February 13

As plans for wind farms rising out of the ocean along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts inch closer to fruition, a new study from Carnegie Mellon University suggests that hurricanes could destroy a significant number of turbines in some of these areas, even coming close to wiping them out.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/will-hurricanes-topple-u-s-wind-turbines/?scp=2&sq=%22Carnegie%20Mellon%22&st=cse

February 12

And while oil and gas companies know how to use hedging to smooth price drops, that tool doesn't work forever, noted Jay Apt, a professor of technology at Carnegie Mellon.

"It doesn't necessarily fix your cost" over the long term, he noted, but gives a range of price options. If the boom in natural gas supply collides with a surge in demand, perhaps from power plants looking to take advantage of the low prices of the cleaner-burning fuel, he said price volatility could return.

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP3e0b9812cd1c44829710ea9dba98efec.html?KEYWORDS=%22Carnegie+Mellon%22

February 11

Noah Smith, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, and colleagues studied how well sentiment expressed in Twitter messages toward President Barack Obama correlated with opinion surveys just before and after the 2008 presidential election.

They found an odd result: An outpouring of discussion about Mr. Obama on Twitter correlated during the campaign with upticks in opinion polls for him, but so did a groundswell of chatter about his chief opponent, John McCain. The researchers theorized that since Mr. Obama won the election comfortably, news about him or his rival tended to be good for him, and that the analyzed tweets may have been reflecting news developments rather than users' opinions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213242703490740.html?KEYWORDS=%22Carnegie+Mellon%22

February 7

People don't like to pay for every little thing. When you head to the Caribbean and end up pulling out your wallet every five minutes for drinks, food, and other indulgences, you can end up in a foul mood. Paying for one product or service at a time, says George Loewenstein, professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, "makes the costs and how much you're paying much more salient. You're forced to think about it more."    

http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2012/02/07/the-financial-benefits-of-all-inclusive-resorts

February 6

KINECT, Microsoft’s remote game console that sits in the corner of the room and registers a user’s intentions from his gestures, will be the shape of things to come if Chris Harrison, a researcher at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, has his way. Mr Harrison thinks Kinect’s basic principles could be extended into a technological panopticon that monitors people’s movements and provides them with what they want, wherever they want it.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/02/virtual-devices

February 6

A professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh is one of 17 people who will be honored with an award by the National Academy of Sciences.

Thirty-year-old Christopher Bettinger is an assistant professor in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering.

His work involves developing implantable medical devices that, one day, might be absorbed by the body once their work is done.

http://www.yorkdispatch.com/penn/ci_19902824

February 2

Twitter users say only a little more than a third of the tweets they receive are worthwhile and other tweets are either so-so or, in one out of four cases, not worth reading at all, according to a new study.

The study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-02-02/social-media/31016801_1_tweets-twitter-users-study

February 2

Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia are trying to top each other with the sweetest package of tax breaks for Shell Oil Co., which plans to build a huge new petrochemical refinery in the region.

But some are questioning why there's been so little public discussion over exactly what's being offered, and how the deals would impact communities and the region.

"Who's going to be paying for the roads?" asked Robert P. Strauss, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. "You have to think through very carefully what the additional costs will be."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/states-offer-big-tax-breaks-shell-oil-plant-15492786#.TyqTlyMf9qQ

February 2

While fashionable and possibly advantageous, the adoption of high-tech envelopes has been slow. Skeptical architects worry that operable components are magnets for value-engineering. Or they foresee them being unplugged and later stripped off their buildings due to poor performance or deficient maintenance. Other firms cite client interests, noting such high-profile failures as the broken actuators on the sun-control diaphragms cladding Jean Nouvel’s 1988 Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris. “Culturally, we have little confidence in what we’re doing, and in systems integration for these hybrids,” says Volker Hartkopf, director of the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. “Yes, these things can break, but so can fans, dampers, thermostats, and so many other things we take for granted.”

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/green/archives/0604edit-1.asp