Wednesday, March 31, 2010

China executed more people than the rest of the world combined in 2009

Ace! NewsFlash

China Executed Thousands in 2009


HONG KONG — China executed more people last year than the rest of the world combined, according to a report published Tuesday byAmnesty International. Amnesty said there were “thousands” of Chinese executions in 2009— the precise number is considered a state secret — and the rights group called on Beijing to divulge how many it carries out.

The report said that at least 714 people were executed in 17 other countries, led by Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Methods of execution included beheading, stoning, electrocution, hanging, firing squads and lethal injection. Amnesty said in its report last year that China had executed at least 1,718 people in 2008, nearly three-fourths of the 2,390 executions worldwide that year.

“The Chinese authorities claim that fewer executions are taking place,” said Claudio Cordone, Amnesty’s interim secretary general. “If this is true, why won’t they tell the world how many people the state put to death?” Although admittedly incomplete, the figures from Amnesty are widely accepted. The State Department, for example, has cited the group’s findings in its reports on human rights.

Iran put at least 388 people to death last year, according to the latest Amnesty report, with about a third of the executions coming in the seven weeks of protests and turmoil that followed the country’s disputed presidential election in June. In Europe in 2009, for the first time since Amnesty International began keeping records, there were no executions. Belarus is the only European nation with the death penalty still on its books; the former Soviet republic reportedly executed two men two weeks ago.

The Constitutional Court in Russia also renewed a moratorium on death sentences in November, and the Amnesty report cited the court ruling saying that the “path towards full abolition of the death penalty is irreversible.” The United States was the only country in the Americas to execute anyone in 2009, according to the report, which said the 52 executions constituted the nation’s highest total in three years. Nearly half the executions, 24, came in Texas, while New Mexico officially banned the death penalty.

Amnesty, which has long opposed the death penalty, said death sentences and executions continued to be used for political purposes, often after unfair trials, and were used “disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities.” The report said at least 2,001 people were sentenced to death in 56 countries in 2009.

In addition to China, seven other Asian countries were reported to have carried out a total of 26 executions last year — Bangladesh, Japan, North Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia had no executions. Two executions in Thailand were the nation’s first since 2003, the report said, as two men found guilty of drug crimes were executed by lethal injection.

Botswana and Sudan were the only countries in sub-Saharan Africa to execute criminals in 2009, while Kenya carried out what Amnesty called “the largest mass commutation of death sentences ever known.” More than 4,000 condemned prisoners in Kenya had their sentences reduced to imprisonment. Burundi and Togo abolished the death penalty in 2009, Amnesty International said, joining 95 countries that had banned capital punishment.

By MARK McDONALD Published: March 30, 2010

Google Runs Into China's 'Great Firewall'

Ace! NewsFlash By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO And LORETTA CHAO


Google Inc.'s search sites in China abruptly stopped working Tuesday, but the explanation for the outage changed as the day wore on. The Internet giant first blamed itself, citing a technical change, but later reversed course and pointed to the heavy hand of China's "Great Firewall"—even as service appeared to be back to normal. The evolving explanation whipsawed Google watchers and showed how fraught with confusion the relationship between China and Google remains. The episode risks escalating their battle a week after Google stopped censoring its search engine in China.

Google struggled to discern the cause of the massive disruption, in which users in China received error messages for Google searches on the company's Hong Kong-based search site, Google.com.hk, and—at least for many users—on Google.com. Google began routing Chinese Internet users to its Hong Kong site last week as it said it would no longer comply with China's censoring policies and wouldn't run a censored Chinese search engine. The company said at midday Eastern time Tuesday that it believed it had caused the problem unintentionally by adding some text to the Web addresses of its search results, triggering the censoring.

Later in the day, Google reversed itself, saying it had made those changes a week earlier. "So whatever happened [Tuesday] to block Google.com.hk must have been as a result of a change in the Great Firewall," the company said. Google said late Tuesday afternoon that its search traffic in China had returned to normal. "For the time being this issue seems to be resolved," it said. The incident added to the sense of confusion over Google's relations with China. Google said Monday that its mobile services in China were being partially blocked, but it wasn't clear how extensive that blockage was, nor that the Chinese government was definitely behind it.

The disruption Tuesday was broader. Users of the Hong Kong site from at least half a dozen Chinese cities said they could reach the search page, but that any term entered in the search window yielded a browser error message, often causing their access to Google to be severed temporarily. Users in some cities also said they couldn't access Google.cn, which since last week has automatically sent users to the Hong Kong site.

Many Chinese users reported that all Web searches—even of terms as innocuous as "happy" or "tree"—on Google's Hong Kong site produced an error message saying the page couldn't be opened. The disruption was similar to how analysts expected a crackdown by China's Internet censors would look. It also shed light on the role of China's censorship regime in filtering results for China-based Web users. The system is opaque and unpredictable, and officials almost never discuss its workings. Wang Lijian, spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, one of China's main Internet regulators, said he was unaware of any Google disruption.

Any permanent blockage of Google's searches by China would deal a sharp blow to the company's hopes of continuing to operate part of its business in the country after dismantling its censored Chinese site. Google said last week that it hoped to maintain its music search and maps services in China, along with sales and research-and-development operations. Beijing has expressed anger at Google for publicly flouting its censorship regime, and a decision to block access to Google entirely has always been considered possible. Many analysts have believed Beijing would stop short of that for fear of infuriating Google's tens of millions of regular Chinese users, not to mention foreign businesses that require access to information.

Because Google censored its old Chinese site, Google.cn, in accordance with government rules, that site wasn't filtered by the government's firewall. Its international sites, such as the Hong Kong one, have always been subjected to filtering, meaning that Chinese users' searches of some sensitive terms—like those related to the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests, the initials RFA, for Radio Free Asia, or even the names of top leaders—might trigger an error message from the browser instead of a results page.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Selected Early Admission Figures for Fall 2010

Ace! NewsFlash

Some Colleges’ Early Admission Figures

Early applications, and acceptances, under binding early decision programs and non-binding early action for the Class of 2014

Update | December 17, 2009, 6:13 p.m.

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (non-binding): 5,684 applications, compared to 5,018 last year, +666; 590 offers of acceptance, compared to 540, +50; total anticipated class size: about 1,070
  • University of Maryland, Baltimore County (non-binding): 2,374 applications, compared to 1,498 last year, +876; 2,076 offers of acceptance, compared to 1,265; +811. total anticipated class size: about 1,575.
  • Wofford College (non-binding): 711 applications, compared too 722 last year, -11; 492 offers of admission, compared to 462, +30; total anticipated class size: about 420.

    Update | December 16, 2009, 8:29 p.m.

  • Brown (binding): 2,847 early applications, compared to 2360 last year, +487; 567 acceptances, compared to 570 last year, -3; total anticipated class size: about 1,485.
  • University of Chicago (non-binding): 5,883 early applications, compared to 3,774 last year, +2,109; 1,676 acceptances, compared to 1,128, +548; total anticipated class size: about 1,350.
  • Johns Hopkins (binding): 1,155 applicants, compared to 1,049 last year, +106; 493 acceptances, compared to 504 last year, -11; total anticipated class size: about 1,235
  • Update | December 16, 2009, 10:35 a.m.

  • Yale (non-binding): 5,262 applications, compared to 5,556 last year, -294; 730 offers of admission, compared to 742, -12; total anticipated class size: about 1,310
  • Update | December 16, 2009, 9:08 a.m.

  • Stanford (non-binding): 5,556 applications, compared to 5,363 last year, +183; 753 accepted, compared to 689 last year, +64; total anticipated class size: about 1675
  • Update | December 15, 2009, 7:56 p.m.

  • Pomona (binding; results that follow reflect only the first of two rounds): 516 applications, compared to 513 last year, +3; 98 acceptances (including from the Posse and QuestBridge Match programs), compared to 95 last year, +3; total anticipated class size: about 385.
  • Occidental (binding): 157 applications, compared to 113 a year earlier, +44; 60 acceptances, compared to 51, +9; total anticipated class size: 500
  • Update | December 15, 2009, 5:47 p.m.

  • The College of Saint Rose (non-binding): 3,117 applications, compared to 2,409 last year, +608; 1,182 offers of admission, compared to 1,127, +55; total anticipated class size: about 600
  • Mount St. Mary’s University, Maryland (non-binding): 3,218 applications, compared to 2,784 last year, +514; 1,620 offers of admission, compared to 1,062, +558; total anticipated class size: about 440.
  • Update | December 15, 2009, 3:15 p.m.

  • Swarthmore (binding, first of two rounds): 292 applications, compared to 302 last year, -10; 129 acceptances, compared to 126, +3; total anticipated class size: about 385
  • Update | December 15, 2009, 2:17 p.m.

  • Hamilton (binding, first of two rounds): 356 applications to date (including some for round 2), compared to 377 on this date last year, -21; 150 acceptances (round 1), compared to 167 last year, -17; total anticipated class size: about 480
  • Emory (binding, first of two rounds): 709 applications, roughly same as last year; 350 early acceptances (including from the QuestBridge Matchprogram), compared to 331 last year, +19; total anticipated class size: to be determined, but last year’s class was about 1,285
  • Update | December 15, 2009, 12:46 p.m.

  • Cornell (binding): 3,579 early applications, compared to 3,443 last year, +136; 1,167 acceptances, compared to 1,264 last year, -103; total anticipated class size: about 3,150.
  • Update | December 14, 2009, 5:16 p.m.

  • Dartmouth (binding): 1,600 early applications, compared to 1,549 last year, +51; 461 acceptances, compared to 401, +60; total anticipated class size: 1,100 to 1,150 (current freshman class is about 1,100, but college is considering increasing next year’s class to 1,150.)
  • Columbia (binding, figures for Columbia College and School of Engineering): 2,995 early applications, compared to 2,942 last year, +53; 631 acceptances, compared to 639, -8; total anticipated class size not specified.
  • Grinnell (binding, first of two rounds): 176 early applications, compared to 175 last year, +1; 90 acceptances, compared to 107, -17; total anticipated class size: 390,
  • December 14, 2009, 12:42 pm

  • Amherst (binding): 438 early applications, compared to 444 last year, -6; 147 acceptances compared to 138, +9; total anticipated class size: about 465
  • Duke (binding): 2,012 early applications, compared to 1,535 last year, +477; 602 acceptances compared to 583, +19; total anticipated class size: about 1,700.
  • Middlebury (binding, first of two rounds): 653 early applications, compared to 648 last year, +5; 262 acceptances (including some for fall 2010, and others for winter 2011) , compared to 274 last year, -12. total anticipated class size: about 700, including students matriculating in fall and winter
  • Northwestern (binding): 1,776 early applications, compared to 1,595 last year, +181; 618 acceptances compared to 590, +28; total anticipated class size: about 2,025
  • Wesleyan (binding, first of two rounds): about 500 early applications, roughly the same as last year; 237 acceptances, compared to 239 last year, -2; total anticipated class size: about 745.
  • Williams (binding): 541 early applications, compared to 614 last year, -73; 212 acceptances compared to 232 last year, -20;

  • *** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

    Columbia, Michigan & a German university accept Common App

    Ace! NewsFlash

    Columbia, Michigan and Connecticut Among 25 Colleges to Add Common Application

    Students applying to Columbia, the University of Michigan, the University of Connecticut and 22 other institutions in the next admissions season will, for the first time, be able to use the Common Application.

    Rob Killion, executive director of Common Application Inc., the nonprofit organization that produces the form, said in an e-mail message that the new additions would bring the total of participating institutions to 414. The next version of the Common Application, which has spared many recent applicants the chore of composing original essays for every institution they apply to, will be available Aug. 1.

    In a statement, Jessica Marinaccio, dean of undergraduate admissions at Columbia, said that adding the Common Application would “make applying to Columbia more accessible to students from every background.” She added:

    “We recognize the anxiety students and families feel throughout the admissions process, and hope that the standardized nature of the Common Application will make applying easier, more convenient and less stressful for students and the counselors and teachers who support them.”

    Still, for all the paperwork it saves students, the Common Application is also believed to have contributed to the arms race mentality among highly selective colleges and their applicants. Ms. Marinaccio noted in her statement that Columbia had received more than 26,000 applications for this fall’s freshman class at Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the most ever.

    Among Ivy League institutions, Columbia is the last to add the Common Application.

    Here, as provided by Mr. Killion, are the 25 colleges adding the Common Application:

    Alaska Pacific University

    Albany College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences

    Columbia University

    Concordia University in Portland, Ore.

    DePaul University

    Fontbonne University in St. Louis

    Husson University in Bangor, Me.

    Jacobs University, Bremen in Germany (the first international member)

    Johnson State College in Vermont

    Maritime College (SUNY)

    Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, N.Y.

    Morrisville State College (State University of New York)

    Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio

    School of the Art Institute of Chicago

    St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., and Santa Fe, N.M.

    Stephens College in Columbia, Mo.

    SUNY Potsdam

    University of Maryland, Baltimore County

    University of Connecticut

    University of Michigan

    University of North Carolina, Asheville

    Western New England College

    Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif.

    Xavier University of Louisiana

    Yeshiva University

    At this point, Mr. Killion said, the colleges with national profiles that do not accept the Common Application are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown, the University of Southern California and Howard.


    *** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

    College Rejections of the Rich & Famous

    Ace! NewsFlash

    Before They Were Titans, Moguls and Newsmakers, These People Were...Rejected

    At College Admission Time, Lessons in Thin Envelopes


    Few events arouse more teenage angst than the springtime arrival of college rejection letters. With next fall's college freshman class expected to approach a record 2.9 million students, hundreds of thousands of applicants will soon be receiving the dreaded letters. Teenagers who face rejection will be joining good company, including Nobel laureates, billionaire philanthropists, university presidents, constitutional scholars, best-selling authors and other leaders of business, media and the arts who once received college or graduate-school rejection letters of their own.


    Both Warren Buffett and "Today" show host Meredith Vieira say that while being rejected by the school of their dreams was devastating, it launched them on a path to meeting life-changing mentors. Harold Varmus, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, says getting rejected twice by Harvard Medical School, where a dean advised him to enlist in the military, was soon forgotten as he plunged into his studies at Columbia University's med school. For other college rejects, from Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy and entrepreneur Ted Turner to broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, the turndowns were minor footnotes, just ones they still remember and will talk about.

    Rejections aren't uncommon. Harvard accepts only a little more than 7% of the 29,000 undergraduate applications it receives each year, and Stanford's acceptance rate is about the same. "The truth is, everything that has happened in my life...that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better," Mr. Buffett says. With the exception of health problems, he says, setbacks teach "lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity."

    Famous 'Rejects'

    Warren Buffett
    [REJECTS1]Bloomberg News; Buffett family photo (inset)

    Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
    After Harvard Business School said no, everything 'I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better.'

    Meredith Vieira
    [REJECTS2]Getty Images; NBC Universal (inset)

    'Today' show co-host
    Had she not been rejected by Harvard, she doubts she would have entered television journalism.

    Lee Bollinger
    [REJECTS3]Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal; Baker City High School (inset)

    Columbia University president
    To 'allow other people's assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake.'

    Harold Varmus
    [REJECTS4]Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal; Harold Varmus (inset)

    Nobel laureate in medicine
    Rejected twice by Harvard's medical school. One dean there chastised him and advised him to enlist in the military.

    Ted Turner
    [REJECTSJ3]Bloomberg

    Entrepreneur
    Rejected by Princeton and Harvard. 'I want to be sure to make this point: I did everything I did without a college degree.'

    John Schlifske
    [REJECTSJ2]Kevin J. Miyazaki for The Wall Street Journal

    President of Northwestern Mutual
    Lesson he learned from Yale's rejection helped him years later counsel his son, Dan (standing), who was rejected by Duke.

    Tom Brokaw
    [REJECTSJ1]Getty Images

    Broadcast journalist
    Harvard rejection prompted him to settle down and stop partying. 'The initial stumble was critical in getting me launched.'

    Mr. Buffett regards his rejection at age 19 by Harvard Business School as a pivotal episode in his life. Looking back, he says Harvard wouldn't have been a good fit. But at the time, he "had this feeling of dread" after being rejected in an admissions interview in Chicago, and a fear of disappointing his father.

    As it turned out, his father responded with "only this unconditional love...an unconditional belief in me," Mr. Buffett says. Exploring other options, he realized that two investing experts he admired, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, were teaching at Columbia's graduate business school. He dashed off a late application, where by a stroke of luck it was fielded and accepted by Mr. Dodd. From these mentors, Mr. Buffett says he learned core principles that guided his investing. The Harvard rejection also benefited his alma mater; the family gave more than $12 million to Columbia in 2008 through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, based on tax filings.

    The lesson of negatives becoming positives has proved true repeatedly, Mr. Buffett says. He was terrified of public speaking—so much so that when he was young he sometimes threw up before giving an address. So he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says the skills he learned there enabled him to woo his future wife, Susan Thompson, a "champion debater," he says. "I even proposed to my wife during the course," he says. "If I had been only a mediocre speaker I might not have taken it."

    Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was rejected as a teenager when he applied to Harvard. He says the experience cemented his belief that it was up to him alone to define his talents and potential. His family had moved to a small, isolated town in rural Oregon, where educational opportunities were sparse. As a kid, he did menial jobs around the newspaper office, like sweeping the floor.

    Mr. Bollinger recalls thinking at the time, "I need to work extra hard and teach myself a lot of things that I need to know," to measure up to other students who were "going to prep schools, and having assignments that I'm not." When the rejection letter arrived, he accepted a scholarship to University of Oregon and later graduated from Columbia Law School. His advice: Don't let rejections control your life. To "allow other people's assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake," says Mr. Bollinger, a First Amendment author and scholar. "The question really is, who at the end of the day is going to make the determination about what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you."

    Others who received Harvard rejections include "Today" show host Meredith Vieira, who was turned down in 1971 as a high-school senior. At the time, she was crushed. "In fact, I was so devastated that when I went to Tufts [University] my freshman year, every Saturday I'd hitchhike to Harvard," she says in an email. But Ms. Vieira went on to meet a mentor at Tufts who sparked her interest in journalism by offering her an internship. Had she not been rejected, she doubts that she would have entered the field, she says.

    And broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, also rejected as a teenager by Harvard, says it was one of a series of setbacks that eventually led him to settle down, stop partying and commit to finishing college and working in broadcast journalism. "The initial stumble was critical in getting me launched," he says.

    Dr. Varmus, the Nobel laureate and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was daunted by the first of his two turndowns by Harvard's med school. He enrolled instead in grad studies in literature at Harvard, but was uninspired by thoughts of a career in that field. After a year, he applied again to Harvard's med school and was rejected, by a dean who chastised him in an interview for being "inconstant and immature" and advised him to enlist in the military. Officials at Columbia's medical school, however, seemed to value his "competence in two cultures," science and literature, he says. If rejected by the school you love, Dr. Varmus advises in an email, immerse yourself in life at a college that welcomes you. "The differences between colleges that seem so important before you get there will seem a lot less important once you arrive at one that offered you a place."

    Similarly, John Schlifske, president of insurance company Northwestern Mutual, was discouraged as a teenager when he received a rejection letter from Yale University. An aspiring college football player, "I wanted to go to Yale so badly," he says. He recalls coming home from school the day the letter arrived. "Mom was all excited and gave it to me," he says. His heart fell when he saw "the classic thin envelope," he says. "It was crushing." Yet he believes he had a deeper, richer experience at Carleton College in Minnesota. He says he received a "phenomenal" education and became a starter on the football team rather than a bench-warmer as he might have been at Yale. "Being wanted is a good thing," he says.

    He had a chance to pass on that wisdom to his son Dan, who was rejected in 2006 by one of his top choices, Duke University. Drawing on his own experience, the elder Mr. Schlifske told his son, "Just because somebody says no, doesn't mean there's not another school out there you're going to enjoy, and where you are going to get a good education." Dan ended up at his other top choice, Washington University in St. Louis, where he is currently a senior. Mr. Schlifske says, "he loves it."

    Rejected once, and then again, by business schools at Stanford and Harvard, Scott McNealy practiced the perseverance that would characterize his career. A brash economics graduate of Harvard, he was annoyed that "they wouldn't take a chance on me right out of college," he says. He kept trying, taking a job as a plant foreman for a manufacturer and working his way up in sales. "By my third year out of school, it was clear I was going to be a successful executive. I blew the doors off my numbers," he says. Granted admission to Stanford's business school, he met Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla and went on to head Sun for 22 years.

    Paul Purcell, who heads one of the few investment-advisory companies to emerge unscathed from the recession, Robert W. Baird & Co., says he interpreted his rejection years ago by Stanford University as evidence that he had to work harder. "I took it as a signal that, 'Look, the world is really competitive, and I'll just try harder next time,'" he says. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and got an MBA from the University of Chicago, and in 2009, as chairman, president and chief executive of Baird, won the University of Chicago Booth School of Business distinguished corporate alumnus award. Baird has remained profitable through the recession and expanded client assets to $75 billion.


    Time puts rejection letters in perspective, says Ted Turner. He received dual rejections as a teenager, by Princeton and Harvard, he says in an interview. The future America's Cup winner attended Brown University, where he became captain of the sailing team. He left college after his father cut off financial support, and joined his father's billboard company, which he built into the media empire that spawned CNN. Brown has since awarded him a bachelor's degree.

    Tragedies later had a greater impact on his life, he says, including the loss of his father to suicide and his teenage sister to illness. "A rejection letter doesn't even come close to losing loved ones in your family. That is the hard stuff to survive," Mr. Turner says. "I want to be sure to make this point: I did everything I did without a college degree," he says. While it is better to have one, "you can be successful without it."


    *** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

    N.Y.U. Plans to Expand Campuses by 40 Percent

    Ace! NewsFlash

    On Governors Island, the university envisions an institute that would unite several academic disciplines around a subject like the urban future.

    New York University is proposing the largest expansion in its history, with a new tower on Bleecker Street and three million square feet of new classrooms, dormitories and offices in the Greenwich Village area. The plans also call for creating a new engineering school inBrooklyn and a satellite campus on Governors Island, complete with dorms and faculty housing.

    The projects, which would expand N.Y.U.’s physical plant by 40 percent over the next 20 years, are aimed at accommodating a growing student body and competing for money and prestige with other universities. They will require approvals from city agencies and have already met with a skeptical response from some neighbors and preservationists. The city’s top economic development official, Deputy Mayor Robert C. Lieber, said that approval of the university’s plans was not guaranteed. “They’ve been deliberate and thoughtful,” Mr. Lieber said. “That doesn’t mean it’s all going to go exactly as they intended. There’s lots of opportunity for discussion here.”

    The university has clashed repeatedly with its neighbors over much less ambitious expansion efforts of recent decades. N.Y.U. officials acknowledged on Monday that these earlier projects had been marked by piecemeal planning and undistinguished design and said they have made a concerted effort this time to conduct an open public process that is mindful of the neighborhood context, architectural quality and residents’ interests. “It’s clear that N.Y.U. had a history of moving forward without listening,” John E. Sexton, the university’s president, said in a telephone interview from Qatar, near N.Y.U.’s new campus in Abu Dhabi. “What this process has allowed us to do is take advantage of the wisdom that’s out there. There are some people just trying to make reputations attacking N.Y.U. But there’s a lot of wisdom in the community.”

    Between 1991 and 2001, the number of students living in N.Y.U. housing tripled to 12,000, from 4,000, as the university raised its national profile. (In the early ’90s, 50 percent of its students came from the metropolitan area; now that figure has declined to 10 to 15 percent.) By 2031, N.Y.U. expects its total student body to grow to 46,500 students, up from the current 41,000.

    By 2031, the university aims to have 240 academic square feet per student; it now has 160, according to its own study, compared to Columbia University’s 326, Harvard’s 673 and Yale’s 866. The plan calls for adding 6 million square feet of space — at a projected cost of about $1,000 a square foot — to N.Y.U.’s existing 15 million, development that quietly started in 2006 and already amounts to 787,000 square feet.

    “For New York to be a great city, we need N.Y.U. to be a great university,” Mr. Sexton said. “We need the space to run our academic programs: to have the faculty that teach in these programs, to have the students who attend these programs, to create not only carriers of knowledge but ambassadors of New York for the future.” The university’s effort to enlist local support for the plan, to be formally introduced at a series of events in April, has yet to win over some key critics, who worry that N.Y.U.’s expansion will overwhelm its historic area. In its Washington Square neighborhood, the university will be creating the equivalent in square footage of a little more than the total floor area of the Empire State Building. “We’re deeply concerned,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “N.Y.U. seems to have worked on their P.R. machine quite a bit, but the reality of what they’re doing — which is taking over more and more of the neighborhood — doesn’t seem like it’s changed very much. They’ve given everybody the opportunity to say what they think and then they’ve largely ignored that feedback.”

    In Brooklyn, N.Y.U. wants to build one million square feet of new space for a new engineering school at the downtown Metrotech complex, site of Polytechnic University. N.Y.U. became affiliated with Polytechnic in 2008 and will merge with the college in the next three to five years to start its own engineering school. On Governors Island, the university envisions an institute that would unite several academic disciplines around a subject like the urban future. “What does it mean in the 21st century to build a great city?” Mr. Sexton said. “Let’s be the lab and thinking space for it, the center in the world for thinking about cities.” N.Y.U.’s nursing school is to move uptown to the university’s “health corridor” along First Avenue in the East 20s and 30s to share a new space with the dental college (they merged about three years ago).

    In most cases, N.Y.U.’s plans do not yet include specific information on what will be built where and when. The 2031 plan is a framework for growth over the next 20 years, not a building-by-building blueprint. “It’s different from a master plan that compels you to put certain things in certain places,” said Lynne P. Brown, a senior vice president at the university.

    Several city officials said they would wait for more details before deciding whether to support the projects. “It is important for our higher education learning centers — Columbia, Fordham, N.Y.U. — to expand if we’re going to grow the New York economy, but they have got to incorporate community concerns and not be seen as running over these neighborhoods,” said Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president. “The rubber now hits the road when this campus plan is announced. The details will matter. It’s showtime now. Give me the whole story.” Mr. Stringer is leading a task force on N.Y.U.’s development that includes Council SpeakerChristine C. Quinn and Representative Jerrold Nadler. In the early stages of the plan’s formation, the university was also guided by four design firms: SMWM, Toshiko Mori, Grimshaw Architects and Olin Partnership. Ms. Mori and Grimshaw have stayed on to advise the university on developing its core neighborhood, N.Y.U. said, and other architects have become involved. Cooper, Robertson & Partners is working on a design for the Brooklyn site and, along with the landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, on the Governor’s Island plan. Polshek Partnership Architects is working on the health corridor.

    The university has held several “open house” meetings to give the public an opportunity to learn more about the plans and respond. Preservationists like Mr. Berman said they were troubled by N.Y.U.’s handling of the historic Provincetown Playhouse theater on MacDougal Street, which the university is turning into a research center for its law school. While the facade of the Provincetown Playhouse entrance was preserved, the rest of the building’s facade and part of a wall was destroyed; N.Y.U. said it was structurally unsound.

    In addition, some are concerned about the university’s plans to build a fourth tower at the Silver Towers complex on Bleecker Street, which was designed by I. M. Pei, opened in 1966 and landmarked in 2008. But N.Y.U. said the plans for that superblock would leave all four corners with open space. “Everything we’re trying to do on the superblock is meant to have it be a more friendly place for the community,” Mr. Sexton said. The university’s plan for Governors Island must compete with other proposals that will be submitted to the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, a city-state partnership.

    The 2031 plan also includes creating new theaters, costume shops and rehearsal studios for the Tisch School of the Arts in a building at Lafayette and East Fourth Street. Under the plan, half the new space will be in remote sites and half within walking distance of its Washington Square core. “We need to recognize our limitations on the Greenwich Village campus to meet our major academic plans,” Ms. Brown said. “You can’t look in these hills anymore.”


    *** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

    $21 billion but scared: Hong Kong tycoon cuts ties with Google

    Ace! NewsFlash

    The Internet company owned by Hong Kong's richest man on Wednesday severed ties with Google's search services, sparking concerns that other companies may pull away from the Internet giant. Stressing its adherence to China's laws, Hong Kong-listed TOM Group issued a statement on behalf of subsidiary TOM Online following Google's decision to shut down its Chinese search engine on Monday.

    Hong Kong's richest businessman Li Ka-shing gestures during a 2009 press conference in 2009. The Internet company owned by Li -- Hong Kong's richest man -- has severed ties with Google's search services, sparking concerns that other companies may pull away from the Internet giant.

    TOM, which runs online and mobile Internet services in mainland China, said in a statement it had stopped users from visiting its website through Google's search engine service. "TOM reiterates that as a Chinese company, we adhere to rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses."

    TOM Group is one of the key elements of the business empire of property tycoon Li Ka-shing, 81, who has strong ties with the Chinese government. Li was ranked as the 14th wealthiest person in the world by Forbes magazine in March, when his net worth was 21 billion dollars, and he is one of only two Hong Kong-based tycoons to make the top 25 world ranking list.

    TOM's announcement came as China's state media slammed Google's decision, saying the US Internet giant was "not god" and accusing it of working with US intelligence. "For Chinese people, Google is not god, and even if it puts on a show of politics and values, it is still not god," said the overseas edition of the official People's Daily, in comments echoed elsewhere in the mainland's media.

    "Google is not chaste when it comes to values. Its cooperation and collusion with the US intelligence and security agencies is well-known," the ruling Communist Party's official mouthpiece said in a front-page commentary.

    China Daily relished the "moment of peace" created by Google's decision, and slammed Google for offering China's 384 million web users access to "pornography and subversive content", saying the Chinese web would "continue to grow in a cleaner and more peaceful environment" without google.cn.

    A Google spokeswoman in Singapore declined to discuss TOM's decision, but said the search giant planned to continue serving mainland Chinese users by re-routing its service through Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory. "We made this decision as a matter of principle, but we understand this is a complicated process with ramifications on the technology side and the business said," she said. It was too early to say whether any of Google's 600 staff in mainland China would be moved to Hong Kong, the spokeswoman said.

    Hong Kong has pledged not to interfere with Google's plan.

    Despite Google's promise of uncensored results, searches on the mainland of politically sensitive key words continue to generate the browser message "cannot display the webpage" -- suggesting China's "Great Firewall" of Internet control remained intact.

    Post-Doc STEP Fellowship @ Princeton

    Ace! NewsFlash

    PROGRAM IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY (STEP) AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY'S WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL

    The Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (Michael Oppenheimer, Director) announces its 2010-2011 Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. STEP will award one-year research positions (with the possibility of renewal for a second year) to
    eligible, talented researchers. These awards are designed to promote basic policy-relevant research under the supervision of one or more STEP faculty members. STEP faculty are offering fellowship opportunities in the
    following areas of interest:

    - David Wilcove: (1)conservation of migratory animals (2) impacts of logging and agriculture on biodiversity in Southeast Asia

    - Michael Oppenheimer: (1) modeling the role of learning in decisions where structural model error is a key concern. This work will be coordinated with ongoing case studies of actual scientific learning coupled to policy decisions. For further insights on this project, see
    http://www.springerlink.com/content/7uw8150573197707/fulltext.pdf
    (2) analysis of paleoclimate proxies for sea level, ice extent, and temperature to improve the use of analogs in forecasting future sea level rise. This project focuses particularly, but not exclusively, on proxies from the Last Interglacial.

    - Denise Mauzerall: research interactions between air pollution and climate change including chemical transport and climate modeling, analysis of potential co-benefits and technical and policy options for mitigation.

    Essential Qualifications: The Postdoctoral Fellows Program is open to all regardless of citizenship, but requires a completed doctorate and does not support work towards the completion of a degree. STEP fellows will be
    eligible for salary and full employee benefits in accordance with University guidelines.

    Applicants should send a CV and a cover letter describing their areas of expertise and interest via
    https://jobs.princeton.edu The review process will commence immediately and continue until positions are filled.

    Education Required: Doctorate Degree
    Application Information
    Contact: Woodrow Wilson School - 285
    Princeton University
    Online App. Form:
    https://jobs.princeton.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=58445&jtsrc=www.hig
    heredjobs.com&jtrfr=www.peopleadmin.com&adorig=PA


    *** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***