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March 31,
2006
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 24 to March 30,
Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 268
references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.
Special Robotics Coverage: Red Team, New Robotics
Site
PBS | March 28
USA Today | March 27
Scientific American | March 27
MSNBC | March 27
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 27
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 25
Pittsburgh Business Times | March 23
National News Stories
The Christian Science Monitor | March 30
Wired News | March 27
The New York Times | March 27
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission | March
27
MSNBC (Baltimore Business Journal) | March
26
The Wall Street Journal | March 23
Student Experience
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | March 30
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 26
Arts and Humanities
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | March 29
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 29
New Scientist | March 28
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 26
Information Technology
Telephony Online | March 29
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 30
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 27
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 29
Biotechnology
MSNBC (Pittsburgh Business Times) | March 26
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 24
Environment
MSNBC (Pittsburgh Business Times) | March 26
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 28
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 25
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 24
International News Stories
Hindu Business Line | March 27
Middle East North Africa Financial Network
| March 24
-
-
Special Robotics Coverage: Red Team, New Robotics
Site
PBS | March 28
Join NOVA for an exclusive backstage pass to the DARPA Grand
Challenge—a raucous race for robotic, driverless vehicles sponsored
by the Pentagon, which awards a $2 million purse to the winning team.
... Headlining the film is Carnegie Mellon University's
"Red Team," led by Red Whittaker, an ambitious
and relentless innovator with world-renowned expertise in the field
of robotics. Under his leadership, 50 students and professionals give
up their personal lives and outside distractions for an intensive all-out
devotion to not one but two robots—"Sandstorm" and "H1ghlander."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/
nova/darpa/about.html | back to top
USA Today | March 27
A one-hour PBS special, NOVA's "The Great Robot Race," airing
Tuesday night, chronicles the race and teams in the 2005 race, which
was the second Grand Challenge conducted by DARPA. Viewers will see
the different approaches and personalities of the robot's creators,
from [Red] Whittaker's army-like team of students waking
up at 4 a.m. to examine the racecourse to a lone Berkeley graduate student
and his small team's creation, Ghostrider, the only driverless motorcycle
in the race. Whittaker, director of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie
Mellon, says that when he hears about things like the Grand
Challenge, he "can't not do them."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/
techinnovations/
2006-03-27-robot-race_x.htm?POE=TECISVA | back
to top
Scientific American | March 27
A milestone in robotics history was left in the dust last October as
four autonomous vehicles met a Grand Challenge set by the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA). By driving themselves without any
human guidance over 132 miles of desert trails, through narrow tunnels
and down a treacherous mountain pass--and doing so at a pace that suggested
they could take on even tougher courses--the machines surprised some
veteran roboticists, who had predicted the Challenge would stand unanswered
for years to come.On March 28, NOVA will broadcast an in-depth television
documentary covering the 2005 Grand Challenge on PBS stations nationwide.
The documentary features the commentary of Scientific American Senior
Writer W. Wayt Gibbs, who covered the Grand Challenge for the magazine
by embedding himself with the Red Team at Carnegie Mellon
University, one of the leading competitors.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID
=00045E00-3D69-1420-BD6983414B7F0000 | back
to top
MSNBC | March 27
It was the kind of story you could make a movie about. Scores of teams
from all over the country devise riderless cars for a grand competition,
with an elite field of 23 teams facing off in the Mojave Desert for
the finals. In the end, it comes down to two teams. One is led by a
grizzled ex-Marine. The other is guided by a soft-spoken, German-born
professor. The prize? Two ... million ... dollars. ... The hourlong
show, which makes its debut Tuesday night, turns the Pentagon-sponsored
Grand Challenge into a drama on the scale of a "Survivor"
episode, even though the outcome of this particular reality-TV program
is well-known. The film crews followed some of the teams for months
before the race, delving into the personalities behind the pursuit:
... Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team, led by robotics
professor and ex-Marine Red Whittaker, entered two
vehicles in the Grand Challenge. Sandstorm, a modified Humvee that was
a veteran of the first Grand Challenge back in 2004, came in a close
second to Stanley. The Red Team's other entrant, a customized Hummer
called H1ghlander, came in third.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12041376/
| back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 27
Nearly 200 teams from around the world entered the second Grand Challenge
last October. Among them were two robot SUVs hammered into shape at
Carnegie Mellon University's robotics labs. The international
press covered highlights of the high-tech race in which 23 vehicles
survived the qualifying rounds. Only four finished the race. But a year
before the race began, a PBS film crew headed by Pittsburgh filmmaker
Joe Seamans began recording the progress of two Carnegie Mellon teams.
"The Great Robot Race," produced for "Nova" by Boston's
WGBH, airs tomorrow. ... "The Grand Challenge was a watershed event
in robotics," says Red Whittaker, professor of
robotics and director of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon.
"It was taking robots from the laboratory to the world. An event
like that is like Kitty Hawk or Woodstock -- there really is never another
chance to do it the first time."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06086/677096-115.stm
| back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 25
With Carnegie Mellon University roboticist
William "Red" Whittaker set to settle his fleet of
"Red Team" racing robots into what he hopes to become "Robot
City" on the old LTV Steel coke works site in Hazelwood, the guessing
game around what else could happen to the 178-acre spread continues.
... Dr. Whittaker will occupy only part of the space -- 9,000 square
feet in the old locomotive Roundhouse -- which is being renovated with
$440,000 in funds from Carnegie Mellon. The Heinz Endowments are expected
to provide a yet-to-be-disclosed amount this spring to aid with redevelopment
of the site, according to its economic development director and former
Carnegie Mellon technology provost Christina Gabriel. ... "This
is the last significant parcel in the city available for development
that's in proximity to Oakland," said Don Smith,
vice president of economic development for the University of Pittsburgh
and Carnegie Mellon. "It's a natural development site for things
that are spawned in Oakland and for companies who want to work with
the universities."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06084/676364-96.stm
| back to top
Pittsburgh Business Times | March 23
Carnegie Mellon University's robots are making their
move on a former steelmaker's site.
No, it isn't the plot of a cheesy science fiction movie. Robots once
housed in the university's Planetary Robotics Building have relocated
to the former LTV Coke Works in Hazelwood, the Pittsburgh-based school
said on its Web site. ... William "Red" Whittaker,
director of the Field Robotics Center and leader of the Red Team, said
the move could be the first step toward creating a "Robot City,"
where robots will be developed and tested, as well as, Whittaker hopes,
work to redevelop the site.
http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh
/stories/2006/03/20/daily35.html
| back to top
National News Stories
Forbes | April 2006
When we speak aloud, we're forcing air past the larynx and tongue, sculpting
words using the articulator muscles in the mouth and jaw. But these
muscles go into action regardless of whether air is sent past them.
All you have to do is say the words to yourself and you're sending weak
electrical currents from your brain to the speech muscles. Jorgensen's
trick is to record those signals (known as electromyograms), process
them with statistical algorithms and compare the output with prerecorded
signal patterns of spoken words, phrases and commands. When there's
a match, the unspoken turns into speech. ... But subvocal recognition
is dealing with electromyograms that are different for each speaker.
Consistency can be thrown off just by the positioning of an electrode.
To improve accuracy, researchers in this field are relying on statistical
models that get better at pattern-matching the more times a subject
"speaks" through the electrodes. But even then there are lapses.
At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers found that
the same "speaker" with accuracy rates of 94% one day can
see that rate drop to 48% a day later. Between two different speakers
it drops even more. Carnegie Mellon researcher Tanja Schultz
says one possible application is a "silent" cell phone that
can detect and translate unuttered phrases like "I'm in a meeting"
and "I'll call you later."
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/
2006/0410/084.html | back to top
The Christian Science Monitor | March 30
Come May, the Federal Communications Commission plans to auction off
some of the last remaining spectrum to companies that want to provide
cellphone service at 35,000 feet. ... The FCC has said it could allow
the service as early as next year. The Federal Aviation Administration
has signaled that as long as airlines are confident it poses no safety
threat, it would be in favor of lifting the ban as well. ... Yet those
who cherish cellphone-free flying sanctuaries still have hope. A study
published this month found that - counter to what many Americans believe
- cellphone radio signals do "present a clear and present danger"
by interfering with sensitive navigational equipment. "We're not
trying to be alarmist, but we are saying, 'Let's just go slow to be
sure there is no danger,' " says Granger Morgan,
a coauthor of the study and head of the Department of Engineering and
Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/
0330/p02s02-ussc.html | back to top
Wired News | March 27
While critics contend that violent video games can turn kids into tiny
terrors, some government agencies and nonprofit groups want to harness
the joystick to help churn out model citizens. To that end, competitions
are under way that are designed to achieve such diverse goals as boosting
America's profile overseas and drawing attention to genocide in Sudan.
... The Darfur Digital Activist competition drew 12 viral game submissions
from colleges across the United States. More than 15,000 students have
played the three finalist selections hailing from Carnegie Mellon
University (Peace Games: Darfur), USC (Darfur: Play Your Part and Stop
Genocide) and Digipen Institute of Technology (The Shanti Ambassadors:
Crisis in Darfur).
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/
games/0,70443-0.html?tw=wn_index_4 | back to top
The New York Times | March 27
Where Microsoft has thousands of engineers on its Windows team, Apple
has a lean development group of roughly 350 programmers and fewer than
100 software testers, according to two Apple employees who spoke on
the condition that they not be identified. And Apple had the advantage
of building on software from university laboratories, an experimental
version of the Unix operating system developed at Carnegie Mellon
University and a free variant of Unix from the University of California,
Berkeley. That helps explain why a small team at Apple has been able
to build an operating system rich in features with nearly as many lines
of code as Microsoft's Windows.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/
03/27/technology/27soft.html | back to top
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission | March
27
The Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Economic Analysis
today announced the appointment of Dr. Duane J. Seppi
as a Visiting Academic Scholar for a term ending in August 2006. Dr.
Seppi is currently a Full Professor of Financial Economics at the Tepper
School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr.
Seppi received his Ph. D. in 1988 from the University of Chicago in
Finance. His areas of expertise include the microeconomics of trading
and liquidity, option pricing, and applied game theory. His recent work
has focused on modeling limit order markets. While at the Commission,
Dr. Seppi will join other researchers on projects concerning corporate
governance, institutional voting and the implications of predictable
trading strategies such as VWAP for liquidity, as well as other areas
as dictated by SEC priorities.
http://www.sec.gov/news/
press/2006-42.htm | back to top
MSNBC (Baltimore Business Journal) | March 26
Turning back the clock on electricity deregulation is sounding good
to Maryland lawmakers worried about the political fallout from electricity
rates projected to soar 72 percent this summer. ... Economists say it
makes little sense to glorify the old system of utility regulation.
Under that system, they say, power companies had little incentive to
run their plants efficiently. In fact, their incentive was to splurge
on more expensive power plants such as nuclear stations, because they
were allowed to earn a rate of return on their investments. "Regulation
had lots and lots of flaws," said Lester Lave,
an economist at Carnegie Mellon University. Consumers,
he said, were left "holding the bag for whatever inefficient behavior
went on."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12033539/
| back to top
The Wall Street Journal | March 23
During a national championship last year, a University of Pennsylvania
soccer team was on the verge of a big upset. In the final game against
Carnegie Mellon University, a group of players had battled
to a 1-1 tie when disaster struck. A Pennsylvania forward booted the
ball toward his own net by mistake. David Cohen, a trainer for the team,
watched in horror as the orange ball rolled past the goalie, for Carnegie
Mellon's second and clinching goal. ... In June, more than 100 teams
will square off in Bremen, Germany, for the 10th-annual RoboCup World
Championship. The competition will coincide with the human World Cup,
which is being held in Germany at the same time. ... "Imagine a
laptop with legs and a camera, that's what the Aibo is," says Manuela
Veloso, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon.
Her university's team dominates RoboCup in the U.S., with Texas, Pennsylvania
and the Georgia Institute of Technology making fast progress.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114308
418234606033-search.html | back to top
Student Experience
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | March 30
As a young girl growing up in northern New Jersey, Arielle Drummond
was inspired to be an engineer by a high school science teacher. As
an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina, she often
was the only African-American woman in her science and engineering classes.
Drummond never gave up on her dream, and now she is pursuing a doctorate
in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University
in Oakland. ... The National Society of Black Engineers, based in Alexandria,
Va., is hoping there are a lot more young black students like Drummond,
who did not opt out of engineering.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review
/business/s_438202.html | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 26
When Shaun Byrnes graduated from college in 2001, he dropped off more
than 200 resumes and was rewarded with two job offers. ... Despite the
fact that Mr. Byrnes had gotten an undergraduate degree from the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most prestigious
business programs in the country, neither job offered to him was in
his preferred area of financial planning or asset management. ... Oh,
how times have changed. As Mr. Byrnes, 27, of Squirrel Hill, prepares
to graduate this spring with a master's degree in information security
policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University,
he has multiple offers for government information technology jobs in
Washington, D.C., which is exactly what he wants to do and where he
wants to be. ... As Mr. Byrnes and other college and graduate students
can attest, after years of meager offerings, the job market is looking
up, fueled by a national economy in its fifth year of expansion and
a local economy expected to experience its first significant job growth
since the late 1990s.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06085/676783.stm | back to top
Arts and Humanities
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | March 29
Henry Hornbostel can rest in his grave. Officials at Carnegie
Mellon University announced Tuesday their decision to move
the proposed site for a 100-foot-tall sculpture to a grassy area called
"the cut" near Forbes Avenue and Warner Hall. The reason:
to keep intact the century-old design of the campus by noted architect
Hornbostel. "It relates better to the campus buildings and landscape
in the new location," said Martin Aurand, a Carnegie
Mellon University archivist. "It's not arguing with the historic
buildings and historic landscape."
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/
trib/regional/s_437905.html | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 29
The drawings are elegant, refined, tasteful, gorgeous, or as the Japanese
would say, Yuuga. They are works of art that deserve a wider showing
than just among gardening enthusiasts, says James White,
curator of the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation at
Carnegie Mellon University. Yuuga is also the name of the current
exhibit of contemporary Japanese botanical drawings on display at the
institute through June 30. Mr. White says Japan easily ranks in the
top six countries to actively promote the genre of botanical art. The
exhibition includes 43 works by 33 Japanese artists. Most were donated
to the institute's permanent collection by the artists.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/06088/677581-42.stm | back to top
New Scientist | March 28
Loneliness is bad for the heart, suggests a new study. It shows that
loneliness increases the blood pressure of those nearing retirement
age to the same degree as smoking or a sedentary lifestyle. Chronic
feelings of social isolation are associated with as much as a 30 mmHg
rise in a person’s systolic blood pressure by the age of 65, which
could easily push their systolic blood pressure over 150 mmHg, the medical
definition of hypertension. The study showed that this is independent
of other confounding variables such as smoking, drinking, socioeconomic
status and body mass index. ... "This shows that how we deal with
isolation changes as we age on both emotional and physical levels,"
says Sarah Pressman, a health psychologist at
Carnegie Mellon University. "This is not something that’s
all in your head."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8908-
absence-makes-the-heart-grow-weaker.html | back
to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 26
Little wonder Thomas Wesley Douglas labors so hard
to create a lively concert experience when he conducts; his first audiences
were often dead -- literally. As a child he practiced the piano in the
parlor of his family's funeral home in Homewood, often decked out for
viewings. "They were right there, lying out in the casket next
to the piano in the chapel," says Douglas, 48, now of Duquesne.
"It wasn't a big deal. I could look over, but I wasn't thinking
about the dead people." But the longer he worked in classical music,
the more he felt audiences weren't treated much differently than corpses.
He became convinced its waning popularity was due to concert atmospheres
more akin to funerals than fun nights out. Through his time singing
and conducting choral music in Dallas, Canton and Pittsburgh (the Mendelssohn
Choir) and musicals for City Theatre, Carnegie Mellon University
and touring shows, Douglas slowly built a performing model that traded
traditional stodginess for energetic interpretations, presentation and
repertoire.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06085/675542-42.stm | back to top
Information Technology
Telephony Online | March 29
David Farber’s credentials are considerable--as
an academic, he did pioneering work in distributed computing and helped
conceive and organize early versions of the Internet including Computer
Science Net (CSNet), NSFNet and NASA’s Research and Education
Network (NREN). During 11 years at Bell Labs, he helped design the first
electronic switching system (ESS)--technology which became the heart
of the modern phone network. In addition to a long academic career ending
at the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School of Business,
he maintained a commercial business developing software, and served
on many boards of directors for commercial companies, in addition to
his post at the FCC. While in Washington, he led the review of Time
Warner’s acquisition of AOL, another in a series of issues where
politics, business and technology collided. Farber said in an interview
today that the current emotionally charged arguments about Net neutrality
are counter-productive and are not likely to produce the solutions required
to insure the Internet’s future. ... "We can get together
under the auspices of Carnegie Mellon and Penn and
people can talk and say things they mean without attribution,"
he said. "They can talk off the record but to each other and not
have to worry about being quoted endlessly and out of context. It has
to be fast and it has to inform the Congress with a set of facts. If
in the process, one comes up with a resolution--happy day. If you don’t,
you have the facts out."
http://telephonyonline.com/regulatory/news/
Net_Neutrality_Farber_032906/ | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 30
A state voting-machine examiner yesterday halted testing of the machine
Allegheny County intends to use in the May primary, saying it was pointless
to continue until a critical software problem is resolved. "It's
not useful to continue because [the software] clearly is not stable,"
said Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon
University professor. ... Dr. Shamos encountered yesterday's problem
during a test for vote tampering. In an instant, he said, he was able
to transform a handful of votes into thousands. Developers quickly fixed
the problem by replacing a file in the tabulation software, but that
didn't alleviate Dr. Shamos' concerns. A malicious hacker could easily
make the same switch, allowing votes to be changed, he said.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06089/678087-85.stm | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 27
If you can hack into a touch-screen voting machine undetected, Michael
Shamos will give you $10,000. Dr. Shamos, a professor of computer
science at Carnegie Mellon University who has spent
more than two decades testing electronic voting equipment, first made
that offer several years ago. To this day, no one has tried to collect.
"Because they know they can't do it," he said last week. But
Dr. Shamos, one of two official examiners for Pennsylvania, has to try.
Tomorrow and Wednesday, he'll be in Harrisburg to test the Sequoia AVC
Advantage, an electronic unit that Allegheny County plans to buy. By
the professor's own admission, thousands of computer scientists, including
some of his Carnegie Mellon colleagues, are expressing serious doubts
about the safety and reliability of high-tech voting systems, just as
local election departments nationwide are preparing to spend millions
of dollars on computerized machinery to meet the strict standards of
the Help America Vote Act, known as HAVA. ... One critic, Dr. David
A. Eckhardt, a lecturer in computer science at Carnegie Mellon,
readily acknowledges Dr. Shamos' expertise. "It would basically
take me about five years to assess a machine as competently as he could,"
Dr. Eckhardt said. Yet, "when the smartest people on the planet
look at the most critical systems, they don't find all the bugs. Even
a system that appears to work fine can be riddled with security flaws."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06086/677130-103.stm | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 29
The delights of computer programming can be a tough sell to many students
-- particularly girls. Carnegie Mellon computer science
professor Randy Pausch believes the Sims characters
will get girls interested in programming by letting them use the characters
to tell stories. "If you walk into a roomful of middle school girls
and say 'Do you want to learn how to program a computer?', only a few
hands will go up," says Carnegie Mellon University computer science
professor Randy Pausch. "But if you walk in and say 'Do you want
to learn how to tell a story and make a movie?', all the hands go up."
That's one reason why Dr. Pausch is so excited about a groundbreaking
deal announced earlier this month in which video game giant Electronic
Arts has agreed to donate the animation for characters from "The
Sims" to Carnegie Mellon for use in a novice programmers' course
the school has developed.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06088/677530-115.stm | back to top
Biotechnology
MSNBC (Pittsburgh Business Times) | March 26
Local universities are working with small acids that have the potential
to play a large role in helping the medical profession better diagnose
patients and save money. Peptide nucleic acids, or PNAs, are molecules
that can bind to DNA or RNA and have the potential to aid in drug discovery,
gene detection and disease diagnosis. Carnegie Mellon
University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center and Duquesne University all are conducting research on potential
applications of PNA. Combined, they give Pittsburgh the largest concentration
of PNA research in the world, according to Bruce Armitage,
associate professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon. ... "There
is little connection between basic research and what the health care
community needs," said Danith Ly, assistant professor
in chemistry at Carnegie Mellon and the coordinator of the conference.
"Our hope is to have these researchers talk about their research
and have people from the companies present and interact and find collaborations."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12033556/
| back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 24
A little-known synthetic molecule that holds great promise for gene
therapy, diagnostics, nanotechnology and other applications will be
the subject of a public symposium today. The world's experts on peptide
nucleic acids, hybrids of protein and DNA, will be at the Mellon Institute
in Oakland for two days of presentations. "Pittsburgh has the largest
contingent of researchers working on this in the world," said organizer
Danith Ly of Carnegie Mellon University.
"That's why we decided to hold the symposium," which is the
first of its kind since scientists in Denmark first made the hybrids
15 years ago.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/06083/675707.stm | back to top
Environment
ABC News49, Topeka | March 27
According to a new poll conducted by ABC News, Time Magazine and Stanford
University, over half of Americans say temperatures where they live
are up and weather patterns are more unstable. They think global warming
has something to do with it. Eight-five percent of Americans believe
global warming is probably happening; that's up 5 percent from 1998.
... "The climate system is very complicated, and we're essentially
running an experiment on that system," said Granger Morgan,
a national expert on global change at Carnegie Mellon
University. "We only get one shot at this, and the problem is we
don't how hard we can push on the system before very substantial changes
start happening."
http://www.49abcnews.com/news/2006/mar/
27/publics_awareness_global_warming_increases/ | back
to top
Local News Stories
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 28
The National Society of Black Engineers rolls its much-expanded presence
into town tomorrow, bringing with it a wide-ranging examination of black
Americans and their role in an ever-expanding technological world. Dozens
of nationally known speakers and more than 10,000 people are expected
for five days of community events, workshops and awards sessions all
tied to the conference's theme: Building the FIRE, or the Foundation
to Impact, Revitalize and Empower. ... A few high-profile names in business
and engineering will weigh in during the conference, including: Randal
Pinkett, the first African American to win on Donald Trump's TV show
"Apprentice"; Dr. Gwendolyn Boyd of Johns Hopkins University,
the first black woman to earn a master's degree in mechanical engineering
from Yale University; Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie
Mellon University; and National Public Radio journalist Ed Gordon, who
will host the black-tie Golden Torch Awards on Thursday night.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/06087/677371-28.stm | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 25
Pittsburgh could be the home for a series of DVDs and videotapes based
on a horror anthology by R.L. Stine, the best-selling "Goosebumps"
author. Allegheny County is backing a potentially profitable and job-rich
plan by Steeltown Entertainment Project to lure The Hatchery LLC, a
Los Angeles entertainment production and marketing firm, here for three
or more movies. ... The movies would provide up to 120 local jobs, pump
money into the economy, return the county's investment (to seed future
projects) and build on the city's reputation as film-friendly. Hurley
sees this as a complement to the work of the Pittsburgh Film Office,
Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology
Center and others.
http://www.post-gazette.com/
pg/06084/676301.stm | back to top
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | March 24
Members of Pittsburgh's African-American community are being sought
to provide fan banter and commentary for a new permanent Negro League
Baseball exhibit being installed this season at PNC Park. Casting takes
place today from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Ebony Development, One Hope Square,
1901 Centre Ave., Hill District. The exhibit is being developed by the
Pittsburgh Pirates and the Carnegie Mellon University
Entertainment Technology Center. Anyone who's seen the Homestead Grays
or the Pittsburgh Crawfords play or can comment on such NLB legends
as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson is welcome to recount his or her stories
in front of the camera. For those who never had the experience, scripts
will be provided. Carnegie Mellon's Drama School will have costumes
on hand, but people are encouraged to wear clothing from the 1930s through
1950s.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/
06083/675686-42.stm | back to top
International News Stories
Hindu Business Line | March 27
It is said that a book can change the way thousands live. May be millions
is more appropriate in this age, considering the reach of the Internet.
E-books and massive online libraries with titles that range across all
topics and sub-topics are available at the click of a button over the
World Wide Web. With the Million Book Digital Library project, Professor
Raj Reddy and others at Carnegie Mellon
University are attempting to make a million books accessible to anybody,
for free, online. At a symposium recently held by Microsoft Research
in Bangalore, Prof Reddy informed the audience that currently 600,000
books from various centers in China, Egypt, Australia and across Europe
had been scanned.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2006/
03/27/stories/2006032700280400.htm | back to top
Middle East North Africa Financial Network |
March 24
Passengers and other people opposed to a Federal Communications Commission
plan to allow the use of cell phones during airline flights now have
some fresh data on their side. A study by engineers at Carnegie
Mellon University, published this month in the technology magazine
IEEE Spectrum, found that cell phones, laptops and other personal electronic
devices can cause greater interference with an airplane's critical electronics
than was previously believed.
http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?
StoryId=Crcn80eicq0vmtfbit05fuY1bsvjtquzfvfK | back
to top
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