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July 7, 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 30 to July 6,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 378 references to the university in worldwide
publications. Here is a sample.
National News Stories
Discovery Channel | July 5
Forbes (AP) | July 4
Arts and Humanities
San Jose Mercury News (McClatchy Newspapers) | July 5
Hartford Courant | July 3
Times-Dispatch | July 3
Information Technology
EE Times | July 6
CCN Magazine | July 3
Biotechnology
Pittsburgh Tribune Review | July 1
Regional Impact
Philadelphia Inquirer | July 6
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 6
MSNBC (Pittsburgh Business Times) | July 2
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 5
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 2
International News Stories
CRN (IT Week) | July 5
Voice of America | July 5
The Herald | July 4
All Africa | July 3
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National News Stories
Discovery Channel | July 5
The "red-eye" reducing software inside digital cameras could someday be used to verify a person's age. Andrew Gallagher, a senior research scientist at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., developed the technique, which has a range of applications. Among them are face recognition security systems, age progression software for missing children, and devices that determine whether a person is of age to purchase alcohol or cigarettes. ... "It's very innovative; I've not seen it before," said professor Tsuhan Chen, an expert in digital video and image processing at the Carnegie Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, Pa. "By itself, it's one way of recognizing the age. Combining it with other techniques would be the final way to approach this."
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/
07/05/redeye_tec_print.html | back to top
Forbes (AP) | July 4
NASA signed off Monday night on a Fourth of July shuttle liftoff despite worries about a piece of foam that popped off Discovery's external fuel tank while the spacecraft sat on the launch pad. "We're go to continue with the launch countdown," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator, at a nighttime briefing. The decision for the 2:38 p.m. EDT Tuesday liftoff was sure to stir more debate about whether the space agency was putting its flight schedule ahead of safety even though Gerstenmaier said "there were no dissenters ... no concerns raised" at a meeting of managers. ... Carnegie Mellon University engineering and risk analysis professor Paul Fischbeck, who had been worried earlier in the day by the falling chunk of foam, said NASA's rationale in going ahead made sense and he is slightly more comfortable with a launch try Tuesday. Fischbeck, who has consulted with NASA on the shuttle's delicate heat protection system, wondered why foam had broken off on the launch pad. "It's something you might want to understand before you launch," he said. ***This Associated Press article was featured in more than 200 media outlets.
http://www.forbes.com/business/businesstech
/feeds/ap/2006/07/04/ap2856633.html | back to top
Arts and Humanities
San Jose Mercury News (McClatchy Newspapers) | July 5
Thousands of patients who check into hospices expecting to die are winning reprieves instead. Sometimes attention from loved ones and quality care from hospice staff turn things around. Or doctors guess wrong when they predict that death is near. And sometimes long-odds medical miracles happen. ... Another theory of unexpected survivals is that pending death brings out the curative power of loving family and friends. Hospice personnel are convinced that it works, and so is Sheldon Cohen, a sociologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who's studied the relationship between emotions and health. "There's no question that people who are suffering adversity do better with social support," said Cohen, citing a 1989 study by health psychologists James Kulik and Joni Mayer. They found that male coronary bypass patients who had frequent visitors used less pain medication and recovered more quickly. Married patients also did better.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews
/news/politics/14971800.htm | back to top
Hartford Courant | July 3
According to a study out of Yale, people with low self-esteem tend to see their relationships as being all good or all bad. The study was conducted over a few years by Margaret Clark, a psychology professor at Yale, and Steven Graham, a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon in Pennsylvania, where Clark previously taught and did some of the research. The results were recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Participants were given the Rosenberg self-esteem inventory, a standard test used to determine self-esteem. They were later told to think about the other person in the relationship and then presented with adjectives, such as "warm" and "caring," or "greedy" and "dishonest." Those with high self-esteem reacted quickly in all cases.
http://www.courant.com/features/
lifestyle/hc-lovehate.artjul03,0,7571587
.story?coll=hc-headlines-life | back to top
Times-Dispatch | July 3
In Dennis Proffitt's eyes, seeing is not always believing. For almost three decades, Proffitt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, has tackled questions of visual perception. For example, what do our eyes see, and how do our brains turn what our eyes see into meaningful information? ... Perception researcher Roberta Klatzky of Carnegie Mellon University emphasized the complexity of the brain and said "seeing" is simultaneously controlled by many different brain areas. Multiple levels of visual processing may distort the accuracy of what we think we see. "An interesting question is where--in all the layered calculations that the brain does--where is it starting to make this mistake?" Klatzky said.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?
pagename=Common%2FMGArticle%2FPrintVersion
&c=MGArticle&cid=1149188899807&
image=timesdispatch80x60.gif&oasDN=
timesdispatch.com&oasPN=%21news | back to top
Information Technology
EE Times | July 6
Silicon foundry United Microelectronics Corp. and EDA startup Extreme DA Corp. have entered into a collaboration to provide sub-90-nanometer variation-aware IC design flows system-on-chips, the companies said Thursday. ... Extreme DA, founded by former Artisan Components Chairman and EDA venture capital luminary Lucio Lanza, Celik and Carnegie Mellon University professor Larry Pileggi, emerged early last year to tout its statistical timing technology, which it bills as an enabler for 65- and 45-nm IC design. The company's main challengers in the space are heavyweight IBM Corp., which introduced its EinsTimer commercial tool just over one year ago, and big-time EDA vendors Magma Design Automation Inc., Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Synopsys Inc., each of which is said to have statistical timing analysis technology in various stages of development.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/
showArticle.jhtml?articleID=190300470 | back to top
CCN Magazine | July 3
A small, wheeled robot designed and built at Carnegie Mellon University powered the school's robot soccer team, CMDragons'06, to victory Sunday in the small robot league at the RoboCup 2006 World Championship in Bremen, Germany. The team's five robots, cube-shaped machines with 7-inch sides, outscored opponents by a combined 53-3 margin in the six games played at the international competition. The small robot league is one of six leagues that compete in the games. Team advisor Manuela Veloso said the superior speed of the new robots built by research engineer Michael Licitra gave the CMDragons a big advantage over other teams. "These great robots, combined with accurate path and control software algorithms for attacking and defending by graduate students James Bruce and Stefan Zickler, produced an exceptional robot team," said Veloso, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Computer Science.
http://www.ccnmag.com/
news.php?id=4340 | back to top
Biotechnology
Pittsburgh Tribune Review | July 1
Changes to mechanical properties of the cell nucleus might contribute to a rare, fatal genetic disorder that causes premature aging, Carnegie Mellon University engineers have discovered. Experts say their findings could help researchers find treatments for the disease called Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome that afflicts one in 8 million newborns worldwide, and illuminate the processes underlying normal human aging. ... In 2003, scientists discovered that Progeria is caused by a mutation in a gene known as lamin A. The gene helps to build a scaffold-like network of proteins called the lamina found just inside the membrane surrounding the cell nucleus, the control center of the cell. A defective version of the lamin A gene causes too much protein to collect in the lamina, which scientists believed made this nuclear scaffolding more fragile, said Kris Noel Dahl, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon and lead author of the study appearing next month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib
/news/health/s_460280.html | back to top
Regional Impact
Philadelphia Inquirer | July 6
When Sen. Arlen Specter vowed to do anything to help Sen. Rick Santorum win reelection this year, he probably did not imagine serving as a political piñata. But that in effect is what is happening as the two Pennsylvania Republicans find themselves on opposite sides of the sharp national debate over illegal immigration. The divide was illustrated yesterday in dueling forums at opposite ends of the state. ... But in a race with only subtle differences between the candidates on abortion and gun control, immigration could emerge as the wedge issue that Santorum uses to cast Casey as out of sync with Pennsylvania voters. At the same time, Santorum can mobilize his conservative base and claim independence from President Bush. "The immigration issue is a great diversion from the issues that hurt him," said Jon Delano, an analyst with Carnegie Mellon University. "And it is a potential threat to Bob Casey because of the amnesty component."
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer
/news/local/14973969.htm | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 6
Duquesne Light is the company that flips the switch every winter on Light Up Night, a luminous holiday event bringing more than 100,000 people Downtown, the largest such gathering in Pittsburgh each year. No one expects the pyrotechnics to disappear this year because the 103-year-old utility was sold to a New York-led group. In fact, civic and nonprofit officials predicted yesterday that Duquesne Light would keep commitments to all sorts of high-wattage community initiatives, from Light Up Night to the company's $500,000 blue-and-white architectural lighting of the Roberto Clemente Bridge--in fact, Duquesne Light recently agreed to repair (for free) any broken bulbs on the bridge before the All-Star baseball game next Tuesday night. ... Carnegie Mellon University history professor Joel Tarr also counseled Pittsburghers "not to read too much into this change. I think the crucial thing is: Are the jobs here?"
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg
/06187/703675-28.stm | back to top
MSNBC (Pittsburgh Business Times) | July 2
An idea that brewed for years as a way to protect the Pennsylvania horse racing industry from competition in West Virginia and Delaware has resulted in a law that should place tens of thousands of slot machines in this state over the next five years. ... The new gaming law allows for 61,000 slots machines statewide, which would place Pennsylvania second only to Nevada in the number of machines it will host. ... Additional development, like a $350 million mixed-use project for the lower Hill District proposed by Barden, and a 1,250-unit condominium project at Station Square by Forest City Enterprises and Harrah's, are also nuggets that the consultants feel are bait being used to sway public and political opinion and, ultimately, the votes of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, which will award the local slots license. ... For its part, the Pittsburgh Gaming Task Force is looking at those promises with skepticism. "We have not and I do not think we will be swayed by all the falderal that has accompanied this whole process," said task force member Ronald Porter, who is CEO of RDP Consulting Services Inc. in East Liberty and an adjunct professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Public Policy.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/
13679779/ | back to top
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 5
After a gloomy, showery morning and intermittent rain that continued into the early evening, skies cleared enough to accommodate the fireworks and the throngs that squished their way into soggy Point State Park. Pittsburgh's fireworks went off as scheduled, but some suburban communities-- including Mt. Lebanon, Cranberry, Shaler, McDonald and Monongahela--postponed their displays last night. A psychiatrist, Dr. Templeton moved from New Jersey to Pittsburgh in 2004 after taking a job as a medical and research specialist for Pfizer Inc. She could have lived anywhere in the region, but chose Gateway Towers for its Downtown location and riverfront view. She is among an increasing number of people who are moving Downtown, according to Patty Burk, director of housing and economic development for the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. ... A study last year by Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Economic Development found that half of all recent movers to Downtown and the North Shore were younger than 45, while 32 percent were 45 to 54.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06186/703440-53.stm | back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 2
Most visitors to Pittsburgh associate the city with its black-and-gold sports teams, three rivers and industrial legacy. Cincinnati native Dan Handley is trying to change that image with a television show called "Pittsburgh Genius," premiering Monday night, that showcases the region as a powerhouse of scientific discovery and innovation. ... Handley has a bachelor's degree in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a master's in logic and computation from Carnegie Mellon University. He also has training in engineering, neuroscience and mathematics. He came to Pittsburgh in 2000 to attend Carnegie Mellon and was struck by the volume and diversity of world-class research being conducted here. ... The first episode of "Pittsburgh Genius" features Carnegie Mellon mechanical engineering and robotics professor Howie Choset, who designs snake-like robots for urban search and rescue, surgery and other uses. "Dan's trying to show that there's a lot of talent in Pittsburgh and hopefully talent will attract more talent and make Pittsburgh even better," Choset said.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib
/news/cityregion/s_460366.html | back to top
International News Stories
CRN (IT Week) | July 5
Data security breaches have little impact on the share price of affected firms, according to a new report, prompting concerns that firms lack sufficient economic incentive to ensure customers' details are fully protected. However, other drawbacks--such as damage to reputation and legal liabilities--may increase the costs if problems occur. A study by Harvard and Carnegie Mellon Universities analyzed 78 data breaches from 2000 to 2006 and found that while share prices dipped after breaches were revealed they tended to improve three days later and ultimately returned to their original level. On average, companies had less than U.S. $10m knocked off their share price in the two days after a data breach was revealed.
http://www.crn.com.au/story.aspx?
CIID=39797&src=site-marq | back to top
Voice of America | July 5
Many parents and teachers have often wished that young people would find something more useful to do with their spare time and abundant energies than to play video games, especially those that make sport of violence, death and destruction. Soon, there may be less to complain about, as game developers and social activists collaborate on a new generation of games that are as compelling as virtual worlds, but which also encourage players to learn about, and solve, real world problems. ... Negotiating ambiguous situations in which there is no one right answer is a difficult part of real life, but it can make for interesting gaming. Imagining, and trying to empathize with, your opponent's perspective is the basic challenge of the Peacemaker Game, a simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, developed by Asi Burak of Impact Games at Carnegie Mellon University. "Many people [have] said 'War is challenging' and 'fighting is challenging,'" Burak acknowledged, "so we try to analyze it and we saw that, yes, 'A versus B' is very challenging. But to make A, B, C and D live together, this is a challenge, because every one of them has a different agenda, and different goals and sometimes they're contradictory."
http://www.voanews.com/english/
AmericanLife/2006-07-05-voa32.cfm | back to top
The Herald | July 4
'Imagine a computer that could pick the right emotional moment to sell you something," says Peter Robinson, of Cambridge University. "Imagine a future where web sites and mobile phones could read our mind and react to our moods." It sounds like Orwellian fiction but this week, Robinson, a professor of computer technology, unveiled a prototype for just such a "mind-reading" machine. The first emotionally aware computer is on trial at the Royal Society Festival of Science in London. The software uses a camera to film people's faces, measure their facial expressions and infer their emotional state. ... "Neuromarketing is in a unique position to give companies a new perspective on what it means to bond with customers," says Justine Meaux of Bright-house. These "bonds"– subconscious positive associations with brands and products – can load our brain in favor of buying a product before our conscious process of choice begins. "Most of the brain is dominated by automatic processes, rather than deliberative thinking," says George Loewenstein, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University. "A lot of what happens in the brain is emotional, not cognitive."
http://www.theherald.co.uk/
features/65220.html | back to top
All Africa | July 3
Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, once made Congo famous. A report in Time magazine showed that some regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are still as horrific as anything Conrad imagined. Despite all this, the country is key to globalization. Mobile phones and other gadgets rely on electronic pieces made out of tantalum. Australia and the DRC are the two biggest producers of this metal, yielding more than 500 metric tons per year. It is estimated that the DRC has 450,000 metric tons of tantalum reserves. Four-fifths of the world's tantalum is found in Africa, of which 80 percent is located in the DRC's eastern region, according to Benjamin Todd at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://allafrica.com/stories/
200607030529.html | back to top
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