you to hit the gym

By Angela Wu
Posted in Faculty, Goings On, In the news Also tagged , , , , Leave a comment