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January
21 - 27, 2005
This internal publication contains information about recent coverage
of Carnegie Mellon that appeared primarily in national newspapers, magazines
and online publications.
Please send comments and suggestions to thomas@cmu.edu
The media coverage archive is available at www.cmu.edu/clips
From January 21 - 27,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 191
references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.
National News Stories
The Wall Street Journal | January 25
The Wall Street Journal | January 25
New York Newsday | January 24
Toledo Blade | January 24
The Wall Street Journal | January 21
Student Experience
Post-Gazette | January 23
Post-Gazette | January 21
Arts and Humanities
Los Angeles Times | January 25
The News-Press | January 24
Post-Gazette | January 22
The Wall Street Journal | January 21, 2005
KUOW (Radio, NPR affiliate) | January 21
Information Technology
Post-Gazette | January 27
Technology Review | Febuary 2005
Biotechnology
Tribune-Review | January 21
Environment
Macon Telegraph | January 26
News Hour (NPR) | January 24
Local News Stories
Tribune-Review | January 27
Post-Gazette | January 25
Post-Gazette | January 23
International News Stories
Innovations-Report, Germany | January 25
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National News Stories
The Wall Street Journal | January 25
When the Argentine Bond Restructuring Agency announced on Thursday that
it would reject Argentina's current debt offer, the Argentine stock
market sold off. Equity investors had been betting on the $103 billion
restructuring gaining a high level of acceptance among bondholders,
despite its meager 30 cents-on-the-dollar payout. ABRA's decision threw
that in doubt...In part, ABRA's clout stems from the group's unique
structure: as a single corporate entity, it is effectively Argentina's
biggest single creditor in what is a diffuse and thinly spread bondholder
community. But it can also be traced to the critical and controversial
role played by ABRA founder and lead negotiator, Carnegie Mellon
economist Adam Lerrick. Dividing his time between two
farms in Virginia and New York and a remote ranch in Wyoming, Lerrick
has used high-tech connections to stay in touch with his far-flung clients
and associates. Along the way, Lerrick has left an indelible stamp on
the Argentine restructuring, perhaps the most complex market transaction
ever undertaken, and picked up admirers and enemies in equal number..."Not
only did Adam get a seat at the table, he was the only one at the table,"
says economist Allan Meltzer, referring to his Carnegie
Mellon University colleague's decision to maintain dialogue when some
big bondholders were boycotting consultations with the government last
year.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_
20050124_007341-search,00.html | back to top
The Wall Street Journal | January 25
As home prices and property taxes in many areas of the U.S. continue
to reach new heights, homeowners are aiming their sights at a common
target: the local tax assessor...In general, assessors are supposed
to base assessments on each property's estimated fair market value.
But their methods can vary... There are a number of other factors that
can affect the process. States vary significantly in terms of how local
assessors are chosen and the credentials they are required to have.
Financial support for the assessment process also widely differs, as
do assessment and appeals laws, and state oversight. And assessors,
who are either appointed or elected, face pressures from politicians
or voters. "Each affects the accuracy and fairness of real-estate
assessment in material ways," says Robert P. Strauss,
a Carnegie Mellon University professor of economics
and public policy. Prof. Strauss studied assessments in four urban areas
for 2001 and 2002 -- Washington, D.C., Baltimore City, Md., Allegheny
County, Pa., and Cuyahoga County, Ohio -- and found "substantial
variability" in the success of each assessor in achieving uniform
assessments.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110661
015488934628-search,00.html | back to top
New York Newsday | January 24
Who hasn't wandered around a store at some point looking for an employee,
and there's not a clerk to be seen? Usually that's a mistake, a sign
of poor scheduling or simply awful customer service. But in the future
that scenario just might be intentional. Technology firms are rolling
out products, software and grand dreams of a time when employees will
be needed only for the few tasks a computer can't do...Much of the new
vision is based on RFID technology, short for radio frequency identification,
which uses tiny computer chips embedded in each product. The chips can
be read from far away - meaning, a customer could load up a shopping
cart and simply walk through a "reader" that tallies up the
purchases and even, perhaps, automatically deducts the balance from
a bank account. The only thing left to do is bag the groceries. Ultimately,
RFID could replace bar codes. It might also replace some low-skill,
"high-touch" jobs once considered immune to high-tech's advance
because they traditionally required a human touch. The more low-skill
the job, the more vulnerable it may be. "It certainly doesn't bode
well for someone who's unable to get different or additional training,"
said Peter Boatwright, a marketing professor at the
Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University
in Pittsburgh.
http://www.newsday.com/technology
/ny-mbcov4123832jan24,0,3345664.
story?coll=ny-technology-print | back to top
Toledo Blade | January 24
With a strike deadline looming, the Ohio Turnpike Commission and its
workers yesterday resumed talks aimed at avoiding the first employee
walkout in the turnpike's nearly 50-year history. The turnpike's 704
toll takers and 293 maintenance workers were poised to strike at 12:01
a.m. today over wages and health care if talks that began at 3 p.m.
yesterday failed to produce an agreement...After announcing the strike
deadline Jan. 14, Mr. Tiboni said he hoped motorists, especially union
truck drivers, would avoid the turnpike if a walkout occurred. Robert
Strauss, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said such sympathy was thin
when two other Teamsters locals struck the Pennsylvania Turnpike for
a week in late November. "Admittedly, the turnpike toll takers
have a lot of stress," Mr. Strauss said. "But people were
startled by how much they make - they were scratching their heads."
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
/20050124/NEWS08/501240316 | back to top
The Wall Street Journal | January 21
Adam Lerrick's bondholders group turned down Argentina's
offer yesterday of 30 cents on the dollar for defaulted Argentine debt.
But it is a measure of the controversy surrounding him that other bondholders,
who also oppose Argentina's offer, still wonder whether Mr. Lerrick
is on their side. As Argentina presses its creditors to accept its terms
on its $103 billion sovereign-debt restructuring, Mr. Lerrick, a
Carnegie Mellon University economist and former Salomon Brothers
bond trader, is playing a critical and contentious role. He has been
paid to organize some 30,000 small bondholders, who own $1.2 billion
in Argentine debt, into a single body, called the Argentine Bond Restructuring
Agency, to give them the lobbying clout of large institutional investors.
Members agree in advance to go along with ABRA's decision on whether
to accept the deal, which further strengthens Mr. Lerrick's bargaining
power.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB11062700
7759432187-search,00.html | back to top
Student Experience
Post-Gazette | January 23
The essays will be written in just 25 minutes using No. 2 pencils.
As rough drafts written under test conditions, they will have scratched-out
words, erasures, sentence fragments, misspellings, grammar mistakes
and handwriting that isn't necessarily pretty. These raw essays will
be available online to the admissions officers of colleges that receive
the students' scores for the SAT college entrance exam. Carnegie
Mellon University, which already required a standardized writing
test, will require applicants to take the SAT or the ACT with writing.
Mike Steidel, Carnegie Mellon's director of admission,
said Carnegie Mellon hasn't decided how to handle the SAT essay. Carnegie
Mellon's application has two essays as well as some short written answers,
he said. "To be honest, we think our essays are going to be more
interesting to read than what this essay is all about." He said
Carnegie Mellon might look at the SAT essay to better understand the
skills of students who are non-native English speakers.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05023/446805.stm
| back to top
Post-Gazette | January 21
Michael Divens and the Carnegie Mellon University men's
basketball team have certainly come a long way over the past four years.
Divens, a Penn-Trafford graduate, describes his first season at Carnegie
Mellon -- a 9-16 campaign -- as "miserable." But if that 2001-2002
season had some bad days, this season has been rolling in good times.
The Tartans are 11-2, having won a school-record nine games in a row.
Divens, a senior guard, has been one of the main cogs, averaging 14.2
points a game and recently becoming the 15th player in Carnegie Mellon
basketball history to go over 1,000 points for his career. "It
means something [scoring 1,000 points]. I'm just glad it came this season
when we're playing so well," said Divens.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05021/444793.stm
| back to top
Arts and Humanities
Los Angeles Times | January 25
Like solo sailors venturing into the Southern Ocean, climbers are seduced
by risk. The desire to push to a summit or scale a rock face is so strong
that they consciously or subconsciously minimize safety precautions
drilled into their brains. It's how adventurers can sabotage themselves,
and some scientists believe it is just part of the game. But for the
insurance industry, it's no game at all. Between calculated risk and
reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss...Prior
to the 1990s, most psychologists believed that happiness, safety and
pleasure motivated most decisions. But a small and influential group
of researchers — including Daniel Gilbert at Harvard, Tim Wilson
at the University of Virginia and George Lowenstein
at Carnegie Mellon University — are not so certain.
"People don't only want to feel happy, they want to feel alive,"
explains Lowenstein, who has spent his career exploring the science
of risk-taking and decision-making. "Part of feeling alive is having
a range of emotions. Taking risks brings a lot of lows but also some
extreme highs."
http://www.latimes.com/features/outdoors
/la-os-razorsedge25jan25,0,5782492.story
?coll=la-home-outdoors | back to top
The News-Press | January 24
If the United States adds private accounts to Social Security as President
Bush wants, it won't be the first nation to do so. About 40 countries
already allow workers to invest some or all of their retirement contributions
in stocks and bonds or are considering it. Many of those countries began
experimenting with private accounts in the 1990s because, like in the
United States, older people are living longer and retirees outnumber
young, working people. The results have been mixed, however, and no
country has a system precisely like the one Bush and his Republican
supporters favor and virtually all Democrats oppose...Much of Latin
America, Eastern Europe and some English-speaking nations including
Australia and the United Kingdom have embraced full or partial privatization...Chilean
workers put 10 percent of their earnings into accounts managed by a
handful of government-approved financial houses that charge hefty administrative
fees, said Silvia Borzutzky, a Carnegie Mellon
University scholar. Though the average pension is higher than what people
would have received if the government was still paying them, women and
the poor are hurt by the shift away from the publicly funded system,
she said.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
/20050124/NEWS01/501240376/1075 | back to top
Post-Gazette | January 22
The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon
University serves up a fine feast this term: an array of appetizers
by some of the most prominent names in new media, a main course by Israeli
artist Michal Rovner, and, for dessert, an Ice Cream Social. Today's
a good day to visit because the gallery will host a reception for the
Japanese art collective Maywa Denki following its 3 p.m. Wats:ON? performance
in McConomy Auditorium, University Center, both free and open to the
public. Like an early valentine, David Robbins' "Ice Cream Social"
sweetens the third floor with its strawberry, chocolate and vanilla
color scheme. Photographs of past socials -- from Des Moines to Paris
-- are attached by magnets to four white mid-century-era refrigerators,
echoing the modern family bulletin board. The pink, brown and white
palette continues in stacks of bowls atop them -- which were commissioned
by the artist and made by Carnegie Mellon students -- and on the walls
in painted bunting and a cryptic poem that Robbins recites in one of
two short films showing.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05022/446275.stm
| back to top
The Wall Street Journal | January 21, 2005
Not everyone succeeds, even in the world's most successful economy.
Many fail, and have failed since the days of the first banks and the
first bank runs. Milton Buckingham Cushing was one of this multitude,
a merchant and land speculator who, overextended on credit, was twice
flattened in 19th-century financial panics. So great was his distress
that he was reduced to writing to his congressman. "Born Losers"
(Harvard University Press, 362 pages, $35), admirably concise and formidably
researched, is the history of America's reverse Horatio Algers. Scott
A. Sandage, an associate professor of history at Carnegie
Mellon University, logged a decade in the library to produce
what amounts to an authoritative chronicle of the risks of lending and
borrowing in 19th-century America (although the book ranges well into
the 20th.)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110625977
876831882-search,00.html | back to top
KUOW (Radio, NPR affiliate) | January 21
In America striving for success is a duty. Ambition is a virtue. Failure
is a stain. But has our understanding of failure changed? In the play
Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman embraces the American dream of success.
He tells his sons "Be liked and you’ll never want".
In the end Willy commits suicide because he sees himself as a failure.
Yet the play questions the notion. Was Willy really a failure? Or did
Willy embrace a misguided notion of success? In the early 1990’s
young people began to proudly wear t-shirts emblazoned with the word
Loser. The musician Beck achieved great success with the refrain "I’m
a loser baby, why don’t you kill me." We’ve all been
touched by failure. Have your views of failure evolved? Is failure not
as bad as it's cracked up to be? In this hour of The Conversation, we
talk to the editor of Failure Magazine and Scott Sandage, author of
Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Sandage concludes that
failure isn’t the dark side of the American dream… failure
is the foundation of the American dream. What do you think? Guests:
Scott Sandage Associate Professor of History at Carnegie
Mellon University and the author of Born Losers: A History
of Failure in America.
http://www.kuow.org/defaultProgram.asp?ID=8301
| back to top
Information Technology
Post-Gazette | January 27
Starting a company is almost like having a baby. So it makes sense that
settling on a name for a new firm can be a just as personal, emotional
and ultimately difficult as naming a newborn. Take the technology industry,
where capturing a funky, cool name that sets you apart from competitors,
says something about you, and hasn't been copyrighted by someone else
is often as labor intensive as getting the company off the ground...there
are the zingers -- names that will never work because they ultimately
make sense to only a few people. Hooman Radfar nearly fell into that
trap, when he and his partners almost named their Dormont-based business-to-business
software firm Ontologix. Radfar, the company's chief executive officer,
said he knew that was a bad idea when Pradeep Khosla,
dean of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer
Science and an adviser to the firm, heard it -- and laughed. "He
couldn't even pronounce it," said Radfar, chuckling at his recollection.
The firm's current name -- Clearspring Technologies Inc. -- came to
light when, after several frustrating brainstorming sessions, someone
walked past its temporary offices at Carnegie Mellon and blurted, "like
a clear spring of data," referring to what Radfar and his team
wanted to ultimately offer their customers. "We said, 'That's not
that bad. If no one decides on a better name, we're keeping it.' "
No one did.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05027/448577.stm
| back to top
Technology Review | Febuary 2005
With so many startup founders, CTOs, high-level engineers, and venture
capitalists in Silicon Valley tracing their roots to India, why doesn’t
India itself boast a booming high-tech innovation sector? One reason,
of course, is that many of the best-trained Indian engineers still find
it more exciting to work in the United States and other Western nations.
But another, more controversial reason could be the type of business
that is booming in India: information technology outsourcing. Some analysts
worry that information technology professionals in India are too busy
serving their well-paying foreign clients to risk time or capital on
developing their own products for the Indian or U.S. markets...But perhaps
most important is a gradual change in attitudes in a culture where entrepreneurs
were once seen as loners who couldn’t hold down regular jobs,
and business failure was traditionally equated with personal failure.
Today "a startup is no longer viewed as a no-no," says [Srini]
Rajam. "It is in fact viewed very positively." At least some
of this change can be credited to outsourcing, says Ashish Arora,
a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon
University. "If India has any kind of successful product development,
it will be because of the success of the software services sector."
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles
/05/02/issue/brief_outsource.asp | back to top
Biotechnology
Tribune-Review | January 21
The next big thing could come in the smallest package imaginable --
so tiny, in fact, it is invisible to the naked eye. Nanotechnology is
the science of working with things that are one-billionth of a meter,
or more than 1,000 times narrower than the diameter of a human hair.
Pittsburgh scientists see a wide open future in using nanotechnology
to make a new generation of products that are not only smaller, but
cleaner, stronger, lighter and more precise. "The huge vision for
nanotechnology is that we'll be able to make new and disruptive technologies
for everything from electronics to medicine to manufacturing,"
said nanotechnology expert Richard McCullough, dean
of Carnegie Mellon University's College of Science.
***Also quoted in this story are Carnegie Mellon faculty members Randall
Feenstra and Ed Schlesinger.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/regional/s_295352.html | back to top
Environment
Macon Telegraph | January 26
Holly Knowles didn't realize she lived near a sewage treatment plant,
much less that her family could be affected if a serious chemical accident
happens there. "If it's something that could harm you, shoot, yeah,
I'd like to know about it," she says of Sandy Run Creek Wastewater
Treatment Plant...Others don't know they could face higher risks, either.
The Telegraph interviewed residents in three different neighborhoods
near facilities with hazardous chemicals, finding none who knew the
facility was nearby. As a result, the residents can't prepare by, for
example, learning to recognize a chemical's smell or how to shut off
outside ventilation. A 2001 survey by the National Chemical Safety Center
found that between 50 percent and 67 percent of "near neighbors"
to plants with very hazardous chemicals were unaware the facility existed..."If
something is so bad that you don't want to tell the public about it,
then you better fix it," said Lester Lave, professor
of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon
University and a member of the advisory committee for the Clean Air
Acts of 1970 and 1990.
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/local/state
s/georgia/counties/houston_peach/10734049.htm | back
to top
News Hour (NPR) | January 24
PAUL SOLMAN: In our last look at the effects of a high, long-term oil
price, we braved the back roads of western Pennsylvania, birthplace
of the world oil industry, and concentrated on those who lose when prices
soar: Individuals like folks who have to drive a lot, industries like
the airlines. We ended with the surprise set of losers, oil and gas
producers. In the short run, of course, those who own oil and gas deposits,
those who invest in them, those in the business of drilling for them,
they all benefit from a price rise. But if prices remain high, as markets
are suggesting they now will, producers could be in big trouble, because
a high long- term price will assuredly lead to a switch away from fossil
fuels, conceivably even to the decline and fall of the petroleum empire.
And that naturally leads into this story about the prime beneficiaries
of high oil and gas prices long term, the sectors of the economy for
which high prices could be the proverbial blessing in disguise - as
they are for Carnegie Mellon's resident prince of darkness,
economist and conservationist Lester Lave. ***Carnegie
Mellon faculty members Volker Hartkopf and Deborah
Lange are also featured in this news story. Streaming video
and transcripts are available online.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy
/jan-june05/oil_1-24.html | back to top
Local News Stories
Tribune-Review | January 27
It's a sound that almost every kid who grew up in the 1960s and '70s
remembers: a warm, metallic buzz. That noise will echo through the corridors
of the Embassy Suites Hotel at the Pittsburgh International Airport
this weekend at the 11th annual Official Electric Football Super Bowl
& Convention. Yes, that frustrating game with the miniature players
who tended to go around in circles is being played again after a spike
of interest in the late 1990s. Rob Dalmasse of
Carnegie Mellon University's chemistry department has been
playing the game since childhood. Since 1997, from his home in Edgewood,
he's hosted the Pittsburgh Electric Football League, which has 10 members.
Most are colleagues of Dalmasse's in Carnegie Mellon's chemistry department,
but no one has yet come up with a super polymer to make the figures
move faster. It has been tried, however. "Enthusiasts have gone
to the lengths of boiling the bases to make them faster or stronger,"
he says, noting other methods of "tweaking" include using
pliers or tweezers on the bases.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/entertainment/events/s_296454.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | January 25
Pennsylvania remains stuck in the middle of the pack among states when
it comes to fostering growth in high-technology businesses and industries,
a state report released yesterday said. The state Department of Community
and Economic Development measured Pennsylvania's progress in forming
and growing tech-based companies by looking at such indicators as research
patents, venture capital investments, and research and development expenditures.
"We're definitely making progress, but we're also not where we
need to be," said local economic development expert Don
Smith, vice president of the MPC Corp., a joint economic development
venture between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon
University. "It just takes time to make the transition from a heavy
industrial economy to one that is entrepreneurial and innovation-driven."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05025/447531.stm
| back to top
Post-Gazette | January 23
When Susan Whitewood opens e-mail reminders about upcoming meetings
of her networking group at Mellon Financial Corp., she's never sure
who else received the same message. The network includes gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender employees at Mellon, and its leaders are careful
to use a blind distribution list that doesn't disclose the names of
members or potential recruits. Not that the it doesn't want to grow
its ranks. But the group, called PRISM -- which stands for Pride, Respect,
Individuality and Support at Mellon -- is adamant about respecting its
participants' privacy..."My sense is we're starting to recognize
the value that diversity can play in the workplace, and I think that's
what is leading to the effort to form affinity groups," said Robert
Kelley, adjunct professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie
Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and author of
"How to Be a Star at Work."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05023/446389.stm
| back to top
International News Stories
Innovations-Report, Germany | January 25
For the first time, researchers have automatically grouped fluorescently
tagged proteins from high-resolution images of cells. This technical
feat opens a new way to identify disease proteins and drug targets by
helping to show which proteins cluster together inside a cell. The approach,
developed by Carnegie Mellon University, outperforms
existing visual methods to localize proteins inside cells, says Professor
Robert F. Murphy, whose report, "Data Mining in Genomics
and Proteomics," appears in an upcoming special issue of the Journal
of Biomedicine and Biotechnology. "Our approach really enables
the new field of location proteomics, which describes and relates the
location of proteins within cells," said Murphy, a professor of
biological sciences, machine learning, and biomedical engineering. "This
work should provide a more thorough understanding of cellular processes
that underlie disease."
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports
/life_sciences/report-39322.html | back to top
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