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July
21, 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 July 14 to July 20,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 198 references to the university in worldwide
publications. Here is a sample.
Special Section: Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 18
MSN Money (AP) | July 18
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 18
Pittsburgh Business Times | July 17
KDKA | July 17
National News Stories
The Chronicle of Higher Education | July 21
BusinessWeek | July 18
The Wall Street Journal | June 18
The New York Times (News.com) | July 17
ABC News (PC Magazine) | July 17
The New York Times | July 14
Arts and Humanities
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 20
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 19
San Diego Union-Tribune | July 18
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 14
Information Technology
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 19
Monterey County Herald (Sacramento Bee) | July 17
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 15
San Jose Mercury News (McClatchy Newspapers) | July 13
Biotechnology
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 19
Environment
Detroit News | July 20
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 18
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 18
International News Stories
Monsters and Critics (UPI) | July 18
RSC Publishing | July 17
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Special Section: Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 18
Twenty percent of the U.S. population will be 65 or older in 2030, and 75 million Americans will have some sort of disability. With such large percentages of the population involved, it's become a national health care priority to help them remain independent and productive and prevent or delay their entry into nursing homes. Success in that effort could not only improve lives but save billions in health care costs, officials say. For those reasons, the National Science Foundation has awarded a $15 million grant to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University to establish a center to improve the quality of life for disabled and aging populations. During a news conference yesterday at Carnegie Mellon, that university's president, Jared L. Cohon, and Pitt Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg announced that the schools are using the grant to create the Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center. ... "In a phrase, we will improve the lives of millions of people, and nothing short of that, in Pittsburgh and across the nation," Dr. Cohon said, noting the grant will benefit both universities and Pittsburgh. ... Center directors will include Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon's Helen Whitaker university professor of computer science and robotics, and Rory Cooper, distinguished professor and chairman of Pitt's School of Rehabilitation Sciences and Technology.
http://post-gazette.com/pg/pp/
06199/706633.stm | back to top
MSN Money (AP) | July 18
Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have received $15 million to develop robotics and computer science technologies that will help the elderly and disabled live more independently. The grant from the National Science Foundation, announced Monday, will establish the Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center. The center will look to improve existing technologies, such as wheelchairs and walkers, and develop new technologies for the workplace to increase the employability of people with disabilities, officials said. ... The center's other director is Takeo Kanade, a professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. "If the technology we develop at the (center) can delay the need to send people from their homes to assisted-living or nursing facilities by even one month, we can save our nation $1.2 billion annually," Kanade said in a statement. "We need to apply the same ingenuity that we've used for military, space and manufacturing applications to improve the human condition."
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/
provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=
AP&Date=20060718&ID=5874868 | back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 18
A smooth, concave trough along the rims of Attila Domos' wheelchair relieves the pressure on his thumbs and helps him conquer the city's tough hills during his daily workouts. Developing ergonomic technologies like this--and more sophisticated robotics systems to help the elderly and people with disabilities live independently and productively--will be the goal of the new Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center run by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib
/news/cityregion/s_462283.html | back to top
Pittsburgh Business Times | July 17
Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh will share a $15 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create an engineering research center that will develop technologies to help older adults and people with disabilities. The Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center will help develop such devices as ones to monitor personal health, control household appliances and drive safely. ... "With its large population of older adults, Pittsburgh is the perfect laboratory, a place to lead in developing solutions to the huge demographic trend that is affecting the United States and other industrialized countries," Carnegie Mellon president Jared Cohon said in a statement. Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg said other Carnegie Mellon-Pitt collaborations, including the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, have produced impressive successes. The new center will be jointly directed by Carnegie Mellon's Takeo Kanade, an internationally recognized expert in computer vision and robotics, and Pitt's Rory Cooper, an internationally recognized wheelchair design expert.
http://washington.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/
stories/2006/07/17/daily4.html?t=printable | back to top
KDKA | July 17
Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have received $15 million to create robotic and computer science technologies designed for increasing the autonomy of dependent people. The grant, awarded by the National Science Foundation, will seek to both improve and create technologies used by the elderly and the disabled through the newly established Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center.
http://kdka.com/local/local_
story_198145723.html | back to top
National News Stories
The Chronicle of Higher Education | July 21
This month computer scientists from around the world will gather in Boston to pit poker-playing computer programs against one another in a quest to advance the frontiers of artificial-intelligence research. Some of the programs try to incorporate the poker-playing rules of experts. But two researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have taken a different route. Their program, called GS2, tries to compute all the possible sets of cards that could be held by opponents and then calculates strategies accordingly. ... GS2 was developed by Tuomas Sandholm, director of Carnegie Mellon's Agent-Mediated Electronic Marketplaces Lab, and Andrew Gilpin, a graduate student in the lab. The Computer Poker Competition is being held during the 21st National Conference on Artificial Intelligence this week, in Boston.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/
v52/i46/46a02702.htm | back to top
BusinessWeek | July 18
In an article published in the cyber journal Technoetic Arts last year, British architect-academics Stephen A. Gage and Will Thorne describe a hypothetical fleet of small robots they call "edge monkeys." ... While fashionable and possibly advantageous, the adoption of high-tech envelopes has been slow. Skeptical architects worry that operable components are magnets for value-engineering. Or they foresee them being unplugged and later stripped off their buildings due to poor performance or deficient maintenance. Other firms cite client interests, noting such high-profile failures as the broken actuators on the sun-control diaphragms cladding Jean Nouvel's 1988 Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris. "Culturally, we have little confidence in what we're doing, and in systems integration for these hybrids," says Volker Hartkopf, director of the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. "Yes, these things can break, but so can fans, dampers, thermostats, and so many other things we take for granted."
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content
/jul2006/id20060719_203408.htm?chan
=innovation_architecture_architecture | back to top
The Wall Street Journal | June 18
Netflix Inc., which boasts nearly five million members, often trumpets how its all-you-can-eat rental model is changing the way people are watching movies. But Netflix may also be changing the way people don't watch them. Through its Web site, Netflix makes it easy to comb through a massive catalog of 60,000 films. It offers access to everything from Charlie Chaplin's 1921 silent tramp movie "The Kid" to recent Academy Award-winners like "Crash." And some members admit that when browsing the Netflix backlog, they overestimate their appetite for off-the-beaten-track films. The result: Sometimes DVDs languish for months without being watched. ... Researchers have documented this behavior among movie-watchers. ... The researchers found that when people chose movies to watch the same day, they often picked comedies or action films. But when they were asked to pick movies to watch at a later date, they were more likely to make "high-brow" selections. For example, the subjects were much more likely to select Steven Spielberg's Holocaust survival drama "Schindler's List" to watch in the future, rather than on the same night. "It's a movie that's really miserable to watch but you feel like you should watch it," said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the study's authors.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/
SB115255814013802582-TM59RENVAhJZg8dn7PVg6l7o
_Q0_20060816.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top | back to top
The New York Times (News.com) | July 17
A debate here hosted by the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan research institute that brags of challenging "conservative thinking," pitted Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, who co-developed the Internet's backbone protocols and has emerged as a leading proponent of congressional antidiscrimination mandates for network operators, against Dave Farber, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist widely considered to be a "grandfather" of the Internet. ... Farber said he opposed the antidiscrimination language Net neutrality advocates are pushing, because the proposals are too "hazy" and could create a "slippery slope" to even broader regulations. "I could see some future congressional politicians who would say, 'Well, you know, we really don't want traffic on the Net that, for instance, is X-rated, and we'd like to stop that,'" he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_
2100-1028_3-6094954.html?_r=2&oref
=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin | back to top
ABC News (PC Magazine) | July 17
Tiny robots will someday crawl up your spine—literally. These microscopic critters, currently in a development phase at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, are biomimetic (that is, based on biological principles), have bacteria motors attached to their near-invisible bodies, and can slither through water canals and probe deep into blood vessels to stop disease and administer medicine. ... Of course, if you ask Carnegie Mellon professor Metin Sitti about nanobots, he will sing their praises. Working at Carnegie Mellon's NanoRobotics Laboratory in Pittsburgh, Sitti is a nanotechnology pioneer. The $700,000 facility has one laser micromachining system, a rapid prototyping 3D printer, and a polymer processing device that all aid in Sitti's nanobot fabrication research. ... "We are envisioning building smaller and smaller robots with many new locomotion capabilities such as climbing, swimming, flying, and walking on water," says Setti, who is originally from Turkey but was educated at the University of Tokyo. "Our latest nanobots are inspired by water striders and basilisk lizards; they are submillimeter swimming robots that use water-locomotion principles."
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/
ZDM/story?id=2203072 | back to top
The New York Times | July 14
Five summers ago, a car bomb exploded in Netanya, an Israeli city on the Mediterranean, and everyone's first reaction was to fear the worst. It had to be another terrorist attack, people figured. Netanya, lying a mere 10 miles from the West Bank, had become all too vulnerable to Palestinian suicide bombers. But assumptions turned out to be wrong. The attack, which proved nonfatal, was the work of Israeli criminals, the police said. One mobster had tried to do in another. What a relief, people said; it wasn't terrorism. "I prefer a criminal attack," Yehuda Madar of Netanya told me at the time. These days, New York has that in common with faraway Netanya. ... "We tend to underreact to risks that are familiar—they kind of recede into the background—and overreact to risks that are new, in part because we don't know how bad they are," said George Loewenstein, a professor of psychology and economics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Car wrecks and people going crazy—those are "known risks," Dr. Loewenstein said. But terrorism, 9/11 notwithstanding, still falls into an "unknown-risk category," and that is scary.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/nyregion/14nyc.html | back to top
Arts and Humanities
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 20
In the nick of time comes the schedule for Carnegie Mellon's 2006 Summer New Play Festival. These workshop productions of plays by Carnegie Mellon playwrights are at 8 p.m. in the Purnell Center's Rauh Studio Theater, free to the public; for tickets, call 412-268-2407.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/06201/707083-326.stm | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 19
It's not often that an international array of people can come together as something akin to a family. But participants at the International Dalcroze Conference and Dalcroze Training Center, sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University through July 28, began with numerous cries of recognition, followed by warm hugs all around. They came from 13 different countries, but this is a professional gathering where just about everybody knows your name. Most people on the street wouldn't recognize the moniker of founder Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, nor would they be able to spell the musical technique that he invented called eurhythmics, literally meaning "good rhythm." ... This year's workshops have a special significance. The conference is celebrating the life of Carnegie Mellon's Dr. Marta Sanchez, a seminal figure who taught at Carnegie Mellon for 40 years and founded the international workshops. As a result of her death in April, longtime friend and director Dr. Annabelle Joseph and administrative assistant Judi Cagley are coordinating the events for the first time without her guidance.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg
/06200/706715-42.stm | back to top
San Diego Union-Tribune | July 18
Ever wonder why top executives prefer that corner office with a view? The answer isn't just status; a usually unrecognized additive comes with the view–what some European public health officials refer to "vitamin G." Never mind the prior and still champion definition of vitamin G, riboflavin (also known as B2). For researchers in the Netherlands, the G stands for green; specifically the effect of green space on health and learning and feelings of social safety. In the United States, we prefer our vitamins in a bottle. ... Vivian Loftness, a professor at Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture, points to potential reductions in lost work time, absenteeism and turnover rate. "Retention of workers is the real sleeper," she says. "It costs an employer about $25,000 every time an valued employee leaves." Over two decades of studies support her contention. Employees who sit next to windows are more productive and exhibit consistently fewer symptoms of "sick building syndrome" than other workers; at one organization, absenteeism quadrupled after a move from a building with natural ventilation to one with sealed windows and central air.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro
/louv/20060718-9999-lz1e18louv.html | back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 14
Andy Warhol was half-right. It's surprising, in a way, the number of ordinary Joes that can become famous overnight these days (Hello, "Big Brother 7: All-Stars"!). Still, the short life span of this millenium's fame means that an estimated 15 minutes of fame seems way exaggerated. Warhol never lived to see the Internet, which creates "celebrity for 15 seconds," in the words of Fritz Grobe. ... But Michael D. Rechtenwald, an English professor and postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, thinks he knows where the road ends: mostly nowhere. "I don't think this is a lasting fame," he said. "This moment, it's perhaps a flash in the pan." Rechtenwald, a culture maven who teaches a counterculture summer course, "The Beats to Hip-Hop," and has appeared on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country," said what's unique about the viral video phenomenon might not last for long. The viral video star has total control over his material and distribution, and is capable of gaining for himself "lots of exposure with minimal cost" because of the limitless possibilities of the Internet.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib
/news/tribpm/s_461909.html | back to top
Information Technology
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 19
Carnegie Mellon University researchers are raising the stakes now that their Texas Hold 'em computer program has beaten other competing programs and forced some expert human players to fold. They are working on updated versions of their program that they predict, in time, will beat any poker ace, human or machine, in head-to-head competition. Dr. Tuomas Sandholm, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, and Andrew Gilpin, a Carnegie Mellon doctoral student in computer science, have been working on the program for 2 1/2 years, beginning with their unbeatable program that played Rhode-Island Hold 'em, a three-card poker game.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06200/706689-96.stm | back to top
Monterey County Herald (Sacramento Bee) | July 17
Last fall, Sen. Jim Battin and his staff mounted what they thought would be a sure-fire plan to nab tickets by working the phones and computers in his district office. "Everybody was in their offices and we were all coordinated. I'm calling, I'm going online. And no one could get through," said Battin, R-Palm Desert. ... Battin introduced legislation seeking to ban "pinging"--an electronic manipulation of online ticket sales orchestrated by hackers to capture as many tickets as possible so they can be re-sold at a profit. ... But some in the cyber world question whether there is a problem. Pradeep Khosla, dean of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and director of CyLab, which developed CAPTCHA, said while it is possible for hackers to attack ticketing systems, a more likely scenario is that servers are being overloaded when tickets go on sale. "It's like me calling you all the time so your phone will always be busy. But it doesn't mean you have picked up and I'm talking to you," Khosla said. "I think it could be happening but my gut feeling is Ticketmaster is exaggerating."
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/
montereyherald/news/15055824.htm | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 15
Carnegie Mellon University has signed a $3 million agreement with the Taiwanese government to establish a research program and educational outreach initiative. Known as the International Collaboration for Advancing Security Technology or iCAST-Carnegie Mellon, the project will focus on a wide variety of security issues, including developing software assurance tools, metrics to measure the effectiveness of intrusion-detection systems and secure video surveillance networks, according to Tsuhan Chen, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon, who will co-direct the project.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06196/706021-28.stm | back to top
San Jose Mercury News (McClatchy Newspapers) | July 13
It may surprise you to learn that it's more difficult for a computer to play poker, perhaps the world's most popular card game, than chess, the pastime of deep thinkers. Unlike chess, poker deals with tricky matters such as uncertainty, probability, guesswork and deception--human wiles that a chess-playing robot, such as the one that beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, doesn't need to consider. As a result, computer experts say, poker is more like real life--with all its subtleties and complications--than chess is, with its fixed rules and vast but finite possibilities. "Chess might be a better test of raw computer power," said Christian Lebiere, a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. But computer poker programs "are indeed more like human problem-solving. ... "Poker is a very complex game," said Tuomas Sandholm, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist. Players have to deal with the luck of the draw as the cards are randomly dealt and must make decisions based on incomplete information.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/
mercurynews/news/politics/15031356.htm | back to top
Biotechnology
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | July 19
People can feel helpless when their iPods, cell phones and laptop computers sap juice from batteries and die on the spot. So Carnegie Mellon University hopes to jolt the electronics industry, among others, with new technology that would make batteries last longer and electrical power more reliable. Dr. Prashant Kumta, professor of materials science and biomedical engineering, said a team he heads has developed a new material to make electrochemical capacitors that can boost the power supply for everyday electronic devices and upgrade electric-automobile technology. ... The research team includes Carnegie Mellon graduate student Daiwon Choi and George Blomgren of Blomgren Consulting of Lakewood, Ohio, who is an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg
/06200/706687-96.stm | back to top
Environment
Detroit News | July 20
Congress today will examine ways to entice more people to buy and use hybrid vehicles as the list of government-issued perks to gas-electric hybrid owners grows longer. States and cities around the nation have been offering everything from free parking to the use of car pool lanes for solo drivers as long as they're behind the wheel of a hybrid. They're also offering tax breaks, discounts and other financial incentives. The goal is to push drivers toward hybrids, which cost as much as $5,000 more than gasoline-only versions of the same models. It could take years to recoup the additional costs through reduced gasoline costs alone. However, hybrid vehicle sales continue to grow as gas prices climb above $3 a gallon. ... Lester Lave, professor of economics and of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said much of the hybrid power has gone into increasing acceleration, rather than improving fuel economy--especially in SUV or luxury hybrids. "There's no reason we should be giving tax breaks when there is no public purpose. In some newer hybrids, there's very little increase in fuel economy."
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article
?AID=/20060720/AUTO01/607200385/1148 | back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 18
Hosting a national meeting to significantly alter the engineering curriculums at universities throughout the United States, Cliff Davidson decided that shorts and a T-shirt would be appropriate attire. On the hottest day of the year, the Carnegie Mellon University professor of civil and environmental engineering said his choice reflected not only comfort, but a new engineering approach that considers alternatives to bricks and mortar to make construction more environmentally friendly. "There are other ways besides air-conditioning to be comfortable," Davidson said. "Maybe shorts and T-shirts should be the norm."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib
/news/cityregion/s_462284.html | back to top
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | July 18
Larry Wasserman. Age: 47. Residence: Squirrel Hill. Family: Wife, Isabella Verdinelli; two cats, Dizzy and Miles. Occupation: Statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon University for 18 years. Noteworthy: Wasserman won the 2006 DeGroot Prize from the International Society for Bayesian Analysis for his new textbook, "All of Statistics." The biennial international prize is awarded to textbooks or monographs based on "novelty, thoroughness, timeliness and importance of their intellectual scope."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/
pittsburghtrib/search/s_462276.html | back to top
International News Stories
Monsters and Critics (UPI) | July 18
U.S. researchers say an amnesia-inducing drug has shed light on how people form new memories. Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh scientists gave people material to memorize--once after being injected with a placebo and once after an injection of midazolam, a drug that causes short-term anterograde amnesia, in which the ability to form new memories is inhibited, while leaving old memories unaffected. ... "This helps us understand the general functions of memory," said Carnegie Mellon psychology Professor Lynne Reder, the study's lead author. "It helps us to relate, for example, the memory declines seen in old age to those seen in patients with hippocampal damage."
http://science.monstersandcritics.com/
news/article_1182106.php/Study_finds
_clues_about_memory_formation | back to top
RSC Publishing | July 17
Japanese scientists have developed a probe that could help detect genetic diseases. Hiroyuki Asanuma at Nagoya University and co-workers created the probe to recognize changes in DNA structure called polymorphisms. Deletion polymorphisms--where one or more nucleotide bases are missing--have been linked to genetic diseases. "Developing methods for the detection of polymorphisms is currently an important theme in personalized medicine," explained Asanuma. To form their probe the group attached fluorescent pyrene units to short nucleotide chains called ODNs (oligodeoxyribonucleotides). These ODNs can bind to DNA. The pyrene groups were slotted either side of one nucleotide. This meant that when the probe bound to normal DNA the pyrene units were held apart by a base pair and only monomer fluorescence was seen. If the DNA contained a deletion polymorphism the pyrene units were forced together, producing a different signal. By changing the distance between the pyrene units, the team were also able to use their method to detect multiple base deletions. Bruce Armitage of Carnegie Mellon University, U.S., said that the probe is significant. "The assay offers an efficient way to detect deletion mutations," said Armitage.
http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/ChemicalBiology
/Volume/2006/8/Probing_DNA_mutations.asp | back to top
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