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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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Safety Management For Aviation Maintenance - Feb.2-6, 2009
Mon, Feb 02, 2009
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
MAINT 09-2
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Audiences Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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BME 533 Seminar Series
Mon, Feb 02, 2009 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Andrew MacKay, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, USC: "Genetically engineered switched and drug carriers: behavior, architecture, and anti-tumor activity"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Predicting Human Body Shape Under Clothing
Mon, Feb 02, 2009 @ 03:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Michael J. Black, Brown University
Host: Prof. Gerard MedioniAbstract:
We propose a method to estimate the detailed 3D shape of a person from images of that person wearing clothing. The approach exploits a model of human body shapes that is learned from a database of over 2000 range scans. We show that the parameters of this shape model can be recovered independently of body pose. We further propose a generalization of the visual hull to account for the fact that observed silhouettes of clothed people do not provide a tight bound on the true 3D shape. With clothed subjects, different poses provide different constraints on the possible underlying 3D body shape. We consequently combine constraints across pose to more accurately estimate 3D body shape in the presence of occluding clothing. Finally we use the recovered 3D shape to estimate the gender of subjects and then employ gender-specific body models to refine our shape estimates. Results on a novel database of thousands of images of clothed and ``naked'' subjects, as well as sequences from the HumanEva dataset, suggest the method may be accurate enough for biometric shape analysis in video.This is joint work with Alexandru Balan. Project page: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~alb/scapeClothing/Related ECCV paper: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~black/Papers/balanECCV08.pdfBiography:
Michael Black received his B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia (1985), his M.S. from Stanford (1989), and his Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University in 1992. He has been a visiting researcher at the NASA Ames Research Center and an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. In 1993 Prof. Black joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where he managed the Image Understanding area and later founded the Digital Video Analysis group. In 2000, Prof. Black joined the faculty of Brown University where he is a Professor of Computer Science. At CVPR'91 he received the IEEE Computer Society Outstanding Paper Award for his work with P. Anandan on robust optical flow estimation. His work also received Honorable Mention for the Marr Prize in 1999 (with David Fleet) and 2005 (with Stefan Roth). Prof. Black's research interests in machine vision include optical flow estimation, human motion analysis and probabilistic models of the visual world. In computational neuroscience his work focuses on probabilistic models of the neural code, the neural control of movement and the development of neural interface systems that directly connect brains and machines to restore lost function to people with central motor system injury.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Joint Source-Channel Coding Fundamentals by Tor A. Ramstad
Tue, Feb 03, 2009 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Joint source-channel coding (JSCC) is promising for practical delays and complexities, as opposed to Shannon's separation theorem which states that source and channel coding can be done separately, but in general
at the cost of infinite delay and complexity.Our approach to JSCC is based on direct mappings (Shannon-Kotelnikov mappings) from the source, represented by its samples, to channel samples, thus avoiding any form of bit representation.We will first review "optimal performance theoretically attainable" (OPTA), which imposes bandwidth stretching between source and channel signals. But this also leads us to a way to optimize linear systems. The
most general case considered consists of subband decomposition, reshuffling of channels and finally OFDM transmission.We then introduce the principles of nonlinear mappings. Some optimized mappings will be shown, and we will demonstrate a system for image transmission based on subband decomposition and use of several dimension
changing mappings which are allocated according to the necessary bandwidth change among the components.Bio: Professor Tor A. Ramstad received his MSc and PhD degrees from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (now the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)) in 1968 and 1971, respectively. He
became a full professor in 1983 at what is now called the Faculty of Informatics, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. He is presently a visiting scholar at University of California, Santa Barbara.His research interests include multirate signal processing, speech and image processing with emphasis on image and video communications, where joint source-channel coding is central. Low power communication for medical
sensor networks is presently the main research topic.Host: Dr. Sanjit MitraLocation: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gloria Halfacre
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The Optimization and Economic Aspects of Internet Advertising
Thu, Feb 05, 2009 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hamid Nazerzadeh, Stanford University
Host: Prof. David KempeAbstract:
In the last few years, Internet advertising has grown to a multi-billion dollar market, and has become the dominant business model for the companies that provide content and services online. Hence, there has been a surge of interest in the problems emerging in the design and implementation of these markets. In this talk, I will discuss some of these problems with a focus on sponsored search, the auctions run by search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN to sell advertisement space alongside the search results. In this context, I will talk about online allocation of advertisement space and designing cost-per-action mechanisms.Biography:
Hamid Nazerzadeh is a Ph.D. student in operations research at Stanford university, working under the supervision of Amin Saberi and Ashish Goel. His research interests lie at the intersection of operations research, computer science, and economics. His dissertation work is mainly focused on the optimization and economic aspects of Internet advertising. He received a Yahoo! Ph.D. student fellowship in 2007.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Theory and Practice of Lossy Joint Source-Channel Coding
Fri, Feb 06, 2009 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Maria Fresia
Princeton UniversityAbstract: With the communication revolution, the number of mobile, satellite and computer communication systems has grown exponentially with the consequence that the available bandwidth for each service is shrinking. The Shannon source-channel separation principle, a milestone on efficient data transmission, states that the optimal performance can be approached by independently designing the source and the channel codes. Driven by this principle, modern communication systems have been developed accordingly. However, the existing source coding schemes exhibit catastrophic behavior with respect to channel errors, thus inducing a significant sub-optimality in the overall transmission system. In this talk a practical lossy joint source-channel coding approach, aimed at avoiding this catastrophic behavior is presented. Applications of the proposed approach to point-to-point images transmission and to the broadcasting scenario, where several users have to receive data generated from common sources, are illustrated.Biography: Dr. Fresia received the laurea degree (eqv. M. Sc.) in Telecommunications Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the University of Genova, Italy in 2002 and 2006 respectively. From September 2006 to September 2007 she was postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Louvain la Neuve, Belgium (in collaboration with Prof. Luc Vandendorpe). She is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University (in collaboration with Professor H. V. Poor). Her research interests include coding theory and signal processing with particular interest to joint source-channel coding, distributed source coding and unequal error protection for embedded images transmission.Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu, EEB 528, x07326
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Best Practices for a Job Search
Fri, Feb 06, 2009 @ 11:30 AM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
EE Students 'Practical Guide' Seminar SeriesSeminar Leaders: Profs. Martin Gundersen and C.-C. Jay KuoDate: Friday, February 6, 11:30 am - 1 pmNew Location:
11:30am - East side of EEB (between SAL and EEB)
12:00pm - EEB 248Website: http://ee.usc.edu/news/practical-guide/* Pizza will be provided by the EE Department.*Abstract: When you are close to graduation, one main goal is to find a good job. There are quite a few things to learn when you are job hunting. Undergraduate activities including research can have a significant impact on the opportunities for graduating students who seek challenging and productive careers. We will present specific examples of undergraduate students who have found career opportunities that resulted from their undergraduate research experience. This seminar will cover several key issues such as the preparation of your resume and telephone and on-site interviews. In addition if you get multiple offers, you will need to make decision which offer to take and learn some negotiation skills. These considerations will also be addressed.Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium: CARMA- Observing our Universe with Millimeter Wave Eyes
Fri, Feb 06, 2009 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lecture Offered by Prof. Anneila I. Sargent, Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Astronomy and Vice President for Student Affairs, California Institute of Technology.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs
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Impact of Surface Water Conditions on Preservative Leaching and Aquatic ...
Fri, Feb 06, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
...Toxicity from Treated Wood ProductsSpeaker:
Brajesh Dubey, Ph.D., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, University of AucklandAbstract:
As of January 2004, wood treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA) was no longer manufactured for most residential uses in United States. This phase out was prompted by risk assessments which indicated an elevated human health risk from arsenic (As) which could be ingested during direct contact with the wood. The primary active ingredients in most of the As-free alternatives formulations include copper (Cu) and an organic co-biocide, among which alkaline copper quaternary (ACQ) and copper boron azole (CBA) are the most popular wood preservatives in current use for the residential market. These Cu-based alternatives have been reported to leach several times more Cu (greater concentrations as well as higher percent leaching) than CCA-treated wood and the aquatic toxicity measured was found to correlate with total Cu concentrations. Due to the higher levels of Cu in the new alternative wood preservatives, it is suspected that it can promote aquatic toxicity in natural water systems. Earlier work focused on evaluating toxicity using laboratory generated leaching solutions (e.g., de-ionized water). In this study, the impact on preservative leaching and aquatic toxicity from treated wood products was evaluated using natural surface waters including waters from two rivers, three lakes, two wetlands, and one seawater, in addition to synthetic moderate hard water and de-ionized water. Blocks of wood treated with Cu based alternatives such as alkaline copper quaternary (ACQ) and copper boron azole (CBA), along with chromated copper arsenate (CCA) treated wood, were leached under quiescent conditions and total Cu, labile Cu and heavy metal toxicity were measured. Results show that ACQ- and CBA-treated wood leach approximately ten and twenty times more total Cu relative to CCA-treated wood and that the presence of organic and inorganic ligands in natural waters lowered the labile fraction of Cu relative to that from laboratory generated leaching solutions. Aquatic toxicity was found to correlate with the labile Cu fraction and hence, the aquatic toxicity of the treated wood leachates was lower in natural waters in comparison to laboratory leaching solutions. The results of the present study suggest that studies designed to evaluate the impacts of treated wood should therefore consider the role of complexation in reducing the labile Cu fraction and its potential role in decreasing toxicity.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Aircraft Accident Investigation - Feb.9-20, 2009
Mon, Feb 09, 2009
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
AAI 09-3
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Audiences Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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BME 533 Seminar Series
Mon, Feb 09, 2009 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Kirk Shung, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, USC: "High frequency ultrasound: a new frontier for ultrasound"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Managing Risk in Megacities: Challenges and Opportunities for Researchers and Practitioners
Wed, Feb 11, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Fouad Bendimerad, Ph.D., P.E., Chairman of the Board,
Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative (EMI), www.emi-megacities.org Abstract:2007 was a turning point for humanity as for the first time in history, the world urban population has exceeded its rural population. In the next 20 years, the world's population is predicted to increase by an additional 2 billion. Most of the increase will be in cities of developing countries. Eventually, cities will account for all future global population growth with record concentrations in large urban conglomerations and megacities in the developing world. By 2015,12 out of the largest 15 cities in the world will be in developing countries.
Losses from a major disaster in large cities and megacities will harm large populations both within and far beyond their boundaries. Unfortunately, the planning and development of cities has only given scant consideration to the consequences of hazards such as earthquake, floods, hurricanes and others. Eight out of the ten most populous cities in the world can be severely affected by an earthquake, whereas six out of ten are vulnerable to storm surge and tsunami waves. Effects of climate change can exhacerbate the impacts of these hazards.
Urban risk from extreme hazards has largely been ignored. The premise has been that cities, especially megacities, have the capacity to address risk on their own. It is now clear that most cities, particularly in the developing world, are not effectively managing their risk. Dealing with megacities risk is becoming a global urgency. The role of academia is critical in providing and disseminating knowledge about risk, and in providing practical tools and methods to public officials and managers of megacities to achieve a more sustainable urban development.
The Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative (EMI) was created in response to the critical need to speed up risk management research and practice of complex urban centers. EMI creates mechanisms for the delivery of scientific and technical knowledge to the city managers, while supporting megacities in building disaster risk management practice. It achieves this by fostering partnerships and cooperation between megacities and scientific organizations, and advocating for megacities risk reduction in international forums.
This seminar provides an overview of issues related to megacities risk management and will show examples of methodologies, analytical tools and practical applications from various cities in the world.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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On Focusing of Shock Waves
Wed, Feb 11, 2009 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Veronica Eliasson Postdoctoral ScholarGALCIT California Institute of TechnologyPasadena, CA In this project we study converging shocks in gas, both experimentally and numerically. The interest in converging shocks stems from their ability to concentrate energy in a small volume. However, it has proven difficult to experimentally obtain a stable cylindrical converging shock wave because initial shape perturbations are amplified during the nonlinear focusing event. In this talk, we address the issue of generating and studying stable converging shocks with various geometrical shapes.
A shock tube is used to transform an initially planar shock into a cylindrical ring-shaped shock. These cylindrical shock waves are then further transformed into different geometrical shapes during the focusing phase by two methods. One method consists of changing the shape of the outer boundary of the test section of the shock tube, while the other introduces cylindrical obstacles in specific patterns inside the test section. As a result, a polygonal shape is most often obtained and depending on the number of sides of the shock, either a Mach or regular reflection occurs at the corners during the focusing event.
The shock wave focusing is also studied numerically using Euler equations of gas dynamics for a gas obeying the ideal gas law with constant specific heats with a high-order accurate Godunov method. The governing equations are discretized on body-fitted overlapping structured grids, and adaptive mesh refinement is used to dynamically track the shocks and contact surfaces. Two problems are analyzed; an axisymmetric model of the shock tube used in the experiments and a cylindrical shock wave diffracted by cylinders in a two-dimensional test section.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - Rm 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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Munushian Lecture: Charles Townes on How the Laser Happened
Wed, Feb 11, 2009 @ 03:30 PM - 05:15 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Nobel Laureate (Physics, 1964) Charles Townes speaks about the intersection of physics and electrical engineering," and the invention of the laser -- about how the interaction between physics and engineering and other fields, is important in originating new ideas, with the creation of the laser as case-in-point. Dr. Townes served as Provost and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1966, he became Institute Professor at M.I.T., and later in the same year resigned from the position of Provost in order to return to more intensive research, particularly in the fields of quantum electronics and astronomy. He was appointed University Professor at the University of California in 1967. In this position Dr. Townes is participating in teaching, research, and other activities on several campuses of the University, although he is located at the Berkeley campus.In addition to the Nobel Prize, Townes has received the Templeton Prize, for contributions to the understanding of religion, and a number of other prizes as well as 27 honorary degrees from various universities.Reception, 3:30 p.m., Lecture begins at 4.
Location: Leonard Davis Auditorium (GER 124)
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Eric Mankin
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Diffusion-Weighted and NMR Imaging of Porous Media
Thu, Feb 12, 2009 @ 11:00 AM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
A non-invasive study of translational dynamics requires a kind of "marking" or "labeling" of the traveling atoms or molecules for tracing their displacements. Magnetic field is a superb experimental tool for encoding the motion of spin-bearing particles. Moreover, since a geometrical confinement considerably affects diffusive motion, the geometry of porous media can be indirectly accessed by measuring the signal attenuation due to restricted diffusion in inhomogeneous magnetic fields. In this talk, we focus on some theoretical and numerical aspects of this problem. Starting from the classical Bloch-Torrey equation, we obtain the NMR signal in a compact matrix form. Each attenuation mechanism (restricted diffusion, gradient dephasing, surface or bulk relaxation) is represented by a matrix which is constructed from the Laplace operator eigenbasis and thus depending only on the geometry of the confinement. In turn, the physical parameters (free diffusion coefficient, gradient intensity, surface or bulk relaxivity) characterize the "strengths" of the underlying attenuation mechanisms and naturally appear as coefficients in front of these matrices. We illustrate the use of this matrix technique by considering restricted diffusion in simple domains: a slab, a cylinder, and a sphere. Further investigation of irregularly-shaped confinements is discussed.
Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Explaining Market Price Discovery as an Algorithmic Process
Thu, Feb 12, 2009 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Richard Cole, New York University
Host: Prof. David KempeAbstract:
Self-organizing behavior can often be characterized in terms of a distributed process. It is natural to ask when and why it arises.One instance of such a distributed process is pricing in markets. A basic tenet of well-functioning markets is that they discover (converge toward) prices that simultaneously balance supplies and demands of all goods; these are called equilibrium prices. Further, the markets are self-stabilizing, meaning that they converge toward new equilibria as conditions change. This talk will seek to explain why this might happen by taking an algorithmic approach.More specifically, we introduce the setting of Ongoing Markets (by contrast with the classic Fisher and Exchange markets). An Ongoing Market allows trade at non-equilibrium prices, and, as its name suggests, continues over time. The main task remaining is to specify and analyze a price update rule. We consider a (tatonnement-style) rule with the following characteristics:1. The procedure is distributed: (i) the price updates for each good are independent, and (ii) the update for each good uses only limited "local" information. 2. It is asynchronous: price updates do not have to be simultaneous. 3. It is simple.And for appropriate markets the rule enables:4. Fast convergence. 5. Robustness in the face of (somewhat) inaccurate data.This talk is intended for a general (Computer Science) audience; it is based on joint works with Lisa Fleischer and Ashish Rastogi.Biography:
Richard Cole is a professor of Computer Science in the Courant Institute at NYU, where he has been on the faculty since receiving his Ph.D. in 1982. His Ph.D. was from Cornell, supervised by John Hopcroft. He served as department chair from 1994-2000. He was a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation in 1988-89, and was named an ACM Fellow in 1998. He is the author or coauthor of over 100 papers. Highlights include the Parallel Merge Sort algorithm, the proof of the Dynamic Finger Conjecture for Splay Trees, and a tight analysis of the Boyer-Moore string matching algorithm.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Maximal Transmission Rate for Finite Blocklength
Fri, Feb 13, 2009 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sergio Verdú
Princeton UniversityAbstract: How much do we need to back off from channel capacity when the blocklength is equal to 1000?Biography: Sergio Verdú is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University where he teaches and conducts research on information theory in the Information Sciences and Systems Group. He is also affiliated with the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. A native of Barcelona, Spain, Sergio Verdú received the Telecommunications Engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1980 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984. Conducted at the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois, his doctoral research pioneered the field of Multiuser Detection. Sergio Verdú was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1992 and member of the U. S. National Academy of Engineering in 2007. He received the 2000 Frederick E. Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000. In 2005, he received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is the recipient of the 2007 Claude E. Shannon Award, and the 2008 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal. In 1998, Cambridge University Press published his book ``Multiuser Detection.'' His papers have received several awards: the 1992 IEEE Donald Fink Paper Award, the 1998 Information Theory Outstanding Paper Award, a IEEE Information Theory Golden Jubilee Paper Award, the 2000 Paper Award from the Japan Telecommunications Advancement Foundation, the 2002 Leonard G. Abraham Prize Award in the field of Communications Systems and the 2007 IEEE Joint Communications/Information Theory Paper Award. Sergio Verdú has served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, and as Associate Editor for Shannon Theory of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1997. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory. He has held visiting appointments at the Australian National University, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the University of Tokyo. In 1998 he was Visiting Professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2002 he held the Hewlett-Packard Visiting Research Professorship at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley.Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu, EEB 528, x07326
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium: Present and Future of Battery Technology
Fri, Feb 13, 2009 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lecture offered by Troy Renken, Vice President of Product Planning and Electronics of ZPower
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admissions & Student Affairs
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Astronautical Engineering Seminar
Fri, Feb 13, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Astronautical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
"Modeling Micro-Physics Effects on Macro-Systems:
Applications in Space Propulsion and Space Environments"Speaker:
Joseph Wang, University of Southern California, Astronautics and Space Technology DivisionRefreshments at 1:45Abstract:
Micro-scale plasma processes often directly determine the macroscopic behavior of space plasma environment and the outcome of spacecraft plasma interactions. Such processes also influence many aspects of electric propulsion system design and operation. Understanding and predicting the effects of micro-physics on macro-systems are often extremely challenging due to the complex nature of the physics and experimental limitations. This talk presents some recent advances in understanding and predicting the effects of micro-scale plasma processes using first-principle based simulation models. Three studies will be discussed. The first concerns ion thruster beam neutralization and propagation. The second concerns charging and charged dust particle interactions on the lunar surface. The third concerns radiation belt remediation using plasma turbulence induced by an artificial plasma cloud. A common theme in all these studies is the development of plasma particle simulation algorithms. Two new particle simulation algorithms, the immersed finite element PIC and the electromagnetic hybrid PIC with finite electron mass, will also be discussed briefly along with the application studies.Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Dan Erwin
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Joint Multiple Cell-Site Processing in Wyner-like Fading Models
Fri, Feb 13, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Shlomo Shamai
EE Dept, Technion, Haifa, IsraelAbstract: We investigate the information theoretic aspects of a simple cellular model, where users experience a soft-handoff situation under joint multicell decoding. The ultimate sum-rate limits of reliable communications in this model in non-fading and fading situations, are presented. Focus is put on the uplink in the high snr regime, with general fading statistics. In this case, adhering to a TDMA intra-cell protocol, a novel closed form expression for the per-cell sum-rate is developed. The result is based on study of the spectrum of certain large random Hermitian tri-diagonal Jacobi matrices. Specifically, since the matrices of interest are tridiagonal, their eigenvectors can be considered as sequences with second order linear recurrence. Therefore, the problem is reduced to the study of the exponential growth of products of two by two matrices. For the case where K users are simultaneously active in each cell, we obtain a series of lower and upper bounds on the high-SNR power offset of the per-cell sum-rate, which are considerably tighter than previously known bounds. The technique can be adapted to generalized Wyner-like cellular models. We examine also special cases of zero/one dependent (per user) `fading` structures to analyze in the impact of users' activity in a `soft handoff` Wyner model. In this case close form expressions are developed for respective capacities in the outage regime, addressing also ergodic case. Time permitting, duality principles that relate the uplink performance to the downlink are discussed, mentioning the results for unfaded and faded cases, and pointing out some open problems.Biography: Shlomo Shamai (Shitz) (S'80–M'82–SM'89–F'94) received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, in 1975, 1981 and 1986 respectively. During 1975-1985 he was with the Communications Research Labs in the capacity of a Senior Research Engineer. Since 1986 he is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, where he is now the William Fondiller Professor of Telecommunications. His research interests encompass a wide spectrum of topics in information theory and statistical communications. He is especially interested in theoretical limits in communication with practical constraints, multi-user information theory and spread spectrum systems, multiple-input-multiple-output communications systems, information theoretic models for wireless networks and systems, information theoretic aspects of magnetic recording, channel coding, combined modulation and coding, turbo codes and LDPC, in channel, source, and combined source-channel applications, iterative detection and decoding algorithms, coherent and noncoherent detection and information theoretic aspects of digital communication in optical channels. Dr. Shamai (Shitz) is a member of the Union Radio Scientifique Internationale (URSI). He is the recipient of the 1999 van der Pol Gold Medal of URSI, and a co-recipient of the 2000 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award, the 2003, and the 2004 Joint IT/COM Societies Paper Award, and the 2007 Information Theory Society Paper Award. He is also the recipient of the 1985 Alon Grant for distinguished young scientists and the 2000 Technion Henry Taub Prize for Excellence in Research. He has served as Associate Editor for the Shannon Theory of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and also serves on the Board of Governors of the Information Theory Society.Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu, EEB 528, x07326Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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BME 533 Seminar Series (NO CLASS, Presidents Day)
Mon, Feb 16, 2009 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
President's Day (University Holiday - No Seminar)
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Airborne Particles and Health: What do we know and not know in 2009
Wed, Feb 18, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Jonathan M. Samet, MD, MS,
Professor and Flora L. Thornton Chair, Department of Preventive Medicine;
Keck School of Medicine, Director, Institute for Global Health,
University of Southern CaliforniaAbstract: Particles of varied size, composition, and structure are ubiquitous in indoor and outdoor air. The sources of the particles are myriad and include both natural phenomena and man's activities. In regard to outdoor air, particle concentrations and sources are regulated in the United States by complex legislation that addresses sources and concentrations. The principal evidence-based regulation under the Clean Air Act requires the promulgation of a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) that sets a concentration for particulate matter (PM) in outdoor air that protects public health with a margin of safety. This presentation reviews the scientific evidence on PM and risk to health, moving from the historical evidence that high levels of PM led to disastrous numbers of excess deaths to the current context in the US and other developed countries, where PM levels are now far lower. Worldwide, PM remains a public health threat in developing countries, where people experience extremely high levels in urban areas, particularly the increasing numbers of mega-cities, and indoors from unvented or poorly vented smoke from biomass fuel combustion.Research is now focused on quantifying risks at lower levels, characterizing mechanisms of toxicity, identifying characteristics of particles that determine risk, and targeting the most critical sources from the public health perspective. The research evidence is broad, coming from the fields of engineering, atmospheric sciences, toxicology, and exposure assessment and epidemiology. An expanded evidence base is needed for protecting public health as cities continue to grow, motor vehicle usage increases, and energy production from coal combustion increases.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Pulsed Jetting in the Mechanical and Biological Worlds
Wed, Feb 18, 2009 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Paul S. Krueger Associate ProfessorDepartment of Mechanical EngineeringSouthern Methodist UniversityDallas, TX 75275 Nature boasts a wide array of organisms utilizing jet propulsion, or more properly, pulsed-jet propulsion. Squid and jellyfish are some of the more well-known members of this group. It is often assumed that this form of locomotion requires high velocity, inefficient jets to be effective. Studies of mechanically generated fully-pulsed jets (pulsed jets with a period of no flow between pulses), on the other hand, have revealed a spectrum of possible flows ranging from vortex rings for short jet pulses to vortex rings followed by trailing jets for longer pulses. Jet pulses producing isolated vortex rings obtained a thrust benefit from over-pressure at the nozzle exit plane during vortex ring formation, a result with potential benefits for biological and/or mechanical pulsed-jet propulsion. In this talk the propulsive efficiency of brief squid (juveniles and adults), longfinned squid (hatchlings), and a self-propelled, mechanical pulsed-jet vehicle ("Robosquid") will be assessed using direct measurement of the jet hydrodynamics with digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV). The results for the juvenile and adult squid show that they utilize the spectrum of jet flows available with the propulsive efficiency of isolated vortex rings being significantly greater than the longer jet pulses. The performance of Robosquid mirrors these results with propulsive efficiency increasing as pulse duration decreases for pulse durations that produce isolated vortex rings. Surprisingly, squid hatchlings outperformed their larger counterparts, a result which is attributed to a range of factors including the hatchlings' preference for shorter pulses and their proportionately larger funnel diameters. A simple model for propulsive efficiency of pulsed jets incorporating nozzle exit over-pressure associated with the unsteady flow physics will be presented. The model explains the key experimental results in terms of over-pressure effects associated with vortex ring formation and predicts efficiencies that increasingly outperform steady jets as scale (i.e., Reynolds number) is reduced for pulsed jets with short, high-frequency pulses. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Paul Krueger received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1997 from the University of California at Berkeley. He received his M.S. in Aeronautics in 1998 and his Ph.D. in Aeronautics in 2001, both from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 2002 he joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at Southern Methodist University where he is currently an Associate Professor. He is a recipient of the Rolf D. Buhler Memorial Award in Aeronautics and the Richard Bruce Chapman Memorial Award for distinguished research in Hydrodynamics. In 2004 he received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation and he was elected the ASME North Texas Section Young Engineer of the Year in 2009. His research interests include unsteady hydrodynamics and aerodynamics, vortex dynamics, vortex-boundary interactions, bio-fluid mechanics, and pulsed-jet propulsion.
Location: Seaver Science Library, Rm 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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New Temporal-Difference Methods Based on Gradient Descent
Wed, Feb 18, 2009 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Richard Sutton, University of Alberta
Host: Prof. Stefan Schaal Abstract:
Temporal-difference methods based on gradient descent and parameterized function approximators form a core part of the modern field of reinforcement learning and are essential to many of its large-scale applications. However, the most popular methods, including TD(lambda), Q-learning, and Sarsa, are not true gradient-descent methods and, as a result, the conditions under which they converge are narrower and less robust than can usually be guaranteed for gradient-descent methods. In this paper we introduce a new family of temporal-difference algorithms whose expected updates are in the direction of the gradient of a natural performance measure that we call the "mean squared projected Bellman error". Because these are true gradient-descent methods, we are able to apply standard techniques to prove them convergent and stable under general conditions including, for the first time, off-policy training. The new methods are of the same order of complexity as TD(lambda) and, when TD(lambda) converges, they converge at a similar rate to the same fixpoints. The new methods are similar to GTD(0) (Sutton, Szepesvari & Maei, 2009), but based on a different objective function and much more efficient, as we demonstrate in a series of computational experiments. (this is joint work with Hamid Maei, Doina Precup, Csaba Szepesvari, Shalabh Bhatnagar, David Silver, and Eric Wiewiora) Biography:
Richard S. Sutton is a professor and iCORE chair in the department of computing science at the University of Alberta. He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and co-author of the textbook Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction from MIT Press. Before joining the University of Alberta in 2003, he worked in industry at AT&T and GTE Labs, and in academia at the University of Massachusetts. He received a PhD in computer science from the University of Massachusetts in 1984 and a BA in psychology from Stanford University in 1978. Rich's research interests center on the learning problems facing a decision-maker interacting with its environment, which he sees as central to artificial intelligence. He is also interested in animal learning psychology, in connectionist networks, and generally in systems that continually improve their representations and models of the world.Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 406
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Characterizing Atmospheric Boundary Layer Turbulence
Thu, Feb 19, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Sukanta Basu, Atmospheric Science Group, Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech University, TexasAbstract:Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) spans the lowest few hundred meters of the earth's atmosphere and intensively exchanges mass (e.g., water vapor, pollutants), momentum, and heat with the underlying earth's surface. ABL has immense practical importance as wide ranges of industrial (e.g., stack gas dispersion, wind energy generation), biological (e.g., pollen transport and deposition), natural (e.g., dust devil formation), and meteorological (e.g., cloud formation) activities take place in this turbulent layer. At the same time, owing to its high Reynolds number, ABL plays a critical role in advancing fundamental turbulence research. For decades, it has been a favorite playground for the theoretical physics community for testing a variety of universal scaling and similarity hypotheses.
My research group at Texas Tech University tries to gain a better understanding of ABL turbulence by synergistically combining new-generation modeling approaches (e.g., large-eddy simulation), observational techniques (e.g., small-aperture scintillometry), and by borrowing a suite of tools from the emergent field of complex systems. In this talk, I present a mélange of ongoing research projects ranging from large-eddy simulation of nighttime boundary layers to flux measurements involving scintillometry, from multi-scale numerical weather prediction to synthetic inflow generation for wind turbine design, and from characterization of low-level jets to portable high-performance computing using MatlabMPI.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Spitzer lecture presents Professor George M. Whitesides
Thu, Feb 19, 2009 @ 03:30 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Professor George M. Whitesides
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Harvard University Cambridge, MA PresentsSimple Bioanalytical SystemsSimplicity and economy are often the keys to successful technologies. ¡°Simple solutions¡± is the phrase we apply to the idea of using science to provide easily used solution to a variety of problems in bioanalysis, with a particular focus on problems in developing economies. The requirements for low cost, ruggedness, and independence of infrastructure characteristic of problems in developing economies pose remarkably challenging problems for advanced science and technology¡ªand the area is one that will benefit enormously from new ideas. Successful solutions will also be useful both in developing economies and in the developed world: low cost and simplicity are advantages almost everywhere. The flow of problems, ideas, and solutions stimulated by considering these problems is thus a most interesting two-way street. This talk will discuss this class of problems within the specific context of medical diagnostics (how close can one come to ¡°Zero-cost Diagnostics¡±?), and with a focus on three technologies: microfluidic systems based on patterned paper, microanalytical systems using magnetic levitation, and simple microfluidics devices for use with simple organisms.
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Learning Similarities and Dimensionality Reduction
Thu, Feb 19, 2009 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Kilian Weinberger, Yahoo! Research
Host: Prof. Fei ShaAbstract:
One of the most fundamental challenges of machine learning and artificial intelligence is the learning of suitable representations of data. Many machine learning algorithms assume that the data is presented in low dimensional vectorial form, where Euclidean distances reflect dissimilarities. Often this raw data format is far from optimal. Ideally one should be able to learn a "hand-tailored" representation of each particular data set for any given task. In this talk, I present three algorithms for learning compact representations that give rise to semantically meaningful similarity metrics. Each of the algorithms involves, at its core, a convex optimization problem that learns the new representation under meaningful constraints. This framework provides perfect reproducibility and theoretical guarantees. The three methods are most suitable for different data settings: Maximum Variance Unfolding reduces the dimensionality of data sets with underlying manifold structure. Taxonomy Embedding is a powerful tool for hierarchical document categorization. Large Margin Nearest Neighbor learns a robust metric for k-nearest neighbor classification. I present state-of-the-art classification results on several real world applications, including handwritten digit recognition on the MNIST corpus and document categorization on the OHSUMED medical journal data base. Biography:
Kilian Weinberger is a Research Scientist at Yahoo Research in Santa Clara, California. He works on next-generation spam filtering algorithms, multimedia search and machine learning with convex optimization. In 2007 he received a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Prof. Lawrence Saul. His work on supervised and unsupervised metric learning won several outstanding paper awards at CVPR, AISTATS and ICML. Prior to his doctoral studies he earned a first class honor BA in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Oxford.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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W.V.T. Rusch Engineering Honors Colloquium: From Physics to Nanophotons
Fri, Feb 20, 2009 @ 01:00 PM - 01:50 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Lecture offered by Asst. Prof. Michelle Povinelli, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California.
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Viterbi Admission & Student Affairs
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Power Controlled Feedback and Training for Two-way MIMO Channels
Fri, Feb 20, 2009 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Ashu Sabharwal
Rice UniversityABSTRACT: Interactive communication systems (cellular, WiFi etc) consist of transceivers, not simply transmitters and receivers. This naturally leads to a two-way channel, where both nodes in a communication system share the system resources, and use multi-round protocols to facilitate communication. Surprisingly, our understanding of this basic communication construct is rather limited.In this talk, we will study the two-way fading channel to understand noise corrupted feedback in communication systems. The noise in the feedback links leads to mismatch in the shared knowledge of the transmitter and the receiver, leading to potential outages in transmission. In the process of analyzing two-way fading channels, we show that two new concepts of power-controlled feedback and power-controlled training feedback naturally come up.BIO: Ashutosh Sabharwal received his B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi in 1993. He graduated from The Ohio State University with a MS in 1995 and PhD in 1999. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at Rice, where he also the Director of Center for Multimedia Communication. His main research interests are information theoretic foundations, protocols and platforms for high performance wireless networks.HOST: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 540, x04667
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - B18
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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Surgical Planning of the Total Cavopulmonary Connection Using MRI
Mon, Feb 23, 2009 @ 12:30 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Distinguished Lectures SeriesPresents Ajit Yoganathan,
Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair
Biomedical Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GeorgiaLecturer's Webpage:
http://www.bme.gatech.edu/facultystaff/faculty_record.php?id=5Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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BME 533 Seminar Series
Mon, Feb 23, 2009 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Ajit Yoganathan, PhD, Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair in Biomedical Engineering & Regents Professor,
Wallace H. Coulter School of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta:
"Surgical Planning of the Total Cavopulmonary Connection Using MRI, Experimental and Computational
Fluid Mechanics"Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Threat And Error Management Development - Feb. 24-26, 2009
Tue, Feb 24, 2009
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
TEM 09-2
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Audiences Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Contrasting Views of Complexity and Their Implications for Critical Infrastructures
Wed, Feb 25, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:
Dr. David L. Alderson,
Operations Research Department,
Naval Postgraduate School,
Monterey, CAAbstract:Considerable attention is now being devoted to "new sciences" of "complexity" and "networks" with the intent of discovering and applying universal laws of highly interconnected and evolved systems. In this talk, I will discuss several issues related to the use of these theories in the context of critical infrastructures, particularly those involving networks. Specifically, we revisit the notion of "organized complexity" and suggest that it is fundamental to our ability to understand, operate, and design next-generation infrastructure networks. We comment on the role of engineering in defining an architecture to support networked infrastructures and highlight recent advances in the theory of distributed control driven by network technologies. This talk represents joint work with John Doyle (Caltech).Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Microstructure as Derived from X-Ray Line Broadening
Wed, Feb 25, 2009 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Tamás Ungár Professor Department Materials Physics Eötvös University Budapest, Hungary X-ray diffraction peaks broaden either when crystallites become small or if the crystal is distorted by lattice defects. Size broadening is independent of diffraction order, however, strain broadening increases with diffraction order. Planar defects, especially stacking faults or twin boundaries produce a mixture of size and strain. hkl dependence of the different microstructure features can be very different allowing separation. A brief summary of the principles and specific case studies will be presented for nanomaterials and conventional grain size structural materials, including the effect of twinning in hexagonal metals.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - Rm 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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Mars, Venus, and Beyond: Enabling Technologies for Cruise, Entry, Descent and Landing
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Astronautical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Astronautical Engineering SeminarSpeaker:
Anita Sengupta,
NASA-JPL,
EDL and Advanced TechnologiesAbstract:
Technologies for near term NASA missions in the areas of cruise, entry, descent and landing will be discussed. The NSTAR ion thruster, first flown on Deep Space 1, was the subject of extensive research to improve its plasma production efficiency and understand wear and degradation processes. The result of our research enabled the 2007 Dawn Mission which is currently flying a suite of three ion thrusters on a journey to the Main Asteroid Belt. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will deliver a 950 kg rover, requiring the use of a supersonic aerodynamic decelerator and a novel propulsive-tethered landing approach. Our research into supersonic fluid structure interaction enabled the
qualification of a 21.5 meter parachute system, the largest ever built for an off-Earth application. The MSL terminal descent engines create a plume impingement induced landing site alteration. Our research into underexpanded supersonic jet interaction with
Martian media has yielded new experimental measurements of bearing capacity failure, entrainment, and saltation. Finally, we are developing an entry system for a Venus lander
that will see heat flux and peak deceleration levels ten times above Mars entry and experience surface pressure and temperature up to 100 times that of Earth. We are developing an ablative thermal protection system that must accommodate high levels of convective
and radiative heating during atmospheric entry. The research in each of these areas will be discussed including new findings, flight implementation, and future work.
Location: Robert Glen Rapp Engineering Research Building (RRB) - 227
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Dan Erwin
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Richard D. James presents Objective molecular dynamics
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 12:45 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Distinguished Lecture SeriesRichard D. James
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics
University of MinnesotaAbstractPerhaps the most important deformations in elasticity are those that represent the bending, twisting and extension of beams. The most important flows in fluid mechanics are viscometric flows. In both cases these are the motions that, when compared with the corresponding experiments, are used to measure the material constants. We give a universal (i.e., independent of the material) molecular level interpretation of these motions. From this viewpoint the bending and twisting of beams and the viscometric flows of fluids are parts of the same subject: in both cases these motions are associated at molecular level with a time-dependent invariant manifold of the equations of molecular dynamics. The presence of this manifold can be used to simplify molecular-level computations. Its presence also suggests a modification of the laws of macroscopic physics. Interesting links to theories of turbulence, to the Boltzmann equation, to the dynamics of nanostructures, and to the Langevin equation will be discussed. Lecturer's Webpage:http://aem.umn.edu/people/faculty/bio/james.shtmlLocation: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Hydrodynamic Modeling for the State of California Ports and Harbors: Past, Present and Future
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:Dr. Aggeliki Barberopoulou,
Postdoctoral Research Associate,
Sony Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, USCAbstract:
Following the global impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, California faced a challenging tsunami warning (June 14, 2005) and a relatively small tsunami that caused extensive damage in Crescent City harbor (November 15, 2006) that served as a wake-up call that the tsunami threat is not well understood for many coastal communities. These incidents attracted new attention to tsunami scientists and emergency managers who demanded a more systematic, consistent, and efficient response system (Synolakis and Bernard, 2006; Bernard et al., 2006).
The present mapping collaboration between the USC-Tsunami Research Center (TRC), Office of Emergency Services, and the California Geological Survey includes 35 separate areas that cover the most important ports, harbors, coastal urban centers, and popular recreational areas in California. This new tsunami inundation mapping effort is in its final phase with inundation map production to be completed by summer of 2009. We note that the first generation of inundation maps for California State emergency management was based on more conservative "worst case but realistic scenarios" (Synolakis et al, 2002), which reflected the understanding of offshore hazards pervasive ten years ago. New local tsunami sources previously unaccounted for, add complexity to hazard studies for California. Further developments in tsunami modeling made it possible to investigate the effect of a wider variety of far field tsunami sources on different parts of the State.
The availability of high-resolution bathymetric and topographic data allows for further insight into the vulnerability of ports, harbors, and other open water bodies significant for the state economy. Recent field work and numerical simulations show that using higher resolution relief data may also help evacuation plans to become more efficient when time is very limited. Additional work remains in high-risk areas of the State with large populations and limited evacuation options to help identify "safer" areas for emergency planning.
The latter are some examples of what can be done to improve tsunami preparedness for California. Following a brief look into the past and an introduction to the work currently carried out by TRC, potential projects are presented that are of interest to the authors. This may also set the ground for new collaborations within the department and beyond.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Computational Study Of Nonverbal Social Communication
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Louis-Philippe Morency, ICT, USC
Host: Prof. Stefan SchaalAbstract:
The goal of this emerging research field is to recognize, model and predict human nonverbal behavior in the context of interaction with virtual humans, robots and other human participants. At the core of this research field is the need for new computational models of human interaction emphasizing the multi-modal, multi-participant and multi-behavior aspects of human behavior. This multi-disciplinary research topic overlaps the fields of multi-modal interaction, social psychology, computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and has many applications in areas as diverse as medicine, robotics and education. During my talk, I will focus on three novel approaches to achieve efficient and robust nonverbal behavior modeling and recognition: (1) a new visual tracking framework (GAVAM) with automatic initialization and bounded drift which acquires online the view-based appearance of the object, (2) the use of latent-state models in discriminative sequence classification (Latent-Dynamic CRF) to capture the influence of unobservable factors on nonverbal behavior and (3) the integration of contextual information (specifically dialogue context) to improve nonverbal prediction and recognition.Biography:
Dr. Louis-Philippe Morency is currently research scientist at USC Institute for Creative Technologies where he leads the Nonverbal Behaviors Understanding project (ICT-NVREC). He received his Ph.D. from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 2006. His main research interest is computational study of nonverbal social communication, a multi-disciplinary research topic that overlays the fields of multi-modal interaction, computer vision, machine learning, social psychology and artificial intelligence. He developed "Watson", a real-time library for nonverbal behavior recognition and which became the de-facto standard for adding perception to embodied agent interfaces. He received many awards for his work on nonverbal behavior computation including three best-paper awards in 2008 (at various IEEE and ACM conferences). He was recently selected by IEEE Intelligent Systems as one of the "Ten to Watch" for the future of AI research.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Integrated Sys Seminar-Convergence of circuits, EM in mm/sub-mmWave regimes(Dr. Babakhani, Caltech)
Fri, Feb 27, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker - Dr. Aydin Babakhani (Caltech)
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
