Carnegie Mellon Maintains Top 25 Standing in U.S. News & World Report...Carnegie Mellon ranked 22nd and its undergraduate programs in engineering and business ranked among the 10 best in the country in U.S. News & World Report's annual survey of "America's Best Colleges." Undergraduate business and engineering programs were ranked fifth and eighth, respectively. U.S. News & World Report annually ranks engineering and business programs, as well as specialty areas within those disciplines. In business specialty offerings, Carnegie Mellon ranked second in management information systems, quantitative analysis, and production and operations management and fifth in supply chain management. In engineering specialties, Carnegie Mellon ranked third best in computer engineering. For more, click here.

DreamWorks CEO Speaks on Campus...Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive officer of DreamWorks Animation SKG™, spoke on campus earlier this month about DreamWorks and the future of animation. As part of the talk, members of the campus community were treated to the world premier of the trailer for DreamWorks' forthcoming film, "Over the Hedge." Katzenberg also offered some advice for audience members. "If you have a love, a passion, an expertise—that will open a door for you, all you have to do is be ambitious and passionate about it. Find that one thing you really love and work really hard on it," he said. DreamWorks' animation division is known for blockbusters like "Shrek" and "Shrek 2."

CAUSE To Spearhead Pittsburgh African-American Oral History Project...The Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) in the Department of History will launch a three-year oral history project beginning in 2006 on African Americans in the city of Pittsburgh since World War II. This project will collect and preserve the memories of the first and second post-World War II generations of African Americans through recordings of their oral recollections as they entered the work force, started families, built communities and waged struggles against inequality. For more, click here.

MSREC Receives $6.5 Million for Materials Science Research...The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) will receive $6.5 million over the next six years from the National Science Foundation to continue creating new, super-efficient materials for industry. "Our goal is to create new paradigms for interdisciplinary work that apply the principles of basic science and engineering to understanding the behavior, development and application of various materials," said Gregory S. Rohrer, head of MRSEC and the Materials Science and Engineering Department. For more, click here.

Researchers Create Center to Study Airborne Particles...Carnegie Mellon researchers led by Chemical Engineering and Chemistry Professor Neil Donahue have created a center to pinpoint the sources and effects of harmful atmospheric particles. The $2 million Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies (CAPS) will conduct laboratory and field tests to investigate the health effects of particulate matter and to understand the role of regional transport of these airborne particles. A major objective of the center is to guide public policy with comprehensive, timely research. For more, click here.

Scientists Create Molecule With Potential To Build Nanodevices...A team of investigators at Carnegie Mellon has shown that the binding of metal ions can mediate the formation of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) duplexes from single strands of PNA that are only partly complementary. This result opens new opportunities to create functional, three-dimensional nanosize structures such as molecular-scale electronic circuits, which could reduce the size of today's common electronic devices by thousands of times. For more, click here.

InterACT Demonstrates Communication Breakthroughs...Carnegie Mellon and the University of Karlsruhe's joint International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies (InterACT) held an international videoconference last month to demonstrate new breakthroughs in cross-lingual communication. Alex Waibel, InterACT director and a faculty member at both institutions, demonstrated domain-independent, speech-to-speech translation in a lecture, which was simultaneously translated from English to Spanish to German. According to Waibel, current speech-to-speech translation systems cannot enable translation of large, open domains including lectures, television broadcasts, meetings or telephone conversations. The new technology developed by InterACT researchers fills that gap and makes it possible to extend such systems to other languages and lecture types. For more, click here.

Researchers Help Create Center for Sustainable Engineering...A collaborative research team led by Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Cliff Davidson and researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Arizona State University plans to revolutionize engineering education by creating the Center for Sustainable Engineering. The center, supported by $1.7 million from the National Science Foundation and $350,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency is designed to help future engineers better manage increased stress on the world's limited resources. The center plans to hold workshops to improve engineering faculty teaching, create a Web site with peer-reviewed educational materials about sustainable engineering and conduct a nationwide survey of sustainable engineering programs and courses to benchmark the status of education in this emerging discipline. For more, click here.

Understanding Customers Key to Competing with Wal-Mart...New research from Tepper School Professor Vishal Singh suggests that small businesses can compete effectively with Wal-Mart by using existing customer data to develop new sales and marketing strategies. The research also identifies several key characteristics of customers that tend to switch to a mega-retailer, allowing local retailers to aggressively target those customers who are likely to defect. Researchers analyzed customer behavior for a small-town supermarket on the East Coast for a period of 20 months, before and after a Wal-Mart Supercenter moved in two miles away. The study is one of the first to quantify the impact of a mega-retailer on a traditional grocery chain. For more, click here.

Largest Bilingual Child Language Database Added To CHILDES System...Carnegie Mellon's Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) now includes the Hong Kong Bilingual Child Language Corpus, the world's largest video-linked database of children learning two first languages. CHILDES is an online, searchable collection of interactions that demonstrate how children learn language in a variety of settings created by Psychology Professor Brian MacWhinney in 1984. The Hong Kong database features 170 hours of audio and video files of four families raising their children bilingually in Cantonese and English. The project, which includes transcripts and searchable video and audio segments, took 10 years to compile. "Researchers around the world are now relying on software developed at Carnegie Mellon to study the acquisition of child language," MacWhinney said. For more, click here.

USDA Grant Aims To Enhance Minority Students' Lab Skills...Carnegie Mellon's Department of Chemistry and Lehman College, an independent college of the City University of New York (CUNY), have received $350,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to establish a cooperative program that enhances minority students' laboratory skills and expands the science curriculum for CUNY undergraduates. Part of the grant will leverage Carnegie Mellon's expertise in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry to assist Lehman in upgrading its NMR facility and introduce a virtual mass spectrometry lab to the curriculum. The grant will also allow the two institutions to create a three-year summer internship program for CUNY undergraduates to study at Carnegie Mellon. For more, click here.

Facial Expressions Reveal How the Body Reacts to Stress...A new study has found that people who respond to stressful situations with angry facial expressions, rather than fearful expressions, are less likely to suffer such ill effects of stress as high blood pressure and high stress hormone secretion. The paper, authored by scholars at Carnegie Mellon; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine was published in the November 14 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. The findings challenge two long-held assumptions: one, that stress elicits undifferentiated negative emotions and as a consequence produces a uniform biological response; and two, that all negative emotions, such as fear and anger, provoke the same psychological and biological reactions. Jennifer Lerner, the Estella Loomis McCandless Associate Professor of Psychology and Decision Science, was lead author of the study. For more, click here.

Green Catalyst Destroys Toxic Compounds in Pesticides and Munitions...A chemical catalyst developed at Carnegie Mellon completely destroys dangerous nitrophenols in laboratory tests, according to doctoral student Arani Chanda, who presented his findings at the 230th meeting of the American Chemical Society. Nitrophenols are man-made pollutants that are toxic to aquatic life and cannot be destroyed by existing means. The catalyst, one of a family of catalysts called Fe-TAML®s (tetra-amido macrocyclic ligand), works with hydrogen peroxide to destroy the pollutant. Fe-TAMLs already have shown promise in killing a simulant of a biological warfare agent (anthrax), reducing fuel pollutants, treating pulp and paper processing byproducts, and detoxifying pesticides. For more, click here.

ETC Videogame Simulation Encourages Peace in the Middle East...A team of students enrolled in the Master of Entertainment Technology (MET) program have developed a videogame simulation to teach and encourage players to create peace. Players assume the role of the Palestinian president or the Israeli prime minister and take on the challenging task of maintaining peace in one of the world's most volatile places. "PeaceMaker is a unique videogame in that it teaches students how to achieve peace through negotiation and cooperation, unlike many videogames that rely on violence," said Asi Burak, the producer of PeaceMaker. For more, click here.

Software Enables Detailed Views of Hurricane Damage on the Web...Software developed by scientists at Carnegie Mellon and NASA Ames Research Center was used on the Google Earth Web site (https://earth.google.com/) to give people detailed views of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Google Earth features a globe showing topographical and manmade objects on the Earth's surface. More than 7,300 aerial photos taken by the Remote Sensing Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were overlaid onto Google Earth with Carnegie Mellon's software, which is part of the Global Connection project. Illah Nourbakhsh, associate professor in the Robotics Institute, is co-principal investigator on the project. For more, click here.

MicroRNAS Play Vital Role in Development...A research team led by Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Jonathan Minden has found evidence that a class of molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs) plays an important role in regulating how eggs develop just before the onset of fertilization. Specifically, miRNAs regulate egg production in a process called oogenesis. MiRNAs silence genes by binding to genetic elements called messenger RNA and preventing them from making new proteins—the molecules primarily responsible for cell activities. This research has important implications for understanding reproduction and development. For more, click here.


Crew Club Makes History . . . For the first time in Carnegie Mellon history the Crew Club sent four boats to the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, one of the largest events of its kind in the world. The Men's Open 4+ and the Women's Lightweight 4+ received invitations to the late October event based on their strong performances at the 2004 Head of the Charles, and the Men's Youth 4+ and Women's Open 4+ shells gained entry through the event's lottery system. “All four boats rowed against tough competition and represented the team well,” said team member and publicity director Adam Suhy. Other highlights this year, included the Women's Club 8+ winning the Pennsylvania Governor's Cup at the Head of the Ohio Regatta in Pittsburgh, silver medals for the Novice Women's 4+ at the Head of the Occoquan in Fairfax, Va., and an overall victory over Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh in a novice event in Pittsburgh on Nov. 12. For more on the Crew Club, click here.