From November 10 to November 16, Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 210 references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.

National

Happy people may suffer fewer colds
CNN (Reuters) | November 16
Staying positive through the cold season could be your best defense against getting sick, new study findings suggest. In an experiment that exposed healthy volunteers to a cold or flu virus, researchers found that people with a generally sunny disposition were less likely to fall ill. The findings, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, build on evidence that a "positive emotional style" can help ward off the common cold and other illnesses. Researchers believe the reasons may be both objective--as in happiness boosting immune function--and subjective--as in happy people being less troubled by a scratchy throat or runny nose. "People with a positive emotional style may have different immune responses to the virus," explained lead study author Dr. Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "And when they do get a cold, they may interpret their illness as being less severe." Cohen and his colleagues had found in a previous study that happier people seemed less susceptible to catching a cold, but some questions remained as to whether the emotional trait itself had the effect.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/11/15/happy.colds.reut/

 

Guarded hope for dope reform
Wired News | November 15
It's possible that Congress will tackle the "100-to-1" disparity that haunts federal law about cocaine possession. Currently, according to a recent Los Angeles Times commentary, a person caught with a briefcase full of 5,000 grams of powder cocaine will get a mandatory 10-year sentence -- just like a person caught with 50 grams of rock cocaine, about the weight of a candy bar. The disparity was to be discussed at a hearing of the U.S. Sentencing Commission on Tuesday. But the fact is that the federal criminal justice system accounts for less than 20 percent of all people imprisoned for violating drug laws, said Jonathan P. Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies drug policy.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,72120-0.html?tw=wn_index_16

 

Video game programs look for new ways to use games
NPR | November 15
This year, the University of Southern California enrolled its first class of undergraduate students who will major in video-game development. The school is not the first major university to have a program in video games. But the curriculum is not all about car races and shootouts. ***This interview mentions Carnegie Mellon's video game development courses. Check out the URL to listen.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6484624

 

Wall Street warms to finance degree with focus on math
The Wall Street Journal | November 14
Just a few years ago, the University of California, Berkeley, found its master's degree in financial engineering a hard sell. Wall Street had cut back sharply on hiring, and many recruiters were still fixated on M.B.A. graduates... Specialized master's programs have been proliferating lately-- everything from luxury-goods marketing to health-care management--but the financial-mathematics degree is especially hot. Carnegie Mellon University, for example, reports a 21 percent increase in applications for its computational-finance master's so far this year, after a 48 percent jump last year. ... Carnegie Mellon's master's in computational finance, a pioneer in the field, is one of the most interdisciplinary. Offered in both New York and Pittsburgh, the program brings together four colleges: mathematical sciences, statistics, the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management and the Tepper School of Business, which administers it. Courses cover such topics as stochastic calculus, options and asset pricing, probability, and financial risk management. Carnegie Mellon is also distinctive because M.B.A. students can earn the computational-finance master's with just one extra semester of courses. "Our regular M.B.A. students are getting jealous of the dual-degree graduates because recruiters want to interview them first," says Kenneth Dunn, dean of the Tepper School.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116346714347122226-search.html?KEYWORDS=%22carnegie+mellon%22&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

 

JJSS
The Wall Street Journal | November 10
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber represented much of what America loves and admires about France. With his passing, after a long and difficult illness, France has lost a controversial giant, the U.S. has lost a great friend, and I have lost my beloved godfather. ... A graduate of the elite École Polytechnique, he was obsessed with science, technology and education, and foresaw the computer age before anyone else in Europe. When President Mitterrand was elected in 1981, and JJSS feared that the Socialist nationalization program would take the country backward, he again looked to the U.S. for inspiration. He created the World Center for Computer Science and brought to Paris America's greatest experts--Steve Jobs of Apple, Nick Negroponte of MIT, Raj Reddy of Carnegie Mellon and many others--to convince the new president that there must be "a computer in every classroom."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116311890931819179-search.html?KEYWORDS=JJSS&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

 

Business schools set course for charted waters
The Wall Street Journal | November 10
C.Y. Tung, a Chinese shipping magnate, was fond of saying that ships can transport ideas as well as cargo. ... Shipboard education--and with it business education--will receive another boost next September when a new program for undergraduate and graduate students launches on its maiden voyage. The program, called the Scholar Ship, is backed by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and six universities from around the world, including the University of California, Berkeley, and Macquarie University in Australia. ... Robert E. Kelley is a professor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who sailed on Semester at Sea in spring 2000 and spring 2003. Prof. Kelley says he spent more time than usual counseling his students on their career and education paths because he frequently saw them in informal settings--at meals, in the lounge or on deck watching the sunset. "The voyage was having a life-altering impact," says Prof. Kelley. "A student was going to be an accountant and now he wants to go into the Peace Corps." He adds: "Students and faculty don't really have a place to hide from each other."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116310840505519009-search.html?KEYWORDS=Business+schools+set+course+for+charted+waters&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

Education for Leadership

District college football: Carnegie Mellon, W&J are headed to playoffs
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | November 13
Carnegie Mellon coach Rich Lackner and his players huddled in an apartment on campus that received ESPN News, put down their pizza and stopped talking when the pairings for the NCAA Division III football playoffs flashed on the television screen. Name by name were scrolled until Carnegie Mellon finally appeared."We all started cheering," Lackner said. "When you're leaving it up to a committee choosing you, there were a little bit of butterflies until we saw our name pop up."Carnegie Mellon (10-0), which received an at-large bid, will make its first appearance in the playoffs since 1990 when it plays host to Millsaps (Miss.) College (7-3) in the first round at noon Saturday at Gesling Stadium.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06317/737949-134.stm

Arts and Humanities

Film kitchen
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | November 13
The next Film Kitchen program will examine an organization that delivers more than 100,000 hot lunches daily in Mumbai, India. It's the subject of a documentary produced by Paul Goodman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. Working with a small film crew, he documented the system that allows 4,500 dabbawallas, most of them illiterate, to use rail, bicycle and foot power to deliver home-cooked meals to workers around Mumbai.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06317/737876-254.stm

 

Stage review: Brecht's 'Man is Man,' Carnegie Mellon uptown
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | November 10
Here's a treat. In the interest, I assume, of multiplying opportunities for students and audience both, Carnegie Mellon has diversified its usual season of big mainstage shows, each running a couple of weeks, offering instead a whole smorgasbord of productions big and small, most running for one week or less. And in the case of Kathleen Amshoff's "Man Is Man," they've gone even further--or allowed her to go further--by loosing the usual institutional bonds to let her take her show off-campus.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06314/737301-346.stm

Information Technology

Designs on a better redesign
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | November 16
There's an entire industry devoted to the research of usability, or how easily a person can use a product. Philosopher John Stuart Mill might have summed up its goals when he said: "It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." Taking his words a step further, the experts at MAYA Design, a South Side design laboratory and consulting firm, Tuesday night hosted a competitive critique of poorly designed products--to show the importance of good design. ... Here are some problems and solutions presented during MAYA Design's World Usability Day event: ... Solution: Buy a stove that has the burners and knobs in a slightly arched arrangement, allowing the user to easily recognize which knob goes with each burner, said Bonnie E. John, a professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_480003.html

 

Content analytics
KMWorld | November 15
IBM has announced major steps intended to assist in the open development and standardization of search and content analytics software. The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standard has established a technical committee to standardize the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) specification. Additionally, the Apache Software Foundation has established an incubator project for developing UIMA-based software. These efforts are based on IBM's development of UIMA software and its experience with clients and partners in deploying content analytic solutions. ... In addition, Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technology Institute is hosting a UIMA Component Repository, where developers can post information about their analytics components and anyone can find out more about free and commercially available UIMA-compliant analytics.
http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=18670

 

MIGS: The best of the rest
Gamasutra | November 10
The Montreal International Games Summit (MIGS) featured a fair number of talks given as parallel sessions between the various keynotes that have been reviewed here on Gamasutra. ... In the afternoon, John Buchanan from Carnegie Mellon University offered some valuable hints from his experience both as an academic and as head of research for Electronic Arts in building a good relationship between the two. Such relationships can be profitable since academia needs interesting problems on which to work, and game developers need solutions to problems. Companies can invest in building bridges to academia in different ways and at varying degrees. Good communication was a leitmotiv here, as in most of the other presentations.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11660

Environment

Properly inflated tires are safer, better for environment
Journal Star | November 15
When tires are not inflated to the pounds per square inch rating recommended by manufacturers, they are less “round” and require more energy to begin moving and maintain speed. So underinflated tires do indeed contribute to pollution and increase fuel costs. An informal study by students at Carnegie Mellon University found that the majority of cars on U.S. roads are operating on tires inflated to only 80 percent of capacity. According to the Web site fueleconomy.gov, inflating tires to their proper pressure can improve mileage by about 3.3 percent; leaving them under-inflated can lower mileage by 0.4 percent for every one PSI drop in pressure of all four tires.
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/11/15/402/doc455b9f338ff6e079338855.txt

 

A green future
Inside Higher Ed | November 14
There is mounting evidence, corroborated by the world’s leading scientists, that planet earth is on fire, that global warming is an inexorable reality, that there is scant need for further studies. The evidence submitted cries for individual and collective solutions. Can natural-resource-dependent institutions, like colleges, play an active, if not leading, role in saving the planet? Yes. Should they? Yes. ... The impetus for sustainable design and green practices most often comes from student groups or faculty members. Carnegie Mellon University’s living roof started as a “what if” posed by three engineering students. Student initiative led the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh to establish an aquatics research lab to study Wisconsin’s waters.
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/14/marthers

Regional Impact

Carnegie Mellon, UPMC to research health care
Pittsburgh Business Times | November 9
Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center signed a five-year, $10 million deal for research in computer science, engineering, robotics and other advanced technology areas related to health care. ... "This arrangement allows us to expand on our considerable strengths in information technology, robotics, engineering, design and life sciences," said Carnegie Mellon senior vice president and provost Mark Kamlet. "Our scientists also will gain insight into some of the problems and challenges that are among the greatest concerns in health care today.
http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2006/11/06/daily27.html

Local

Map of sea urchin's genes is complete
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | November 15
An international team of nearly 250 scientists reported Friday that they had determined the exact order of all 814 million letters of DNA code that carry the instructions for making and maintaining a sea urchin. Sea urchin expert Charles Ettensohn, of Carnegie Mellon University, and his team were part of the multicenter, international consortium. They focused on the genes for skeleton formation, known as biomineralization. Complete sequencing of the sea urchin genome will make many more experiments possible, he said. "It's good times for those of us who work with the system," Dr. Ettensohn said. "It's almost like nirvana."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06319/738288-84.stm

 

Those directors are really smart people
Beaver County Times | November 12
College professors seldom look like Dennis Quaid. Randy Quaid maybe, but not so much the handsomer Dennis, which means moviegoers must suspend disbelief when they see "Smart People," the latest film using Pittsburgh as its backdrop. For "Smart People," Dennis Quaid will play a Carnegie Mellon University professor who falls in love with a doctor (Sarah Jessica Parker). The romantic comedy also features Thomas Haden Church (Oscar nominated for "Sideways") as the professor's adopted brother. Parker won't arrive in Pittsburgh until after Thanksgiving to shoot scenes inside Allegheny General Hospital, but Quaid and Church have been in town all week and have ingrained themselves with the Carnegie Mellon community, pledging to conduct a Q&A with the school's film students, says college spokeswoman Sophie Nassif.
http://www.timesonline.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17456628&BRD=2305&PAG=461&dept_id=478569&rfi=8

International

Bringing foreign universities to India
The Hindu | November 14
Foreign universities outside India play a large role in the Indian higher education scene. They attract many thousands of Indian students to their campuses each year — 80,466 Indians enrolled in U.S. institutions alone in 2004-05 and at least eight other countries actively recruit Indian students. Graduates of accredited foreign institutions play important roles in the development of India upon their return home. ... Meanwhile, U.S. educational institutions are increasingly interested in India as a nation which is, and will continue to be, an important world force in the coming decades. University presidential delegations from, to name a few, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and Purdue Universities, and other high-level delegations including one from the Asia Society, have come to India in the past two years to learn more about and from the country.
http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/14/stories/2006111402491000.htm