Free Republic

Ten Jewish students have filed a federal civil rights suit against The Cooper Union for failing to protect them and their classmates from antisemitism. The complaint filed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday cites an Oct. 25, 2023 incident in which the students said feared for their lives while locked in the campus library ... “Cooper Union has failed to adequately protect not just our clients but other Jewish students on campus in the face of pro-Hamas hate,” ... “No student should be subjected to intimidation, fear or hatred when pursuing an education,” ... The suit claims Cooper Union — a...

In the highly competitive race to get self-driving cars to the market, most companies hold their secrets close. But when it comes to helping those cars figure out where they are on the road, some experts are ready to open up. Argo AI, based in the Strip District, and Aptiv, based in O’Hara, publicly released some of their own data sets earlier this year in an effort to further advancement in the field. The companies shared parts of their own maps of cities where they are testing self-driving cars, including Pittsburgh. That may seem strange considering the abundance of applications...

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pennsylvania, have used a novel 3D bioprinting method to build functional parts of the human heart. According to a study published in Science, an advanced version of Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH) technology was developed to 3D print collagen for small blood vessels, valves, and beating ventricles. FRESH technology is patented to FluidForm, a Massachusetts-based medical startup. Professor Adam Feinberg, CTO and co-founder, FluidForm, and Principal Investigator at the Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics Group, CMU, said: “We now have the ability to build constructs that recapitulate key structural, mechanical, and biological properties...

The New York Times reports that a new study by researchers from Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Pennsylvania scanned 22,484 porn sites and discovered that they are riddled with tracking tools feeding data back to third party tech firms such as Facebook, Google, and Oracle. “Our results indicate tracking is endemic on pornography websites: 93% of pages leak user data to a third-party,” the study concludes. The study scanned the sites in March of 2018 and found that 74 percent of trackers came from Google or its subsidiaries, 24 percent came from Oracle and 10 percent came from...

A new collection of transportation agencies and universities is taking one small step toward transforming the Rust Belt into a place associated with the future instead of the past. Eleven agencies and institutions located in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have formed the Smart Belt Coalition, which will spur joint efforts on the testing and deployment of autonomous and connected cars. The collaboration comes on the heels of a legislative overhaul of Michigan regulations last month, which have been relaxed to spur the testing of self-driving technology on the state’s public roads. Ohio and Pennsylvania do not have laws on the...

PITTSBURGH - Police at Carnegie Mellon University have issued a warning about online blackmail incidents targeting students at the university and other Pittsburgh-area colleges. An alert posted on the CMU website says the incidents involve demands for payment to prevent the release of sensitive videos and photographs. Police said male students have been contacted on social media and asked to continue the conversation on Skype. The victims were encouraged to remove their clothes and perform sexual acts in view of the camera. Afterward, an unknown person claiming to have recorded the event demanded money to prevent the release of the...

Opting for that plate of bacon instead of a salad can actually help save the environment. A newly released study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that following the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommendations to eat more fruits, vegetables, dairy, and seafood is more harmful to the environment than eating meat. According to the study, a vegetarian diet requires more greenhouse gas emissions per calorie than meat. ...

Shortage of organs for transplantation has been one of the most challenging endeavor that patients, families and health care providers face today. But now, a possible novel answer to organ shortage has arrived: 3D printing of substitute organs. Numerous measures have been implemented to widen the pool of organ donors all across the U.S. Interventions to address the problem of organ shortage include national programs to heighten deceased donor donation, paired donor exchanges and split organ donation, among many others. Actions to hasten public awareness, enhance efficiency of donation mechanism and standardize donation policies have resulted in remarkable rates of...

Strategy games such as chess have long been considered important ways to measure artificial intelligence. But A.I. researchers at Carnegie Mellon University chose a different, and in some ways, more challenging game: poker. Susan Koeppen of CBS Pittsburgh station KDKA reports on what happens when the chips are down. Doug Polk, 26, is considered the best heads up, or one on one, no limit Texas hold 'em player in the world. He's defeated countless opponents and won millions of dollars. Polk bet his reputation that he could beat Claudico, Carnegie Mellon's artificial intelligence super computer.

<p>Billionaire capitalist George Soros, whose shrewd speculation conquered world markets, delivered a scathing denunciation of Bush administration policies yesterday, accusing the White House of shirking its responsibility as the world's only superpower.</p> <p>In a speech before 500 at Carnegie Mellon University, Soros said the Bush administration had a "visceral aversion to international cooperation," which is why it is willing to ignore world opinion in its rush to wage war with Iraq.</p>

Carnegie Mellon University Office of the President, Dr. Subra Suresh 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 412-268-2000 Dear Dr. Suresh: This letter is being sent to you on behalf of the Qatar Awareness Campaign Coalition. The purpose is to inform you and the public of the activities of Qatar, the country whose capital hosts a campus of Carnegie Mellon University. Since 2001, the Qatar Foundation has borne all campus development costs associated with the campus in Doha’s Education City. (Also see here.) Since 2004, Carnegie Mellon has operated Carnegie Mellon in Qatar, as part of Qatar’s Education City. The educational...

The war against the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality has a new heroine. Move over, Sandra Fluke. In the run-up to the 2012 election, the Georgetown Law School grad Fluke brought honor to the Democratic Party by exposing an archaic patriarchal religious institution and highlighting the need for unlimited free birth control for every college girl in America. In liberal circles there were none braver or more committed to the contraceptive cause than Sandra Kay Fluke. In the eyes of many Democrats, this was a woman one votive shy of being officially canonized as the patron saint of free birth...

PITTSBURGH — President Obama almost certainly cannot win Pennsylvania again on Nov. 6 without Pittsburgh. He also needs a resurgence of the young voters who helped carry him in 2008, renewed enthusiasm in urban Democratic strongholds and sweeping faith in his economic vision, political analysts said. Winning Ohio, another pivotal battleground state, would not hurt, either. All of which could explain why the president is making Oakland a high-profile stop early in his re-election campaign, the political watchers said. Obama is set for a 2:10 p.m. rally on Friday at Carnegie Mellon University, part of his “Betting on America” bus...

Patriotic Robot Snake Climbs Trees, is Creepy by James Plafke | 12:50 pm, September 6th, 2010 A team of students at Carnegie Mellon’s Biorobotics Lab built a robotic snake, which they named “Uncle Sam,” that is able to climb trees and, most of all, be creepy. Check out the video below. Uncle Sam can mimic a real snake’s movement, including being able to wrap itself around trees and use a vertical roll to maneuver upward. The “face” of the robot helps make Uncle Sam a great spy tool, being able to climb up trees or poles and peer into windows....

August 29, 2009 — Today’s Evolutionary Just-So Story is brought to you by New Scientist: “Girls Are Primed to Fear Spiders.” Once upon a time, while cavemen were out hunting and gathering, the women back home had to learn to avoid dangerous animals. David Rakison of Carnegie Mellon University put this all into evolutionary terms for the rest of us:...

Coming to America by: Jesse Masai, November 04, 2008 America’s global dominance has found its basis in economic supremacy and both could be ending in light of on-going domestic and international economic difficulties. Carnegie Mellon University professor of political economy and public policy and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Allan Meltzer presented a paper at a recent briefing at the Washington, D.C. think-tank. In the paper, entitled End of the American Century, he argued that major changes are needed in global institutions and that the period of U.S leadership may be coming to an end, and as...

If a Post-Gazette poll taken last week is any indication, a lot of you are really stressed about work. To the question, "Do you have nightmares about your job?", a full 77 percent of respondents -- 815 out of 1056 -- said "yes." Maybe you need to take a nap. At work. That's the idea behind Metronaps, the New York-based brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University grad Arshad Chowdhury. Metronaps offers businesses the opportunity to increase productivity by helping workers to take naps. The service includes an "energy assessment" that surveys workers to evaluate the impact of fatigue in the workplace...

A robotic car named Junior, programmed by Stanford computer scientists, finished slightly ahead of Boss, the robo-vehicle from Carnegie Mellon University, as half a dozen driverless vehicles made history by completing a 60-mile race over a city-like environment. But the real winner of this third and most difficult in a series of robo-races is probably the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which sponsored the first of these events in 2004 to spur development of unmanned military vehicles. In all, 11 robotic vehicles set out on the race course Saturday morning, and while five scrubbed out for various reasons, the fact...

It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. :-) Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes - a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis - as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message. To mark the anniversary Wednesday, Fahlman and his colleagues are starting an annual student contest for innovation in technology-assisted, person-to-person communication. The Smiley Award, sponsored by Yahoo Inc., carries a $500 cash prize. Language experts say the smiley face and other emotional icons, known as emoticons, have given people a concise...

Comparing life cycle CO2 emissions from plug-in hybrids, coal-to-liquids gasoline, and conventional gasoline. A study from the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center (CEIC) concludes that while enacting policies to subsidize the production of coal-to-liquids transportation fuel would enhance national security by lowering oil imports, encouraging plug-in hybrids powered by coal-generated electricity is a less costly policy that also reduces oil imports and does more to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. CEIC produced the paper in the context of the current work by the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce on transportation energy legislation, the current draft of which includes...