On the theory that college students might be among the first to drop cable TV, the company looked at changes in subscriber figures in college towns such as Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio.

At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, research scientists have designed a 4-inch silicon chip that holds 700 tiny primitive motors.

Shermis, a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio, supervised the Hewlett Foundation's contest on automated essay scoring and wrote a paper about the experiment.