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January
6, 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 December 23—January 5,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 497
references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.
National News Stories
The Chronicle of Higher Education | January
6
Wired Magazine | January 2006
Inside Higher Ed | December 29
The New York Times | December 29
MSNBC (AP)| December 28
NPR | December 26
Scientific American | December 26
Forbes Magazine | December 23
Variety | December 18
Howard Hughes Medical Center Bulletin | December
2005
Student Experience
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 30
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 29
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 26
Arts and Humanities
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | January 5
WNBC New York | January 4
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | January 1
The Seattle Times | January 1
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 27
AZ Central | December 27
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 25
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 24
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 23
Information Technology
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | January 2
Beaver County Times & Allegheny Times |
January 2
Chicago Tribune | January 1
San Jose Mercury News (AP) | January 1
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 26
Electronic Engineering Times | December 2005
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | January 1
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 31
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 29
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 27
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 27
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 26
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 24
International News Stories
Journal of Turkish Weekly | January 4
The China Post (AP) | December 29
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National News Stories
The Chronicle of Higher Education | January 6
Bookstores have a kind of aura. Not the gleamingly lit chains, but the
well-stocked used bookstore, usually with the faint tickle of dust in
the air, piles of books crowding the aisles, and dollar carts outside
the door. You might remember whiling away an afternoon leafing through
this or that book, finding a first edition of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's
Rainbow or a pricey university press book for $2.50, or browsing with
a friend. The aura wears off, however, if you've worked in a bookstore.
While I was in graduate school, I worked in one not far from Stony Brook,
on Long Island. I needed the money — this was back in the late
80s, and my stipend was something like $7,000 — and thought it
would be better than waiting tables. It was a serious bookstore —
or "bookshop," the owners insisted — that barred romance
novels and textbooks from its shelves. The owners were a married couple
who had originally moved to the area for graduate school, and they knew
books, meticulously culling through the bags people brought in, separating
standards in fields spanning literature to ornithology from Harold Robbins
and Anthony Robbins, relevant from outdated, and clean from ratty copies.
*** This article was written by Jeffrey J. Williams,
a professor of English and literary and cultural studies at Carnegie
Mellon University.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/
v52/i18/18b00501.htm | back to top
Wired Magazine | January 2006
In 1991, a Carnegie Mellon computer science PhD student
named Dean Pomerleau had a critical insight. The best
way to teach cars to drive, he suspected, was to have them learn from
the experts: humans. He got behind the wheel of Carnegie Mellon's sensor-covered,
self-driving Humvee, flipped on all the computers, and ran a program
that tracked his reactions as he sped down a freeway in Pittsburgh.
In minutes, the computers had developed algorithms that codified Pomerleau's
driving decisions. He then let the Humvee take over. It calmly maneuvered
itself on Pittsburgh's interstates at 55 miles per hour. Everything
worked perfectly until Pomerleau got to a bridge. The Humvee swerved
dangerously, and he was forced to grab the wheel. It took him weeks
of analyzing the data to figure out what had gone wrong: When he was
"teaching" the car to drive, he had been on roads with grass
alongside them. The computer had determined that this was among the
most important factors in staying on the road: Keep the grass at a certain
distance and all will be well. When the grass suddenly disappeared,
the computer panicked. ... Eight years later, when DARPA held its first
Grand Challenge, processors had in fact become 25 times faster, outpacing
Moore's law. Highly accurate GPS instruments had also become widely
available. Laser sensors were more reliable and less expensive. Most
of the conditions Dickmanns had said were necessary had been met or
exceeded. More than 100 contestants signed up, including a resurgent
Carnegie Mellon squad. ... The Carnegie Mellon team also used Pomerleau's
approach. They drove their Humvees through as many different types of
desert terrain as they could find in an attempt to teach the vehicles
how to handle varied environments. Both SUVs boasted seven Intel M processors
and 40 Gbytes of flash memory - enough to store a world road atlas.
Carnegie Mellon had a budget of $3 million. Given enough time, manpower,
and access to the course, the Carnegie Mellon team could prepare their
vehicles for any environment and drive safely through it.
http://www.wired.com/wired/
archive/14.01/stanley.html | back to top
Inside Higher Ed | December 29
Coverage of literary scholarship in the mainstream news media leaves
some academics asking, "Why are they saying such terrible things
about us?" In fact, that question was the subtitle of a paper presented
Wednesday by David R. Shumway, a Carnegie Mellon
University English professor, at the Modern Language Association’s
annual convention in Washington. "The lack of respect afforded
the humanities in the press is something most of us will agree upon,"
Shumway said, adding that literary scholars are, at best, ignored or
used on occasion for an expert sound bite by reporters. In more malicious
cases, Shumway said, journalists seize on opportunities, like the MLA
convention itself, to lampoon what they see as the egg-headed elite
and their esoteric, out of touch ramblings. "How many times have
we seen the headline 'Jane Austen and the masturbating girl?'"
asked Jeffrey J. Williams, an English professor at
Carnegie Mellon, to a few groans from the audience. He was referring
to the title of a past MLA paper that lit up headlines as if it were
the centerpiece of the entire 1995 convention.
http://insidehighered.com/
news/2005/12/29/press | back to top
The New York Times | December 29
Clayton Barlow-Wilcox scored 15 points and Nate Maurer added 13 as unbeaten
Carnegie Mellon (10-0) topped host Princeton, 51-46, last night,
becoming the first Division III team to defeat the Tigers in 23 years.
... Carnegie Mellon, ranked 22nd in Division III, had not played in
17 days. But the Tartans took a pair of 5-point leads in the first half.
Princeton (2-8) rallied to take a 32-29 advantage at the break as the
first-time starter Edwin Buffmire, who led the Tigers with 11 points,
and the reserves Mike Strittmatter and Alex Okafor provided a spark.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/sports/
ncaabasketball/29hoops.html | back to top
MSNBC (AP)| December 28
Distinguishing fine wine from plonk is usually left to connoisseurs
and winemakers, who rely on their senses, rough chemical measurements
and the whims of nature to produce an exceptional tipple. But a Carnegie
Mellon University professor, working with industry scientists
in Chile, is hoping that computer models will identify the traits of
good wine — eventually helping vintners produce more of it. Lorenz
"Larry" Biegler, who teaches chemical engineering
at the university, is working on mathematical formulas to automate the
fermentation process, adjusting ingredients and conditions to ensure
robust flavors and higher yields from grape harvests. ... Scientists
don't fully understand the delicate mix of compounds that emerge during
fermentation and why they create such pleasing sensations for wine drinkers.
Biegler's research focuses on yeast, which consumes sugar and produces
alcohol. "We would like to come up with a reasonably good model
of how this yeast cell behaves ... then control this fermentation process
so we can make better-quality wines," he said.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10631169/
| back to top
NPR | December 26
This holiday season, a lot of children will open their presents and
find robotic toys, like mechanical dogs and dinosaurs. Unfortunately,
robot toys often disappoint. They're just so robotic, repeating the
same things over and over again. But a team at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh is exploring how to make robots more engaging
over the long term. Their assistant is roboreceptionist Marion "Tank"
LeFleur. Tank sits in the lobby of a computer science building, at a
desk decorated with desert storm camouflage and a framed photo of Dwight
Eisenhower. He has a computer monitor for a head. On the screen is a
blue Frankenstein face. When his sensors register your presence, he
smiles pleasantly and says, "Hello there. What can I do for you?"
Type on his keyboard and you can ask Tank the same questions you'd ask
a real receptionist: Where is the bathroom? Where can I get some food?
You can also ask Tank where to find the office of Reid Simmons,
the computer science professor who created the robot. Then, try asking
Tank what he thinks of Reid Simmons. "Dr. Reid is my boss,"
says Tank, sounding wary. "I don't know him very well yet. Don’t
you think he has shifty eyes? And, what's up with that hair?" Tank's
suspicions about his boss come courtesy of the university's School of
Drama. It's all part of an experiment on how to make robots less boring.
The answer, Simmons says, is simple: turn the robot into a soap opera.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
story.php?storyId=5067678 | back to top
Scientific American | December 26
When no robot completed [the Grand Challenge], DARPA doubled the prize
and scheduled a second running, through a different part of the desert,
for October 2005. ... Two hours before the event began, DARPA officials
unveiled the course by handing out a computer file listing 2,935 GPS
waypoints--a virtual trail of bread crumbs, one placed every 237 feet
on average, for the robots to follow--plus speed limits and corridor
widths. Many teams simply copied this file to their robots unchanged.
But some used custom-built software to try to rapidly tailor a route
within the allowed corridor that could win the race. The Red Team, based
at Carnegie Mellon University, raised this mission-planning
task to a military level of sophistication. In a mobile office set up
near the starting chutes 13 route editors, three speed setters, three
managers, a statistician and a strategist waited for the DARPA CD. Within
minutes of its arrival, a "preplanning" system that the team
had built with help from Science Applications International Corporation,
a major defense contractor, began overlaying the race area with imagery
drawn from a 1.8-terabyte database containing three-foot-resolution
satellite and aerial photographs, digital-elevation models and laser-scanned
road profiles gathered during nearly 3,000 miles of reconnaissance driving
in the Mojave.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?
chanID=sa006&articleID=000000A3-
4BCC-13A8-8BCC83414B7F0000
| back to top
Forbes Magazine | December 23
Targeting customers with specific products makes sense to marketing
professor Vishal Singh of Carnegie Mellon University,
who recently completed a study of the Wal-Mart effect on traditional
supermarkets. He found that 70% of the revenue decline suffered by the
typical supermarket upon Wal-Mart's arrival into its neighborhood could
be attributed to 20% of the customers. Generally, those with young kids
or pets buying bulk items like diapers and paper towels were leaving
for Wal-Mart, while those looking for fresh produce, seafood and salad
bars stayed with the supermarket. What's more, the average-sized basket
hitting the checkout line remained little changed, meaning that sales
declines could be chalked up to losing bulk shoppers altogether--not,
as many thought, to customers going to Wal-Mart for some items and to
the supermarket for others. Singh said better-performing supermarkets
know how to make use of customer data captured from loyalty cards, now
common in almost all big chains. He calculated that retaining just 5%
of large-basket shoppers would stem losses by 40%.
http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/12/
23/walmart-kroger-albertsons-cx_tvr_
1223supermarkets.html
| back to top
Variety | December 18
"We're constantly reaching out to that music world," says
[Broadway] casting director Bernard Telsey, who has placed 'N Sync's
Joey Fatone and Spice Girl Melanie Brown in "Rent" and Toni
Braxton and Destiny's Child's Michelle Williams in "Aida."
"There were times when it helped ticket sales, but it was less
about that than it was that we needed great singers and great performers.
So why shouldn't we go down that avenue? That's just as valuable as
going after the graduating class of Carnegie Mellon."
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117934813?
categoryid=16&cs=1&query=carnegie+and+mellon&
display=carnegie+mellon
| back to top
Howard Hughes Medical Center Bulletin | December
2005
Dannie Durand, now a professor at Carnegie
Mellon University, remembers sitting down to breakfast at the
Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, during a
workshop on molecular evolution. Her classmates were discussing one
of their favorite single-celled organisms, radiolarians, a family of
marine plankton that take on a variety of geometric forms. Durand was
unfamiliar with them. "Are they protists?" she asked, referring
to a class of organisms that cannot be classified as animal, plant,
or fungus but that exhibit characteristics of all three. The table went
silent. "Do you work on mammals?" someone asked—perhaps
the ultimate put-down from an organismal biologist. "No, I'm a
computer scientist trying to learn to be a computational biologist,"
Durand replied. "Oh, that's all right then," her challenger
conceded. Biologists, computer scientists, and engineers speak different
languages. Mention "vector" to a molecular biologist and a
plasmid (a circular piece of bacterial DNA used in gene cloning) comes
to mind. Say "vector" to an engineer, and she thinks of a
mathematical concept. Similarly with "expression": To a biologist,
it means protein production from a gene; to an engineer, it's an equation.
http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/dec2005/
chronicle/crosstalk.html
| back to top
Student Experience
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 30
WQED-TV will air two half-hour programs written by drama students at
Carnegie Mellon University. The shows will air at 8
p.m. Thursday under the umbrella title "Collision Course."
"Love Chance" is a drama about a counselor challenging her
own emotional demons. "The Work of 50 Men" is based on the
invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin and its effect on the lives of
18th-century slaves.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/05364/629769.stm
| back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 29
Clayton Barlow-Wilcox scored 15 points, and Nate Maurer added 13, as
unbeaten Carnegie Mellon topped Princeton, 51-46, on
Wednesday night, becoming the first Division III team to defeat the
Tigers in 23 years. Carnegie Mellon (10-0) withstood a Princeton rally
that tied the score late in the second half and overcame a stretch of
committing nine turnovers in 11 possessions to score the final five
points of the game. "If it's not the biggest win for us, it ranks
right up with the biggest," said Tartans coach Tony Wiggen.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
sports/college/s_408460.html
| back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 26
More than 50 years ago, T. Jerome Holleran won a scholarship of about
$600 a year to attend what is now Carnegie Mellon University.
There were three strings attached. Holleran had to keep his grades up,
mow his benefactor's lawn to earn some extra spending money and someday
repay the gift through his own philanthropy. Holleran, 69, who grew
up in Shadyside, is paying back that debt and then some. He has given
Carnegie Mellon $1 million for a capital campaign that university officials
have told faculty could raise roughly $1 billion. ... He is giving $20,000
for each scholarship. He hopes another donor matches that with $30,000.
The $50,000 could generate about $2,500 a year for each needy student.
... As the winner of one of the scholarships, Douglas M. Hilling II,
20, of Morgantown, W. Va., appreciates Holleran's generosity. His parents
are not able to pay for his education, so the sophomore works part-time
and takes out loans.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
trib/regional/s_407524.html
| back to top
Arts and Humanities
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | January 5
What is the right way to hear the contemporary art music of another
culture? This album by Carnegie Mellon composer Reza
Vali raises the question with elan as he shifts to the soundscape
of his native Iran. In differing degrees, Vali's String Quartet No.
2 (1992), "Caligraphies" (2000) and String Quartet No. 3 (2001)
contained here incorporate Persian modes and evoke Iranian folk melody.
The violin is brought into spectacular relief in the manner of the indigenous
style. ... The howling of desperate wolves opens Leonardo Balada's
"No-res," or "Nothing," a bleak cantata about death
from 1974. Using text (by French writer Jean Paris) from several languages,
tapes of animals, smashing glass and uprooted trees, the work's harrowing
look at death would make a worthy Halloween counterpart to Handel's
"Messiah."
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/06005/632491.stm
| back to top
WNBC New York | January 4
Most sexually active teenage girls know relatively little about sexually
transmitted diseases until it is too late, according to new research.
In a survey of 300 adolescent girls in the Pittsburgh area, Carnegie
Mellon University researchers found that girls who reported
having been diagnosed with an STD knew more about that particular disease
than other girls, but did not know more about the other diseases. The
findings are published in the January edition of the Journal of Adolescent
Health. On average, with the exception of HIV/AIDS, the teens did not
know many basic facts about STDs, said Julie Downs,
lead author of the study. "Our schools have decided to focus on
AIDS, and that has come at a cost," she said. "Teens just
aren't being taught about these other diseases, and so they may come
away with a false sense of confidence."
http://www.wnbc.com/health/
5845538/detail.html
| back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | January 1
Capping 26 years of memorable music making in Pittsburgh, Robert
Page led his final concert as music director of the Mendelssohn
Choir in April. Page has dozens of recordings to his credit, many made
with the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras and one with the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra. He continues to be an important presence in local
concert life. He led George Frideric Handel's "Messiah" with
the symphony in December and will conduct Benjamin Britten's comic opera
"Albert Herring" this month at Carnegie Mellon
University, where he remains Paul Mellon Professor of Music and director
of choral studies.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
entertainment/music/s_408950.html
| back to top
The Seattle Times | January 1
One of Greenspan's greatest legacies was his success in building credibility
for the Fed as an inflation-fighter — "a major reason that
long-term interest rates remained low as the economy was expanding during
Greenspan's final year in office," said Allan Meltzer,
a Carnegie Mellon University economics professor and
the author of a 2002 book on the early history of the Federal Reserve.
"What he's shown is that you can have full employment and low inflation
at the same time," Meltzer said. "The Keynesian school didn't
believe that, but Greenspan showed that it could be done."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
html/businesstechnology/2002714332_
greenspan01.html
| back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 27
Dote, dote and dote some more on your tots, society says -- and, somewhere
along the way, prepare them for adulthood. Yet doing too much of the
first thing, though well-intentioned, can prevent the latter, experts
say. "It happens because mothers are trying to do good things for
their children, but they're not thinking of the long-term goal, which
is the children being able to do things for themselves," says Dr.
Sharon Carver, director of The Children's School at Carnegie
Mellon University, and a professor in the psychology department.
"It's accomplishing one goal, but at the expense of another goal,"
she says. "I think the key thing is helping moms to understand
and articulate for themselves what their goals are for their children."
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/
style/family/s_407603.html
| back to top
AZ Central | December 27
Anheuser-Busch Cos., the world's largest brewer, plans to toast the
New Year with higher prices for Budweiser and Michelob. Pepsi Bottling
Group Inc. may drink to that too. Companies such as DuPont Co. and Clorox
Co. are joining the party with price markups of their own, celebrating
the return of pricing power after a year in which many businesses struggled
to recover higher costs for energy and raw materials, and some were
forced to discount. ... Economists such as David Rosenberg of Merrill
Lynch & Co. in New York and Marvin Goodfriend of
Carnegie Mellon University doubt that companies will
be able to make price increases stick. "The economy is moderating,"
said Rosenberg, who predicts economic growth will slow to 2.5 percent
next year from 3.5 percent this year. "The forces of productivity
and globalization have acted as very powerful disinflationary forces."
Those issues are less important that what the Fed does, said Goodfriend,
who was a senior monetary policy advisor at the Richmond Fed until 2003.
If the Fed's inflation fighting strategy is credible, firms won't risk
losing business by raising prices. "Whether or not pass-through
happens is entirely a function of what firms in general think the Fed
will do in response" to higher costs, Goodfriend said. "I
would stop short of worrying about this because I think the Fed is well
positioned to respond and is cognizant of the risks."
http://www.azcentral.com/business/
articles/1227price-increases27-ON.html
| back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 25
A poet can be walking down any street in the world and see the most
insignificant item -- a shadow, a child's balloon, a lost sneaker --
and transform the image of it into a poem. But what happens when a cataclysmic
natural disaster strikes and demands a response? The difference in scope,
according to Judith R. Robinson, of Oakland, didn't
affect the quality of the work in "Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of
the Tsunami," an anthology of poems about the tsunami that struck
Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, 2004. ... While financial contributions are
always appreciated, the poems also act as a way to explore and meditate
upon the meaning of tsunami. "That's the part, I think, that probably
grasps the attention of poets as much as anything else," says Robinson,
a poet and poetry editor who teaches at Carnegie Mellon
University's Academy for Lifelong Learning. "We always think in
metaphor. This tragedy, this enormous loss of life, is in many ways
a metaphor for the human condition, isn't it? We all have our expectation,
and we expect life to be a certain way. We love the world and we love
nature, and then something like this comes along that shakes us and
calls into question some of our beliefs about everything, about existence."
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
entertainment/books/s_407023.html
| back to top
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 24
The glory of George Frideric Handel's "Messiah" rang out in
Heinz Hall on Thursday when Robert Page led four excellent
vocal soloists, the Mendelssohn Choir and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
in a thrilling account of the Christmas classic. ... Tenor Douglas
Ahlstedt, substituting on short notice, was riveting after
the instrumental introduction. A veteran of the Metropolitan Opera who
now teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, Ahlstedt
sang with beautiful tone throughout his range and was also impressively
agile in the aria "Ev'ry valley shall be exalted."
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
entertainment/music/s_407097.html
| back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 23
Alan Fletcher, head of Carnegie Mellon
University's School of Music, has been named the new president and chief
executive officer of the Aspen Music Festival and School. Dr. Fletcher
is the seventh president and CEO in the institution's 57-year history.
He will return to Carnegie Mellon through February before beginning
work at Aspen on March 1. ... Dr. Fletcher, who has headed Carnegie
Mellon's Music School since 2001, succeeds Don Roth, who served with
the festival from 2001 to 2005. ... Dr. Fletcher said it's unlikely
Carnegie Mellon has began its search for his replacement, although Jared
Cohon, university president, had been aware he was under consideration
for the position in Aspen. "The school of music is in great shape,"
said Dr. Fletcher. "It's a wonderful faculty and staff with a great
future."
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/05357/626773.stm
| back to top
Information Technology
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | January 2
As people shuffle back to work this week, they will swap tales of New
Year's revelry, ski slope antics and bizarre Christmas gifts, as is
always the case after a long holiday break. Fifty years ago, Herbert
A. Simon and Allen Newell had a Christmas break story that would top
them all. "Over the Christmas holiday," Dr. Simon famously
blurted to one of his classes at Carnegie Institute of Technology, "Al
Newell and I invented a thinking machine." It was another way of
saying that they had invented artificial intelligence -- in fact, the
only way of saying it in the winter of 1955-56 because no one had gotten
around to inventing the term "artificial intelligence." ...
It would be eight more months before their program, called Logic Theorist,
would successfully run on a computer, the Rand Corp.'s JOHNNIAC. But
they had helped invent artificial intelligence and their work "inspired
generations of researchers to work in that area," said
Randal E. Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science at
Carnegie Tech's successor institution, Carnegie Mellon
University.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06002/631149.stm
| back to top
Beaver County Times & Allegheny Times | January
2
Pennsylvania's privacy laws are more restrictive than federal laws.
The state's law regarding recording conversation requires that everyone
involved in the discussion give permission to be recorded. Federal laws
allow a person to record as long as they are part of the conversation.
That means some cameras can violate rights if sound is recorded, but
video itself doesn't have criminal statutes. Charges can be raised in
civil matters when videotaping is tactless, like videotaping a locker
room. That's why places under surveillance will usually post a sign
to notify the public. And there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands
of publicly available webcams with most cities now having fairly extensive
sets, mainly for traffic purposes, said Michael Shamos,
a distinguished career professor at Carnegie Mellon
University's school of Computer Science and member of the governing
board for the university's Privacy Technology Center, a group that looks
at the positive and negative impacts of technology. Webcams, he said,
have their benefits, such as with security, but also have drawbacks,
like privacy implications. "You can look around and see if there
are people, but it's not easy to see a webcam. In a sense it's like
somebody peeking out a window...," Shamos said. And just about
anyone can get a Web camera these days. Some cost less than $25.
http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?|
newsid=15854609&BRD=2305&PAG=461&dept
_id=478569&rfi=6
| back to top
Chicago Tribune | January 1
Watch television and you'd think high-tech gadgets are meant only for
the young. MP3 players, iPods and Xboxes are everywhere. But older people
could be the biggest beneficiaries of advances in technology as companies
work to create devices to help seniors at home. Take, for example, Pearl,
a robot meant to help residents of long-term-care facilities. Designed
by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Pearl
is being tested at a Pittsburgh nursing home. Pearl guides residents
from their rooms to another part of the building, say, for a physical
therapy session. Pearl also gives verbal reminders to residents to take
medications or eat. Pearl is just one of the promising technologies
showcased at the recent White House Conference on Aging in Washington,
D.C. The technologies were exhibited by CAST, the Center for Aging Services
Technologies. Its members are technology companies and universities,
all working on ways to help seniors live independently in their homes
for longer.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/
chi-0601010437jan01,1,5797961.story?
coll=chi-techtopheds-hed
| back to top
.
San Jose Mercury News (AP) | January 1
The Dragon Runner resembles a remote-controlled model car, but it's
hardly a toy. The small, four-wheeled vehicle is designed with a deadly
serious purpose: to speed along dusty streets and creep through shadowy
buildings, sniffing out explosives and sending video images to a hand-held
controller - and saving the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It's still in evaluation to see what it can do, how it should
be modified and improved before the military decides to go into larger
production," said Hagen Schempf, who helped invent
the device at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University
before his company, Automatika, licensed it. "The sales are in
the dozens already."
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/
news/world/13529990.htm
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 26
When Latanya Sweeney clicked on a computer link recently
that she thought would take her to a student newspaper Web site, she
quickly realized with a groan that she had been scammed. Her computer
had been infected by a virus, and she had to purge every file before
she could use it again. That's aggravating enough for an everyday user,
but for a leading expert on computer privacy, it's embarrassing. Dr.
Sweeney runs the Data Privacy Lab at Carnegie Mellon
University and teaches in the school's prestigious Institute for Software
Research International. The invasion of her computer shows how vigilant
people must be these days in the never-ending struggle to benefit from
the Internet's life-changing technology while also protecting their
privacy. That challenge has sent her lab in two parallel directions.
One is to demonstrate the vulnerability of personal information and
give people tools to protect their data. The other is to find ways that
the government can conduct surveillance for potential terrorists without
invading citizens' privacy.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/05360/628091.stm
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Electronic Engineering Times | December 2005
The biggest advantage of IC design at 65nm, 45nm and below may not be
gate capacity or power savings after all. It may be the ability to design
inefficiently with respect to transistors, discovering new methodologies
and architectures in the process. Granted, "design for inefficiency"
doesn't sound like a great slogan. But let's ponder this question: What
could designers do if they had so many available transistors and logic
devices that using each one with maximum efficiency was no longer a
consideration? ... At the recent International Conference on Computer-Aided
Design (ICCAD), Seth Goldstein, associate professor
of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon
University, noted that asynchronous circuits remove the problem of timing
closure, eliminate global clocks and tolerate parametric variation.
They may take two to six times the area of synchronous circuits, but
at the nanoscale level, Goldstein said, "all of a sudden we have
those devices."
http://www.eetasia.com/ARTICLES/
2005DEC/C/2005DEC_ART_WK4.HTM
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Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | January 1
Electric companies again are seeking acquisitions. Within the past year,
five mega-deals have been announced. ... Experts believe 2006 will see
increased merger and acquisition activity, with the three local electric
utilities, Allegheny Energy Inc., Duquesne Light Co. and FirstEnergy
Corp. perhaps part of the mix. ... "Allegheny Energy stock has
done very well -- awfully well -- since the new chief executive came
in," said Jay Apt, executive director of the Carnegie
Mellon University Electric Industry Center. "It's probably
a good bet the company is on the mend. FirstEnergy is a fairly low-cost
power generator, with a fleet of nuclear and coal plants." Apt
said Duquesne Light may not be as tempting as Allegheny Energy or FirstEnergy
because it divested its low-cost, coal-fired power plants as part of
a utility deregulation deal with the state.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
business/s_409367.html
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 31
While more mergers and acquisitions are likely on the horizon, tech
insiders are expecting 2006 to be a bit different as Pittsburgh finally
may be reaping the bounty of its labor. ... Hopes especially are high
in the life sciences sector, where in 2004 the University of Pittsburgh
churned out 10 start-ups from technology it cultivated, seven of which,
university officials say, remain in the region. Carnegie Mellon
University with its strength in the software, robotics and other material
engineering sectors, also made strides, spawning four firms in 2004.The
local IT sector is not to be dismissed, despite the fact that it hasn't
managed to spawn as many firms, said Don Smith Jr.,
vice president of economic development at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon.
The region's strong presence in IT-focused software and engineering
firms continues as demonstrated by the troika of Silicon Valley tech
titans that recently set up research and development shops in this region
-- Apple Computer Inc., Google Inc. and Intel -- not to mention disc
drive maker Seagate Technology, which has been here since 2002.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/05365/630441.stm
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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 29
Pennsylvania lawmakers -- who awarded themselves free lifetime health
insurance -- are about to learn the long-term cost of their pledge,
and the cost of providing similar benefits to all retired state employees.
Legislators 50 or older with 10 years' service are entitled to full
medical insurance until they die, a plan more generous than the lifetime
coverage provided to most state employees. The growing tab for such
benefits is troubling, said Robert P. Strauss, professor
of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
"It's easy to imagine that whatever property tax cuts come along
from casino gambling will be more than offset by tax increases needed
to fund these health benefits, and also to put the teachers' and public
employee retirement systems back into the black because of the fall-off
in the stock market in 2001," Strauss said.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
trib/regional/s_408432.html
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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 27
The romantic notion of wine-making goes something like this: Grow grapes,
pick and crush them, ferment in a vat, then drink up. This ancient ritual
is getting some modern-day redress from scientists who are trying to
use computer modeling, advanced chemistry and the laws of physics to
manufacture a tastier glass of wine. "We are trying to make the
average bottle of wine better, and understand what makes a really great
bottle of wine really great," said Lorenz "Larry"
Biegler, Bayer professor of chemical engineering at Carnegie
Mellon University, whose research focuses on optimizing chemical
processes such as fermentation and oil-refining.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
trib/pittsburgh/s_407676.html
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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 27
The $147 million owed to Allegheny County school districts in back taxes
would pay for 3,300 teachers at an annual salary of $45,000, or buy
more than 140,000 computers for classrooms. The county's delinquency
rate dwarfs that in nearby counties. Experts blame the unpaid taxes
on industrial decline -- which shifted the tax burden from corporations
to homeowners -- but a bigger factor might be that Allegheny is one
of only two counties in the state not required to collect delinquent
school, municipal and county taxes through a county-run tax claim bureau.
... A centralized bureau would be a small step toward righting the county's
tax and assessment system, but one worth taking, said Robert
Strauss, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's
Heinz School of Public Policy. "What you get from that is professionalization
and economies of scale, and a transparent process," Strauss said.
"It's a microcosm of good government."
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
trib/regional/s_407715.html
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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 26
Twenty-five colleges and universities in America are trying to raise
at least $1 billion, and two of them are blocks apart in Pittsburgh.
The University of Pittsburgh has raised $862 million toward a $1 billion
campaign and Carnegie Mellon University raised about
$244 million. Although Carnegie Mellon will not officially set its target
until mid-2008, university officials have told faculty they are considering
a goal of roughly $1 billion. Experts say the two campaigns show the
strengths of the institutions, and underscore their ability to bring
in outside money that will help Pittsburgh, a city in the financial
doldrums, ignite its economy.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
trib/regional/s_407522.html
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 24
In what has become my own little holiday tradition, I've been monitoring
-- slightly bemused, as always -- the annual December pageant that pits
the "Happy Holidays" hoi polloi against the "Merry Christmas"
crowd, the PC multiculturalists against the JC fundamentalists, the
Don't Shove Your Observance Down our Throat hordes against the Let's
Put the Christ Back in Christmas crusaders. The essays and articles
and letters to the editor. The inevitable hue and cry and self-righteous
indignation on talk radio. The struggles, visible on the faces of so
many retail workers, to say just the right thing. I just enjoy the action
and the diversion despite my indifference to the outcome. Because for
me, the outcome was decided long ago. *** This article was written by
Chad Hermann, a lecturer in the management communication department
of the David A. Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon
University.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
05358/627282.stm
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International News Stories
Journal of Turkish Weekly | January 4
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), regulators and government representatives
from across the GCC region will have the opportunity to discuss local
topics related to IP networking at the RIPE NCC Regional Meeting in
Doha, Qatar, to be held 17 - 18 January 2006. This meeting will be hosted
by ictQATAR, Qatar's Supreme Council of Information and Communication
Technology and sponsored by Qtel (Qatar Telecom), Qatar's exclusive
telecommunications provider, with Carnegie Mellon Qatar
Campus and Qatar Foundation acting as co-hosts.
http://www.turkishweekly.net/
news.php?id=24518
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The China Post (AP) | December 29
Distinguishing fine wine from plonk is usually left to connoisseurs
and winemakers, who rely on their senses, rough chemical measurements
and the whims of nature to produce an exceptional tipple. But a Carnegie
Mellon University professor, working with industry scientists
in Chile, is hoping that computer models will identify the traits of
good wine _ eventually helping vintners produce more of it.
Lorenz "Larry" Biegler, who teaches chemical engineering
at the university, is working on mathematical formulas to automate the
fermentation process, adjusting ingredients and conditions to ensure
robust flavors and higher yields from grape harvests. Scientists don't
fully understand the delicate mix of compounds that emerge during fermentation
and why they create such pleasing sensations for wine drinkers. Biegler's
research focuses on yeast, which consumes sugar and produces alcohol.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/
p_latestdetail.asp?id=33972
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