From December 1 to December 7, Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 276 references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.

National

Guarding the jewels
The Wall Street Journal | December 7
The American law firm has some unusual labor practices. Junior employees, recruited and cultivated at great effort and expense to the firm, either make partner after years of hard work, or they're asked to leave--if they haven't yet done so on their own--at which time they're replaced by another fleet of young lawyers. ... But economists James Rebitzer and Lowell Taylor explain the up-or-out system differently. For them, the system is a natural solution to a property-rights problem. ... Mr. Rebitzer is the Carlton Professor of Economics at Case Western University and an associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, which first circulated "When Knowledge Is an Asset" as a working paper in October. Mr. Taylor is a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School and a former member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors. They spoke by phone with The Wall Street Journal Online's Aaron Rutkoff.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116521015980339812.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

Fraudsters on internet auction sites often leave trail leading to crimes
The Wall Street Journal | December 5
Most con artists on auction sites like eBay have never heard the term "bipartite core." But odds are good that they are creating them as they go about their scams. A bipartite core is a term from math and computer science that describes a situation where members of Group A will deal with members of Group B, but never with each other; the pattern becomes apparent when the interactions of the two groups are plotted on a graph. It is common for auction fraudsters to create fake identities for themselves. A group of computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University has discovered that if the interactions from an auction site are plotted on a graph, clusters of bipartite cores often become evident, each of which can be a good indicator that fraud is taking place. Christos Faloutsos, computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon, and Duen Horng "Polo" Chau, one of his graduate students, explain.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116528022090340643-search.html?KEYWORDS=Fraudsters+on+internet+auction+sites+often+leave+trail+leading+to+crimes&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

 

Me translate pretty one day
Wired Magazine | December 2006
Jaime Carbonell, chief science officer of Meaningful Machines, hunches over his laptop in the company's midtown Manhattan offices, waiting for it to decode a message from the perpetrators of a grisly terrorist attack. Running software that took four years and millions of dollars to develop, Carbonell's machine--or rather, the server farm it's connected to a few miles away--is attempting a task that has bedeviled computer scientists for half a century. ... I brought along the text, taken from a Spanish newspaper transcript of a 2004 al Qaeda video claiming responsibility for the Madrid train bombings, to test Meaningful Machines' automated translation software. The brainchild of a quirky former used-car salesman named Eli Abir, the company has been designing the system in secret since just after 9/11. Now the application is ready for public scrutiny, on the heels of a research paper that Carbonell--who is also a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and head of the school's Language Technologies Institute--presented at a conference this summer.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/translate.html

Education for Leadership

Rutgers' Leonard wins Draddy Trophy
Sports Illustrated (AP) | December 5
Rutgers fullback Brian Leonard won the Draddy Trophy on Tuesday night, given to college football's top scholar athlete. ... The I-AA finalists were Yale offensive lineman Ed McCarthy; St. Francis, Pa., receiver Luke Palko and Alabama A&M offensive lineman Kristian Smith. Ferris State linebacker Michael Klobucher and Pittsburgh State defensive end Ryan Meredith were the Division II finalists. Carnegie Mellon defensive back Aaron Lewis and St. Thomas receiver P.J. Theisen were picked from Division III, and Ambrose center Brad Cook was picked from NAIA.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/football/ncaa/12/05/draddy.trophy.ap/index.html

 

Climate change: End of the first act?
GreenBiz | December 2006
The one seeming certainty in environmental policy these days is that climate change is the most serious issue facing the world. The major policy mechanism for addressing it is also established: reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by reducing fossil fuel use. That this is an unlikely path for the world as a whole has only increased expressions of concern, even hysteria. Climate change has become the existential challenge of the environmental era.  One way or another, that existential challenge is now moot. A recent article in Science suggests that atmospheric engineering (creating reflective sulfur aerosols) could counteract global warming, and a recent Ph.D. dissertation by Joshuah Stolaroff at Carnegie Mellon University, entitled Capturing CO2 from Ambient Air: A Feasibility Assessment, shows that capture of CO2 from ambient air is feasible today using known technologies.
http://www.greenbiz.com/news/columns_third.cfm?NewsID=34308

Arts and Humanities

Sights & Sounds
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 7
One of the best assets of Carnegie Mellon University's Regina Gouger Miller Gallery is the three floors that comprise it. For stepping off of the elevator to each, you never know what you're going to see. That's especially true of three exhibitions currently on view, because each is a surprise in its own way. Paul Dickinson's work on the first floor is unassuming enough upon first encounter. ... "He's interested in the metaphor and the actuality of remixing," says gallery director Jenny Strayer about Dickinson's work. "Taking one thing and turning it into something else." ... Needless to say, Dickinson has a flair for the dramatic, which is rivaled here only by the work on the second floor. That's where, stepping off the elevator, visitors will be submerged in a theatrical world created by visiting director and scenographer Pamela Howard and her students.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_482952.html

 

Carnegie Mellon film festival makes debut
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 7
The birth of a notion at Carnegie Mellon is called "Faces of Democracy," the highly ambitious Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival debuting this week and continuing through Sunday. It's an important new addition to the city's motion-picture smorgasbord: the Pittsburgh premiere of a dozen award-winning features and documentaries, plus 10 short student films, in as many languages from around the world, under the topical umbrella of democracy and its contemporary global dynamics.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06341/744157-254.stm

 

Stage review: 'Side Show' is freakishly fine
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 5
Freaks are a surefire attraction, either directly through freak shows or secondarily, when the fascination becomes the subject of exploration. ... Or take the 1997 musical "Side Show," with book and lyrics by Bill Russell and music by Henry Krieger, which is now being given an elaborate staging at Carnegie Mellon. ... Hard on the heels of Point Park's "Ragtime," "Side Show" is a reminder that some of Pittsburgh's strongest musical theater takes place in our drama schools. Guest director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj and musical director Thomas Douglas lead a cast of 15 in an in-your-face depiction of side-show sleaze, followed by glamorous flashes of vaudeville glitter. On the large Chosky Theater stage, the ambitious Carnegie Mellon designers portray both with a baroque melange of mist, drapery, strings of lights and feathers.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06339/743520-325.stm

 

Martin Aurand re-views Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh City Paper | November 30
When you drive into Pittsburgh through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, the realization is, or should be, immediate. This city's geographical location is one of the nation's most stunning, with rivers, hills and valleys unfolding in a remarkable tableau. In the post-industrial age, though, heads have cleared less readily than skies, so appreciation of the visual rather than mineral advantages of our topography has often been slow in coming. Even with grand riverside parks and plazas in the offing, projects for unsightly highways and unfathomable mountaintop removals would despoil the views rather than enhance them.  Don't these people understand that Pittsburgh in the land is nothing less than an artwork unfolding before our eyes each day? Martin Aurand certainly does. The architectural librarian and archivist (as well as my colleague) at Carnegie Mellon has just published The Spectator and the Topographical City through the University of Pittsburgh Press. ***This article was written by Charles Rosenblum, Carnegie Mellon adjunct assistant professor of architecture.
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A20111

Information Technology

Tracking proves double-edged sword
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 3
Last week, customer service agents at FedEx Ground received an unusual complaint: A man's package had arrived a day early. ... But while online tracking has been an unqualified success since its inception a little more than a decade ago, it's also had some unforeseen side effects. The more information customers know, it turns out, the more entitled they feel to demand customized services. Knowledge, as they say, is power. ... Providing "behind the scenes" information to customers is something that companies find themselves doing partly to lower costs or drive business, and partly to keep up with their competitors, said Baohong Sun, a marketing professor specializing in information management at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. "Whether it's good or bad, it's going to change customer behavior," she said. "They invite the customer to share in the process."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06337/742916-28.stm

Environment

Centennial events to recognize Carson's life, work
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 6
As founder of the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson's legacy would seem secure. Environmental experts recently ranked the author of "Silent Spring" as the world's most influential environmentalist. In 1999, Time Magazine named the Springdale native as one of the 20th century's most important people. Pittsburgh's Ninth Street Bridge has been renamed in her honor. ... The inaugural Rachel Carson Legacy Conference will be held Sept. 29 at Carnegie Mellon University on "Sustaining the Web of Life in Modern Society" and other environmental topics.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06340/743823-113.stm

Regional Impact

Westinghouse to hire 1,000
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 7
Westinghouse Electric Co.'s decision to hire and base at least 1,000 nuclear engineers in Western Pennsylvania will light up the region's economy, economists said Wednesday. "There are very few investment or location decisions each year in the U.S. of this magnitude," said Donald Smith, vice president of economic development for Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. "These jobs will have a tremendous economic impact. They are high-paying jobs that will attract highly skilled talent into this region," he said.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_483024.html

 

Regulators to re-examine electricity law
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | December 3
Pennsylvania's utility regulators will soon take a fresh look at the state's decade-old electricity deregulation law and other rules dictating how power can be bought and sold. ... Former PUC commissioner John Hanger, now chief executive of the conservation advocacy group PennFuture, said large users under the old, regulated system simply were used to "incredibly low-priced electricity, less than 3 cents a kilowatt hour." ... Pennsylvania's total average power cost--for residential, commercial and industrial rates--fell below the nationwide figure for the first time this summer, he said, so the state is moving in the right direction.And neighboring states' rates may be lower simply because other customers still are carrying part of the burden for the big industrials, Hangar said. Ohio deregulated but still has price freezes in place. West Virginia remains regulated. And generally, "There is a general reassessment going on across all states of the restructuring that went on a decade ago," said Lester Lave, co-director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, which is preparing a report for Pennsylvania officials on energy costs.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_482472.html

Local

Tinsel Town meets Steel City
WTAE | December 6
A new pair of Hollywood stars is in town to make Pittsburgh the backdrop for an upcoming film. The Carnegie Mellon University campus has become the set for "Smart People Here" starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Dennis Quaid. "I've heard of this college for a long, long time. I grew up in Cincinnati which had a great arts college as well. This is always, like, the dream destination point for people," said Parker.The actors have been enjoying themselves while in the city as well.
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/10473819/detail.html

 

Mellon name woven into the fabric of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | December 5
There's no denying that the Mellon name is synonymous with Pittsburgh -- Mellon money fueled the city's emergence as this country's industrial center, and Mellon leadership laid the groundwork for the city's original renaissance. Current events can't change that undeniable history. ... "They financed some very, very key enterprises around here," Joel Tarr, professor of history and policy at Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, said of the Mellons and their bank. Among the businesses Mellon bankrolled that eventually grew into Fortune 500 firms: Gulf Oil, Alcoa, Koppers. Mellon also supplied capital for local entrepreneurs George Westinghouse and Henry Clay Frick.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06339/743651-28.stm

International

Qatar features in Carnegie Mellon book project
Gulf Times | December 7
Qatar is going to be a part of the prestigious Million Book Project (MBP), a unique concept pioneered by Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science and University Libraries, it is learnt. The goal of the MBP is to digitally scan 1mn books by 2007. Books are being scanned in many languages, with all having free-to-read access. "More than 600,000 books have already been scanned, according to the digital libraries initiative head Gabrielle Michalek," a source at Carnegie Mellon in Qatar explained. ... Michalek first saw the collection on a visit to Doha last year while in town to discuss the MBP. After returning to Pittsburgh, the home of Carnegie Mellon, she put a plan into motion to get these items digitally scanned. The long-time Carnegie Mellon librarian and digital libraries expert is expected to move to Doha to oversee a pilot program called the Qatar Heritage Rare Book Project in which 300 rare and 5,000 non-rare items are to be scanned.
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=121264&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16

 

Fixated on currency
The Times of India | December 7
China's remarkable growth has been financed by rapid expansion of money and bank credit that is producing an
increasingly unsustainable investment boom. This renews concerns that the country may not be able to avert a painful "boom-and-bust" cycle such as the one it endured in the mid-1990s. Monetary policy is usually the first line of defense in such situations. But China's monetary policy has been hamstrung by the tightly-managed exchange rate regime. ***This article was written by Marvin Goodfriend,Carnegie Mellon professor of economics.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/OPINION/Editorial/Fixated_on_currency/articleshow/733237.cms

 

It all depends on your point of view
The Economist | December 2
Computers can look, but they cannot see. Cheap digital sensors can act as their eyes, but programming machines to make sense of what they see is extremely difficult. Even when they can identify faces and vehicles, computers' inability to understand context results in ludicrous mistakes, such as finding faces in clouds or cars halfway up trees. Humans, by contrast, are able to construct a mental model of a scene from a photograph by taking into account the relative sizes of recognized objects, the laws of physics and some basic common sense. Now several research groups are building new computer-vision systems to enable computers to do the same thing. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University believe they have achieved a breakthrough in the reconstruction of three-dimensional models from two-dimensional images (pictured). Their system analyzes photographs of outdoor scenes, identifies "sky" and "ground" regions, and looks for visual cues that distinguish horizontal surfaces from vertical ones. It then reconstructs the scene by cutting and folding the original image, taking into account the constraints that apply in the real world: skies are blue, horizons are horizontal and most objects sit on the ground. "In our world things don't just float," says Martial Hebert, who co-developed the software with his colleagues Alexei Efros and Derek Hoiem.
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=1174221301&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1165845226&clientId=3259#fulltext

 

Carnegie Mellon launches website dedicated to Qatar's heritage and culture
The Peninsula | December 1
The Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar has launched a website dedicated to the heritage and culture of Qatar. The website, the first of its kind in Qatar, features detailed descriptions as well as photographs of 21 different cultural heritage sites including museums, forts, mosques, archaeological areas, traditional houses and souqs. The site is addressed www.heritageofqatar.org ... "We are thrilled that our first collaboration with Qatar is one that beautifully showcases the culture, heritage and the people of a country that has so graciously welcomed us. This website shows the deep and vibrant history of Qatar and Carnegie Mellon looks forward to many more ways in which we can work together with community officials and become part of Qatar's future," said Dr. Charles E. Thorpe, dean Carnegie Mellon Qatar.
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&month=December2006&file=Local_News2006120182620.xml

 

Rather than go abroad to study, Arabs bring foreign colleges to them
International Herald Tribune (AP) | December 1
For decades, top students in this muggy Persian Gulf city traveled a long way to go to college, usually in the United States or Britain. After the Sept. 11 attacks, some felt less welcome. Now they needn't leave home. Using government coffers heaving with energy revenues, U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf are spending billions to keep students at home by luring their favorite U.S. and European universities here. ... Carnegie Mellon's dean, Chuck Thorpe, expects his graduates will soon start high-tech companies using local venture capital. This is a place that has the vision to do education right and the resources to do it," said Thorpe. That mix is very rare.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/02/africa/ME_FEA_GEN_Qatar_US_Universities.php?page=2