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February
25 - March 3, 2005
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 February 25 - March 3,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 230 references to the university in worldwide
publications. Here is a sample.
National News Stories
The Mathematical Association of America | March
2
Los Angeles Times | February 27
Science | February 25
Chicago Tribune | February 25
Student Experience
Post-Gazette | March 3
The Wall Street Journal | March 2
Post-Gazette | March 1
MSNBC | February 27
Arts and Humanities
Lansing Journal (ASSOCIATED PRESS) | March
3
ABC News (TV/ASSOCIATED PRESS) | March 2
Post-Gazette | February 27
The New York Times | February 25
Post-Gazette | February 25
Information Technology
The New York Times (ASSOCIATED PRESS) | March
1
Regional Impact
Tribune-Review | March 1
Post-Gazette | February 27
Local News Stories
Post-Gazette | February 28
Tribune-Review | February 28
-
-
National News Stories
The Mathematical Association of America | March
2
In 1950, mathematician and magician William Fitch Cheney Jnr. published
a superb two-person mathematical card trick, which continues to baffle
audiences today...The tricks are guaranteed 100% mathematical -- though
you may choose to dress them up a little, for instance as mind reading
tricks...Michael Trick at Carnegie Mellon
kindly put together a website which illustrates this, er, trick in action.
http://www.maa.org/editorial/colm
/cardcolm200502.html | back to top
Los Angeles Times | February 27
At the Open University in Britain and London Business School, researchers
have been recording brain activity as shoppers tour a virtual store.
The researchers say they have identified the neural region that becomes
active when a shopper decides which product to pluck from a supermarket
shelf. In Germany, DaimlerChrysler Corp. used brain imaging to assess
how young men responded to different car designs. In Japan, researchers
at Nihon University and the Gallup Organization used brain scanning
to probe customer loyalties to a Tokyo department store. Many researchers
are skeptical of efforts to commercialize insights into how the brain
works. "Right now, brain scanning, especially at the level of neuromarketing,
is to some degree a matter of tea leaf reading," said George
Lowenstein, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon
University. Nevertheless, a consumer group called Commercial Alert sought
a congressional investigation of neuromarketing research last year.
http://www.latimes.com/business/custom
/admark/la-sci-brain27feb27,1,5829495.
story?coll=la-utilities-business | back to top
Science
| February 25
In a remote Chinese valley sit 25 neat clusters of antennas, each tipped
slightly askew. They are testing the airwaves, listening for interference
from TV signals. If reception is clear enough and other things go well,
within the next year or two the fields of the Ulastai Valley will fill
with tilted antennas, like a Christmas tree farm pummeled by wind...Thanks
to recent advances in theory and computing power, radio astronomers
can now build telescopes consisting of huge arrays of antennas capable
of viewing the universe in a novel palette of low frequencies hitherto
rarely used for astronomical observations. "What's most exciting
to me [is] that we don't know what we're going to see," says PaST
collaborator Jeffrey Peterson of Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Peterson isn't alone in his
enthusiasm. Several other array telescope projects are under way in
the Netherlands, Western Australia, and the American Southwest. Their
scientific goals include finding radio equivalents of gamma ray bursts
and detecting the faint traces of the first stars.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content
/full/307/5713/1194 | back to top
Chicago Tribune | February 25
Bill Peterson, a police officer in the village of Clayton, has never
shot anyone. A 22-year veteran, he's never even had to take his gun
out of its holster...But what's boring to Peterson and virtually unheard
of in larger cities is good for Clayton, a farming village of 890 residents
about 250 miles southwest of Chicago...Some say there's another reason
why crime in small towns is so rare. It's the fishbowl theory: Criminals
have no place to hide. "They'll keep their nose clean because they
don't want to be known as riffraff. If you're riffraff, you're done,"
Peterson said. Experts say there's validity to that theory. Alfred
Blumstein, a professor at the Heinz School of Public Policy
and Management at Carnegie Mellon University, calls
it "social control." Small town residents know most of the
other people in their town and care what other people think of them.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local
/chicago/chi-0502250235feb25,1,4233304.story
?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed | back to top
Student Experience
Post-Gazette | March 3
Carnegie Mellon got off to a rocky start and then knocked out Gettysburg
late at the free-throw line in its first appearance in the postseason
in 27 years. The Tartans (19-6), who set a school record for victories
in a season, defeated Gettysburg, 66-60, in the opening round of the
ECAC Division III Southern men's basketball tournament at Skibo Gym
last night. No. 2 Carnegie Mellon will meet Catholic, a 72-71 winner
against DeSales last night, in the semifinals tomorrow night at Franklin
and Marshall, the site of the top remaining seeded team. "Now maybe
we've got a little taste for it and want to keep going," Carnegie
Mellon coach Tony Wingen said. "This
is like the Division III NIT. We're still playing, that's what is really
important." Carnegie Mellon, which overcame a 10-point deficit
early in the second half, made 12 consecutive free throws down the stretch
to hold off the Bullets (16-11).
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05062/465562.stm
| back to top
The Wall Street Journal | March 2
Opinion piece by: David Celento. Unpaid internships,
while seemingly innocent, are highly discriminatory against college
students from lower-income families ("America's A-List Internships,"
Weekend Journal, Feb. 18)... As an architectural firm owner and adjunct
faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, I abhor
this commonplace practice in my field. Many universities stress ethics
in their course work but then hire celebrated individuals who frequently
engage in this practice. I encourage businesses and academic institutions
to put an end to this harmful practice, which hurts both low-income
achievers as well as honorable businesses. If this isn't done voluntarily,
perhaps it is appropriate for the legality of this discriminatory and
damaging practice to be examined.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB11097
2838882667883-search,00.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | March 1
The Carnegie Mellon men's basketball team is in a postseason
tournament for the first time since 1976-77 and just the second time
in school history. The second-seeded Tartans (18-6), who have tied a
school record for victories in a season, will play host to No. 7 Gettysburg
(16-10) in the first round of the ECAC Division III Southern tournament
at 7 p.m. tomorrow at Skibo Gym. The semifinals of the eight-team event
will be played Friday at the site of the highest remaining seed and
the championship game will be Saturday.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05060/464440.stm
| back to top
MSNBC | February 27
When working visas were issued last October, new applicants didn't have
a chance. Instead, every H-1B visa went to one of the backlog of applicants
who applied during the early filing period the year before but didn't
make the cut...But starting March 8, certain provisions of the 2005
Omnibus Appropriations Bill (HR 4818) make available an additional 20,000
H-1B visas each fiscal year to aliens who have earned a master's degree
or higher from a U.S. institution...But Lisa Krieg,
isn't getting her hopes up just yet. As director of the office of international
education at Carnegie Mellon University, Ms. Krieg
has been watching this closely but finds it "a little concerning"
that some rules haven't been set, such as when the additional 20,000
visas will be effective. Though she couldn't quote an exact number,
she said several hundred foreign students graduate from Carnegie Mellon
each year with master's degrees or higher. "So I think if we have
several hundred here alone, the 20,000 will go pretty fast," she
said, "and essentially we'll be right back where we are now, in
an employment gap."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7044314/
| back to top
Arts and Humanities
Lansing Journal (ASSOCIATED PRESS) | March 3
Liam Conlon doesn't fit the profile of your typical classical concertgoer.
But when the high school freshman recently discovered that a show featuring
music from the computer game "Final Fantasy" would be playing
near his suburban Chicago home, he could hardly believe it...The response
- including several standing ovations - was much the same last year
when the Los Angeles Philharmonic played the music at the Walt Disney
Concert Hall...Orchestra representatives from such cities as Atlanta
and Cleveland also are considering joining the tour, says Arnie Roth,
music director and principal conductor for the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra.
And he believes they are wise to do so. "It's an automatic way
to expand your audience," says Roth. Others in the industry say
it's a matter of orchestras losing their stuffy image. "You don't
want to make it seem like you have to be retired and driving your Lexus
in order to listen to classical music," says Alan Fletcher,
head of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
/20050303/THINGS0201/503030330/1055/news | back
to top
ABC News (TV) | March 2
Here's the scene: You've waited for your big day, and you finally take
the stage to belt out that song that's going to put you in the chips,
depending on how much the judges like your performance. Will you have
a better chance of beating out your competitors if you're first or if
you're last? The edge nearly always goes to competitors who are later
in the order of appearance, not earlier, according to some intriguing
new research. Psychologist Wändi Bruine De Bruin
of Carnegie Mellon University has studied various competitive
events and found that judges tend to give higher scores to those who
appeared later in the program than those who appeared earlier. "I
have found that the later you perform, the better your scores and the
higher your chances of winning," she says.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology
/DyeHard/story?id=541432&page=1 | back to top
Post-Gazette | February 27
Growling and surly, he had us at, "You prosecuted the crap out
of that one." Those were the first words viewers heard Andy Sipowicz
(Dennis Franz) say to his future late wife, Sylvia Costas (Sharon Lawrence),
on ABC's "NYPD Blue" in September 1993. His follow up? An
obscene gesture and a line of dialogue we still can't publish in a family
newspaper. Yes, gruff Andy Sipowicz, the heart and soul of "NYPD
Blue," did not begin his 12-year prime-time tenure as a warm and
cuddly character...Kathy M. Newman, associate professor
of English at Carnegie Mellon University, said Franz's
Sipowicz began as a stock working stiff, "sort of a fat, ugly man,
very lowbrow. "I think he had to evolve if he was going to be as
central to the show as he was," Newman said. Much of that evolution
was unplanned, as were the many cast changes that contributed to making
Sipowicz the central character (Franz didn't get top billing on "Blue"
until Jimmy Smits left the show).
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05058/462441.stm
| back to top
The New York Times | February 25
Responding to growing concerns about its ability to monitor the side
effects of vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
decided last week to separate its national immunization program, which
advocates vaccination, from its vaccine safety branch, which monitors
the potential risks of the vaccines...Two outside researchers, Dr. Mark
Geier and his son, David Geier, who were expert witnesses for parents
seeking damages from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program,
have fought for access to the database. The agency has been hesitant,
fearing that doing so could violate the privacy of those whose medical
histories are in it. Dr. Stephen E. Fienberg, a professor
at Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the committee
that weighed in on the dispute, suggested the Geiers be granted further
access.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02
/25/politics/25vaccine.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | February 25
While most teenagers spend their time trying to compose themselves in
the face of everyday life and peer pressure, a group of students in
the Shaler Area School District has been composing music. A three-year
Meet the Composer program, wrapping up this weekend with a special concert,
has opened up the usually arcane world of classical composition to students.
While many of these teenagers are proficient on a musical instrument,
they are far more likely to have written a poem or sketched a drawing
than composed a piece of music. "In English class, you write some
poems or paragraphs, but not in music [class]," said Jim Whipple,
one of two local composers who worked with students at Shaler...Whipple
and [Efrain] Amaya also used the grant
to write music of their own. Amaya, a Carnegie Mellon
University composer, wrote several concert pieces. Whipple finished
concert works as well but also wrote some music for the residency's
media sponsor WQED, including some lighthearted station mottos and fund-raiser
fanfares.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05056/462370.stm
| back to top
Information Technology
The New York Times (ASSOCIATED PRESS) | March
1
Some of the nation's leading computer scientists are siding with file-swapping
companies against the music and movie industries. They were joined by
tech firms and consumer groups, among others, in urging the U.S. Supreme
Court on Tuesday to side with two online file-sharing firms in their
high-stakes battle with Hollywood and the recording industry...A group
of 17 computer science and engineering professors at nine universities,
including Harold Abelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Edward W. Felten of Princeton and David J. Farber of
Carnegie Mellon, stressed in their brief that they
feared if the court sided with the entertainment companies it could
chill technological progress in computers and the Internet.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology
/AP-File-Sharing-Suit.html | back to top
Regional Impact
Tribune-Review | March 1
The concept of fitness as a lifetime pursuit takes the national spotlight
in Allegheny County in June. The 2005 Summer National Senior Games --
The Senior Olympics -- come to the region June 3 through June 18. If
you are not among those who are competing (and we would like to hear
from you if you have), you can still be a volunteer. They are needed
to fill a variety of roles, during and prior to the event. Positions
include drivers, coordinators, office and field personnel and medical
professionals. Athletes will compete in 18 sports. Venues will be spread
throughout Allegheny County, with events scheduled to take place at
the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University,
Schenley Park and North Park. The potential economic benefit is about
$30 million. "Pittsburghers have always rallied around a good cause
and a big game. Here is an opportunity to be a part of the biggest one
in town," said David White, executive director of the Pittsburgh
committee.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/newssummary/s_308767.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | February 27
The latest forecast from PNC Financial Services Group economists doesn't
offer a lot to smile about. It does predict an end to the region's three-year
slide in payroll employment, but only barely. We remain burdened with
the overhang of a still-shrinking US Airways and the lack of a major
growth industry. But there are some signs of better days ahead. The
University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University,
for example, are cooperating on a range of initiatives aimed at making
the region a hotbed for promising biotech and information technology
ventures, the sort of collaboration that was often forsaken in the past.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05058/463172.stm
| back to top
Local News Stories
Post-Gazette | February 28
Edmund M. Clarke, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon
University, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering
for his work in developing a technique for finding errors in computer
hardware and software. The technique, called model checking, has proven
superior to simulation in detecting flaws in computer circuits. Since
Clarke and several students began developing model checking in 1981,
companies such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Siemens and Fujitsu have
used it to improve verification of circuit designs.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05059/463817.stm
| back to top
Tribune-Review | February 28
Gov. Ed Rendell's proposal to shift money from a national tobacco settlement
to provide health insurance for more low-income residents would result
in a 29 percent cut in health research grants, many of which are used
to seek advances in the treatment of cancer, diabetes, strokes and cardiovascular
disease. Over the past three years, Pennsylvania's share of the national
tobacco settlement has provided $228 million in research grants to hospitals
and universities statewide. Rendell's state budget blueprint includes
$72.9 million in grants for 2004-05, but only $51.9 million the following
year, a $21 million cut...Health research grants funded in 2003-04 with
money from the national tobacco settlement, according to the state Department
of Health, include * $962,758 to Carnegie Mellon University
for three projects, including the development of a new methodology for
detecting interactions of protein components that regulate the function
and health of cells.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/regional/s_308157.html | back to top
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