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March 11
- 17, 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 March 11 - 17,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 352 references to the university in worldwide
publications. Here is a sample.
National News Stories
The Chronicle of Higher Education | March 18
MarketWatch (Dow Jones) | March 15
The Washington Times | March 15
Washington Post | March 11
San Francisco Chronicle | March 11
Qatar Campus
Strategiy, United Arab Emirates | March 14
AME Info, United Arab Emirates | March 14
Student Experience
Tribune-Review | March 15
Arts and Humanities
Post-Gazette | March 17
The Washington Times | March 16
Post-Gazette | March 16
Tribune-Review | March 14
Los Angeles Times | March 13
Sculpture | March 2005
Information Technology
Post-Gazette | March 15
Tribune-Review | March 15
The New York Times | March 14
ComputerWorld | March 14
Biotechnology
MSNBC | March 15
Post-Gazette | March 15
Environment
Tribune Review | March 16
Regional Impact
Post-Gazette | March 17
Tribune-Review | March 17
Post-Gazette | March 11
Local News Stories
Post-Gazette | March 16
Tribune-Review | March 16
Post-Gazette | March 15
Post-Gazette | March 15
Pittsburgh Business Times | March 11
International News Stories
Bloomberg | March 16
New Scientist, UK | March 16
Medical News Today, UK | March 16
Times, UK | March 14
The Economist, UK | March 12
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National News Stories
The Chronicle of Higher Education | March 18
A computer hacker who learned how to break into software used by hundreds
of colleges' online-admissions programs passed the word along this month
to anxious business-school applicants, more than 200 of whom promptly
tried to find out weeks early whether they had been accepted. Six institutions
were hit by the overeager applicants. Carnegie Mellon University,
Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said
they knew who tried to break into their computer systems and would not
admit any of those applicants.
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly
/v51/i28/28a03301.htm | back to top
MarketWatch (Dow Jones) | March 15
Shares of Walt Disney Co. continued rising Tuesday as investors again
backed the company's promotion of Robert Iger to the top spot, replacing
the longtime chief executive, Michael Eisner. The choice of Iger was
blasted by dissident shareholders Roy Disney and Stanley Gold, but analysts
who cover the entertainment giant largely favored the shift, saying
it gives the company a chance to evolve more smoothly while hanging
on to shareholder value...There is a question as to whether Gold and
Roy Disney would ask for a special shareholder meeting or wait until
the next annual gathering of shareholders, roughly a year away. "By
then there'll be all kinds of other issues," said Dale
Hershey, a professor of business law at Carnegie Mellon
University. He added that when the next annual meeting convenes, Iger
already will have a track record upon which shareholders could vote.
Hershey indicated the two dissidents might have to prove malfeasance
to persuade shareholders that wholesale change is in order at the Disney
boardroom, and that would be critical should they seek litigation. "They
would have to show that the board acted in violation of its fiduciary
duties," he said. Most options are a long shot, he added.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=
{255abc5e-3d6c-4170-9546e4e68b930ad8}&siteid=
google&dist=SignInArchive&archive=true¶m=
archive&garden=&minisite= | back to top
The Washington Times | March 15
The government of Argentina has completed the largest sovereign debt
swap in history, three years after economic collapse triggered riots
in South America's second-largest country. The deal, worth $102 billion
including past-due interest, was a complicated undertaking covering
150 bond issues and 600,000 investors. The successful restructuring
left investors hurting, but raised public optimism and scored political
points for President Nestor Kirchner, a popular center-left president
who still faces heavy economic problems...U.S. investors hurt by Argentina's
default were mostly institutional players. They cried foul to American
officials, but were likely to have diversified portfolios that absorbed
much of the impact, analysts said. "There is a big difference in
a U.S. hedge fund complaining about things not being fair and a retail
investor in Europe doing the same," said Adam Lerrick,
a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh
and former head of international product development at the investment
firm Salomon Brothers. Mr. Lerrick played a key and controversial role
in the negotiations as head of the Argentine Bond Restructuring Agency
(ABRA), a group that corralled the negotiating power of about 30,000
European retail investors holding $1.2 billion in bonds.
http://washingtontimes.com/world
/20050314-093421-5202r.htm | back to top
Washington Post | March 11
If you're the worrying kind, what do you choose from the smorgasbord
of dread laid out upon the table of modern life? Osama bin Laden still
out there scheming, somewhere at large? Terrorists with a radioactive
"dirty bomb" or just a Ryder truck full of fertilizer and
fuel oil? Something as general as global warming, or as specific as
the dangerous intersection on the way to your daughter's school? To
help make sense of it all, I rounded up a few experts in the burgeoning
field of risk analysis. Paradoxically, the exercise was a comfort. It
turns out there's no "right" or "wrong" way to calculate
the sum of our fears...Baruch Fischhoff, a Carnegie
Mellon University professor who heads the Society for Risk
Analysis, said, "Risk analysis is easier when you have a historical
record, but it's a matter of theory when you don't." Trying to
judge the risk of any kind of terrorist attack is hard, because by definition,
it's an exercise in reading the terrorists' minds.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn
/articles/A25615-2005Mar10.html | back to top
San Francisco Chronicle | March 11
Marketing to Baby Boomers seems like a no-brainer. There are a lot of
them, and they've got a lot of money. But somehow Madison Avenue has
been oddly tone-deaf about what Boomers want, according to speakers
at What's Next, Boomer Business Summit, a two-day conference in Philadelphia
for about 200 entrepreneurs, marketers, brand managers, venture capitalists
and others hoping to find gold in the generation aged 40 to 59...Still,
many market opportunities to lure Boomers remain untapped...PharmaAbby.
Designed by students at Carnegie Mellon's graduate
school of business, PharmaAbby is a computer telephone system that reminds
customers to refill prescriptions.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=
/c/a/2005/03/11/BUGG8BNDTG18.DTL | back to top
Qatar Campus
Strategiy, United Arab Emirates | March 14
More than 600 guests and dignitaries have attended a gala event to celebrate
the inauguration of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar..."There
is a spontaneous synergy between Qatar Foundation and Carnegie Mellon,"
HH Sheikha Mozah stated in her address while welcoming Carnegie Mellon
Qatar to Education City... "Like Her Highness, Carnegie Mellon
is deeply committed to the ideals that have shaped Education City from
its inception – ideals like democracy, freedom, increased opportunities
for both men and women, and most important, the power of higher education
to turn these ideals into realities," said Jared L. Cohon,
Ph.D., president of Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.strategiy.com/inews.asp
?id=20050313233820 | back to top
AME Info, United Arab Emirates | March 14
More than 600 guests and dignitaries attended a gala event on the 10th
of March 2005, to celebrate the inauguration of Carnegie Mellon
University in Qatar. The event was graced by the presence of H.H Sheikha
Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, wife of H.H the Emir and Chair of Qatar
Foundation. A delegation of academics, students, administrators and
trustees from the main campus in Pittsburgh also attended the event,
which in true Carnegie Mellon tradition commenced with the Carnegie
Mellon bagpiper in celebration of the University's Tartan heritage...During
the ceremony, H.H Sheikha Mozah bestowed the Mozah Bint Nasser Chair
of Computer Science and Robotics on Dr. Raj Reddy,
the Simon University professor of Computer Science and Robotics from
Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. Guests at the Inaugural
Gala were regaled with the world premier of 'Fanfare for the Future:
Celebrating the vision of Qatar Foundation' by students from Carnegie
Mellon's School of Music. This piece was especially composed for H.H
Sheikha Mozah by Alan Fletcher, D.M.A, professor and
head of Carnegie Mellon's School of Music. 'Our students are hand-picked
- it's hard to make the grade at Carnegie Mellon, and so we only offer
admission to the best and brightest. And those leaders of tomorrow?
They are here today,' said Dr. Charles E. Thorpe, dean
of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.
http://www.ameinfo.com/news
/Detailed/55661.html | back to top
Student Experience
Tribune-Review | March 15
Heidi Finkenbinder could find no support group after her sister was
deployed to Iraq, so the West Virginia University student started a
group on her own. Finkenbinder, 23, a senior psychology major, says
she needed someone to talk to, and she felt isolated because she was
attending college away from her home in Fairmont, W.Va. The group that
Finkenbinder helped start -- which first met last month -- is among
the programs that colleges and universities in Western Pennsylvania
and West Virginia are developing to help students who have loved ones
serving in the military. Carnegie Mellon University,
the University of Pittsburgh, and Duquesne University offer one-on-one
counseling, but the schools don't have support groups specifically for
students who have relatives deployed in the military. Support groups
are hard to start, says Cynthia Valley, Ph.D., director
of Counseling and Psychological Services at Carnegie Mellon.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/style
/family/s_313272.html | back to top
Arts and Humanities
Post-Gazette | March 17
Most composers follow painters, poets and other artists in disdaining
promotion. Marketing is seen as palaver, too much publicity the work
of a mountebank. Even for an event as potentially auspicious as U3,
a biannual new music festival showcasing the composers of Carnegie
Mellon University, Duquesne University and the University of
Pittsburgh, there was modesty in marketing and in presentation. This
at a time when no one would have begrudged gasconading if it had brought
in more patrons than the moderate showing. From the jocular to the heart-rending,
from the sonic to the affected, the particular pieces in this chamber
music concert varied in type and quality, but there were no slouches.
Here's a quick first response to the works, some sure to rise or fall
in opinion with further hearings.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05076/472488.stm
| back to top
The Washington Times | March 16
A psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh
has discovered babies who are spoken to in infant-directed speech learn
to talk sooner. Erik Thiessen, a psychology professor
at the university, said his research shows most adults speak to babies
in infant-directed speech: short, simple sentences coupled with higher
pitch and exaggerated intonation. He said such speech patterns assist
infants in learning words more quickly than normal adult speech. Thiessen
and his colleagues exposed 8-month-old infants to fluent speech made
up of nonsense words. They then assessed whether the infants had been
able to learn the words.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking
/20050316-090814-5317r.htm | back to top
Post-Gazette | March 16
The bagpipe notes reverberate with distinction. Somber. Regal. Strong.
The bass and snare drums sound as though they should announce a coming
army or foreshadow an impending battle. Instead, they rattle the windows
of the Carrick High School cafeteria, where the Greater Pittsburgh Police
Emerald Society Pipes & Drums Band gathers for one last practice
before last Saturday's St. Patrick's Day parade. For the two-dozen men
who hone this centuries-old musical form, it's a chance to recognize
their ethnic heritage. A chance to honor their profession...If the band
has made quick progress in the brief time since its inception, it owes
it to its instructor, Alasdair Gillies, who also teaches
the Carnegie Mellon University Pipe Band. A native
of Scotland who grew up in Ireland, Gillies has 17 years' experience
as a piper and Pipe Major with the Queen's Own Highlanders, a distinguished
Scottish military unit, and served for many years as instructor to prepare
recruits to be Regimental Pipers. He's won numerous international awards
for solo piping and is considered one of the world's finest. Gillies,
traveling in the United Kingdom and Ireland, could not be reached for
comment.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05075/472256.stm
| back to top
Tribune-Review | March 14
The lines, dots and other shapes of two dozen new music scores will
become real sounds this week when the music schools and department of
Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne University and the University
of Pittsburgh team up to present a festival highlighting their faculty
and students. Called "U3 II," the collaboration is a sequel
to one offered two years ago that included chamber, electronic and orchestral
music. The composers to be heard at concerts Tuesday through Friday
include local figures known nationally and internationally, such as
Leonardo Balada, David Stock, Nancy Galbraith,
Alan Fletcher, Reza Vali, Matthew
Rosenblum and Eric Moe. New to the festival this year is a reading session
of music by student composers Federico Garcia, Nicholas Batko and Jeremy
Sment by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Meyer
at Heinz Hall. Meyer will have a busy day, as his usual Saturday morning
rehearsal of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony will be held in the afternoon.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/entertainment/music/s_313029.html | back to top
Los Angeles Times | March 13
Zero gravity almost ruined painting for Frank Pietronigro
[a fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon
University's College of Fine Arts]. Several years ago Pietronigro put
on a pair of goggles, sealed himself in a clear plastic bag bigger than
a refrigerator and flew high into the atmosphere on a NASA KC-135 turbojet
that swooped in parabolic arcs, creating 15-second intervals of near-
weightlessness. With each turn, Pietronigro floated free of gravity
and squeezed pastry bags filled with acrylic paint that coiled like
smoke...Of course, there isn't a painting per se, only some splattered
clothing, which the artist displayed recently at the first conference
in the United States dedicated to space art -- a loosely defined genre
in which either the subject or the medium involves leaving the Earth.
For three days in February three dozen space artists gathered at the
Carnegie Mellon University's West Coast campus at the NASA Ames Research
Center near Mountain View to talk about their work, toss around ideas
and dream aloud about making art freed from the fetters of gravity.
"The space art community is large and extensive and we're trying
to institutionalize it, so it's not just folks on the fringe,"
says Lowry Burgess, former dean of the College of Fine
Arts at Carnegie Mellon, which was a sponsor.
http://www.latimes.com
| back to top
Sculpture | March 2005
Scupltors and landscape architects typically approach the creation of
outdoor spaces from different perspectives. Sculptors sometimes offer
quite radical approaches to the appearance and use of public areas,
ideas not always in keeping with traditional notions of function or
accepted design practice. These differences have been overcome [through
the cooperative efforts of Mel Bochner and Michael Van Valkenburgh]
in the interest of achieving a unique fusion in Kraus Campo, a new garden
for the Carnegie Mellon University campus in Pittsburgh.
http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag05
/March_05/mar_05.htm | back to top
Information Technology
Post-Gazette | March 15
Watts S. Humphrey, founder of the Software Process
Program at Carnegie Mellon University, was awarded
the 2003 National Medal of Technology in a ceremony yesterday in the
East Room of the White House. Established by Congress in 1959, the award
is administered by the National Science Foundation in recognition for
pioneering scientific research that has led to a better understanding
of the world around us, as well as to the innovations and technologies
that give the United States its global economic edge. Humphrey, who
now resides in Sarasota, Florida, is a fellow of the Software Engineering
Institue at Carnegie Mellon.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05074/471450.stm
| back to top
Tribune-Review | March 15
President Bush honored a Carnegie Mellon University
fellow and 13 others during a ceremony Monday to recognize achievement
in science and technology. Watts S. Humphrey, a research
scientist at Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, received
a National Medal of Technology for his work in improving intellectual
productivity in computer programming. Humphrey, a retired IBM executive
who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said in a phone interview that the
industrial changes of the 19th and 20th centuries were driven by time-motion
studies. The studies helped companies find the most cost-effective ways
for workers to build products. "Our approach, sort of the dream
we've followed, is to use those principles in intellectual work,"
he said. Finding ways to improve intellectual productivity is easy compared
to the task of getting programmers to adopt new work methods, Humphrey
said.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/regional/s_313363.html | back to top
The New York Times | March 14
To the Editor: You urge New York legislators to favor optical scanners
because they are "the best voting technology now available."
They aren't. Despite the fact that the voter personally marks the ballot
and has the chance to verify his or her choices, no machine has ever
been built that can read a ballot the way a human eye does, and there
is no assurance that the machine will count the ballot the way it was
marked by the voter...Electronic machines do not suffer from this defect.
They offer a finite number of yes-no choices, so there is no possibility
of mistaking voter intent. Please note: The writer, Michael
I. Shamos, is a professor at Carnegie Mellon
University and a consultant to the secretary of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania on electronic voting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03
/14/opinion/l14vote.html | back to top
ComputerWorld | March 14
Robert Brown recently took a step that many IT executives haven't taken
in years: He added staffers. Brown, senior vice president of operations
at Fremont, Calif.-based Tiburon Inc., hired two workers, including
someone for the newly created position of IT manager. A sign of better
times ahead? Yes. But Brown's modest hiring spree also signals a shift
in thinking for him, his IT department and his company. CIOs need to
realign themselves and their staffs with their companies' overall mission.
"We used to say that in IT, you enable the business. Now you have
to contribute," says Jean K. Holley, senior vice president and
CIO of Tellabs Inc. in Naperville, Ill..."The savvy people understand
what they need to learn," says Janet Cohen, executive
director of the CIO Institute and chief operating officer of the H.
John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, both at
Carnegie Mellon University. CIOs today need to understand finance,
strategy, business process re-engineering and organizational behavior.
They need to be able to communicate with a variety of audiences and
to measure the value of IT, according to Cohen. Some CIOs are getting
MBAs, taking courses or learning on the job to gain the necessary skills,
Cohen adds.
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics
/careers/story/0,10801,100349,00.html | back to top
Biotechnology
MSNBC | March 15
A robot laden with sensor equipment has detected life on the arid terrain
of the Chilean desert, a first for rover-based systems. Nobody was surprised
to find life there, but with the harsh conditions and sparse biological
activity, the feat is likened to finding microbial creatures on Mars
if any exists there. Zoë, a four-wheeled automaton built to scan
for living organisms, found evidence of bacterial colonies and lichens
living among the rocks of Chile’s Atacama Desert. "Our life
detection system worked very well, and something like it ultimately
may enable robots to look for life on Mars," said Alan
Waggoner, an Atacama study team member and director of the
Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
NASA’s Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are currently exploring
the Red Planet, but they are not equipped to make the specific measurements
needed for life detection. Developed by Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics
Institute, Zoë borrows its name from the Greek word for "life."
The robot is part of a three-year Life in the Atacama project at the
Astrobiology Science and Technology Program for Exploring Planets, aimed
at understanding how life can be detected by remotely operated rovers.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7189627/
| back to top
Post-Gazette | March 15
A Carnegie Mellon University rover called Zoe is the
first robot to remotely detect life, finding fluorescent signals from
both visible lichens and microscopic bacteria in Chile's barren Atacama
Desert. The NASA-sponsored field test last fall thus demonstrated that
scientists can use robots to identify life in harsh regions, a critical
technology as automated exploration on Mars shifts from a search for
water to a search for life. "The rover found 'em all by itself,"
said Alan Waggoner, director of Carnegie Mellon's Molecular
Biosensor and Imaging Center, which developed the robot's life-detection
instrument. The findings are being announced this week at the Lunar
and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, where Waggoner spoke yesterday.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05074/471530.stm
| back to top
Environment
Tribune Review | March 16
A $1.6 million study of air pollution around Neville Island will begin
this summer. The study, expected to take two to three years, is being
conducted by Carnegie Mellon University researchers
and funded by $1.1 million from the Allegheny County Health Department's
Clean Air Fund and $500,000 from the federal Environmental Protection
Agency. Researchers will be looking for 23 air toxins, said Allen
Robinson, an associate professor of mechanical engineering
and public policy. In addition to Neville Island, they will sample the
air Downtown to check for emissions from motor vehicles and the air
in South Fayette to look for pollutants coming from outside the county
and the state. "Likely Neville Island is going to have high air
toxics given the industrialization, but how is it different from other
places? That's one of the questions we want to ask," Robinson said.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/pittsburgh/s_313857.html | back to top
Regional Impact
Post-Gazette | March 17
About 18 months ago, marketing researcher Lynn Liu was in a room with
a focus group of middle and high school-age girls, trying to figure
out how to talk about math and science in a language that would get
their attention. It wasn't going well. "This was a pretty jaded
group," Liu added. "I was just about ready to throw up my
hands." But Liu persevered, as did her colleagues at MARC, Family
Communications, Carnegie Mellon University and other
members of the Girls Math Science Partnership, who have been waging
an ongoing campaign against the assumption that math, science, technology
and engineering are not only too intellectually difficult but -- gasp!
-- inappropriate for girls and women. As a result, www.braincake.org
is making its debut online today..."This is about creating buzz,"
said Carnegie Mellon professor Barbara Mistick. "And
it's about getting to a place where a girl will say, 'I want to take
that extra math class because I know I can do it.' "
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05076/472477.stm
| back to top
Tribune-Review | March 17
As a student at former Sacred Heart High School in Shadyside in the
1970s, Kathleen Buechel shunned mathematics. Buechel, though, hopes
girls of this generation soon will find a community of peers fascinated
by math and science -- on a new Web site unveiled Wednesday. Buechel,
president of the Alcoa Foundation, joined the Girls, Math & Science
Partnership at its inception in 1998. The partnership -- a project of
the late Fred Rogers' Family Communications Inc. in Oakland -- unveiled
a Web site yesterday designed to serve as an incubator of interest in
the subjects. The site -- www.BrainCake.org -- serves an electronic
smorgasbord of resources for girls curious about what they can accomplish
in life by understanding such facts as quadratic equations or the theory
of relativity. The Web site features brain teasers and homework assistance.
It also serves as a vehicle by which girls can communicate with mentors
and female role models in various professions. "Girls really want
to change the world. They're very positive. They have great ideas,"
said Barbara Mistick, a professor of entrepreneurship
at Carnegie Mellon University who leads the partnership.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/regional/s_314268.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | March 11
He's calm and knowledgeable. Patient, but efficient. And he makes a
special effort to help the elderly and non-native English speakers.
It would be easy to like this guy answering the phone at the Port Authority.
But his robot-like nasal tone dashes all hopes right off the bat. "I
am a voice-activated agent that can give you bus information,"
he says. "Where do you want to go?" He's a computer system
and he's only available for two weeks, as the Port Authority and Carnegie
Mellon partner to test a new voice-activated system that allows
callers to find route and time information for 10 bus routes, all based
in the East End, during times when the Port Authority customer service
line is not staffed...Many voice-activated systems are not user-friendly
for people who have trouble either hearing or speaking English because
they've been designed using accessible subjects like university students,
said Maxine Eskenazi, an associate teaching professor
at Carnegie Mellon's Language Technology Institute and one of the lead
researchers on this project. Eskenazi and research scientist Alan
Black received a $650,000 grant from the National Science Foundation
to research exactly how to design a system for these extreme speaker
populations, specifically the elderly and non-native speakers. They
worked with associate research professor Lorraine Levin,
and graduate students Antoine Raux and Brian Langer, the voice of the
agent.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05070/469676.stm
| back to top
Local News Stories
Post-Gazette | March 16
On March 2, about 150 students tried to access data during a nine-hour
window of vulnerability in a computer system that managed the information
for six schools. Although the data that the intruders wanted hadn't
been posted in some cases, their security breaches left a trail of cyber
footprints. The decisions by Carnegie Mellon, Harvard and Duke universities
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to bar grad school applicants
who tried to sneak a peek have fueled curious discussions about the
nature of cheating. Some of the applicants who could be denied admission
want to parse the very definition of the offense...The straight-shooting
words of Mike Laffin, spokesman for Carnegie
Mellon's Tepper School of Business, said it all: "The
students were accessing information that they did not have permission
to see, and we consider that an ethical breach." What part of that
is so hard to understand?
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05075/471953.stm
| back to top
Tribune-Review | March 16
Allegheny County Council on Tuesday night approved Chief Executive Dan
Onorato's plan to cap property tax assessments at 4 percent, but the
administration acknowledged it's only a matter of time before a lawsuit
challenges the move. "I think it's almost guaranteed," county
Solicitor Mike Wojcik said after council members voted 12-3 to approve
the plan. In a surprise action, council amended the legislation to have
tax bills inform property owners whether the Onorato plan saves them
money or costs them more...Robert P. Strauss, an economist
and public policy specialist at Carnegie Mellon University,
warned council members that the cap plan probably violates the state
constitution because the tiered system creates separate classes of taxpayers.
The constitution requires that taxpayers be treated equally. "If
you believe the ordinance will survive a uniformity challenge, I wish
you good luck," Strauss said, adding that council members could
be held personally liable if they are found to have knowingly violated
the constitution.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/pittsburgh/s_313887.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | March 15
By Stephen E. Spear. Next year's projected federal
budget deficit weighs in at over $450 billion. The Bush administration
has proposed some $15 billion in cuts to various federal programs as
a way of beginning to deal with the deficit, but most observers expect
that once Congress gets finished with the budget, most of these cuts
will have been restored under political pressure from affected constituencies.
It would seem, then, that the conventional approach to deficit management
doesn't work very well. Are there other approaches that might? Please
note: Writer Stephen E. Spear is a professor of economics at the Tepper
School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05074/471488.stm
| back to top
Post-Gazette | March 15
The Post-Gazette on Wednesday applauded the economy's creation of 262,000
new jobs in February and wrote that the "job scene seems to be
brightening" which "may signal that a definite, but fragile,
recovery is under way" ("Job Surge: Last Month's Numbers Offer
Hope," March 9). I would like to take that assertion a step further.
An economic recovery has been under way for many months. Unfortunately,
as The Wall Street Journal noted, it has been the "Rodney Dangerfield"
recovery. It can't get any respect. Please note: The writer is a master
of business administration student at the Tepper School of Business
at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05074/471421.stm
| back to top
Pittsburgh Business Times | March 11
Licensing agreements, a crucial factor in the transfer of technology
from academia to industry, have been steadily increasing at universities
across the United States, according to newly released data by the Association
of University Technology Managers, Northbrook, Ill. Both the University
of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University reflect
the trend. During fiscal 2004, which ended June 30, 2004, Pitt executed
52 licenses on its technology, up from 44 the previous year. Carnegie
Mellon saw the number of licenses, options and other agreements increase
from 48 in 2003 to 64 in 2004: The number of license agreements actually
executed were 21, a slight dip from 2003's 26. Most institutions of
higher education do not use flat fees or percentages in licensing arrangements,
and Pitt and Carnegie Mellon are no exception. "Fair market value
is not like buying a jug of milk," said Carnegie Mellon vice provost
Christina Gabriel. "It ends up as a negotiation.
We have a template we work from that's the baseline of what we expect."
http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh
/stories/2005/03/14/focus2.html | back to top
International News Stories
Bloomberg | March 16
Paul D. Wolfowitz, the U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary and an architect
of the Iraq War, became President George W. Bush's candidate to head
the World Bank. Wolfowitz would replace James Wolfensohn, 71, who plans
to retire from the Washington-based World Bank when his five-year term
ends May 31. The nomination, which by tradition is made by the U.S.,
must be approved by the bank's 184 member countries...[Wolfowitz] pushed
a hard-line policy against Iraqi aggression in Kuwait during the Gulf
War, then played a negotiating role after its end, seeking to strengthen
Saudi Arabia's military capabilities and reduce arms sales to the region.
He also helped manage an institution of almost 700,000 civilians and
1.3 million uniformed personnel. A critic of Clinton's approach toward
China and Russia, Wolfowitz urged tougher stances on those countries'
missile transfers to Iran. "He's a strong-minded man," said
Allan Meltzer, a Carnegie Mellon economics
professor. Unlike Wolfensohn, "Wolfowitz is the kind of person
who is likely to look to have a focus."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087
&sid=a0tU7LPhdJzo&refer=top_world_news | back
to top
New Scientist, UK | March 16
Researchers have proven that a robotic rover can be used to detect living
organisms, even in a desert with barely any to find. The team led by
Nathalie Cabrol of NASA's Ames Research Center is planning an even more
ambitious, more automated attempt later in 2005. The ultimate goal is
to develop a system that can be used to hunt for signs of life on Mars.
The team, which includes scientists from Carnegie Mellon
University's renowned Robotics Institute in the US, used a 1-metre-tall,
four-wheeled rover called Zoe to explore a nearly lifeless region at
the heart of the Atacama Desert in Chile - the driest place on Earth.
In order to simulate operating a rover on Mars, the vehicle was controlled
remotely by scientists in Pittsburgh. The controllers were not told
exactly where it had "landed" - only that it was somewhere
within a large "landing ellipse". The team then instructed
the rover to move to a specified spot, but the rover had to use its
onboard software to plan its own route and avoid obstacles. The rovers
currently exploring Mars only travelled up to 317 metres under autonomous
control, but Zoe went as far as 5000 metres on its own.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7154
A similar story also appeared in German in the publication Spektrumdirekt,
available online at
http://www.wissenschaft-online.de/abo/ticker/775648
| back to top
Medical News Today, UK | March 16
Erik Thiessen's research also sheds light on why adults
may struggle to learn a second language - Adults may feel silly when
they talk to babies, but those babies will learn to speak sooner if
adults talk to them like infants instead of like other adults, according
to a study by Carnegie Mellon University Psychology
Professor Erik Thiessen published in the March issue of the journal
Infancy. Most adults speak to infants using so-called infant-directed
speech: short, simple sentences coupled with higher pitch and exaggerated
intonation. Researchers have long known that babies prefer to be spoken
to in this manner. But Thiessen's research has revealed that infant-directed
speech also helps infants learn words more quickly than normal adult
speech.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com
/medicalnews.php?newsid=21329 | back to top
Times, UK | March 14
If your boss asks you to give a presentation, beg to go last. The late
placing may cast you in a more favourable light. Researchers at
Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, who studied figure-
skating competitions and the Eurovision song contest, concluded that
those who appeared towards the end tended to score higher marks than
those who performed earlier. It confirms previous findings of the “serial
position effect”. Dr Wändi Bruine De Bruin,
the magnificently named academic who led the study, said: “A friend
of mine asked to go last in a series of job interviews, after hearing
about my research. She got the job. I like to think that she did so
because she has great skills, but order effects may have tipped the
balance for her.” Should I ask to switch my column to Friday?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article
/0,,1072-1524525,00.html | back to top
The Economist, UK | March 12
If you have sausage-sized fingers, find pen-driven handheld computers
a fiddle or have never got the hang of predictive text on your mobile
phone, a new chip might provide a sympathetic ear. It is being devised
by a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University
and the University of California at Berkeley to do one thing, and one
thing only: speech recognition. Using a new, hardware-based approach
to the problem, the researchers hope to create a chip that performs
speech recognition much more efficiently than is currently possible
using software-based recognition systems... Computationally difficult
tasks often start out in software, and are implemented in hardware later.
"You do them in software first, because it's easier," says
Rob Rutenbar, professor of electrical and computer
engineering at Carnegie Mellon and the lead engineer on the "In
Silico Vox" speech-chip project. "You redo them in hardware
later to maximise their performance."
http://www.economist.com
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