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June 9, 2006
This internal publication contains information about recent coverage
of Carnegie Mellon that appeared primarily in national newspapers, magazines
and online publications. Please note that some sources may require registration
or a subscription in order to access their information online.
Please send comments and suggestions to thomas@cmu.edu
The media coverage archive is available at www.cmu.edu/clips
From June 2 to June 8,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 121 references to the university in worldwide
publications. Here is a sample.
National News Stories
Forbes | June 7
USA Today | June 5
The Christian Science Monitor | June 5
The New York Times | June 3
Time | May 28
Science Magazine | May 2006
Student Experience
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | June 8
Beaver County Times | June 4
Arts and Humanities
Globe Gazette | June 5
Science Magazine | May 2006
Information Technology
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 6
San Francisco Chronicle | June 2
Advance Imaging Magazine | June 1
Environment
St. Louis Business Journal | June 2
The Miami Herald (Associated Press) | June 2
Regional Impact
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 7
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 5
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 5
Pittsburgh Business Times | June 2
Pittsburgh Business Times | June 1
International News Stories
CIO India | June 8
Central Chronicle | June 6
The Peninsula | June 6
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National News Stories
With midterm elections only months away, state and local officials nationwide are in the midst of a somewhat troubled transition to electronic voting systems. Two newcomers hope that the security and reliability problems that have emerged will give them a leg up. ... Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, said while there was "plenty of room for a good design, it doesn't mean the company will be successful in the marketplace." "This involves selling to municipalities and county governments, and there are companies who have been in the business for decades or even a century," Professor Shamos said. "The only realistic way for a new company to succeed is to sell to a big company who has had experience selling into that community. It's not like consumer products."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/
business/08sbiz.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1 | back to top
Forbes | June 7
When Ben Bernanke was tapped to become the new chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Wall Street hailed his fine communication skills, saying the plainspoken economics professor would improve the transparency of the Fed. But now that blunt talk from the new Fed chief has thrown the markets into a two-day tailspin, many observers seem wistful for Bernanke's predecessor, the famously abstruse Alan Greenspan. ... What's interesting about Bernanke is that he's getting poor marks for the very thing he was expected to excel at: Telegraphing monetary policy in a clear way to the markets. "He's not doing as well on that as I expected him to do," says Allan Meltzer, a Fed historian, professor at Carnegie Mellon and co-founder of the Shadow Open Market Committee, a Fed monitoring group. Bernanke's problem is that, rather than delivering a consistent message on inflation to help ground expectations, he appears to be zigzagging based on the latest economic numbers, much like jittery investors do, Meltzer argues. "The mistake is that he's playing their game, which is to watch the next number."
http://www.forbes.com/home/business
/2006/06/07/bernanke-speak-
governor-cx_jh_0607fed.html | back to top
USA Today | June 5
One of the hottest new courses on U.S. college campuses is a direct result of cybercrime. Classes in digital forensics—the collection, examination and presentation of digitally stored evidence in criminal and civil investigations—are cropping up as fast as the hackers and viruses that spawn them. About 100 colleges and universities offer undergraduate and graduate courses in digital forensics, with a few offering majors. There are programs at Purdue University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Tulsa, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Central Florida. Five years ago, there were only a handful.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news
/techinnovations/2006-06-05-digital-
forensics_x.htm?POE=TECISVA | back to top
The Christian Science Monitor | June 5
These days, most analysts on Wall Street and the nation's monetary officials don't pay much attention to the growth in the nation's money supply. Yet the Federal Reserve's creation of new money remains vital to maintaining a vibrant economy without much inflation, at least in the long run. The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan pay far more attention to money than the Fed does. Right now, some economists reckon the Fed has been slightly too generous in pumping out new money in the past five years. If so, the inflation rate may rise modestly in coming months. "A bit more tightening" is needed, says Bennett McCallum, an economist at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. But the recent negative reaction of the stock market to what's seen as a new threat of inflation and thus higher interest rates is perhaps exaggerated. "We don't think the Fed is dramatically off course," Professor McCallum says.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/
0605/p15s01-cogn.html | back to top
The New York Times | June 3
When the Internet telephone provider Vonage went public last week, it was meant to be a coming-out party for a technology that many see as the future of voice communications. It was also a chance at redemption for Jeffrey A. Citron, a brash and canny entrepreneur trying to overcome a checkered past. ... Analysts say questions about the company's prospects sowed the seeds of a rough debut. They suggest that investors — from big pension funds to individuals — thought enough of Vonage to take a chance on the offering, but not enough to consider it a long-term bet. When the stock started trading and looked to be headed south, investors quickly soured and sold their shares, accelerating the decline. One investor who found himself in that position is David Anderson, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Mr. Anderson is a Vonage customer who was given the opportunity to buy shares in the offering. He wound up being allotted 200 shares and spending around $3,400 for them. From the start he was not planning to keep them, he said, largely because of the company's competitive and financial situation. "Before I bought it, I decided I'd sell it immediately," Mr. Anderson said. "If it opened up, I'd take a quick profit. If not, I'd cut my losses."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/
technology/03vonage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin | back to top
Time | May 28
In the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles last February, some of the biggest hotshots in Hollywood sat in rapt attention. Legendary music producer Quincy Jones was there at the Entertainment Gathering, L.A.'s version of Davos, along with Peter Guber, producer of the original Batman movie; former Disney Imagineer Danny Hillis; and scores of other media minds. Who had them spellbound? Chris Anderson, an unassuming magazine editor, who was explaining a giant curve on an x-y chart, a theory that he calls "the long tail." ... More recently, though, in a 2003 academic paper that Anderson says influenced his theory, three management professors looked at the 80/20 rule in reverse. They upended the belief that the Internet's main benefit to consumers would be lower prices. Instead, they suggested that greater value online came from consumers having access to a wider selection of products and services. The key for businesses hoping to capitalize on the long tail, says Carnegie Mellon's Michael D. Smith, one of the paper's authors, is to cater to "significant heterogeneity in taste." Even though a majority of us may like U2 on our MP3 players, for example, there are enough of us who enjoy string quartets or British ska to make it profitable for those who sell them all.
http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/
article/0,9171,1198903-2,00.html | back to top
Science Magazine | May 2006
If you're in an unfamiliar city and trying to locate the convention center for yet another conference, a map prepared by the local Visitor's Bureau can come in handy. It's likely to incorporate a navigational aid: an overlaid square grid, often with rows labeled with letters of the alphabet and columns labeled with numbers. An index might tell you that your hotel is in the A2 square, and the convention center can be found in Q22. Last November, scientists who successfully reached the new Washington, D.C., convention center heard Norwegian neuroscientist Edvard Moser address the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting. In an invited talk, he told the audience that rodents, and presumably people, have their own versions of such navigational grids embedded in their brains. ... The leading theories, proposed by several groups, among them McNaughton and his collaborators, and David Touretzky and Mark Fuhs of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have to do with "attractor networks," which can be conceptualized as a sheet of neurons packed closely together like marbles on the surface of a table. In the grid cell attractor network, each neuron in the sheet is a different grid cell.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/
5774/680?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&
RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=The+map+in+the+brain%3
A+Grid+cells+may+help+us+navigate&searchid=1
&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT | back to top
Student Experience
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | June 8
Claire Tomesch. Age: 21. Residence: Oakland. Family: Parents, John and Kristine Tomesch, of Succasunna, N.J. Education: Senior mathematics major in Carnegie Mellon University's Science and Humanities Scholars Program. Noteworthy: Won a prestigious U.S. Department of Homeland Security scholarship, which entitles her to fully paid tuition next school year, a $1,000 monthly stipend for nine months and a paid summer internship with Homeland Security. Tomesch started her internship Tuesday at Pacific Northwest National Labs in Richland, Wash. She will assist with research on image signal processing and nonlinear wave analysis. Both are used to process electronic data. Tomesch is among 130 students from a pool of nearly 700 eligible applicants nationwide who received a Homeland Security scholarship or fellowship. She completed an extensive application that included several essays.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib
/news/cityregion/s_457108.html | back to top
Beaver County Times | June 4
Ever since the economic recession in 2001, the job market for college grads has been dicey. Scared students fled back for law or professional degrees, while parents worried that they spent thousands of tuition dollars to have newly minted grads shuffling around the house eating Cheetos in their bathrobes all day. But that trend, employment analysts say, may be reversing. Although the local economy still lags behind some other cities, local graduates and college career counselors say they've seen the nationwide trend on campuses here. Especially for those in the most-wanted majors-or those willing to relocate-new college graduates are more likely to find themselves wooed by prospective employers, instead of the other way around. ... Judy Mancuso, who works in career services for Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said it's been an "incredibly successful" year for seniors, estimating that employer recruitment increased 40 percent over 2005, continuing a three-year "upswing."
http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm
?newsid=16735795&BRD=2305&PAG=461
&dept_id=478569&rfi=6 | back to top
Arts and Humanities
Globe Gazette | June 5
The 19th annual North Iowa Writers Workshop will feature three authors, a playwright and a marketing executive. It is scheduled for July 7-8, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days, in the Mason City Room of the public library. Globe Gazette reporter and columnist John Skipper, is the workshop coordinator and will be one of the speakers. His eighth book, Wicked Curve: The Life and Troubled Times of Grover Cleveland Alexander, was published this month. Other speakers are: Scott Sandage, a Mason City High School graduate who is now a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. His book, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, was published last year. Sandage will talk about the value of research.
http://www.globegazette.com/articles/
2006/06/05/latest_news/
doc44844d179bfdf704057531.txt | back to top
Science Magazine | May 2006
In 1961, economist and Nobel Laureate George Stigler initiated the "economics of information" when he relaxed an assumption that had dominated economics until that point. Rather than assume that people are fully knowledgeable of relevant information when it comes to making a decision, he allowed for the possibility that people might lack information and be motivated to acquire it. ***This article was written by Carnegie Mellon professor of social and decision sciences, George Loewenstein.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/
312/5774/704?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=
10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=The+pleasures+
and+pains+of+information&searchid=1&
FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT | back to top
Information Technology
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 6
A computer survey technique developed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers has led to discovery of the most distant galaxy cluster in the universe, and the most massive to date. Known as XMM-XCS 2214-1734, the cluster contains hundreds of galaxies surrounded by superheated, X-ray-emitting gas whose temperature reaches more than 10 million degrees. ... Kathy Romer, a lecturer in physics and astronomy at the University of Sussex in England and principal investigator of the XMM-XCS team, began the research project while she was adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon from 1997 through 2003. Her student, Kivanc Sabirli, who is now working on her doctorate at Carnegie Mellon, worked full time for four years writing software used to process X-ray satellite data that led to the "needle in a haystack" discovery of the galaxy cluster.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06157/695966-115.stm | back to top
San Francisco Chronicle | June 2
The nation's largest high-tech trade association jumped into the network neutrality debate Thursday, siding with content providers like Google that want to stop telephone and cable companies from charging them higher fees for preferred Internet delivery. ... "When you see eBay and Amazon and Google and Yahoo in the United States, they came from people starting with interesting ideas who did not have to leap over any kind of a hurdle to buy access to customers,'' said Google executive Vint Cerf, one of the scientists who helped create the Internet. But in recent days, academics such as Carnegie Mellon computer scientist David Farber and UC Berkeley economist Michael Katz have argued against net neutrality legislation, saying that higher prices are also a form of innovation and that prohibiting charges to content providers shifts the burden to consumers. "There's a tendency to protect competitors from being harmed rather than protect consumers from being harmed,'' said Farber, who said it may not be wise to write the 30-year-old first-come, first-served Internet system into law.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c
/a/2006/06/02/BUG76J61121.DTL&hw=Trade
+group+backs+equality+high+tech+firms+
want+to+maintain&sn=001&sc=1000 | back to top
Advance Imaging Magazine | June 1
As a topic, robotics has been covered by the magazine to no small extent as part of machine vision solutions. However, many pure robotic applications were explored over the years. One interesting exploration has been the self-navigating vehicle using imaging technologies to move down the road. An early exploration was discussed in 1987, where Carnegie Mellon University developed a system on a van platform that navigated using color classification. The system differentiated the road color from the color of the terrain surrounding it, and corrected the steering to keep the vehicle on path. However, there were limitations: The road had to be straight and the vehicle’s maximum speed was approximately 1 meter every 10 seconds. Compare that to the DARPA challenge, covered by Advanced Imaging in October, 2005. The vehicles taking part in this Defense Advanced Research Project Agency contest (whose goal is to set the foundation for self-navigating military logistics vehicles) were required to navigate a 131.2 mile road course through the desert to receive a $2 million prize. Three vehicles completed the competition (and many more performed exceptionally), with speeds topping 35 mph. Machine vision technology, laser range finders and GPS featured heavily among the 23 contestants.
http://www.advancedimagingpro.com/publication
/article.jsp?pubId=1&id=2804 | back to top
Environment
St. Louis Business Journal | June 2
Congress plans to increase funding next year for federal research in clean energy technologies, including biofuels, solar power and wind power. Lawmakers are following the lead of the private sector, which already is putting more of its money into alternatives to oil and natural gas. The market for solar energy grew 55 percent last year to $11.2 billion, and the wind power market jumped 47 percent to $11.8 billion, according to Clean Edge Inc., a market research company. ... "We believe revolutionary thin film technologies can unlock the sun's potential," said Troy Hammond, vice president of Plextronics. Pittsburgh-based Plextronics uses a polymer technology created by a Carnegie Mellon University professor that absorbs the sun's light and acts like a semiconductor to generate electricity.
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories
/2006/06/05/focus10.html?page=2 | back to top
The Miami Herald (Associated Press) | June 2
After declining for years, the Caribbean sugar industry is suddenly looking sweet again as a source of ethanol--the alternative fuel that some see as an answer to sky-high oil prices. ... In the Dominican province of Monte Plata, a consortium led by Belgium-based Alcogroup has announced plans to build an ethanol plant, while the Dominican sugar cooperative says it is in talks with other partners to convert at least one sugar mill into an ethanol distillery. "People are sort of tripping over one another to put up the mills," said Lester Lave, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who studies alternative fuels. In Jamaica, a company based in Brazil--one of the world's leading ethanol producers--is seeking to buy out the struggling state-owned sugar producer so it can enter the U.S. market without paying tariffs under a regional free-trade agreement.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/
international/latin_america/14720669.htm | back to top
Regional Impact
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 7
Allegheny County officials are examining reports that some of the county's thousands of new touch-screen voting machines never received certification from the state before the May 16 primary election. The issue likely won't affect the outcome of the election, according to Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who tests voting machines for Pennsylvania. ... Dr. Shamos noted that ES&S and the county, after finalizing a contract in April, had little time to prepare for the primary. He said both would have to develop a better procedure for ensuring that all machines are properly certified before future elections. "It is not at all clear that any of this was deliberate," Dr. Shamos said. "There is no reason to believe that [the machines] were corrupted or behaved differently."
http://www.post-gazette.com
/pg/06158/696230-85.stm | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 5
Leadership Pittsburgh's recent graduates want it. They said so Friday, when they released a blueprint for melting the city of Pittsburgh's government into Allegheny County's government. ... There, four-dozen graduates of Leadership Pittsburgh's class for regional rising stars told a ballroom full of honchos that, after studying 10 cities and interviewing 60 local leaders, they believe the city can and should be merged into the county. One of those graduates, the Pittsburgh Technology Council's chief lobbyist, Brian Kennedy, said he started out viewing such a move as "a bridge too far, with limited results." Now, he believes that it can and should be done, to improve economic development and planning, boost the region's clout, and improve efficiency. That jibes with the findings of Jerry Paytas, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Economic Development. In 2004, he published the results of a multiyear study of 285 metropolitan areas that found Pittsburgh to be the third most fragmented region. Only in the Philadelphia and Boston areas was governmental power more diffuse.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg
/06156/695830-85.stm | back to top
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 5
Dr. Robert Siegler, Teresa Heinz professor of cognitive psychology, department of psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, was named to the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The panel of 17 experts will advise President Bush and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings on the best use of scientifically based research to advance the teaching and learning of mathematics.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/06156/695346-318.stm | back to top
Pittsburgh Business Times | June 2
MedSage Technologies LLC was little more than a PowerPoint presentation and William Kaigler's dream when it was founded in 2002. Not the least among the hurdles facing the company was convincing people the idea would work because it was so new, said Kaigler, MedSage's founder and COO. ... MedSage got its foot in the door with both by offering to provide their members with discounts on medSage products. "We grow by word of mouth," Connelly said. "Those are sales people I don't have to hire." ... Word-of-mouth marketing has "worked well for a lot of companies," said Ajay Kalra, associate professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, citing a highly successful Burger King promotion last year that was featured on the Web. "If it is done well, nothing is more powerful than word-of-mouth marketing," because the message is coming from people we trust, Kalra said.
http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh
/stories/2006/06/05/smallb1.html | back to top
Pittsburgh Business Times | June 1
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded $1.5 million to Carnegie Mellon University and $2.1 million to the University as Pittsburgh as part of its program to help strengthen undergraduate research and outreach programs in biology. The two universities are among 50 selected to receive a grant, which are designed to help students better prepare to become researchers or to work in the field of science.
http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh
/stories/2006/05/29/daily29.html?surround=lfn | back to top
International News Stories
CIO India | June 8
Information stewardship pervades a business. The steward oversees information throughout its life cycle, regardless of how it's used, who owns it, where it resides and more. Stewardship means data-quality management, data security, auditable compliance with privacy and disclosure guidelines, information life-cycle management (ILM), and business-continuity planning and disaster recovery. ... ILM is about confidentiality, availability and integrity of information, says Julia Allen, senior member of the technical staff at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh. She suggests network executives approach information stewardship with key questions and then structure actions around the responses to these questions: What needs to be protected, and why? What needs to be prevented? How do we manage the residual risk? For example, Allen says, "If you're thinking about business continuity or disaster recovery, and you [operate in a hurricane zone], you ask yourself in preparation for [such] a natural disaster, 'What do I need to protect? What actions do I need to prevent against--in this case a natural disaster--and what actions do I need to take?'"
http://www.cio.in/news/viewArticle
/ARTICLEID=1538 | back to top
Central Chronicle | June 6
India's tele-density now is little over five for every 100 persons and its computer penetration rate is woefully low at one per 100 persons. ... Indeed, as pointed out by Dr. V. Arunachalam, a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA: "The internet was the knee jerk answer but how meaningful it would be in a world where only one in ten had even heard of internet and only one in three had ever made a telephone call at least once". In fact, India's vast rural hinterland had not been able to benefit from the ongoing advances in communications and computer revolution sweeping the urban stretch of the country. India's tele-density now is little over 5 for every 100 persons and its computer penetration rate is woefully low at one per 100 persons. And according to Dr. Raj Reddy, an internationally-known authority on robotics, the 4Cs-connectivity, computer access, content and capacity-should go hand in hand to minimize the global digital divide.
http://www.centralchronicle.com
/20060606/0606304.htm | back to top
The Peninsula | June 6
Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar announces the names of students placed on the Dean's List for the 2006 spring semester. The Dean's List distinction is earned by the top-ranking students in business administration and computer science each semester in recognition of outstanding academic achievements.
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display
_news.asp?section=local_news&month=june
2006&file=local_news2006060614237.xml | back to top
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