|
|
|
April 8-14,
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 April 8-14,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 658
references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.
National News Stories
The Wall Street Journal | April 12
The New York Times | April 12
The New York Times | April 12
MSNBC | April 11
Gizmag | April 11
Student Experience
Tribune-Review | April 11
Arts and Humanities
Tribune-Review | April 12
Post-Gazette | April 10
Information Technology
The Seattle Times | April 14
Post-Gazette | April 11
Post-Gazette | April 8
Hot Topic: Cyber Ethics
Tribune-Review | April 14
Post-Gazette | April 13
The Wall Street Journal (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
| April 12
Post-Gazette | April 12
Cybersecurity
Post-Gazette | April 14
The Wall Street Journal (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
| April 12
Biotechnology
Medical News Today, UK | April 12
WFMY News 2 - TV | April 11
Environment
Pittsburgh Business Times | April 8
Local News Stories
The Morning Call | April 10
International News Stories
Globe and Mail, Canada | April 11
BBC News, UK | April 8
-
-
National News Stories
The Wall Street Journal | April 12
Many of today's chief executives reached the apex of the corporate ladder
despite their humble college beginnings. But the route to the top is
changing, management experts say. That will force the next generation
of company leaders to forge different career paths. Future chief executives
may require a broader liberal-arts education and wider international
experience..."I advise students all the time, 'You've got to have
something you can do for a company now. That's what gets you in the
door. But if you want to succeed long term, you've got to have a broader
range of skills and problem-solving abilities,"' says Robert
Kelley, an adjunct management professor at the Tepper School
of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB11132697
2599804265-search,00.html | back to top
The New York Times | April 12
Beginning in the mid-1990's, pay increases for most workers slowly but
steadily outpaced the rate of inflation, improving the living standards
for nearly all Americans. But an unexpected reversal last year in those
gains has set off a vigorous debate among economists over whether the
decline is just a temporary dip or portends a deeper shift that may
cause the pay of average Americans to lag for years to come. Even though
the economy added 2.2 million jobs in 2004 and produced strong growth
in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell for the year,
after adjusting for inflation - the first such drop in nearly a decade..."What
we're seeing now is not atypical; employers can't pay the wage bill
to keep up with the oil price increase," said Allan H.
Meltzer, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University.
"I think the long-term trend will be that wages will right themselves
and look like productivity growth on average."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04
/12/business/12wages.html | back to top
The New York Times | April 12
Employers are slashing their fixed-benefit pension plans. Cuts in Social
Security are being proposed. Americans understand that the only way
to retire comfortably is to save much more money. So why don't we? This
behavioral quirk has long stumped mainstream economists, who tend to
assume that people are generally rational beings who have read the Aesop
fable about the ant and the grasshopper and understand the virtues of
thrift...But many people do not really behave that way. In fact, we
exhibit lots of foibles that make little sense...This eccentricity on
its own could cut into our retirement savings, making us reluctant to
lose income today in exchange for a future reward...Last year, Mr. Laibson
and his fellow economist George Loewenstein of Carnegie
Mellon University, together with Jonathan D. Cohen and Samuel
M. McClure of Princeton's Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior
studied brain scans of people choosing between rewards at different
points in time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12
/business/retirement/12porter.html | back to top
MSNBC | April 11
New studies of the very distant universe confirm the idea that black
holes and galaxies helped each other grow through massive mergers. In
one investigation, researchers examined star-forming galaxies in the
young universe and found that black holes appear to grow continuously
during bursts of star birth. The observations reveal an intense round
of star birth and black hole growth in several galaxies about 10 billion
years ago...The findings fit with recent computer simulations, led by
Tiziana Di Matteo of Carnegie Mellon
University, suggesting galaxy mergers drive material toward the center
of the merging system, providing food to the black hole. That simulation
also suggested that the energy created when black holes merge contributes
to star formation while blowing gas to the outskirts of a galaxy, creating
a limit as to how much the black hole can consume.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7466118/
| back to top
Gizmag | April 11
Developed by a team of Carnegie Mellon University interaction
and product designers, the Hug and the SenseChair are robotic product
prototypes designed to improve the quality of life for the world’s
growing elderly population. The Hug, which looks like a 16-inch pillow,
uses vibrations and heat, light and sound signals to mimic human interaction
(such as a child's hug) and is designed to augment phone calls and ultimately
help the elderly communicate more meaningfully with distant family members.
The SenseChair is equipped to sense, monitor, stimulate, interact and
communicate with the sitter. The products will go on show in New York
this week.
http://www.gizmag.com/go/3921/
| back to top
Student Experience
Tribune-Review | April 11
Patreace Thornton works in a lab at the University of Pittsburgh where
she simulates pressure differences in oil flowing through a pipe. A
junior majoring in electrical engineering, she is used to being surrounded
by men in her classes since high school. "I was always up against
guys because I am in a math and science field," said Thornton,
20, of Richmond, Va. "You just have to do the best you can, and
most of the time it's better than the guys." Nationally, Harvard
University President Lawrence H. Summers sparked a firestorm about the
lack of women in math and science fields when he suggested the gap might
be due to innate differences between the sexes. Last month, Harvard
faculty gave him an unprecedented no-confidence vote...Lenore
Blum, distinguished career professor of computer science at
Carnegie Mellon, has studied the barriers to women in higher
education for decades. Women often are excluded from social situations
where they can network with male colleagues. Blum recalled working at
the University of California at Berkeley where women were excluded from
the faculty club at the time. She also was not asked to join male colleagues
on weekend sailing trips where they could discuss math.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/regional/s_322738.html | back to top
Arts and Humanities
Tribune-Review | April 12
Robert Page's final concert as music director of the
Mendelssohn Choir on Sunday evening was a glorious and unforgettable
musical feast, a fitting climax to 26 years of memorable music making.
The opening selections from "The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom"
by Sergei Rachmaninoff featured the choir singing "a capella,"
without accompaniment. The drama inherent in religious music was powerfully
projected, with ensemble singing of such well-balanced sensuous beauty
that listeners might have thought themselves already in heaven. The
low basses were striking, but so to were the shapeliness of the inner
voices and the thrust of the sopranos on top. Page's decision to conclude
his Mendelssohn tenure with the world premiere of Nancy Galbraith's
"Requiem" reflected his unflagging artistic vitality. That
he prepared so accurate and emotionally perceptive a performance of
the challenging score demonstrated the beautiful harmony within him
of technical mastery and expressive artistic vision...Page will remain
active in Pittsburgh musical life as professor of music at Carnegie
Mellon University and will assist the Mendelssohn Choir during
its transition year before his successor is in place.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/entertainment/music/s_322991.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | April 10
Having started at the bottom, Robert Page loves the
view now. Seated in the living room of his high-rise apartment, the
choral conductor can view most of Oakland's landmarks, from St. Paul
Cathedral to the Cathedral of Learning, from the University of Pittsburgh's
Music School to its Petersen Events Center. After years of climbing
the ladder in the music industry, he, too, is at the top of his field.
Tonight will be Page's final concert as full-time music director of
this nearly 100-year-old ensemble that performs with the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra as well as holds its own concerts. He'll remain a
music professor and director of choral studies at Carnegie Mellon
University and still have a presence with the group, but after 26 years
at the helm, Page is retiring.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05100/484631.stm
| back to top
Information Technology
The Seattle Times | April 14
Concerned about Big Brother watching you? Why not watch back? With cameras
getting smaller and cheaper all the time, and showing up on everything
from cellphones to lapel pins, round-the-clock surveillance is becoming
available to average citizens. As much as some may recoil against the
thought, experts headlining a four-day conference in Seattle said yesterday
putting one's own life on record could prove the best defense against
growing government and corporate incursions into privacy. Speaking at
the Association for Computing Machinery's Computers, Freedom and Privacy
conference, Steve Mann termed the process "sousveillance"
— pronounced soo-veillance and roughly French for "to watch
from below" — in contrast to surveillance, or to watch from
above. In general, the term refers to using a wearable or portable video
camera to record your every action...Sousveillance poses its own set
of thorny issues. An attendee from Quebec said provincial law there
prohibits photographing someone without his or her knowledge. And sousveillance
practitioners using a restroom "might want to point their cameras
toward the wall," Latanya Sweeney, a Carnegie
Mellon associate professor, suggested somewhat puckishly.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html
/businesstechnology/2002240978_spyware14.html | back
to top
Post-Gazette | April 11
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has narrowed the field
for its second Grand Challenge robotic race this October, selecting
118 teams for on-site evaluations from the 195 that submitted applications.
Two entries from Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team
are among those scheduled for site reviews. Based on the reviews, DARPA
will invite 40 of those teams to a qualification event in late September
for the $2 million, winner-take-all race. No more than 20 teams will
qualify for the race, which pits autonomous robotic vehicles against
each other over a 150-mile desert course. No team came close to finishing
the inaugural event last year.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05101/486152.stm
| back to top
Post-Gazette | April 8
The computerized UniLect voting system, under fire in Mercer County
because some of the machines malfunctioned and wiped out votes in November,
has been decertified by the state, meaning county election bureaus can
no longer use it. That means Mercer County, as well as Beaver and Greene
counties, must scramble to find new voting systems before the May 17
primary, unless the makers of UniLect are able to regain certification.
Such a scenario is unlikely...The decertification was the result of
a Department of State hearing in February. Michael Shamos,
a Carnegie Mellon University computer expert, was hired
to test the reliability of the touch-screen system. During the demonstration,
the system froze up, unresponsive to the prodding of UniLect Corp. President
Jack Gerber.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05098/484975.stm
| back to top
Hot Topic: Cyber Ethics
Tribune-Review | April 14
Some of the best-known labels in the music industry filed lawsuits Wednesday
against 25 Carnegie Mellon University students and
another 16 from the University of Pittsburgh, saying they pirated songs
over the high-speed Internet2 used primarily for research on college
campuses. Arista, Warner Brothers and Motown are among the 15 companies
that filed two copyright infringement lawsuits in U.S. District Court
in Pittsburgh. Still unknown are the names of the Carnegie Mellon and
Pitt students who the lawsuits say downloaded songs illegally, shared
them with friends or just made them available using the supercharged
Internet that limits its access almost exclusively to academia and some
corporations. The students are known now only by Internet protocol addresses,
a series of numbers assigned by their universities. Students [at Carnegie
Mellon] learn about copyrights and intellectual property rights for
two weeks in a class all students are required to take, and Carnegie
Mellon limits the amount of bandwidth -- the pipe for using the Internet
-- that they can use each day. Those caught illegally downloading files
can lose network privileges for 45 days. But trying to actually block
illegal downloading is a challenge, because that could curb legitimate
research, said Joel M. Smith, vice provost of computing
services at Carnegie Mellon and its chief information officer.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/trib/pittsburgh/s_324000.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | April 13
In a new wave of action against users who illegally swap music on the
Internet, the Recording Industry Association of America today plans
to sue 405 college students across the country, including 25 from Carnegie
Mellon University and 16 from the University of Pittsburgh,
for copyright infringement...Today, the RIAA will issue subpoenas to
Carnegie Mellon and Pitt to reveal the names of the students based on
their Internet accounts. It will then file federal lawsuits against
those students for copyright infringement. Joel M. Smith,
chief information officer, who oversees central computing at Carnegie
Mellon, said yesterday the university is required by law to turn those
names over to the RIAA. He added, "We do not approve of anyone
engaged in violation of copyright law. We spend a good deal of effort
in educating our students about copyright law and the consequences and
ethics of violating it. We teach an entire section of that in a course
that every student is required to take."...As for the university
monitoring students on its own, he said, "it's actually difficult
to do. At Carnegie Mellon, it's against our policy to look at the content
on the network, except in cases of security threats to the network.
"Secondly, even if you were to look at content, it doesn't really
label itself as a legal download from iTunes, as opposed to an illegal
copyright violation."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05103/487349.stm
| back to top
The Wall Street Journal (ASSOCIATED PRESS) |
April 12
The recording industry intends to sue hundreds of college students accused
of illegally distributing music and movies across Internet2, the super-fast
computer network connecting leading universities for researching the
next generation of the Internet, industry officials said Tuesday. The
Washington-based Recording Industry Association of America, the trade
group for the largest labels, said it will file federal copyright lawsuits
Wednesday against 405 students at 18 colleges with access to the Internet2
network, which boasts speeds hundreds of times faster than the Internet.
Internet2 is used by several million university students, researchers
and professionals around the world but is generally inaccessible to
the public. The RIAA said the 18 schools include Boston University,
Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Drexel
University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University,
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University,
New York University, Ohio State University, Princeton University, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University
of California-Berkeley, University of California-San Diego, the University
of Massachusetts-Amherst, the University of Pittsburgh and the University
of Southern California.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_
20050412_005503-search,00.html | back to top
Post-Gazette | April 12
By Chad Hermann. San Antonio businessman Howard Giles
recently paid $300 -- not including license, meat processing and taxidermy
fees -- for two hours of hunting on Live-Shot.com, hoping to bag any
animal that might wander across his monitor...More cyber-shooters are
lining up to follow, unless the Humane Society or another outraged organization
-- bills banning the practice are pending in 14 states -- manage to
kill the site before it kills again. But I wouldn't bet on it. Because
plenty of extremists -- many of them even more crazed and less stable
than someone who would kill a pig with his PC -- will argue that you
can't put stop signs on the information superhighway; the Internet,
they'll tell you, should be an open road to go anywhere you want and
do anything you can, a point-and-click freeway of downloaded desire
and instant gratification. If it feels good, do it. If it might be illegal
or unethical in the real world, do it anyway. **Please note: Chad Hermann
is a lecturer in management communication at the Tepper School of Business
at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05102/486652.stm
| back to top
Cybersecurity
Post-Gazette | April 14
Most children would just as soon play a computer game than listen to
a lecture about the dangers of cyberspace -- and that's just fine with
computer security experts at Carnegie Mellon University.
Carnegie Mellon's CyLab and its Information Networking Initiative will
unveil tonight a new interactive game, called MySecureCyberspace, designed
to teach kids how to keep themselves safe from cybercreeps and to protect
their computers against Internet viruses. The game, which adjusts its
sophistication level based on the age of the player, features superheroes
in the "Cyber Defense Academy," cartoon characters similar
to those of the Disney Channel's Kim Possible and of the 1960s "futuristic"
classic, "The Jetsons." Pradeep Khosla, CyLab
co-founder and Carnegie Mellon's dean of engineering, said the MySecureCyberspace
game, as well as an accompanying Web portal, will be distributed to
20,000 Pittsburgh families through the Pittsburgh Public Schools' Emerging
Links project, which makes computers and Internet links available to
low-income families. And, within a few weeks, the game should be available
for download from a Carnegie Mellon Web site. "We want to have
every household have one member who is aware of cybersecurity,"
Khosla said of the project.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05104/488052.stm
| back to top
The Wall Street Journal (ASSOCIATED PRESS) |
April 12
Eight universities will collaborate on "open-source" approaches
to computer security under a five-year, $19 million grant from the National
Science Foundation that follows a presidential committee's finding of
inadequate federal funding for cybersecurity. The new collaborative
intends to develop techniques to keep the nation's computer-based electrical,
financial, communication and other networks at least partly operational
during and after a major attack. Strategies for such "graceful
degradation" are necessary to keep the nation's critical infrastructures
from collapsing, said S. Shankar Sastry, a professor of electrical engineering
and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, who
will direct the effort. In addition to the University of California,
Berkeley, the participating schools are Carnegie Mellon,
Cornell, Stanford, San Jose State and Vanderbilt universities, along
with Mills and Smith colleges. Inclusion of the two all-women colleges
is intended to reverse a decline in female engineering graduates in
recent years, Mr. Sastry said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB11132636
6751704077-search,00.html | back to top
Biotechnology
Medical News Today, UK | April 12
A simple, elegant method could enable scientists to predict how groups
of neurons respond to one another and synchronize their activity, report
a group of investigators at Carnegie Mellon University.
Their work, in press with "Physical Review Letters," ultimately
could help scientists understand how neurons network with one another
in learning and disease. The research was conducted at the Center for
the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a joint initiative between Carnegie
Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. "Synchronization is important
for information coding and storage in the brain," said Nathan
Urban, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the
Mellon College of Science and a member of the CNBC.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com
/medicalnews.php?newsid=22648 | back to top
WFMY News 2 - TV | April 11
A future in which laboratory-grown organs and stimulated growth of muscle,
bones and nerves could play a major role in treating medical conditions
was revealed at a recent Tissue Engineering Symposium at Wake Forest
University Baptist Medical Center. Winston-Salem, NC -- The symposium,
sponsored by Wake Forest Baptist and the International Society of Arthroscopy,
Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine, was part of the society's
annual conference. Tissue engineering experts from Wake Forest Baptist,
Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon
University, the University of Texas at Austin, as well as Italy and
Japan, discussed their latest work. Tissue engineering, a term that
was coined in 1986, describes the science of replacing, repairing or
regenerating organs or tissue. The term is often used interchangeably
with regenerative medicine.
http://www.wfmynews2.com/news/health
/health_article.aspx?storyid=39059 | back to top
Environment
Pittsburgh Business Times | April 8
It's not the steel city anymore, it's the green city. Moving further
away from its outdated image as industrial and smoke-filled, Pittsburgh
is attempting to stamp itself as one of the national leaders in green
building, the art of using natural light and renewable products to build
homes and office buildings that save energy and provide a better return
for their investors...Leanne Tobias, founder and principal of Malachite
LLC, a real estate consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., says buildings
like the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and the PNC First Side
Center are proof that Pittsburgh is establishing itself as a leader
nationally for building concepts that live in harmony with nature and
create better revenue streams for their builders. She said the Carnegie
Mellon University Center for Building Performance is also a
leading research arm for green building construction. Ms. Tobias, who
made a presentation Thursday on the costs and financing of green buildings,
said there are still major misconceptions that the green building movement
must overcome in the public eye.
http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh
/stories/2005/04/04/daily32.html | back to top
Local News Stories
The Morning Call | April 10
After ending two consecutive years in deepening red ink, Allentown's
beleaguered finances have become the city's most pressing issue, likely
forcing its next mayor to examine whether to make more cuts or increase
taxes to keep the city solvent. The city finished 2004 with an estimated
$3.6 million deficit. And this year, the budget is riddled with a series
of ''what ifs'' that will have a tremendous impact on the city's financial
future. Primary among the unknowns is whether City Council will win
its legal challenge of the new labor contracts for city police and firefighters,
which council argues are too costly and potentially illegal...And if
city council wins its lawsuit? All bets are off. Nobody knows whether
the courts would impose a new contract or send the matter back to an
arbitrator. Robert Strauss, a political scientist at
Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Public Policy
and Management, said that in their current form, the two contracts —
particularly with their no-layoff clauses and minimum staff requirements
— will hamper the city financially. ''It is giving away so much
of the future, that you are just exacerbating the problem,'' Strauss
said.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a1-5financeapr
10,0,585246.story?coll=all-newslocal-hed | back to
top
International News Stories
Globe and Mail, Canada | April 11
"Babies really do like baby talk," says The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"Not only do infants like the exaggerated intonation, the higher
pitch and the short, simple sentences typical of baby talk, but they
actually learn to speak sooner if adults speak to them this way, according
to a study published this month in the journal Infancy. In a series
of experiments with eight-month-old infants, Erik Thiessen,
director of the Infant Language and Learning Lab at Carnegie
Mellon University, found that they learned words more quickly
when the words were expressed in baby talk than they did if they heard
the same words spoken in the same monotone that adults use to address
each other."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory
/LAC/20050412/FASS12/TPComment/Features | back to
top
BBC News, UK | April 8
The observations from the Chandra space telescope are the deepest X-ray
images ever obtained, viewing events that are 10 billion light-years
away. It is also clear most of these galaxies are merging with close
neighbours. David Alexander told the UK Astronomy Meeting the collisions
were probably providing the material to feed the holes and drive the
birth of new stars...A recent computer simulation, performed by Dr Tiziana
Di Matteo of Carnegie Mellon University and
collaborators, has shown how big galaxy mergers can drive material towards
the central regions of galaxies, producing stars and fuelling black
hole growth. "These recent observations [by Dr Alexander and colleagues]
are in good agreement with our simulation," said Dr Di Matteo.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4420209.stm
| back to top
|
