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March 18
- 24, 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 18 - 24,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 259
references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.
National News Stories
Newsweek | March 28
Philadelphia Daily News | March 21
The Wall Street Journal | March 18
Los Angeles Times | March 18
ABC News | March 17
Student Experience
Voice of America | March 17
Arts and Humanities
Post-Gazette | March 23
Post-Gazette | March 21
Post-Gazette | March 19
Information Technology
Post-Gazette | March 21
The Boston Globe | March 21
Biotechnology
National Geographic News | March 18
Nature, UK | March 18
Environment
The Ledger | March 20
Regional Impact
Post-Gazette | March 22
Post-Gazette | March 22
Post-Gazette | March 22
Local News Stories
Tribune-Review | March 20
Post-Gazette | March 19
Tribune-Review | March 18
International News Stories
The Financial Express, India | March 23
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National News Stories
Newsweek | March 28
Science and engineering may not seem cool, but RadioShack is out to
change that. In April, the store will launch the Vex Robotics Design
System, which includes a 500-piece starter kit (for $299) that allows
buyers to design and construct radio-controlled robots that can lift
and throw objects, and even move about the room. And if RadioShack has
its way, that room will be a classroom. "Vex is really built for
high-school students," says marketing manager Sam Mahserjian, adding
that Carnegie Mellon University helped develop a curriculum
that teachers can use to incorporate 'bot building in their classes.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7241791
/site/newsweek/ | back to top
Philadelphia Daily News | March 21
When it comes to guns and murder, not all cities are created equal.
Philadelphia is experiencing an upward tick in killings - including
an alarming stretch of more than 20 murders in 10 days - but so are
some other large cities. On the other hand, some cities have shown that
effective measures - ranging from stricter gun laws to community intervention
with street gangs - can really make a difference. At the start of the
1990s, for example, the murder rate was nearly the same in New York
as it was in Philadelphia, but today Philly's rate is three times higher.
So far this year, 82 people have been slain in Philadelphia compared
with 330 for all of 2004. "Since 2000, the national murder rate
has been roughly flat," said Alfred Blumstein,
a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes
in the study of violence. "When it declined in the 1990s, it declined
everywhere, but when it's flat, it goes up in some places and down in
others."
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly
/news/11190868.htm | back to
top
The Wall Street Journal | March 18
By Allan H. Meltzer. President Bush's nomination of
Paul Wolfowitz to lead the World Bank is an inspired choice. It suggests
that the president's commitment to spreading democracy is not merely
rhetorical. It shows also that he recognizes that democracy involves
more than the ballot box. Institutional reforms that encourage development
of markets, the rule of law, protection of human and property rights,
and openness to trade -- all these sustain democracy by giving people
opportunity, hope and higher living standards. Competitive markets and
rule of law help to reduce corruption, a problem everywhere but especially
acute in developing countries. World Bank estimates suggest that $1
trillion a year is paid in bribes in all countries. Even a small fraction
of this would do a lot to improve living standards if spent productively.
Democracy, a free press, and the rule of law are an antidote to bribery
and corruption. Please note: Allan Meltzer is a professor of political
economy and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB11111
0298505683090-search,00.html | back
to top
Los Angeles Times | March 18
People trust other people when economic theory says they should not.
They cooperate when betrayal seems more rational. They gamble foolishly,
overestimating risk when they are losing, and underestimating it when
they are winning. They spend too much and save too little. Economists
know all this from personal experience, but they don't know how to factor
the quirks of human behavior into their mathematical models. This is
no small matter...When a decision forms, the brain moves faster than
self-awareness. The brain unconsciously prepares to act a measurable
length of time — up to 500 milliseconds — before a person
consciously decides to act. In other words, the brain is always one
step ahead of itself, calculating the potential costs and benefits of
each choice at a cellular level. "Most of the brain is dominated
by automatic processes, rather than deliberative [thinking]. A lot of
what happens in the brain is emotional, not cognitive," said George
Loewenstein, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon
University.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-brain18mar18,
1,5283200.story?coll=la-news-science | back
to top
ABC News | March 17
As the nation struggles to come to terms with the recent spate of shootings
from Atlanta to Chicago to Milwaukee, some criminologists have found
a common theme in the seemingly disparate attacks: They were at least
partially aimed at institutions and carried out by frustrated, alienated
individuals. They're a symptom of a society less anchored in communities
than it once was, critics say, and one in which some mainstream institutions,
from the courts to the local city council, may have grown less responsive
to individuals' needs...While all three shootings include signs of anger
at institutions and alienation, other criminologists see a different
common thread: the accessibility of guns. "The one thing that unites
them is the presence and the availability of guns to people who are
prepared to do utterly irresponsible things with them," says Alfred
Blumstein, a professor at the Heinz School of Public Policy
and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
http://abcnews.go.com/International
/CSM/story?id=591449 | back
to top
Student Experience
Voice of America | March 17
This week in our Foreign Student Series we discuss Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is well known
for its programs in computer science, engineering and business...Today
Carnegie Mellon University has more than eight thousand students. About
two thousand of them are international students. They come from more
than ninety countries. Most are graduate students from India, China,
South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey. And most of the graduate students are
studying engineering, business, computer science and information systems.
About five hundred fifty international students at Carnegie Mellon this
year are undergraduates. Most are from South Korea, India, Singapore,
Malaysia and Canada. They are mostly studying engineering, computer
science, business and social sciences.
http://www1.voanews.com/SpecialEnglish/article.cfm?
objectID=2645727B-C307-42B0-98A1FB4D38C6874B&title
=EDUCATION%20REPORT%20-%20Foreign%20Student%20Series
%20%2329%3A%20Carnegie%20Mellon%20University
| back to top
Arts and Humanities
Post-Gazette | March 23
In a new departure, the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama
is presenting three American plays in rotating repertory. Its whole
drama season is based on plays about science and its impact on society,
concerns that match those of other schools at Carnegie Mellon. But more
specifically, these three plays focus on contemporary science and women.
The three share a single set in Carnegie Mellon's Chosky Theatre, which
has been reconfigured for the occasion. [Reviews of each play follow].
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05082/475886.stm
| back to top
Post-Gazette | March 21
The adventurous U3 Festival brought forth some fascinating music last
week, but the net effect is questionable. In five events starting Tuesday,
any one of the talented composers from Carnegie Mellon
University, Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh could
have been Dustin Hoffman yelling futilely into the glass in the wedding
scene of "The Graduate." Most of the events were sparsely
attended, outside of a few friends, students and devotees (although
I am told that the last night, which I missed due to the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra concert, did better). To some, the attendance surely
is a capstone to the misguided belief that new music isn't vital, that
it's different from what the public likes and should go away. To me,
the past week showed just how "normal" contemporary music
is. Just like the traditional repertory, or any music for that matter,
if people don't know about it, they won't know to come. In fact, for
its next installment, the U3 Festival needs to take a U-turn when it
comes to marketing.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05080/474766.stm
| back to top
Post-Gazette | March 19
Some of the nation's leading artists and landscape designers will be
at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Art on April
11 for a symposium, "No Stone Unturned: Artists + Garden."
They will also celebrate the opening of the Kraus Campo, a public art/garden
installation on the Carnegie Mellon campus. The symposium is free and
open to the public and will run from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with a panel
discussion at 7 p.m., all at the McConomy Auditorium at the University
Center. Lecturers include: Mel Bochner, conceptual artist and designer
of the Kraus Campo; Charles Eliot, professor of landscape architecture
at Harvard Design School and landscape architect of the Kraus Campo.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05078/473854.stm
| back to top
Information Technology
Post-Gazette | March 21
Robots built at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics
Institute are often christened with names such as Dante, Grace and NavLab,
but no moniker has better suited a machine than has Nomad. First assembled
in 1997 as a test bed for a lunar rover, the four-wheeled Nomad has
trekked across Chile's bone-dry Atacama Desert and searched for meteorites
in bone-chilling Antarctica. And it was on the road yet again last month,
ambling across frozen Lake Mascoma in Hanover, N.H. This latest field
test, for which Nomad was outfitted with a wind turbine to generate
electric power, is part of a NASA project called Life on Ice: Robotic
Antarctic Explorer, or LORAX. The idea is to eventually send a revamped
Nomad to Antarctica to look for microbial life in the ice surrounding
a nunatak ---- the top of a hill or mountain peeking out of the thick
glacial ice. And, because this is a NASA project, the experience gained
in searching for sparse life in a frozen environment could inform future
efforts to find life on Mars. Last week, researchers from NASA and Carnegie
Mellon announced that a stablemate of Nomad called Zoe had become the
first robot to detect life in the Atacama Desert. Please note: This
article is not available at the Post-Gazette Web site.
back to top
The Boston Globe | March 21
Identity theft is a nasty crime with a catchy name -- too catchy for
our own good. Identity theft, though important, isn't the root problem,
and focusing on it may distract us from real solutions. And we need
solutions badly. For a month or so, we've fretted over the news that
careless database companies had sold crooks a couple hundred thousand
Social Security numbers. It's bad enough that crooks can steal our personal
data, or even purchase it. But it gets worse: They can often find the
same stuff with Google. At least they can if they're as smart as Latanya
Sweeney, an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie
Mellon University. In a paper she will present this week in
California, Sweeney describes a program of hers that scans Google search
results for files containing names and Social Security numbers. In her
test of the software, Sweeney tracked down 140 job hunters who had posted
resumes on the Web. For some odd reason, they included their Social
Security numbers -- easy pickings. Sweeney's motives are pure; she wrote
another program to e-mail the 140 people and warn them of the threat.
Nearly all cleaned up their resumes. Sweeney has proposed a service
called Internet Angel that would automatically scour the Net and alert
people if their Social Security numbers are online.
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005
/03/21/lets_focus_on_the_theft_not_the_identity/
| back to top
Biotechnology
National Geographic News | March 18
In a nondescript office building near the airport in Scottsdale, Arizona,
the Alcor Life Extension Foundation is selling a shot at immortality.
Inside, 67 bodies—mostly just severed heads—lay cryogenically
preserved in steel tanks filled with liquid nitrogen, waiting for the
day when science can figure out a way to reanimate them. But is deathlessness
really a scientific possibility? ...While vitrification circumvents
some of the problems associated with freezing, it raises other issues.
Scientists must impregnate tissues with high concentrations of cryoprotective
chemicals that promote the vitreous state, but these are potentially
toxic. Another concern is the cooling rate needed to vitrify large organs.
Some scientists say vitrification requires high cooling rates that are
typically not achievable at the center of large objects. "If you
talk about the brain, we can achieve very high cooling rates at the
outer surface of the brain, but the cooling rate at the center will
be lower than the critical one required for vitrification," said
Yoed Rabin, a cryopreservation specialist at Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news
/2005/03/0318_050318_cryonics.html | back
to top
Nature, UK | March 18
An autonomous robot has found life in one of the most lifeless places
on Earth: the Atacama desert in northern Chile, thought to be a close
analogue of Mars's arid surface. "Our life detection system worked
very well, and something like it may ultimately enable robots to look
for life on Mars," says Alan Waggoner, one of
the expedition team members from Carnegie Mellon University
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The team say this is the first time an
autonomous robot has identified life in the Atacama. The four-wheeled
droid, called Zoë, found colonies of bacteria and lichens in two
different parts of the desert, which has the least amount of organic
material anywhere in the world. Scientists back in Pittsburgh sent commands
to guide Zoë's exploration each day, but she relied on her own
cameras and internal sensors to navigate the tough terrain. As she looked
for signs of life, fellow researchers in the desert followed to check
her results. "There is not a single example of the rover giving
a false positive," says Edwin Minkley, a biologist
on the Carnegie Mellon team.
http://
www.nature.com/news/2005
/050314/full/050314-12.html | back
to top
Environment
The Ledger | March 20
Imagine a rustproof Erector Set big enough for King Kong and you can
picture the Polk Power Station in Central Florida. The labyrinth of
interlocking pipes, tubes and stanchions looms above former phosphate
strip mines and alligator-patrolled ponds in a desolate expanse between
Tampa and Orlando. But what is most striking about this plant is what
you don't see: smoke...Why aren't others rushing to build coal gas plants?
The reasons include chemistry, money and politics. Coal gas was pioneered
in 1792 and used for cooking, heating and street lighting. Fertilizers
and chemicals have been made from coal gas for years. Nazi Germany made
diesel fuel this way, and South Africa continues to do so. But power
plants are a different animal. Power plants are run mostly by mechanical
engineers, who shy from anything that smacks of chemical refineries,
says Ed Rubin, an engineering professor at Carnegie
Mellon University.
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
/20050320/NEWS/503200431/1001/BUSINESS | back
to top
Regional Impact
Post-Gazette | March 22
Innovation is Pittsburgh's heritage. From coke and steel to aluminum
and food processing, pioneering Pittsburgh entrepreneurs built the companies
that made the 20th century the "American Century" and led
the industrial age. Our region must tap into this entrepreneurial heritage
to thrive in the 21st century. Natural resources provided the foundation
for Pittsburgh's leadership in industrial innovation...Today, the natural
resources that will provide the foundation for our future prosperity
are found in universities and other centers of knowledge rather than
in raw materials. In areas from nanoscience, bioengineering and translational
medicine to robotics and national preparedness, the University of Pittsburgh,
UPMC and Carnegie Mellon University are doing breakthrough
research. They work together with a collaborative spirit unusual among
major institutions, creating new technologies that will change the way
people live and work worldwide.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05081/475103.stm
| back to top
Post-Gazette | March 22
Aesthetically, Philips CFT North America's nine-month-old local research
and development operation pales in comparison to the riverside grandeur
of the Seagate Technology building that rose along the banks of the
Allegheny in the Strip District three years ago. But looks aren't everything.
As everyone in economic development knows, bricks and mortar are only
a piece of the pie. What really matters is that Ton Peijnenburg, chief
of the East Coast office of Philips Center for Industrial Technology,
is here, hiring and open to ideas. Getting Seagate "was a real
coup for Pittsburgh," said Christina Gabriel,
Carnegie Mellon University's vice provost for corporate
partnerships and technology development. These kinds of wins, she said,
spawn a "virtuous" cycle of growth in the region. "Federal
funding to a university can lead to tech and economic development ...
and more tech and economic development," Gabriel said. Before Seagate,
there had not been many occasions when a large company had been lured
to Pittsburgh just because of the talented minds, added Carnegie Mellon's
Tim McNulty, special assistant to the provost, who served on
then-Gov. Mark Schweiker's staff. "I always looked at Seagate as
an important turning of the corner for the region," McNulty said.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05081/475117.stm
| back to top
Post-Gazette | March 22
Experts say the tech sector finally is emerging from its dreary winter,
but Pittsburgh is taking its time catching up. The National Venture
Capital Association reported in January that 2004 was a good year for
capturing investment deals from previously leery investors -- $17.6
billion in capital was raised, up from $10.5 billion in 2003. But Pennsylvania
yielded only a fraction of that action, as two high-profile local venture
capital funds struggled to raise dollars and fell well below their initial
goals. Yet the crop of local firms remain steady, and several of the
industry's subsectors are in growth mode...There are signs of life in
the information technology sector as well. "Roboburgh," as
The Wall Street Journal dubbed Pittsburgh in 1999, got a boost last
month when Carnegie Mellon University beat out giant
defense contractor Lockheed Martin for a $26 million contract to build
combat robots for the Marine Corps.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05081/475149.stm
| back to top
Local News Stories
Tribune-Review | March 20
A car bomb tore through a theater popular with Westerners during a performance
Saturday in Doha, killing one person, officials said. Twelve other people
were injured in the blast in the northern suburb, Qatar's Interior Ministry
said in a statement. Lisa Kirchner, spokeswoman for
Carnegie Mellon University's campus in Doha, said none
of the school's 48 faculty and staff members were in the vicinity of
the theater when the blast occurred. "After we heard about the
explosion, we contacted everyone by telephone to make sure they were
safe," said Kirchner, director of marketing and public relations
for Carnegie Mellon's Doha campus. The school opened its Qatar campus
in August.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/newssummary/s_315376.html | back
to top
Post-Gazette | March 19
The University of Pittsburgh and its research partners will receive
$4.9 million from Pennsylvania's share of national tobacco settlement
money to develop ways of identifying and treating dementia and, in particular,
Alzheimer's disease. The grant was one of five totaling about $20 million
announced this week by Gov. Ed Rendell and Health Secretary Dr. Calvin
Johnson. The bulk of the money -- $13.4 million -- will go to establish
centers of excellence in neurodegenerative diseases, with the remainder
used for research into reducing tobacco use. The research also involves
colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State
University and the local biotech firm Cellumen Inc.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05078/474063.stm
| back to top
Tribune-Review | March 18
Laurel: To Watts Humphrey. This Carnegie Mellon software
fellow was one of 13 people this week to receive a National Medal of
Technology from President Bush. Professor Humphrey, a retired IBM executive
living in Sarasota, Fla., is noted for his work employing time-motion
studies to improve computer programming.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/opinion/archive/s_314485.html | back
to top
International News Stories
The Financial Express, India | March 23
Given the competition and the urge to become a major player, companies
need to adopt the Personal Software Process (PSP) and Team Software
Process (TSP) than that of merely achieving the quality levels of CMM
and Six Sigma, said Watts Humphrey, quality guru and
propounder of the benchmark Computer Maturity Model (CMM). Mr Humphrey,
who is also the Fellow of Software Engineering Institute at the Carnegie
Mellon University, said that both PSP and TSP will immensely
benefit software professionals. They not only fix the bugs with a consistent
zero defect delivery system but also will make the corporates be more
competitive and withstand all competition. Mr Humphrey, who was here
on a visit to address the software professionals and industry captains,
said that PSP is an individual level model that helps individual engineers
to plan their work, estimate the size, defects, effort and schedule
involved in their work and to track these while working.
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_
story.php?content_id=85958 | back
to top
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