August 26

This production via students at Carnegie Mellon makes a worthy addition to FringeNYC with a show that demonstrates a lot of promising talent. It tackles the familiar tale of a woman who puts off a murderous king by spinning tales that are so captivating he can't bear to kill the storyteller until he's heard the end and keeps putting off her death night after night until he falls in love and has a change of heart. Playwright Aidaa Peerzada emphasizes Sheherizade's desire to protect all the other women who would be killed by this king on their wedding nights, one after the other.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/theater-fringenyc-roundup_b_1831770.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment&ir=Entertainment  

August 25

This is true for a slew of reasons: chief among them, the recognition that hordes of us are stressed out, that stress wreaks havoc upon our bodies and that the practice of meditation has significant and measurable stress-reduction properties.

In a recent study led by J. David Creswell, assistant professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, mindfulness-based meditation continues to reveal itself as a therapeutic powerhouse, with far-reaching influence on both psychological and physical health.

http://us.cnn.com/2012/08/25/health/meditation-loneliness-inflammation-enayati/index.html?iref=24hours  

August 21

As a judge, I got a first-hand look at the strengths and weaknesses of the test. First of all, there’s the five-minute time limit – an arbitrary figure mentioned by Turing in his paper. The shorter the conversation, the greater the computer’s advantage; the longer the interrogation, the higher the probability that the computer will give itself away – typically by changing the subject for no reason, or by not being able to answer a question. The 30 per cent mark, too, is arbitrary.

But what about the nature of the test itself? Traditionally, language has been as the ultimate hallmark of intelligence, which is why Turing chose to focus on it. Yet while it may be our most impressive cognitive tool, it is certainly not the only one. In fact, what gives our species its edge may be the sheer variety of skills we have at our disposal, rather than its proficiency at any one task. “Human intelligence,” says Manuela Veloso, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, “has to do with the breadth of things that we can do.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9489002/How-long-before-robots-can-think-like-us.html

August 17

The agency attributed the decline to a combination of three factors: a mild winter, reduced demand for gasoline and, most significant, a drop in coal-fired electricity generation because of historically low natural gas prices. Whether emissions will continue to drop or begin to rise again, however, remains to be seen, experts said Friday.
“While this is a positive step, we shouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, we’ve got plenty of natural gas, we can just switch to that, problem solved,’ and move on,” said Jay Apt, the director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, who was not involved in compiling the study.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/a-20-year-low-in-u-s-carbon-emissions/  

August 16

You’ll find more than a couple green roofs at this cutting-edge school. Currently, Carnegie Mellon is home to six green rooftops, located at Hamerschlag Hall, the Mellon Institute, Porter Hall, the Gates Center, the Posner Center, and Doherty Hall. Most buildings use a tray system and a number are equipped with water collection tanks that provide water that is used for other purposes on campus, though they run the gamut from full rooftop coverings to small gardens for students to enjoy. The school has also proven to be a green leader in solar energy, recycling, and water management.

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2012/08/16/20-colleges-embracing-the-green-roof-trend/

August 15

An imagination geared toward making robots from cardboard boxes can quickly fade once the lure of playtime is replaced with a fear of science and technology learning.

But a team of Carnegie Mellon University researchers are betting that a toy designed to bring cardboard friends to life could be the tool that makes creating technology just another part of play.

The Hummingbird -- a kit featuring electronic sensors, motors and everything else required to turn a craft project into a robot -- was unrolled for commercial sale in July after six years of research.

http://www.newsday.com/business/technology/high-tech-kit-lets-kids-make-lifelike-robots-1.3905875?qr=1  

August 3

EteRNA is a joint product out of Carnegie Mellon and Stanford which hopes to use RNA chains produced in the game to create a real life library of stable RNA patterns for research. While that’s all well and good it also helps that the game they created to do it is ACTUALLY FUN and proves that science, when properly packaged, is still the best puzzle game on the market.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/260242/free_friday_gaming_with_science_and_wikipedia.html  

August 2

Artificial Intelligence: Representation and Problem Solving
Carnegie Mellon University

The theory and practice of Artificial Intelligence sit at the core of this class, exploring the mathematical and scientific foundations as well as the big-picture implications of autonomous intelligent agents. The future is closer than we think, and students who take this course are learning necessary skills and concepts that will help them in the next chapter of integrated intelligence.

http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/campuslife/10-college-courses-that-didnt-exist-10-years-ago