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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for January 25, 2013
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USC Transfer Day: Engineering & Admission Talk, Financial Aid Presentation, Tour and Advisement
Fri, Jan 25, 2013 @ 09:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Undergraduate Admission
Workshops & Infosessions
Transfer Day features a Viterbi School of Engineering workshop designed to answer all your questions about admission guidelines, our admission process and more. The program also includes a campus tour and special presentations for transfer students about admission, financial aid, and transfer credit. In addition, Viterbi transfer counselors will be available for individual coursework advisement on a first-come, first-serve basis in the afternoon following the program (transcripts required for advisement). Reservations required. Please call (213) 740-6616 for more information and to make a reservation.
Location: USC University Park Campus
Audiences: Prospective transfer students and families
Contact: Viterbi Admission
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USC Physical Sciences and Oncology Center
Fri, Jan 25, 2013 @ 11:45 AM - 01:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Michelle Povinelli, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering
Talk Title: Stretching of Lipid Membranes Using Optical Forces
Abstract: Membrane bending and stretching control key aspects of cellular function, and changes in chemical composition alter membrane mechanical properties. GUVs are model lipid bilayer systems that have become popular for investigating membrane mechanical properties. The ability of membranes to bend under low stress is characterized by the bending modulus (úB). We show that the optical stretcher, or dual-beam optical trap (DBOT), provides a method for non-invasive application of time-dependent forces on a GUV, allowing rapid measurement of the bending modulus.The applied stress in a DBOT elongates the GUV, increasing its eccentricity. We increase the optical power in the DBOT as a function of time and extract the resulting surface area strain (percent change in surface area) from analysis of microscope video images. The lateral tension on the membrane at each power level is calculated from the surface stress. The bending modulus can be extracted from the slope of the area strain vs. surface stress plot.We compare the bending modulus values obtained from a lipid bilayer in liquid phase, 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC), and bilayer in gel phase, 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC). We observe that the bending modulus of gel phase bilayer is larger than the lipid phase bilayer. We then show that we can use our high-throughput setup to measure the bending modulus of populations of GUVs and obtain ensemble statistics. We compare the bending modulus of POPC lipid bilayer with and without cholesterol and show that the addition of cholesterol does not significantly affect the bending modulus.
Biography: USC was selected to establish a $16 million cancer research center as part of a new strategy against the disease by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and its National Cancer Institute. The new center is one of 12 in the nation to receive the designation. During the five-year initiative, the Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers will take new, nontraditional approaches to cancer research by studying the physical laws and principles of cancer; evolution and the evolutionary theory of cancer; information coding, decoding, transfer and translation in cancer; and ways to de-convolute cancer's complexity. As part of the outreach component of this grant, the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine is hosting a monthly seminar series.
Host: USC Physical Sciences in Oncology Center
Location: Clinical Science Center (CSC) - Harkness Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kristina Gerber
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Music Festivals: Creating New Communities for a New Generation
Fri, Jan 25, 2013 @ 12:30 PM - 10:00 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
University Calendar
Admission is free.
Each generation creates venues where music can be shared. In recent years, music festivals such as Coachella, Outside Lands, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and South By Southwest have drawn hundreds of thousands of people to listen to cutting-edge bands from the United States and abroad. Coachella has grown from 25,000 people during two days in 1999 to crowds of 85,000 a day over two three-day weekends in 2012. This growth raises interesting questions about the meaning of these communal spaces in the age of social media, virtual friendships and a decline in the traditional music industry. What do these events say about youth culture and its social and political links to concerts in the 1960s and â70s? Can the transformative potential of music mobilize a culture?
The music-festival phenomenon will be addressed in a panel featuring Dawes lead singer Taylor Goldsmith, music critic Ann Powers, USC professor Josh Kun and a music festival representative. Documentary screenings throughout the day will further reveal the power and impact of music festivals today and historically.
Schedule of Events:
12:30 p.m.: Screening of Monterey Pop (1968)
Directed by D.A. Pennebaker, 79 minutes.
A concert film from the June 1967 festival held at the county fairgrounds in Monterey, California. Camera operators include famed documentarian Albert Maysles. The film includes incredible performances by Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Simon & Garfunkel, Otis Redding, The Who and Jimi Hendrix, who set his guitar on fire in an unforgettable performance.
2:30 p.m.: Screening of Wattstax (1973)
Directed by Mel Stuart, 98 minutes.
âThe Afro-American answer to Woodstockâ was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and focused on the community of Watts. Jesse Jackson gave the invocation, and musical performances by Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers and others are interspersed with notable interviews, including one with Richard Pryor.
4:30 p.m.: Music Festivals: Creating New Communities for a New Generation
Panel discussion with Taylor Goldsmith, Ann Powers and others TBA, moderated by Josh Kun
A panel of experts will discuss the music-festival phenomenon: Taylor Goldsmith, the lead singer/songwriter of the rock group Dawes, which has played numerous festivals in the U.S. and abroad; Ann Powers, an author and critic who covers rock, rap and pop and is a contributor to NPR and the Los Angeles Times; and moderator Josh Kun, a professor at USC Annenberg who directs the Popular Music Project at the Norman Lear Center.
6 p.m.: Reception, Queenâs Courtyard
7 p.m.: Screening of Electric Daisy Carnival Experience (2011)
Directed by Kevin Kerslake, 150 minutes.
Followed by a Q&A with Kevin Kerslake
This techno and house music rave was the last one held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Featured acts included Deadmau5, will.i.am and Moby.
About the Panelists:
Taylor Goldsmith is the songwriter and lead singer for Dawes, a four-person Los Angeles rock band. The band is embraced by well-known musicians such as Jackson Browne, who has frequently performed with Dawes and who has called Goldsmith âa brilliant songwriter,â and Robbie Robertson, who chose Dawes as his backup band for several television appearances. Esquire magazine calls Goldsmith âthe best young songwriter in America,â and says his songs âdonât just speak for themselves but accomplish something far rarerâthey speak for us.â The bandâs first album, North Hills, included one of Rolling Stoneâs top 25 songs of the year. Their latest CD, Nothing Is Wrong (2011) landed on many âbest ofâ lists. Dawes has toured nearly nonstop for the past several years in the U.S., Australia and Europe, performing at music festivals such as Coachella, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, SXSW and the Newport Folk Festival. (Dawes official website)
Josh Kun is a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC, director of the Popular Music Project at the Norman Lear Center and a Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities fellow. He is the author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America and co-author (with Roger Bennett) of And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost. He is a contributor to the New York Times and Los Angeles. He is also a co-founder of the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, a nonprofit Jewish record label and digital archive, and speaks often on topics ranging from cross-border Mexican music to the political and social history of rock music in Los Angeles, about which he curated a recent Pacific Standard Time exhibition at the GRAMMY Museum. (Twitter, bio)
Ann Powers is an author and pop-music critic who has been writing about popular music and society since the early 1980s. She is the author of Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America and co-editor of Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap. In 2005, Powers co-wrote the book Piece by Piece with musician Tori Amos. The book discusses the role of women in the modern music industry, and features information about composing, touring, performance and the realities of the music business. Powersâs writing also has appeared in the New York Times, Blender and The Village Voice. She currently writes for NPR Music and is a contributor to the Los Angeles Times. (NPR, Twitter)
Organized by the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, USC Libraries and the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu
Location: Eileen L. Norris Cinema Theatre (NCT) - Norris Cinema Theatre/Frank Sinatra Hall
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daria Yudacufski
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W.V.T. Rusch Honors Colloquium; The Challenge of Mars Exploration
Fri, Jan 25, 2013 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Richard A. Cook, Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Talk Title: The Challenge of Mars Exploration
Host: W.V.T. Rusch Honors Program
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Christine Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs
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Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Jan 25, 2013 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Alyosha Molnar , Cornell University
Talk Title: Light-field Imaging Using Angle-Sensitive Pixels in Standard CMOS
Abstract: Whereas traditional photography techniques maps the intensity of light at a particular plane, Light-field imaging attempts to capture a more complete description of the field of light rays. In particular, by mapping the distribution of incident angle in a scene, Light-field imaging permits passive extraction of 3-D structure. I will present a new type of CMOS pixel, the “angle-sensitive pixel” (ASP), based on the Talbot effect. ASPs use stacked diffraction gratings built from CMOS interconnect layers to generate a strongly angle-sensitive light response. An appropriately chosen mosaic of ASPs, then, provides a much richer description of incoming light from out-of-focus scenes, and does so in a computationally compact format, similar to the Gabor filters used in many image-processing applications. I will discuss several applications for arrays of ASPs, including digital light-field photography, lensless far-field imaging, and near-field lensless 3-D imaging of microscale samples.
Biography: Prof. Alyosha Molnar received his BS from Swarthmore College in 1997, and after spending a season as a deck-hand on a commercial Tuna fishing boat, worked for Conexant Systems for 3 years as an RFIC design engineer. He was co-responsible engineer developing their first-generation direct-conversion receiver for the GSM cellular standard. That chip, and subsequent variants, have sold in excess of 100 million parts. When he entered graduate school at U.C. Berkeley in 2001, Molnar worked on an early, ultra-low-power radio transceiver for wireless sensor networks (receiving his master’s degree), and then joined a retinal neurophysiology group where he worked on dissecting the structure and function of neural circuits in the mammalian retina. He joined the Faculty at Cornell University in 2007, and presently works on low-power software-defined radios, neural interface circuits, and new integrated imaging techniques.
Host: Hossein Hashemi, Mike Chen
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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CEE Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Jan 25, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Joon-Ho Choi Ph.D., LEED AP, Assistant Professor of Building Science, USC
Talk Title: Human-Building Interaction: Potential Use of Bio-Signals for Indoor Environmental Controls
Abstract: TBA
Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
