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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for December
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Human Factors in Aviation Safety - Dec. 1-5, 2008
Mon, Dec 01, 2008
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
HFH 09-2
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Attendees Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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BME 533 Seminar Series: Thomas Coates, MD, & Herbert Meiselman, PhD
Mon, Dec 01, 2008 @ 12:30 PM - 01:50 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Thomas Coates, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, and Herbert Meiselman, PhD, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Keck School of Medicine, USC, "Impact of blood viscosity on oxygenation in sickle cell disease"
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Graduate/Department/Sponsors only
Contact: Mischalgrace Diasanta
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Novel Liquid Crystal Networks
Mon, Dec 01, 2008 @ 01:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Mork Family Department of Cheical Engineering & Material Science Presents:Rafael Verduzco
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge, TN"Novel Liquid Crystal Networks"AbstractThe combination of liquid crystals and polymers results in fascinating materials in which the elasticity of polymers is coupled to the liquid crystal (LC) order. In this work, we present three qualitatively different types of LC gels and elastomers and explore their electro-optical response, mechanical actuation, and flexoelectric behavior. Using block copolymer self-assembly, we prepare LC physical gels that exhibit fascinating texture transitions with temperature and multiple director relaxation modes, in contrast to covalent gels which show a single relaxation mode. Next, covalent networks with a controlled molecular weight between cross-links were prepared by "click" cross-linking of telechelic polymers produced by ring-opening metathesis polymerization. These networks swell readily in a small molecular LC solvent, 5CB, to form LC gels with high swelling ratios that exhibit a fast, reversible, and low-threshold electro-optic response. Finally, a series of bent-core liquid crystals were synthesized and used to swell calamitic monodomain liquid crystal elastomers (LCE). Nematic bent-core liquid crystals show enhanced flexoelectricity, and bent-core elastomers represent a potential method for incorporating flexoelectricity into a robust polymeric device. These LC networks and gels provide insight into the connection between physical properties and network structure and also demonstrate the broad range of materials accessible with different synthetic approaches.
Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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MULTISCALE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FRACTURE LENGTH...
Mon, Dec 01, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
... APERTURE, DENSITY AND PERMEABILITYby:Dr. Shlomo P. NeumanDepartment of Hydrology and Water ResourcesUniversity of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721ABSTRACT:Fractured rocks exhibit a hierarchical structure which renders their attributes scale-dependent. In particular available data indicate a tendency for fracture length scales to be distributed according to a power law, average fracture aperture to be given by a power of the fracture length scale, and fracture density as well as log permeability to behave as random fractals. To date, no consistent theoretical relationship has been developed between fracture type (as categorized, for example, by length scale and/or aperture) and corresponding fractal attributes (such as density and log permeability). We explore multiscale relationships between these fracture categories and attributes on the basis of a theory recently proposed by Neuman (2003), which allows linking them in a formal way. Analyzing the available data in light of this theory allows us to demonstrate that, for fractures having length scale L, (a) the variance of any fractal attribute grows as a positive power of L, (b) the same variance decreases as a negative power of the smallest length scale sampled, (c) for nominal parameters that are most representative of values inferred from field data, the variance of fracture densities increases quadratically with L, rendering their standard deviation linearly proportional to L, (d) for such nominal parameters log permeability variance increases as , (e) for a given L the variance of log permeability is proportional to that of fracture density, the constant of proportionality being a (positive, zero or negative) power of L, and (f) the standard deviation of log permeability is proportional to a positive power of the average aperture, where . The underlying theory contains explicit expressions for the mean, variance, variogram and integral (spatial correlation) scale of a statistically anisotropic fractal attribute truncated by upper and lower length scale cutoffs and/or internal lacunae. The attribute may have a Gaussian distribution, in which case it forms fractional Brownian motion (fBm), or a zero-mean symmetric Levy stable distribution, in which case it forms fractional Levy motion (fBm), the latter distribution exhibiting heavier tails than does the former. Our expression for the mean attribute of a truncated hierarchy of fracture length scales, in terms of the mean attributes associated with individual scales, may yield meaningful representations of the overall density or porosity of a truncated fracture hierarchy. However, it generally does not yield equivalent or effective values of permeability. Instead, the latter are defined on the basis of equivalent or effective forms of Darcy's law the derivation of which typically requires simulating fluid flow through the hierarchy. We mention briefly the effective permeability of a box embedded in a hierarchical medium, and associated measures of uncertainty, develop by Di Federico et al. (1999) on the basis of the scaling theory on which this talk is partly based. Based on Neuman, S.P., Multiscale relationships between fracture length, aperture, density and permeability, Geophys. Res. Lett., L22402, doi:10.1029/2008GL035622, 2008.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Non-Parametric Latent Variable Models for Shape and Motion Analysis
Tue, Dec 02, 2008 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Raquel Urtasun, MIT
Host: Prof. Fei Sha, Prof. Ram NevatiaAbstract:
Dimensionality reduction is a popular approach to dealing with high dimensional data sets. It is often the case that linear dimensionality reduction, such as principal component analysis (PCA), does not adequately capture the structure of the data. In this talk I will discuss Probabilistic Non-linear Latent Variable models in the context of 3D human body tracking, 3D shape recovery from single images, character animation and classification.First, I will describe how to use Gaussian Process Latent Variable models (GPLVMs) for learning human pose and motion priors for 3D human body tracking from monocular images. I will then show how to combine multiple local models to model the space of possible deformations of objects of arbitrary shapes, but made of the same material. This will allow us to perform monocular 3D shape recovery in the presence of complex deformations of poorly textured objects.In dimensionality reduction approaches, the data is typically embedded in a Euclidean latent space. However for some data sets, such as human motion, this is inappropriate. We present a range of approaches for embedding data into non-Euclidean latent spaces that incorporate prior knowledge. This allows us to learn models suitable for motion generation with good generalization properties. Finally, I.ll show how to extend these models to be discriminative, resulting in accurate classification even when dealing with high dimensional input spaces and very small training sets.Biography:
Raquel Urtasun is currently a Research Scientist at the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley, working with Prof. Trevor Darrell and will be a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley EECS. Raquel’s main research areas are computer vision, machine learning and computer graphics. During 2006-2008, she was a postdoctoral associate at MIT-CSAIL. She earned her PhD at EPFL (Switzerland) in 2006 under the supervision of Prof. Pascal Fua on Motion Models for Robust 3D Human Body Tracking.
Location: Charles Lee Powell Hall (PHE) - 223
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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Converging Shocks in Water
Wed, Dec 03, 2008 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Veronica Eliasson Postdoctoral Scholar GALCIT California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA Fluid-solid interactions present a challenging and coupled problem. This presentation will focus on converging shocks in water confined in an elastic body. Both experiments and simulations will be considered. The overarching goal is to provide quantitative results for shock-focusing in a converging geometry in water, and provide a better understanding of the response of the surrounding material and how it affects the focusing event.
To create a converging shock in water, a projectile launched from a gas gun impacts on a liquid contained in a converging geometry. The impact on the liquid initiates a shock wave which, during the focusing phase, builds up high pressure. Consequently, the shock in the liquid transmits to the solid. As a result, the waves in the material are then influencing the wave propagation in the liquid, creating a coupled problem.
Simulations are performed with Overture(LLNL), a finite difference code with overlapping grids and adaptive mesh refinement. Three types of simulations are considered to help quantify the experimental data: simulations of converging shocks in water in a rigid confinement, simulations of wave propagation in the surrounding material, and simulations with a solid-liquid coupling using Euler equations for the fluid domain and linear elasticity equations in the solid domain.
Results have the potential to enhance the design of marine structures subjected to dynamic loading, as well as improve the techniques used to generate high-speed liquid jets. Schlieren photograph of the impact event taken with a 20ns spark source. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Veronica Eliasson has been working as a postdoc at GALCIT, Caltech since Oct. 2007. She is working on a joint project with Prof. Paul Dimotakis and Prof. Ares Rosakis investigating converging shocks in water, where the liquid-solid coupling between the confined water and the surrounding material is of interest.
Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, Rm 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: April Mundy
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Distributed Anomaly Detection for Wireless Sensor Networks
Fri, Dec 05, 2008 @ 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Chris Leckie
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
University of Melbourne
Abstract:
Identifying misbehaviors is an important challenge for monitoring, fault
diagnosis and intrusion detection in wireless sensor networks. A key
problem is how to minimize the communication overhead and energy
consumption in the network when identifying misbehaviors. We treat this as
a problem of distributed unsupervised learning, where the aim is to build
and combine compact representations of normal behaviour based on the local
measurements from each sensor. These models can be based on
hyperellipsoidal, cluster-based or kernel-based representations. A key
objective is to minimize the communication overhead required to share
these models of normal behaviour between sensor nodes. We demonstrate on
data from real-life sensor networks that our scheme achieves comparable
accuracy compared to equivalent centralized approaches while achieving a
significant reduction in communication overhead.
Bio:
Dr Chris Leckie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer
Science and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne,
Australia. He has made numerous theoretical contributions to the use of
clustering for problems such as anomaly detection in wireless sensor
networks and the Internet. In particular, he has developed efficient
clustering techniques that are specifically designed to cope with highdimensional
and time-varying data streams, which are a major challenge in
network intrusion detection. His work on filtering denial-of-service
attacks on the Internet has been commercialized with an Australian company
(IntelliGuard I.T.), leading to a commercial product. His research has
been published in leading journals and conferences such as ACM Computing
Surveys, IEEE TKDE, Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI and ICML.
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari ext. 12528Location: Frank R. Seaver Science Center (SSC) - 319
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: B.Krishnamachari
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Aircraft Accident Investigation - Dec. 8-19, 2008
Mon, Dec 08, 2008
Aviation Safety and Security Program
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
AAI 09-2
For more information and to register for Aviation Safety and Security Program courses, please visit http://viterbi.usc.edu/aviation.Audiences: Registered Attendees Only
Contact: Viterbi Professional Programs
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Novel Liquid Crystal Networks
Mon, Dec 08, 2008 @ 01:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science Presents:"Novel Liquid Crystal Networks"Rafael Verduzco
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TNAbstractThe combination of liquid crystals and polymers results in fascinating materials in which the elasticity of polymers is coupled to the liquid crystal (LC) order. In this work, we present three qualitatively different types of LC gels and elastomers and explore their electro-optical response, mechanical actuation, and flexoelectric behavior. Using block copolymer self-assembly, we prepare LC physical gels that exhibit fascinating texture transitions with temperature and multiple director relaxation modes, in contrast to covalent gels which show a single relaxation mode. Next, covalent networks with a controlled molecular weight between cross-links were prepared by "click" cross-linking of telechelic polymers produced by ring-opening metathesis polymerization. These networks swell readily in a small molecular LC solvent, 5CB, to form LC gels with high swelling ratios that exhibit a fast, reversible, and low-threshold electro-optic response. Finally, a series of bent-core liquid crystals were synthesized and used to swell calamitic monodomain liquid crystal elastomers (LCE). Nematic bent-core liquid crystals show enhanced flexoelectricity, and bent-core elastomers represent a potential method for incorporating flexoelectricity into a robust polymeric device. These LC networks and gels provide insight into the connection between physical properties and network structure and also demonstrate the broad range of materials accessible with different synthetic approaches.
Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Annual Pings Lecture: Confronting the Climate-Energy Challenge
Tue, Dec 09, 2008 @ 03:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering & Material Science Annual Ping's LecturePresentsProfessor Daniel Schrag
Harvard University, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and
School of Engineering and Applied SciencesConfronting the Climate-Energy ChallengeAbstractThe increase in atmospheric CO2 due to burning coal, oil and gas represents an unprecedented experiment on the Planet Earth. We know from air bubbles trapped in ice cores that CO2 has never been higher than 300 parts per million in the last 650,000 years, and from indirect measurements, we think it was not significantly higher than this for tens of millions of years. Geologic records of climate change, as well as observations of neighboring planets, provide a variety of important lessons that can guide us in evaluating the risks of future climate change. In general, the uncertainties in our understanding of the climate system are biased towards lack of knowledge about catastrophic events. In this context, a variety of strategies will be discussed for meeting the world's energy needs with the smallest possible impact on our atmosphere, as well as considering what strategies we might require if climate change is more dramatic than we expect.Daniel Schrag is the Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Environmental Science and Engineering. Schrag studies climate and climate change over the broadest range of Earth's history. He has examined changes in ocean circulation over the last several decades, with particular attention to El Niño and the tropical Pacific; he investigates Pleistocene ice-age cycles over the last million years; he studies the warm climates of the Eocene, 50 million years ago; and, with colleagues from Harvard, helped to develop the Snowball Earth hypothesis that explains extreme glacial events that occurred
over 600 million years ago. Currently he is working on the early
history of Mars and Earth, trying to understand the environmental conditions around the time of the origin of life. He is also working on new technological approaches to mitigating future climate change, including advanced energy technologies for low-carbon transportation fuel, and carbon sequestration. Schrag received a B.S. from Yale and a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at Princeton before moving to Harvard in 1997. Among various honors, he was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2000.Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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FIELD AND LABORATORY ANALYSIS OF WATER WELL DESIGN PARAMETERS
Wed, Dec 10, 2008 @ 09:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
PhD Oral Defense by:Christopher Harich
Graduate StudentAbstract:
It is the goal of this research to establish fundamental principles of water well design. These principles have developed critical water well design parameters for four different types of aquifers; very coarse, coarse, medium and fine grained according to the Wentworth classification. With extensive laboratory testing utilizing the world's largest sand-tank well/aquifer model at the University of Southern California's Geohydrology Laboratory and field data from over 100 wells accompanied by 400 aquifer sieves, this research has developed a standard by which water wells can be designed.
The design of efficient water wells requires knowledge of various hydraulic factors that affect the major drawdown components of a well. The Step Drawdown Method has been shown to be a valid more robust method for the determination of water well efficiency. This method determines more head loss terms then the Conventional Method for calculating well efficiency and thus determines all of the aquifer and well loss terms for a particular well. The demarcation of the transitional state of laminar to turbulent flow is well defined by the method of critical radius and presented herein. Five types of initial well developments are discussed and are critical to decreasing the critical radius over a well's operational pumping rate. Minimizing these turbulent flow losses can result in substantial cost savings over the lifetime of the well.
This research has will aid engineers in developing more efficient water wells in various geohydrological settings. Its goal is to provide the largest production of water while maintaining the lowest operational costs for the well owners. This paper will design wells that are simple and strong while protecting our water resources.Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Seminar: Fabrication Methods for the Production of Polymer Films
Thu, Dec 11, 2008 @ 01:00 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science Presents:"Fabrication Methods for the Production of Polymer Films: Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition and
Templated Formation of Ionotropic Gels Using Patterned Paper"Malancha Gupta
Harvard University
Cambridge, MAAbstractThis talk will describe two methods for the production of polymer films. The first method focuses on the use of initiated chemical vapor deposition to make a wide variety of polymer coatings such as poly(2-(perfluoroalkyl)ethyl methacrylate), poly(glycidyl methacrylate), and poly(furfuryl methacrylate). Vapor deposition has the environmental benefit of using no solvents and the process can be used to conformally coat substrates with complex geometries such as fabrics and wires since there are no surface tension problems. Deposition rates as high as 300 nm/min can be achieved. The proposed polymerization mechanism is the classical free radical polymerization mechanism of vinyl monomers. Monomer and initiator gases are fed into a vacuum chamber where resistively heated wires are used to thermally decompose the initiator molecules into free radicals. The free radicals then attack the vinyl bonds of the monomer molecules. Propagation occurs on the surface of a cooled substrate. We have demonstrated that the process can be used to modify the surfaces of high-aspect-ratio (~100) polymeric membranes and electrospun fiber mats.The second method focuses on the use of paper templates to fabricate shaped films of ionotropic hydrogels. Solutions of polymers such as alginic acid, carrageenan, and carboxymethyl cellulose form films with defined shapes when brought into contact with patterned templates of paper wetted with aqueous solutions of multivalent cations. This method allows the production of topographically and topologically complex 3D shapes, such as interlocking rings and Möbius strips. The shaped films can be made magnetically responsive by using paramagnetic ions like holmium as the cross-linking ions or by suspending ferrite microparticles in the hydrogels. Heterogeneous films of ionotropic hydrogels can be fabricated through the use of multiple templates. These heterogeneous structures include single films where a pattern of one hydrogel is surrounded by another hydrogel ("gel-in-gel" structures) and hydrogels that contain a gradient in the concentration of cross-linking agent.
Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
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Autonomy: From Outer to Inner Space
Thu, Dec 11, 2008 @ 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Kanna Rajan, Principal Researcher for Autonomy, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)
Host: Prof. Gaurav SukhatmeAbstract:
Ocean Sciences the world over is at a cusp, with a move from the Expeditionary to the Observatory mode of doing science. Recent policy decisions in the United States, are pushing the technology for persistent observation and sampling which hitherto had been either economically unrealistic or unrealizable due to technical constraints. With the advent of ocean observatories, a number of key technologies have however proven to be promising for sustained ocean presence. Mobile robots routinely map the benthic environment and sample the water-column up to depths of 6000 meters while tele-operated vehicles navigate remote depths performing scientific experiments in-situ relating to biogeochemical processes in the ocean. Such platforms however have inherent limitations with how they are commanded and operated; pre-defined sequences of commands are currently used to determine what actions the robot will perform and when irrespective of the contextual environment in which it operates. As a consequence not only can the robot not recover from unforeseen failure conditions, but they are unable to significantly leverage their substantial onboard assets to do opportunistic science.To mitigate such shortcomings, we are developing deliberative techniques to dynamically command Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). Our effort is aimed to use a blend of generative and deliberative Artificial Intelligence Planning and Execution techniques to shed goals, introspectively analyze onboard resources and recover from failures. In addition we are working on clustering techniques to adaptively trigger science instruments that will contextually sample the seas driven by scientific intent. The end goal is towards unstructured exploration of the subsea environments that are a rich trove of problems for autonomous systems. Our work is a continuum of efforts from research at NASA to command deep space probes and Mars rovers, the lessons of which we have factored into the oceanic domain. In this talk I will articulate the challenges of working in the hostile underwater domain, lay out the differences and motivate our architecture for goal-driven autonomy on AUVs.Biography:
Dr. Kanna is the Principal Researcher in Autonomy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (http://www.mbari.org) a privately funded non-profit Oceanographic institute which he joined in October 2005. Prior to that he was a Senior Research Scientist and a member of the management team of the the 95 member Autonomous Systems and Robotics Area at NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, California. At Ames, balanced programmatic and technical responsibilities. He was the Principal Investigator of the MAPGEN Mixed-Initiative Planning effort to command and control the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on the surface of the Red Planet. MAPGEN continues to be used to this day, twice daily in the mission-critical uplink process at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Kanna was one of the six principals of the Remote Agent Experiment (RAX) team, which designed, built, tested and flew the first closed-loop AI based control system on a spacecraft. The RA was the co-winner of NASA's 1999 Software of the Year, the agency's highest technical award (http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/projects/remote-agent/). His interests are in automated Planning/Scheduling, modeling and representation for real world planners and agent architectures for Distributed Control applications. Prior to joining NASA Ames, he was in the doctoral program at the Courant Institute of Math Sciences at NYU. Prior to that he was at the Knowledge Systems group at American Airlines, helping build a Maintenance Routing scheduler (MOCA), which continues to be used by the airline 365 days of the year. MAPGEN has been awarded NASA's 2004 Turning Goals into Reality award under the Administrators Award category, a NASA Space Act Award, a NASA Group Achievement Award and a NASA Ames Honor Award. Kanna is the recipient of the 2002 NASA Public Service Medal and the First NASA Ames Information Directorate Infusion Award also in 2002. In Oct 2004, JPL awarded him the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for his role on the Mars Exploration Rovers misson. He was the Co-chair of the 2005 Intnl. Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), Monterey California (http://icaps05.icaps-conference.org/) and till recently the chair of the Executive Board of the International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space. He continues to serve on review panels for NASA, the Italian Space Agency and European Space Agency.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Colloquia
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The Classically-Enhanced Father Protocol
Mon, Dec 15, 2008 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mark M. WildeMonday, December 15, 2008
11:00am - 12:00pm
EEB 539Abstract: The classically-enhanced father protocol is an optimal protocol for a sender to transmit both classical and quantum information to a receiver by exploiting preshared entanglement and a large number of independent uses of a noisy quantum channel. We detail the proof of a quantum Shannon theorem that gives the three-dimensional capacity region containing all achievable rates that the classically-enhanced father protocol obtains. Points in the capacity region are rate triples consisting of the classical communication rate, the quantum communication rate, and the entanglement consumption rate of a particular coding scheme. The classically-enhanced father protocol is more general than any other protocol in the family tree of quantum Shannon theoretic protocols. Several previously known quantum protocols are now child protocols of the classically-enhanced father protocol. Interestingly, the classically-enhanced father protocol gives insight for constructing optimal classically-enhanced entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting codes.Biography: Mark M. Wilde completed the Ph.D. program in Electrical Engineering at USC in August 2008 with special focus in quantum computing and quantum communication. He obtained a Master's of Science degree at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. He pursued undergraduate studies in computer engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. NEC Laboratories America in Princeton, New Jersey hosted him as a visitor for September 2008 and the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore hosted him from October to the present date. He will begin a career at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in Washington, DC in January 2009 with a focus on quantum computing and quantum communication applications.Host: Prof. Todd Brun, tbrun@usc.edu, EEB 502, x03503Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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A Functional Genomics Approach for Improving ....
Tue, Dec 16, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Chlorinated Organic Bioremediation ProcessesDr. David R. JohnsonPostdoctoral ResearcherDepartment of Fundamental MicrobiologyUniversity of Laussane, SwitzerlandAbstract:Chlorinated organics are among the most prevalent contaminants of groundwater resources and pose a significant threat to human and ecological health. Remediating these resources with pump-and-treat strategies is technically challenging and costly. Fortunately, strategies that utilize microorganisms to degrade these pollutants in situ have been developed and applied with success. Of particular interest are members of the Dehalococcoides group of bacteria because of their ability to degrade a wide range of chlorinated organic pollutants. Although significant progress has been made, effective methods for optimizing and monitoring the performance of Dehalococcoides-based bioremediation systems are now needed.To begin to address these needs, this research applied functional genomics tools to improve our understanding of the model bacterium Dehalococcoides ethenogenes strain 195. Transcriptomics were analyzed by whole-genome microarrays while proteomics were analyzed by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. Active and non-active cultures were characterized and compared to identify factors that can potentially limit dechlorination performance. This approach successfully identified cobalamin (vitamin B12) as a key factor controlling dechlorination activity and revealed novel strategies for minimizing cobalamin deficiencies within bioremediation systems. In addition, these studies identified mRNA and peptide biomarkers that could be used to quantitatively assess the physiological state of strain 195 within uncharacterized systems. The results of this research demonstrate the utility of functional genomics approaches for accelerating our understanding of environmental biological systems. More collaborative efforts between the fields of genome sciences and environmental engineering are now needed to help address current and future environmental problems.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Title Seismic Performance and Post-Earthquake Resilience of Highway Systems
Wed, Dec 17, 2008 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Stu Werner Seismic Systems & Engineering Consultants, Oakland CA Abstract: Protection of life safety is no longer the sole requirement for the successful seismic design of bridges and other highway structures. Design to maintain acceptable highway-system performance and resilience that reduces post-earthquake traffic disruptions and ensures rapid restoration of traffic flows is also vital for facilitating emergency response, reducing economic losses, and reducing socio-economic impacts of earthquake damage. This presentation will address this issue, which is now being investigated under a new research project that is part of a continuation of the multi-year FHWA Seismic Research Program. The presentation will also describe the REDARS methodology and software for seismic risk analysis of highway systems, its application to the assessment of highway-system performance and resilience, and future directions for its continued development.Duration About 40-45 minutes for presentation, plus time for questions and discussionBio. Stu Werner has over 40 years of experience in earthquake engineering and risk analysis of highway, seaport, and air transportation systems and structures. His work in this area has included design peer review, analysis, full scale testing, and system risk analysis for diverse clients that have included the Federal Highway Administration, Caltrans, Port of Los Angeles, Port of Oakland, BART, San Francisco Airport, US Geological Survey, FEMA, CH2M Hill, URS, and Oregon DOT. Since the mid-1990s, Stu has led the development of REDARS and its application to highway systems in earthquake-prone regions nationwide. He is president of Seismic Systems & Engineering Consultants in Oakland CA, has published over 130 papers that describe his various earthquake engineering activities, and is a recent recipient of the ASCE C. Martin Duke award in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of lifeline earthquake engineering.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Partially Polarized Noise in Optical Fiber Communications System
Wed, Dec 24, 2008 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Curtis R. Menyuk
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department
University of Maryland Baltimore CountyAbstract: Polarization effects such as polarization-dependent loss (PDL), polarization-dependent gain (PDG), and polarization mode dispersion (PMD) can significantly impact system performance. When characterizing system performance, it is important to relate the more fundamental Q-factor to the more easily measured signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It is also important to take into account the realistic optical and electrical filter shapes. The widely used formulae to relate Q and SNR that can be found in optical fiber communications textbooks only consider two extreme cases in which the noise is unpolarized or completely co-polarized with the signal. However, partially polarized noise can occur in systems with significant PDL. In a series of publications, members of my research group have systematically investigated the impact of partially polarized noise both theoretically and experimentally. I will summarize the results of that research in my presentation. A key finding is that the relationship between Q and SNR is not unique. As a consequence, Q can vary greatly even when the SNR does not change.Bio: Curtis R. Menyuk was born March 26, 1954. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT in 1976 and the Ph.D. from UCLA in 1981. He has worked as a research associate at the University of Maryland, College Park and at Science Applications International Corporation in McLean, VA. In 1986 he became an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and he was the founding member of this department. In 1993, he was promoted to Professor. He was on partial leave from UMBC from Fall, 1996 until Fall, 2002. From 1996 – 2001, he worked part-time for the Department of Defense, co-directing the Optical Networking program at the DoD Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences in Adelphi, MD from 1999 – 2001. In 2001 – 2002, he was Chief Scientist at PhotonEx Corporation. For the last 20 years, his primary research area has been theoretical and computational studies of fiber optic communications, lasers, and nonlinear optics. He has authored or co-authored more than 210 archival journal publications as well as numerous other publications and presentations. He has also edited two books. The equations and algorithms that he and his research group at UMBC have developed to model optical fiber transmission systems are used extensively in the telecommunications industry. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the IEEE. He is a former UMBC Presidential Research Professor.Host: Alan Willner, willner@usc.edu, EEB 538, x04664Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
