In Brief

The University announced March 17 that it is starting construction of the NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY BUILDING, which President Tilghman has termed her “most urgent priority” as she worked to raise funds for the project. The construction cost is estimated at $180 million, which University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said is about 25 percent less than the estimate two years ago. Cliatt said that Princeton has raised “sufficient funds to move forward with the project,” but that fundraising efforts for the building will continue.

Site-preparation work was expected to begin by the end of March, with construction expected to take three years. The 248,000-square-foot building, with separate wings for the neuroscience institute and the psychology department, will be located south of Icahn Lab. (For more details, see Notebook, Jan. 13.)  

A semester-long pilot of the Amazon Kindle DX ELECTRONIC READER reduced the amount of paper students used to print course readings by almost 50 percent, the University said. Launched to determine if e-readers could decrease paper usage without negatively affecting classroom experience, the pilot program provided 50 students in three fall-term classes with Kindles for their course readings. While the e-readers were praised for their portability and for reducing paper waste, students and faculty said that improvements are needed in annotation, highlighting, and document-navigation capabilities if the devices are to have the same teaching value as traditional paper texts.

IN MEMORIAM   DAVID J. FURLEY, a professor of classics from 1966 to 1992, died Jan. 26 in Banbury, United Kingdom. He directed the Program in Classical Philosophy from 1969 to 1982 and was classics department chairman from 1982 to 1985. He also served as president of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy.

ARTHUR W. LO, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, emeritus, died Feb. 25. Lo joined the Princeton faculty in 1964, retiring in 1986.