From June 19 to June 25, Carnegie Mellon Media Relations counted 264 references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.

National

Carnegie Mellon robot racers plot successor to Boss
Scientific American Blog | June 25
Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing team plans to roll out a leaner and meaner successor to its driverless Boss SUV by the end of the year. The team's first Boss won DARPA's 2007 Urban Challenge, which pitted autonomous autos against one another in a race through simulated city traffic. Tartan is now choosing the make and model of the vehicle that will carry all sorts of the latest lasers, cameras, and other gizmos needed to navigate the world without a human in the cockpit.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=carnegie-mellon-robot-racers-plot-s-2009-06-25

 

Fed takes on unprecedented role
NPR | June 24
Professor Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University is skeptical. He doesn't think the Fed will be able to remove the massive stimulus from the economy before inflation erupts. "I have no reason to believe that that would happen, because it's only happened once, and that was when Paul Volcker did it," he says.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105871259

 

The Fed holds steady: Mixed signals on the economy
TIME | June 24
When the FOMC emerged from a two-day meeting on June 24, though, it didn't even offer a definite signal on that. "There's clearly a debate going on within the Fed as to what they should do next, and there's no need to make a decision yet," says Marvin Goodfriend, a former chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond who now teaches at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. "The Fed is essentially buying time before it commits to whether the disinflation risk is greater or the inflation risk is greater."
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1906961,00.html

 

6 common shopping traps—And how to avoid them
Oprah.com | July Issue
Ironically, "when people feel economically insecure, they tend to reassure themselves by shopping," says George Loewenstein, PhD, professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The thinking is: "If I were economically secure, I would go shopping, so if I'm shopping, I must be economically secure."
http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200907-omag-shopping

Education for Leadership

Students share their worlds through gigapans
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | June 23
They were part of a global pen pal program created by Carnegie Mellon University and UNESCO International Bureau of Education to let students create panoramic pictures using GigaPan cameras to exchange with other schools.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_630641.html

Arts and Humanities

Game seems to play favorites with players of a certain trait
NewsOK.com | June 23
Q: What’s the best guarantee in life for having a dream come true? A: If it’s your dream, you’re the guarantee, via the classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Dreams can color your thinking about plans and your closest friends, especially if nighttime reveries mirror what you believe, said Bruce Bower in "Nighttime Thoughts See Light of Day” in Science News. People in diverse cultures generally assume that dreams contain hidden truth, say Carey Morewedge of Carnegie Mellon University and Michael Norton of Harvard University. In fact, many dreamers feel these provide more meaningful insight than do comparable waking thoughts.
http://newsok.com/strange-but-true/article/3379791

Information Technology

Free tools for job seekers
HispanicBusiness.com | June 19
All that remains is to explain to patrons the concept behind CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart), the program that asks users to transcribe words displayed as distorted images to prove that they are human and not robots. If our new email users are too irritated and confused by this hurdle, we can explain that, in many cases, their typing is being put to good use. In a program called re CAPTCHA, Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn places images from old faded documents into the program. When we interpret the distorted text, we are actually helping to transcribe an historical document into digital format, which proves once again that humans are the best OCR (optical character recognition) systems in existence.
http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/newswire/2009/6/19/free_tools_for_job_seekers.htm

Biotechnology

Cells are like robust computational systems, say reports
OBBeC.com | June 22
According to a report published recently in the online journal Molecular Systems Biology by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, gene regulatory networks in cell nuclei are similar to cloud computing networks, such as Google or Yahoo. The similarity is that each system keeps working despite the failure of individual components, whether they are master genes or computer processors.
http://www.obbec.com/news/1136-computational-system/2617-cells-are-like-robust-computational-systems-say-reports

Environment

Just say no: Climate skeptics and deniers
Cleantech Blog | June 22
I'm somewhat knowledgeable about technologies to address climate change, but I'm less knowledgeable about climate science per se, and therefore less able to separate the wheat from the chaff in the climate debates. So, I was very pleased to when the Cleveland office of URS Corporation (NYSE: URS) and Ideastream recently hosted a presentation by someone who understands the issues very well: Peter Adams, Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://www.cleantechblog.com/2009/06/just-say-no-climate-skeptics-and.html

Regional Impact

Wilkinsburg home buyers may get tax break
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 25
But a study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Public Policy and Management in 2007 noted that the actual amount of taxes paid by Wilkinsburg residents is in line with the rest of the county, despite the high rates. It also says the best solution for Wilkinsburg to attract new residents and incrementally lower taxes is to find ways to increase the value of properties in the borough.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09176/979608-56.stm

Local

Carnegie Mellon names new board chairman
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 22
Carnegie Mellon University has named a new chairman and chair of the executive committee of its board of trustees. Raymond J. Lane, a managing partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a global venture capital firm, will succeed board chairman David Shapira in both roles effective July 1.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09173/979126-100.stm

 

Smart move to use Smartphones For banking?
WTAE-TV News | June 24
Carnegie Mellon University professor and former FCC chief technologist David Farber says that in general, mobile banking is as safe as a logging in from a home computer. "It's pretty secure -- more secure than your debit card," said Farber. Still, cell phones could lead to dangerous links if users are not careful and could contain sensitive information if stolen.
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/call4action/19848626/detail.html

International

Presidential honors
Chemical and Engineering News | June 24
Among the 2009 award winners is Carnegie Mellon University chemistry professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, who received the Academic Award for developing atom-transfer radical polymerization techniques that use small amounts of a copper catalyst in conjunction with environmentally friendly reducing agents or radical initiators. This research has opened up greener routes to advanced polymeric materials.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/87/i26/8726news4.html

 

Leaving 'friendprints'
Alibaba News Channel | June 22
Research conducted by Alessandro Acquisti, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of public policy and management who also spoke at the conference, has found that individuals' notions of privacy are malleable depending on the context of an interaction. According to Acquisti, people are more likely to divulge key personal information--their photo, birthday, hometown, address and phone number--on social networking sites than they would on other Web sites. His 2005 study highlighted privacy concerns such as online and physical stalking.
http://news.alibaba.com/article/detail/entrepreneur/100122396-1-leaving-%2527friendprints%2527.html

 

Carnegie Mellon reappoints engineering dean
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | June 25
Carnegie Mellon University today announced the reappointment of Pradeep K. Khosla to a second five-year term as dean of its engineering college. Dr. Khosla's reappointment as head of the Carnegie Institute of Technology is effective July 1, the university said. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon and has been a member of the institute's faculty since 1986.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09176/979886-100.stm#ixzz0JX91TLTP&D