Analyses of Twitter feeds have been used to track flu epidemics, predict stock market changes and do political polling, but now that the National Football League season is underway, the natural question is: Can Twitter help you beat the spread on NFL games?

The answer, say computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon, is yes. Or, at least it can help a little bit at certain times during the season. They will report their findings Sept. 27 at the Machine Learning and Data Mining for Sports Analytics conference in Prague, Czech Republic.

What they found was that their analysis of tweets didn't help much when it came to predicting winners or the over/under score. But when it came to winning with the spread, the researchers said their method was 55 percent accurate. That doesn't offer a huge advantage, CMU's Christopher Dyer acknowledged, but it might be enough to be profitable.

Read the full story.

In anticipation of flu season, University Health Services will be conducting flu vaccination clinics on campus starting next week. The schedule is as follows:

• Sept. 25: 9 a.m. -12 p.m., University Health Services
• Oct. 1: 9 a.m. -12 p.m., National Robotics Engineering Center in Lawrenceville
• Oct 7: 3 - 6 p.m., Tepper School of Business, GSIA 109
• Oct 10: 2 - 4 p.m., PPG, downtown
• Oct 17: 2 - 6 p.m., Hamburg Hall
• Oct 21: 12:30 - 4:30 p.m., Rangos 2, University Center

Please bring your CMU ID card.  Human Resources will cover the vaccine cost for staff and faculty; the CMU student insurance plan will cover the vaccine cost for students on the plan. For spouses/partners and students on other plans, the cost is $17 (payment by student account or check only; no cash, please).

For additional clinics and information go to the University Health Services website. 

Carnegie Mellon students are highly sought after by companies around the world. That was quite evident this week as recruiters from nearly 300 companies set up shop in the University Center to tap the talents of about 3,000 Carnegie Mellon students at the university's annual Technical Opportunities Conference, hosted by the College of Engineering and The Society of Women Engineers.

"This is the largest job fair on the CMU campus and it really draws some outstanding companies and career opportunities for all of us," said Christy St. John, a TOC co-director and a senior mechanical engineering major. "It really makes me feel like I've accomplished something when I hear and see how productive this conference is."

The conference was created more than 40 years ago to help students talk to recruiters, network and learn about job and internship opportunities with large and small companies.

Some of the companies attending this year's conference included Accenture, Amazon, Adobe Systems, Alcoa, Bayer Technology Services, BNY Mellon, Dow Jones, General Motors, Procter & Gamble, Texas Instruments, Intel Corp., Northrop Grummen Corp., Microsoft, Motorola, Morgan Stanley and Verizon.

Read more about the job fair.