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• Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars (66)
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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February

• Feb

  01

  A Reading by Nguyen Qui Duc

  Thu, Feb 01, 2007 @ 12:00 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Journalist, memoirist and radio show host Nguyen Qui Duc will read from his work. Lunch will be provided. http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861414&active_category=Upcoming

  Location: Troyland Apartments (TAP) - er Hall 420

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Daria Yudacufski

  

• Feb

  01

  Dinh Q. Lê: Artist Talk and Discussion

  Thu, Feb 01, 2007 @ 02:00 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  For more information, visit: http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861414&active_category=Upcoming

  Location: Troyland Apartments (TAP) - er Hall 420

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Daria Yudacufski

  

• Feb

  01

  Recent development of steel-concrete composite structures and their applications in China

  Thu, Feb 01, 2007 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  KAP 203, 2:30pm-3:30pm
  February 1, 2007Speaker:
  Jianguo Nie, Professor
  Tsinghua University
  Beijing, ChinaAbstract
  Using the combined advantages of both steel and concrete materials, the steel-concrete composite system is a popular type of structure used in both buildings and bridges in China. In this seminar, general information of building and bridge construction in China will be introduced. Then the recent research in new types of connections of steel-concrete composite beams and columns will be presented. Innovative applications of composite system in the repairs/strengthening of bridges and buildings will also be presented.Dr. Jianguo Nie is a Professor of the Department of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, China. He is currently holding the title of Cheung Kong Scholar, a high prestigious title awarded by the Chinese Ministry of Education. He is the Director of Research Institute of Structural Engineering at Tsinghua University, and the Director of Key Laboratory of Structural Engineering and Vibration of China Education Ministry, Tsinghua University. Dr. Nie's major research interests are steel-concrete composite structures, strengthening and retrofitting of concrete structures, and applications of steel-concrete composite structures to building and bridge systems. Prof. Nie has more than 20 years of experience in research and directing students in these research areas and has published more than 150 papers and 2 books.

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 203

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  01

  WiSE Distinguished Lecturer, Dr. Maria Klawe, Gender, Lies, and Videogames

  Thu, Feb 01, 2007 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

  Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Maria Klawe became the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College on July 1, 2006. A renowned computer scientist and scholar, Klawe is the first woman to serve as president of HMC. Prior to joining HMC, she served as dean of engineering and professor of computer science at Princeton University.Klawe earned her B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics at the University of Alberta, Canada, and began her tenure at Princeton in January 2003. Prior to that, she held academic positions at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the University of Toronto and Oakland University. During her 15 years at the University of British Columbia she served as head of the Department of Computer Science from 1988 to 1995, vice president of student and academic services from 1995 to 1998, and dean of science from 1998 to 2002. She also spent eight years in industry, serving at IBM Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, Calif., first as a research scientist, then as manager of the Discrete Mathematics Group and manager of the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department.Klawe has been active in many organizations promoting women and leadership in science and technology, and is currently chair of the board for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology in Palo Alto, Calif. She is a current member of the Executive Committee, the past president (2002-2004), and also a fellow (1995) of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), and was a board member of the Computing Research Association. Her service to other organizations includes work as a trustee for the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, and the American Mathematical Society. She holds honorary doctorates from Dalhousie University (2005), Queen's University (2004), the University of Waterloo (2003), and Ryerson University (2001).

  Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100 (Hedco Auditorium)

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Nicole Hawkes

  

• Feb

  02

  The Capacity of Interference Channels with Partial Transmitter Cooperation

  Fri, Feb 02, 2007 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER: Professor Ivana Maric, Stanford UniversityABSTRACT: We present capacity regions for several two-sender, two-receiver channels with partial transmitter cooperation. First, we present the capacity regions for compound multiaccess channels (MACs) with common information and compound MACs with conferencing. Next, we consider two interference channel models; interference channels with common information and interference channels where the message sent by one of the encoders is known to the other encoder. The capacity regions of both of these channels are determined when there is "strong" interference, i.e., the interference is such that both receivers can decode all messages with no rate penalty. The resulting capacity regions thus coincide with the capacity region of the compound MAC with common information. HOST: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

  

• Feb

  02

  Decentralized Processing: An Information Theoretic Perspective

  Fri, Feb 02, 2007 @ 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER: Prof. Shlomo Shamai, Technion, Israel Institute of TechnologyAbstract: We discuss the scenario where remote nomadic users (or a single user) communicate to a destination via a set of intermediate agents. The agents are ignorant of the codebook used due to the nomadic regime and are connected to the destination via reliable links of finite capacity. We focus here on independent Gaussian channels to all agents, who are equipped with a single antenna while the transmitter or transmitters may posses multiple antennas.First we review the results associated with a single transmit antenna, invoking decentralized quantization, which yield the ultimate achievable rate, in the nomadic regime.For a multiantenna transmitter, upper and lower bounds on the achievable rate with Gaussian signalling are developed, and it is demonstrated that the full multiplexing gain of the system can potentially be maintained, even when the transmitter is denied the knowledge of the channel state information (corresponding fading coefficients). We also examine the asymptotic setting with the number of agents and transmit antennas (or users) taken to infinity, yet maintaining a fixed ratio. Here we demonstrate the incompetence of the simple compression when compared to a Wyner-Ziv based approach.Finally, we confine attention to the basic single antenna scheme with two agents and consider the impact of a finite capacity feedback link from the final destination to the agents, allowing for a single round of conferencing. Network coding is optimal here in the sense of facilitating the full exploitation of the conferencing phase on the feedback link (from the destination to the agents). The impact of this conferencing protocol on the ultimate performance is quantified, and implications of layered coding in this scenario are also considered.Bio: Shlomo Shamai (Shitz) is the William Fondiller Professor of Telecommunication at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion---Israel Institute of Technology, where he has been on the faculty since 1986. His research interests encompasses a wide spectrum of topics in information theory and statistical communications.Prof. Shamai is an IEEE Fellow and 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. He is also the recipient of the 2000 Technion Henry Taub Prize for Excellence in Research. He has served as Associate Editor for 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

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

  

• Feb

  02

  Materials Science Seminar

  Fri, Feb 02, 2007 @ 02:45 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  THE MORK FAMILY DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCEPresents:Microscale Flow and Transport Problems arising in Surfactant Rheology, Printing Processes, and Polymer ElectrophoresisBy:Professor Satish Kumar
  Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
  University of MinnesotaAbstractFluid flow and transport processes occurring on length scales of microns or less often involve phenomena which are unimportant at larger length scales. Although such phenomena can complicate our ability to understand and design microscale flow and transport processes, they also offer opportunities to engineer novel and useful effects. Three examples will be presented in this talk in support of this idea. In the first example, we consider an instability that arises when a fluid flows past a soft elastic solid. Experiments and theory suggest that this instability is responsible for certain rheological phenomena observed in surfactant solutions, and that it may also be useful for enhancing mixing in microscale flows. In the second example, we consider the displacement of one thin liquid film by another on a chemically patterned surface. Numerical simulations using a lubrication-theory-based model indicate a mechanism by which one liquid can be emulsified into the other, a step which is known to play a key role in lithographic printing processes. In the third example, we consider polymer electrophoresis through a narrow constriction. Brownian dynamics simulations show that the relationship between chain transit velocity and chain length depends in a sensitive way on the constriction geometry and applied electric field strength, and is controlled by an interplay between three distinct time scales.2:45-3:30 PM
  (Refreshments will be served at 2:30 PM)First year MASC students are required to attend.

  Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Petra Pearce

  

• Feb

  05

  Practical network coding by binary superposition of codewords...

  Mon, Feb 05, 2007 @ 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER: Professor Joerg Kliewer, University of Notre DameABSTRACT: In this talk we consider two applications of network coding based on the binary superposition of codewords at a network node. In the first application we address the scenario in which two partners (node A and node B) cooperate in transmitting information to a single destination; each partner transmits both locally-generated information and information that originated at the other partner. A key observation is that node B already knows node A's relayed information and can exploit that knowledge when decoding node A's information. This leads to an encoding scheme in which each partner transmits the binary superposition of its local and relayed information. The superimposed codeword is interpreted differently at the two receivers, i.e., at the other partner and the destination node, based on their different a priori knowledge. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme provides substantial coding gain over other cooperative diversity techniques.The second application proposes a novel distributed encoding procedure to realize codes that resemble LT codes (rateless codes for erasure correction) in both structure and performance. For the case of two sources communicating with a single sink via a common relay, this technique separately encodes K/2 symbols of information onto slightly more than K code symbols at each source. These two codewords are combined at the relay by a mixture of routing and network coding. The resulting MLT (modified LT) code can then be decoded by the sink to recover all K information symbols. It is shown that, for the case of four sources communicating to a single sink, using a MLT code leads to a 50% reduction in overhead at the sink, compared to employing four individual LT codes combined by time-sharing at the relay. Similar benefits for MLT codes can also be observed for the frame error rate if a fixed code rate is considered.Bio: Joerg Kliewer received the Diploma Degree (M.S.) in Electrical Engineering from the Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany, in 1993 and the Dr.-Ing. degree (Ph.D.) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany, in 1999, respectively. From 1994 to 1998 he was a research assistant at the University of Kiel, Germany. From 1999 to 2004 he was with the Faculty of Engineering, University of Kiel, Germany, as an Assistant Professor. In 2004 he was visiting the University of Southampton, U.K., for one year, and since 2005 he is with the University of Notre Dame, IN, as a Visiting Assistant Professor. He received a Leverhulme fellowship award in 2003 and a German Research Foundation fellowship award in 2004, respectively. His current research interests include joint source and channel coding, error correcting codes, network coding, and network information theory.Host: Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

  

• Feb

  05

  BME Seminar Series

  Mon, Feb 05, 2007 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM

  Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  "The Invisible Cartilage and Other Mysteries of the Musculoskeletal System--by MR. UTE Imaging"Shantanu Sinha, PhD
  Professor of Radiology
  UCSD School of Medicine

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Adam Wyatt

  

• Feb

  06

  CS Distinguished Lecture Series

  Tue, Feb 06, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Prof. David SalesinUniversity of WashingtonTitle: Unleashing the Computer's Potential for CommunicationAbstract: In this talk, David Salesin claims that the real market for PCs lies in their vast potential as a communications medium. Already, millions of PowerPoint presentations are made each day, hundreds of thousands of documents are archived on line, and literally billions of web pages are searched. Yet, so far, computers are used largely just to emulate the appearance of existing, physical media, such as slide transparencies or 8-1/2" x 11" sheets of paper. Drawing upon examples that range from computer-generated illustration and virtual cinematography to adaptive document layout and animated presentations, David discusses some of the research challenges he sees in harnessing the power of the computer to create more powerful communications media than exist today. Biography: David Salesin is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington and is also a Principal Scientist in the Advanced Technology Labs at Adobe Systems. Salesin's research interests are in computer graphics and include digital photography and video, automatic design & presentation of information, non-photorealistic rendering, visualization, image-based rendering, digital typography, and color.Hosted by Prof. Karen Liu

  Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Nancy Levien

  

• Feb

  07

  PhD Defense: The Extraction and Complexity Limits of Graphical Models for Linear Codes

  Wed, Feb 07, 2007 @ 09:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER: Mr. Thomas HalfordAbstract: A decade ago, the introduction of turbo codes and iterative message passing algorithms revolutionized the theory and practice of coding. In the ensuing years, the coding theory community has become adept at designing codes from good graphical models - that is, models which imply low-complexity, near-optimal iterative message passing algorithms. Specifically, modern codes are constructed by connecting a large number of simple local codes together via a rich, random-like, cyclic interconnection network. A key observation from this work is that the introduction of cycles to graphical models can enable massive complexity reductions in model, and thus decoding, complexity.Whereas constructive graphical modeling problems (e.g. code design) have been widely addressed by the coding theory community, less is understood about the inverse problem of model extraction. Specifically, can good graphical models be obtained for existing algebraic codes, or more generally, for arbitrary systems? What tradeoffs exist between model complexity and cyclic topology for a given code? If good models can exist, how can they be obtained, or extracted?This dissertation presents a theoretical framework for the study of extractive graphical modeling problems. The limits of extraction are first considered and a number of new results are presented on the space of graphical models for a given (fixed) code. Most significantly, a new characterization of the tradeoff between cyclic topology and complexity in graphical models for linear codes is provided. Inasmuch as the cyclic topology of a graphical model is related to the performance of the decoding algorithms it implies, this tree-inducing cut-set bound provides insight into the fundamental limits of graphical model extraction. Extraction is then treated formally using the language of combinatorial optimization and a number of novel heuristics for both defining and solving this optimization problem.The results of a number of side problems that arose in the aforementioned study of graphical model extraction are also reported. Novel optimal soft-in soft-out (SISO) decoding algorithms are described for Reed-Solomon codes and for first-order Reed-Muller codes. A practically realizable - yet remarkably successful - suboptimal SISO decoding algorithm for arbitrary linear block codes based on massively redundant Tanner graphs is also developed. Finally, an efficient algorithm for counting short cycles in bipartite graphs is described.Bio: Thomas R. Halford received the B. A. Sc. degree in engineering physics from Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada, in 2001. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, where his research focuses primarily on graphical models of codes. He spent the summer of 2005 visiting the Natural Language Processing Group at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY.Advisor: Keith M. Chugg

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

  

• Feb

  07

  Introduction to Nanorobotics

  Wed, Feb 07, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER:
  Prof. Aristides Requicha, USC- Gordon Marshall Chair in Engineering and
  Professor of Computer ScienceNanorobotics is an emerging field that encompasses: * Programmable assembly of nanoscale components (i) by manipulations with SPMs (or other robotic devices), (ii) by passive self-assembly on programmed templates, or (iii) by active self-assembly of robotic components.
  * Design and fabrication of nanorobots with overall dimensions at or below the micrometer range and made of nanoscopic components.
  * Programming and coordination of large numbers of such nanorobots. This talk begins with a brief introduction to nanotechnology and then assesses the state of the art and open issues in the three areas above.

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, Room 203

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  07

  BIODIESEL COMBUSTION AND EMISSIONS

  Wed, Feb 07, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 AM

  Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  André Boehman Professor of Fuel ScienceDepartment of Energy and Geo-Environmental EngineeringPennsylvania State UniversityAbstractIn this work, we consider the behavior of biodiesel fuels during diesel combustion, including the injection process, pollutant formation and the characteristics of the pollutants. Topics covered include the unique features of the ignition process for biodiesel fuels, the anomalous "NOx Effect" that is observed in diesel engines running on biodiesel and impacts of biodiesel on the characteristics of diesel soot. Past and ongoing work seeks to relate the nanostructure and oxidative reactivity of soot. This work shows that the initial structure alone does not dictate the reactivity of diesel soot and rather the initial oxygen groups have a strong influence on the oxidation rate. A comparison of the complete oxidation behavior and burning mode was made to address the mechanism by which biodiesel soot enhances oxidation. Diesel soot derived from neat biodiesel (B100) is far more reactive during oxidation than soot from neat Fischer-Tropsch diesel fuel (FT100). B100 soot undergoes a unique oxidation process leading to capsule-type oxidation and eventual formation of graphene ribbon structures. Incorporation of greater surface oxygen functionality in the B100 soot provides the means for more rapid oxidation and drastic structural transformation during the oxidation process. These characteristics of diesel soot have implications for the operation and regeneration of diesel particulate filters and, as a consequence of the coupling that can arise between particulate and NOx controls, for the operation of urea-selective catalytic reduction of NOx.

  Location: Seaver Science Library, Rm 150

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: April Mundy

  

• Feb

  08

  Narrative Medicine: The Healing Power of Stories

  Thu, Feb 08, 2007

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  As part of the Medical Humanities Speaker Series, Dr. Rita Charon, internist and literary scholar, will engage students and faculty in dialogue about some of the core issues facing the health of individuals and society. She will present two talks, one on the University Campus and one on the Health Sciences Campus.Rita Charon is professor of clinical medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and director of the program in narrative medicine. She is a general internist in practice in the Associates of Internal Medicine in Presbyterian Hospital. For more information on this event, please visit:http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861435&active_category=Upcoming
  

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Daria Yudacufski

  

• Feb

  08

  The Theory behind IDEAL: Cramer-Rao Bounds for Chemical Species Separation in Magnetic Resonance Im

  Thu, Feb 08, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  The Theory behind IDEAL: Cramer-Rao Bounds for Chemical Species Separation in Magnetic Resonance ImagingAngel R. Pineda, PhD
  Department of Mathematics
  CSU-FullertonAbstract:The separation of water and fat in MRI through the acquisition of images at multiple echo times provides a robust method for fat suppression in areas where the field is inhomogeneous and fat saturation pulses fail. By accurately estimating the fat component, we are also able to explore diagnostic information that may exist in the fat image. In this talk, we will show how to propagate the imperfections of the magnetic field into our estimate of water and fat and use this understanding to optimize the imaging parameters. Introducing the imperfections in the magnetic field in the estimation of the water and fat makes the estimation nonlinear. The optimization of data acquisition based on the Cramer-Rao bound for this nonlinear problem leads to a new optimal solution. Our acquisition and reconstruction is part of the IDEAL method for chemical species separation.Bio:Dr. Pineda received his BS from Lafayette College in 1995, his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 2002, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Radiology at Stanford University in 2006. He is the author of 15 refereed journal articles, and has made numerous contributions to CT and MRI reconstruction, including optimization of the IDEAL fat-water separation technique which is emerging as a gold-standard for MRI-based fat-water imaging. He recently joined the faculty in the Department of Mathematics at CSU-Fullerton.Host: Krishna S. Nayak, 0-3494, knayak@usc.edu http://ee.usc.edu/

  Location: Room: EEB 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Talyia Veal

  

• Feb

  08

  Lyman L. Handy Colloquium

  Thu, Feb 08, 2007 @ 12:45 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  MODELING CHEMICAL REACTIVITY: EFFECTS OF CONFINEMENTKeith E. Gubbins
  Center for High Performance Simulation (CHiPS) and
  Department of Chemical Engineering, North Carolina State University,
  Raleigh, NC 27695, USA A goal of theory is to predict chemical reactivity – equilibrium composition, reaction mechanisms and reaction rates, as well as diffusion limitations – from first principles. At present our ability to achieve this is quite limited, for a number of reasons. First, ab initio methods are necessary, since electrons are rearranged, but these are computationally very demanding, and with current supercomputers we are quite limited in the length and time scales that can be accessed; moreover, the scaling of the computational burden with the number of electrons is poor. Second, reaction events are rare, and so even if we have the energy landscape for the reaction conventional molecular dynamics simulations are insufficient. A brief review of the most widely used methods to model chemical reactions, at both the electronic and atomistic levels will be presented, with comments on their applicability and a description of their strengths and weaknesses1. In many applications a combination of ab initio and semi-classical atomistic simulations will be needed. Specialized atomistic simulation methods are usually necessary, since the reactions are themselves rare events, and the free energy landscape for the reaction is often rugged with many possible reaction paths. Chemical reactions are often carried out in nano-structured materials, which can enhance reactions due to their large specific surface area, their interactions with the reacting mixture and confinement effects. An experimental investigation of the role of each possible catalytic effect is challenging, since experimental measurements reflect an integration over multiple catalytic effects. In this talk several of the different factors that can influence a chemical reaction in confinement will be considered. We first consider the influence of steric hindrance on the equilibrium and kinetics for the rotational isomerizations of several small hydrocarbons. These examples illustrate how reaction rates can vary doubly exponentially with the dimensions of the confining material (the 'shape-catalytic' effect). As a second example, we consider the unimolecular decomposition of formaldehyde on graphitic carbon pores of various sizes . These results illustrate the influence of electrostatic interactions with the supporting material on the reaction mechanism and equilibrium yield for reactions involving a charge transfer. As a final example, we consider the interaction of a water molecule with a defective carbon substrate as an example of a chemical interaction that can be enhanced through a shape-catalytic effect. We show using ab initio calculations how a vacancy site on a carbon surface can induce the thermal splitting of water at relatively low temperatures . We also examine the dissociation on a vacancy site on a nanotube surface, which shows the shape-catalytic effect of the surface curvature. These results are a first step toward the design of catalytic materials that take advantage of different enhancing effects simultaneously. 1 E. Santiso and K.E. Gubbins, "Multi-Scale Molecular Modeling of Chemical Reactivity", Molecular Simulation, 30, 699-748 (2004).2 M. Kostov, E.E. Santiso, A.M. George, K.E. Gubbins and M. Buongiorno Nardelli, "Catalytic role of defective carbon substrates in the dissociation of water", Physical Review Letters, 95, 136105 (2005).Refreshments will be served after the seminar in the HED Lobby
  The Scientific Community is Cordially Invited.
  

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Petra Pearce

  

• Feb

  08

  Modeling and Optimization of Data Gathering Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

  Thu, Feb 08, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  CSI INTERNAL SEMINARSPEAKER: Professor Bhaskar Krishnamachari, CENGABSTRACT: The most dominant approach to the development of querying and data-gathering protocols in wireless sensor networks can be characterized as "design by intuition, validate by simulation". Given the severe resource constraints in these systems, it is essential to complement this perspective with mathematical modeling and optimization. Such modeling has both descriptive and prescriptive uses, which we illustrate through a couple of case studies. In the first study, we derive scaling laws for query-based sensor networks, identifying the application conditions under which it is possible to deploy arbitrarily large sensor networks when the resources per node are kept bounded. In the second, we use an optimization framework to design a fair and efficient rate-control scheme for data gathering.

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

  

• Feb

  08

  Biological Materials, Biomaterials and Biomimetics

  Thu, Feb 08, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

  Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Ulrike G.K. WegstMax-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart, GermanyLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CAAbstract: Biological materials and their skilled use have played a key role in the development of mankind and technology, and the course of history. After millions of years, they are still of great importance today and used both as low cost, high volume materials and as materials for high-tech applications. One reason for their success is that they have properties which cannot easily be emulated by man-made materials, yet. Their striking mechanical efficiency is primarily due to their hierarchical structure which provides them with the potential of optimisation at each structural level, resulting in stiff, strong and tough composites even though, from a mechanical point of view, there is nothing very special about the individual components. The considerable advantage which we have over our ancestors today is that we cannot only use biological materials in their "native" state, but that we have the tools to investigate and test them at almost all levels of their structural hierarchy. With an informed evaluation of their structure, properties and function, principles of optimisation may thus be identified that allow for the development of new or improved man-made materials. Illustrated in this talk will be how the mechanical efficiency and optimisation of biological materials, ranging from bone to seaweed and from mollusc shell to bamboo, can be evaluated and compared with engineering materials. A variety of methods for the structural characterisation of biological materials and their hierarchical composite structure, ranging from synchrotron-based x-ray microtomography to a novel method for in situ mechanical testing in an SEM or FIB, will be presented. Finally, an example for a systematic knowledge transfer from nature to technology that resulted in the successful development of a biomimetic bone-substitute material will be given.
  

  Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 256

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: April Mundy

  

• Feb

  09

  Narrative Medicine: The Healing Power of Stories

  Fri, Feb 09, 2007

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  As part of the Medical Humanities Speaker Series, Dr. Rita Charon, internist and literary scholar, will engage students and faculty in dialogue about some of the core issues facing the health of individuals and society. She will present two talks, one on the University Campus and one on the Health Sciences Campus.Rita Charon is professor of clinical medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and director of the program in narrative medicine. She is a general internist in practice in the Associates of Internal Medicine in Presbyterian Hospital. For more information on this event, please visit:http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861435&active_category=Upcoming
  

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Daria Yudacufski

  

• Feb

  09

  Biodiesel In America - Setting the Stage

  Fri, Feb 09, 2007 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  
  Speaker:Joe Gershen,
  Tellurian Biodiesel,
  PO Box 3096,
  Santa Monica, CA 90408,
  310.962.0488Title:
  Biodiesel In America - Setting the StageAbstract:For many years energy has been taken for granted, with reliance upon nonrenewable petroleum, natural gas, coal and other fossil-based fuel reserves as a predominant source for transportation, power and home heating needs. Recent market conditions and energy security concerns along with increased environmental and climate change consciousness have created an awareness and demand for non-polluting, domestically produced, renewable resources to supplement our reliance upon petroleum fuels. Our energy future depends on finding sustainable energy solutions, and biodiesel is one of those solutions.The talk will be about the biodiesel marketplace, demand drivers, which include both energy policy and markets, acceptance of biodiesel by manufacturers, as well as opportunities and challenges which face this emerging industry.

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, 156

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  09

  Honors Program Colloquium: What is a Comet

  Fri, Feb 09, 2007 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

  Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Lecture given by Dr. Paul Weissman, Senior Research Scientist at JPL.

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

  Audiences: Faculty and Honors Program Students

  Contact: Erika Chua

  

• Feb

  09

  Looking Out/Looking In: City of God

  Fri, Feb 09, 2007 @ 06:30 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  A screening of "City of God" will be followed by a discussion with USC social work professor Kristin Ferguson. Dinner will be provided."City of God" (directed by Fernando Meirelleres and Katia Lund, Brazil, 2002) is about a housing project built in the 1960s that in the early '80s became one of the most dangerous places in Rio de Janeiro. This film captures one of the primary social-work concepts of person-in-environment while also demonstrating the failure of the government to reduce poverty, crime and substandard living conditions. USC social work professor Kristin Ferguson will lead a discussion following the film and will examine the latest research regarding social development in Latin American countries.Using the dynamics of film characters and plots as metaphors for both unhealthy and transforming behavior, fluid mental states and deep rooted social problems, the Looking Out/Looking In series will help the audience understand the internal world of people who seek counseling, types of group behavior and community assets and pathology to dispel myths and enlarge our understanding of the disenfranchised.

  Location: George Lucas Instructional Building Room 108

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Daria Yudacufski

  

• Feb

  12

  BME Seminar Series

  Mon, Feb 12, 2007 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM

  Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  "Text Detection and Image Parsing"Alan Yuille, PhD
  Department of Statistics and Psychology
  University of California, Los Angeles

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Adam Wyatt

  

• Feb

  13

  MVDR modeling of Speech and its application to Speech Recognition

  Tue, Feb 13, 2007 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Dr. Bhaskar D. Rao
  University of California, San DiegoAbstract: In this talk, we present all-pole models based upon the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) spectrum for spectral modeling of speech. Although linear prediction (LP) is a popular method for obtaining all-pole model parameters, LP spectral envelopes overestimate and overemphasize the medium and high pitch voiced speech spectral powers, thereby featuring unwanted sharp contours, and do not improve in spectral envelope modeling performance as the filter order is increased. In contrast, the MVDR all-pole spectrum, which can be easily obtained from the LP coefficients, is shown to feature improved spectral envelope modeling as the filter order is increased. In particular, the high order MVDR spectrum models voiced speech spectra very well, particularly at the perceptually important harmonics, and features a smooth contoured envelope. Computationally, the MVDR spectrum can be based upon either conventional time domain correlation estimates or upon spectral samples, a task that is common in frequency domain speech coding. A robust feature extraction technique for continuous speech recognition based on MVDR modeling is discussed. We consider incorporating perceptual information in two ways: (1) after the MVDR power spectrum is computed and (2) directly during the MVDR spectrum estimation. Incorporating perceptual information directly into the spectrum estimation improves both robustness and computational efficiency significantly. We evaluate the technique on several recognition tasks and the results compare favorably with existing techniques.About the Speaker: Bhaskar D. Rao received the B.Tech. degree in electronics and electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, in 1979, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 1981 and 1983, respectively. Since 1983, he has been with the University of California, San Diego, where he is currently a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. He is a Fellow of IEEE. His interests are in the areas of digital signal processing, estimation theory, and optimization theory, with applications to digital communications, speech signal processing, and human-computer interactions.Host: Shri Narayanan (ext 06432)

  Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 211

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Talyia Veal

  

• Feb

  13

  Travel time estimation in extended urban networks

  Tue, Feb 13, 2007 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Outline:The dynamics of traffic flow variation have a considerable impact on the task of monitoring and controlling the operation of road networks. The real-time prediction of travel time enables network operators to design and deploy Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) in freeway and urban arterial networks aiming to mitigate some of the effects of the un-predictability of traffic conditions and un-reliability of network travel services. One of the most difficult problems of travel time estimation is the magnitude of the error estimate as this can render any controlling measure unreliable and eventually useless. Subsequently, the determination of threshold values for the predicted travel times can assist network managers to run more efficient control strategies and enhance system performance. Such strategies can involve the timely selection of appropriate traffic control actions, e.g., through Variable Message Sign (VMS) displays, and allow risk-aversing travelers to make different travel choices, according to their own perception of their generalized travel cost. This paper describes both the algorithms and the real-life experiments that were undertaken in Athens in the wake of the Athens Summer Olympics of 2004.Bio:
  Professor and Head, Laboratory of Railways and Transport, Dept of Transportation Planning and Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
  

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Shane Goodoff

  

• Feb

  13

  Neurogrid: Emulating a Million Neurons in the Cortex

  Tue, Feb 13, 2007 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Ming Shieh Department of Electrical EngineeringDISTINGUISHED LECTURER SERIES"Neurogrid: Emulating a Million Neurons in the Cortex"Dr. Kwabena Boahen,Stanford UniversityAbstract: I will present a proposal for Neurogrid, a specialized hardware platform that will perform cortex-scale emulations while offering software-like flexibility. Recent breakthroughs in brain mapping present an unprecedented opportunity to understand how the brain works, with profound implications for society. To interpret these richly grow-ing observations, we have to build models—the only way to test our understanding—since building a real brain out of biological parts is currently infeasible. Neurogrid will emulate (simulate in real-time) one million neurons connected by six billion synapses with Analog VLSI techniques, matching the performance of a one-megawatt, 500-teraflop supercomputer while consuming less than one watt. Neurogrid will provide the programmability required to implement various models, replicate experimental manipulations (and con-trols), and elucidate mechanisms by augmenting Analog VLSI with Digital VLSI, a mixed-mode approach that combines the best of both worlds. Realizing programmability without sacrificing scale or real-time op-eration will make it possible to replicate tasks laboratory animals perform in biologically realistic models for the first time, which my lab plans to pursue in close collaboration with neurophysiologists.Bio: Kwabena A. Boahen is an Associate Professor in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University. He is a bioengineer who is using silicon integrated circuits to emulate the way neurons compute, linking the seemingly disparate fields of electronics and computer science with neurobiology and medicine. His contributions to the field of neuromorphic engineering include a silicon retina that could be used to give the blind sight and a self-organizing chip that emulates the way the developing brain wires itself up. His scholarship is widely recognized, with over sixty publications to his name, including a cover story in the May 2005 issue of Scientific American. He has received several distinguished honors, including a Fellowship from the Packard Foundation in 1999, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 2001, a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research in 2002, and the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award in 2006. Professor Boahen's BS and MSE degrees are in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD (both earned in 1989), where he made Tau Beta Kappa. His PhD degree is in Computation and Neural Systems, from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA (1997), where he held a Sloan Fellowship for Theoretical Neurobiology. From 1997 to 2005, he was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, where he was the first Skirkanich Term Junior Chair.Host: Prof. Alice Parker(Reception to follow the talk at 5:00p.m.)

  Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Auditorium

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Rosine Sarafian

  

• Feb

  14

  The Economics of Multimedia

  Wed, Feb 14, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  The Economics of MultimediaDr. Darko Kirovski
  Microsoft ResearchAbstract:
  Researchers often forget that "Content is King," that the technical world of multimedia is built around popular multimedia content, not the other way around. With an emphasis on economics, I will overview a recently proposed economic ecosystem for building an incentive-based off-line market for digital media. In the system, anyone can buy or sell digital media anywhere, anytime. Transactions are executed via a tamper-resistant media player equipped with a short-distance wireless, e.g. iPod + WiPAN. Most importantly, transaction revenues are split so that one part goes to the rightful copyright holder and the remainder to the seller as an incentive. The proposed viral marketing network has an objective to: 1) improve the profits of copyright owners by reduction in operation costs and improved media availability, and 2) satisfy a sophisticated set of usability and economic requirements end-users may have. The new system creates two important research directions: design of a secure, atomic transaction protocol and modeling of the proposed ecosystem to explore the effect of key pricing, delivery, networking, and marketing strategies. In a prelude to the technical part of his talk, I will first overview several ongoing projects at Microsoft Research related to multimedia.Short Bio of Speaker:
  Darko Kirovski received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2001. Since April 2000, he has been a researcher at Microsoft Research. His research interests span over several systems research areas: multimedia processing and economics, counterfeit deterrents, security, biometrics, reliable computing, and embedded system design. He has received the 1999 Microsoft Graduate Research Fellowship, the 2000 ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference Graduate Scholarship, the 2001 ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation, the Best Paper Award at ACM Multimedia 2002, and co-authored a Best Student Paper at MMSP 2006 with Shan He. Darko has authored over 90 journal and conference papers and filed over 30 patents.Host C.-C. Jay Kuo, x04658

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Talyia Veal

  

• Feb

  14

  Behavior of Pile Foundations in Liquefied and Laterally Spreading Ground

  Wed, Feb 14, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker:
  Prof. Scott Brandenberg,
  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
  UCLAAstract:Structures founded on pile foundations have suffered extensive damage due to earthquake-induced liquefaction and lateral spreading. Damage has been particularly intense when a relatively strong nonliquefied crust layer spreads laterally on top of an underlying liquefiable deposit and exerts large loads on the pile foundations. Lateral spreading hazard poses a large problem for bridges because (1) bridges often cross bodies of water and are founded in a profile consisting of a sloping nonliquefied crust over liquefiable sand, (2) many bridges were constructed before liquefaction and lateral spreading was identified as a hazard to be considered in design, and (3) current design methods have not been sufficiently verified by case histories and model studies. This talk presents a suite of centrifuge studies of pile foundations embedded in a gently sloping profile of nonliquefied clay over liquefiable loose sand over dense sand. The densely instrumented models provide insights into the fundamental mechanisms of load transfer between piles and liquefiable sand, and between pile caps and nonliquefied spreading crusts. The data show how dilatancy (i.e. cyclic mobility) of liquefiable sand affects soil-pile interaction, and how passive loads of laterally spreading crusts are mobilized against pile groups at displacements that are about an order of magnitude larger than observed in tests in nonliquefied soil profiles. Observations from the centrifuge tests led to improved design guidelines for static beam on nonlinear Winkler foundation (BNWF) analyses that are commonly used in design practice. Analyses that utilize the guidelines are shown to reasonably predict pile cap displacements and peak bending moments for cases where the pile groups were laterally stiff to limit damage to the structure. The talk ends with discussion of preliminary results from an ongoing project to develop fragility functions that characterize lateral spreading hazard for approximately 13,000 Caltrans bridges, many of which were not designed to resist lateral spreading loads.

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall 203

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  14

  Nonlinear Dynamics of Multi-Mesh Gear Systems

  Wed, Feb 14, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

  Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Prof. Robert ParkerDepartment of Mechanical EngineeringOhio State UniversityGear vibration dominates helicopter cabin noise, which can exceed 110 dB. Gear vibration is a major concern in numerous other applications including aerospace, automotive, wind turbines, high-speed machinery, manufacturing, and more. Despite gears' long history, scientific study of their dynamics has been concentrated in the last 40 years, and the pervasive impact of nonlinearities and parametric instability in gear vibration has been realized only in the last decade. Mathematical models are emerging to incorporate these critical aspects. Planetary gears and other systems having multiple interacting tooth meshes exhibit especially interesting dynamics that remain largely unexplored. Nonlinearity from tooth contact loss and parametric instability from varying contact conditions as the gears rotate are essential features of complex phenomena observed in practice. After giving industrial examples motivating the research, the presentation will focus on modeling and analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of planetary gears using asymptotic and finite element/contact mechanics methods. In addition to illustrating and explaining the rich range of nonlinear dynamics that emerge, the analytical approximations generate results with clear practical implications. An ambitious $2.1M experimental gear dynamics program with specialized facilities that are unique worldwide will also be discussed.Professor Robert Parker has been at the Ohio State Department of Mechanical Engineering since 1996. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. His research investigates problems on the dynamics, vibration, and stability of mechanical systems with particular focus on high-speed devices. He has held visiting research appointments at INSA Lyon (France), Risoe National Lab (Denmark), NASA Glenn Research Center, the University of Technology-Sydney, and Tokyo University. He worked for two years in the Spacecraft Dynamics division of The Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles. He consults internationally on vibration problems in numerous industries.Prof. Parker has received over $5M of research funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Army Research Office, NASA, National Rotorcraft Technology Center, General Motors, Ford, Boeing, Sikorsky, and other companies. Prof. Parker is a Fellow of ASME and AAAS. He was one of a select group invited to National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Symposia in the US and Germany. He received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 1999, which is "the highest honor awarded by the U.S. government to scientific researchers early in their careers," as well as the NSF CAREER and Army Young Investigator Awards.
  

  Location: Seaver Science Library, Rm 150

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: April Mundy

  

• Feb

  15

  Changing Project Delivery Strategy......

  Thu, Feb 15, 2007 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  CHANGING PROJECT DELIVERY STRATEGY:
  AN IMPLEMENTATION FRAMEWORK
  FOR THE TRANSPORTATION PROJECT SECTORSpeaker:
  Giovanni C. Migliaccio,
  2007 Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas at Austin,Abstract:
  For organizations such as departments of transportation, other public agencies, or private companies, the adoption of a new approach to procure services for delivery of construction projects requires significant organizational changes; these changes include modifications to both their work processes and existing organizational structures. Because these adjustments encompass many different aspects of the organization's interests, they must occur for the change initiative to be successfully implemented. Researchers at the Center for Construction Industry Studies are investigating the adoption of innovative project delivery approaches within the transportation project sector in order to better understand the dynamics of this type of organizational change. This seminar will present findings from a study of state transportation agencies that have recently implemented the design-build method for delivering highway projects.
  Using as a case study the new $1.3 billion SH 130 tolled expressway project in central Texas, the research team has analyzed project documentation and performed 39 interviews to individuals affiliated with owner, legal counselor, engineering consultant, and contractor. Findings suggest that project representatives institutionalize practices and routines connected to the new approach by adapting to new challenges, rather than by "overwriting" previously existing practices. Consequently, the institutionalization of innovative approaches to project delivery happens concurrently with a deinstitutionalization of the previous approaches. This concurrency produces different effects on the project environment, depending on the mediating action of some emerging industry practices and the perspectives of the involved parties.
  Using these findings, the presenter has developed a conceptual framework for helping owner organizations implement a new project delivery approach. This framework has been further enriched by the data from a comparative study of three transportation projects around the United States. In addition, 90 experts in the implementation of the design-build method for transportation projects were identified and invited to participate in a Delphi study to validate and populate the developed framework. Findings from all of these studies will be presented in this seminar, including preliminary findings from the ongoing Delphi study.
  

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, 203

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  15

  CS Colloquium-David Woodruff

  Thu, Feb 15, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Title: Efficient and Private Distance ApproximationDavid WoodruffMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyAbstract:I will cover two of my results in distance approximation. Consider the setting in which two parties want to approximate the distance between their input vectors.First I will consider l_2, the Euclidean distance. It is known how to approximate l_2 efficiently. However, if we require the protocol to be private, that is, neither party can learn more than what follows from the distance and his/her private input, much less is known. Feigenbaum, Ishai, Malkin, Nissim, Strauss, and Wright [FIMNSW] gave a protocol with O(sqrt{d}) communication for privately approximating the Hamming distance of two d-dimensional vectors. I will give a private protocol with polylog(d) communication for l_2. As a special case, this yields an exponential improvement over [FIMNSW] for the Hamming distance.Next I will consider the l_p distance, for p > 2. This problem is motivated by recent research in streaming algorithms, and has applications in database theory. I will give a 1-round protocol achieving optimal communication for this problem, up to logarithmic factors. It is easy to implement in the streaming model, and consequently resolves the main open question of a 1996 paper of Alon, Matias, and Szegedy.Joint work with Piotr Indyk (STOC 2005, TCC 2006).Biography: David Woodruff is a fifth-year PhD student at MIT. He received his master's in computer science, and B.S. degrees in both computer science and mathematics, all from MIT. He is interested in theoretical computer science, particularly algorithms, complexity theory, and cryptography. Hosted by David Kempe
  

  Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Nancy Levien

  

• Feb

  15

  Viterbi Early Career Chair Lecture: JEANNE BAMBERGER: Tracing the compositional process

  Thu, Feb 15, 2007 @ 06:30 PM - 09:10 PM

  Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER: Jeanne Bamberger, http://web.mit.edu/jbambMIT Professor of Music and Urban Education, emerita,Visiting Professor, School of Education, UC-BerkeleyTITLE: Tracing the compositional process — a natural experimentSHORT DESCRIPTION:
  I will pick and choose among the compositional decisions the students make in an effort to demonstrate how a computer-based environment can help to make musical intuitions explicit. And how these, in turn, can reveal the implicit structures of common musical practice.This is also a guest lecture in ISE 575 Topics in Engineering Approaches to Music Cognition. This year's topic is Human-Centered Computing in Generating Music. The class website is at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ise575/c/syllabusThe lecture is based on Jeanne Bamberger's "The development of intuitive musical understanding: a natural experiment," Psychology of Music, vol.31(1):7:36, 2003, available at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ise575/c/papers/bamberger2003.pdf .HOST: Elaine Chew, USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Please rsvp by noon on Feb 14 to echew@usc.edu .
  

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 167 (subj to change pending attendance, please rsvp)

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Elaine Chew

  

• Feb

  15

  Viterbi Early Career Chair Lecture: JEANNE BAMBERGER: Tracing the compositional process

  Thu, Feb 15, 2007 @ 06:30 PM - 09:10 PM

  Integrated Media Systems Center

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER: Jeanne Bamberger, http://web.mit.edu/jbambMIT Professor of Music and Urban Education, emerita,Visiting Professor, School of Education, UC-BerkeleyTITLE: Tracing the compositional process — a natural experimentSHORT DESCRIPTION:
  I will pick and choose among the compositional decisions the students make in an effort to demonstrate how a computer-based environment can help to make musical intuitions explicit. And how these, in turn, can reveal the implicit structures of common musical practice.This is also a guest lecture in ISE 575 Topics in Engineering Approaches to Music Cognition. This year's topic is Human-Centered Computing in Generating Music. The class website is at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ise575/c/syllabusThe lecture is based on Jeanne Bamberger's "The development of intuitive musical understanding: a natural experiment," Psychology of Music, vol.31(1):7:36, 2003, available at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ise575/c/papers/bamberger2003.pdf .HOST: Elaine Chew, USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Please rsvp by noon on Feb 14 to echew@usc.edu .
  

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 167 (subj to change pending attendance, please rsvp)

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Elaine Chew

  

• Feb

  15

  Science, Serendipity and the Search for Truth: Point of View

  Thu, Feb 15, 2007 @ 07:00 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Point of View will focus on the limitations and opportunities afforded by the necessary use of multiple points of view in a variety of perhaps surprising contexts. USC anthropologist Amy Parish will discuss how point of view has been central to her research into relationships among female bonobos. From a journalistic perspective, Victor Navasky, author of the recently published A Matter of Opinion, will draw on his experience as an editor at Monocle, "a leisurely quarterly of political satire" (it came out twice a year), The New York Times and The Nation to speak about objectivity, subjectivity, ideology and opinion. Victor is currently chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review. Finally, Jon Boorstin, Oscar-nominated filmmaker and author of Making Movies Work, will talk about how making movies, and enjoying them, relies upon the mysteries of point of view.For more information, please visit:http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861401&active_category=Upcoming
  

  Location: Gin Wong Conference Center

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Daria Yudacufski

  

• Feb

  16

  Wireless Future - Trends and Challenges

  Fri, Feb 16, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER: Dr. Yrjo Neuvo, Professor, Technology Advisor, Nokia Corporation, Helsinki, FinlandABSTRACT: This year there will be more than 3 Billion cellular phone users and we expect 90% of the world's population of about 6 Billion people to live within mobile phone coverage by 2010. Already for some years the majority of digital camera modules have been integrated in mobile phones. Connection to your emails and the Internet based services around the world is conveniently provided by your cell phone. This talk gives first a brief overview of current trends in cellular phones usage addressing the key characteristics of both emerging and developed markets. With increasing processing capabilities and broadband data rates the cell phone is turning into a multimedia computer with imaging, music, video, graphics, GPS and TV capabilities. Second part of the talk will address some relevant challenges for the research community emerging from the desire to further increase the data rates, performance and versatility of use. Energy management is a very broad multidisciplinary challenge covering practically all technologies from semiconductor technologies to wireless protocols and software architecture. The quest for ever increasing data rates challenge, in addition to wireless telecommunications theory, RF integration and antenna designs. The role of SW is playing an increasingly important role in wireless terminals bringing up issues like open source, security and SW productivity.BIO: Yrjo Neuvo, Ph.D., Professor and Technology Advisor, previously Executive Vice President and CTO of Nokia Corporation, has been responsible for product development and technologies of mobile phones. He was a member of the Nokia Group Executive Board of Nokia during 1993-2005. Before joining Nokia, he gained international academic recognition as a professor of signal processing at Tampere University of Technology. He was a National Research Professor at the Academy of Finland and visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his doctorate from Cornell University. During his academic years he has published over 400 scientific articles. Dr. Neuvo has been and is a member of several international research and innovation policy related working groups and committees. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a member of Academia Europeae, the Swedish Academy of Technical Sciences, two Finnish Academies and holds three honorary doctorates. He was general Chairman of 1988 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, First IEEE Workshop on Nonlinear Digital Signal Processing in 1993, the 2001 IEEE International Conference on Communications and the 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.Hosts: Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu AND Sanjit Mitra, skmitra@usc.edu

  Location: Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Memorial Hall (of Philosophy) (MHP) - 106

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

  

• Feb

  16

  Heavy Metal Stabilization in Contaminated Soil.....

  Fri, Feb 16, 2007 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  HEAVY METAL STABILIZATION IN CONTAMINATED SOIL USING CROSSLINKED BIOPOLYMERS WITH INTERPENETRATING POLYMER NETWORK (IPN) STRUCTURESSpeaker:Shawntine Lai
  Environmental Engineer
  URS CorporationAbstract:
  U.S. Department of Defense has many outdoor small arms firing ranges for weapons training, essential for its mission. Their use, however, generates soil contamination primarily with Pb, which is a characteristic hazardous waste. With common total Pb levels in range soils of 50,000 mg/kg or more, there is an acute need for efficient permanent stabilization technologies. The study proposed the use of biopolymers for Pb stabilization in soils. The concept is based on biopolymers' well-known abilities to bind metals, soil particles and to create the crosslinking networks (interpenetrating polymer networks, IPNs) in the presence of crosslinking agents. Consequently, the soil treatment with crosslinked biopolymer networks able to bind both Pb and soil particles in composites resistant to biodegradation may provide a permanent stabilization. There are several commercialized biopolymers and possible crosslinking agents available, such as guar gum, xanthan gum, chitosan, alginate, etc. Many of them have been widely adapted in soil remediation since they are renewable and cost-effective. They can be used as barriers to prevent the migration of hazardous wastes.The parameters used in this study included biodegradability of the IPNs, weight swelling ratio, and rheological properties of the IPNs. Lead in firing range soil was successfully stabilized up to 99% using crosslinked biopolymers at optimum conditions. The distribution of lead species in soil components was investigated using Selective Sequential Extraction (SSE) procedures, and was altered due to the formation of IPNs. This crosslinked biopolymer technology was also applied to synthetic polluted soil of other metals, such as Cr, Cu, and Fe, and showed remarkable results. This presentation will also provide general information on how to conduct and evaluate Environmental Site Assessments (ESAs) in engineering practice, such as Phase I ESA, Phase II ESA, and Preliminary Endangerment Assessment. The purpose of the ESAs is to identify existing or potential environmental hazards for a subject property. The assessments provide useful information for subsequent remedial action plans.
  

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 156

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  16

  Honors Program Colloquium: Pluto Eris and the Dwarf Planets of the Solar System

  Fri, Feb 16, 2007 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

  Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Lecture given by Professor Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology.

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

  Audiences: Faculty and Honors Program Students

  Contact: Erika Chua

  

• Feb

  17

  Southern California Computing in Music (Inaugural) Symposium

  Sat, Feb 17, 2007 @ 09:30 AM - 06:00 PM

  Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Organizers: Elaine Chew (USC) and Shlomo Dubnov (UCSD)Organizing Committee: Arshia Cont (UCSD), Jie Liu and Arpi Mardirossian (USC)Event url: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~sccim/2007i (poster at www-scf.usc.edu/~sccim/sccimPoster.jpg)We are pleased to announce the founding, and inaugural symposium, of the Southern California Computing in Music (SCCiM) network, to be held at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, on Saturday, February 17, 2007. This meeting is jointly organized by USC and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).The establishing of the SCCiM network celebrates the growing nucleus of researchers and research groups focussing on computing applications in music. The network will facilitate collaborations and joint meetings among music computing researchers, educators, and industry experts in Southern California. The inaugural symposium will feature both faculty and student presentations on music and computing research and programs not only at USC and UCSD, but also at UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine. The symposium will conclude with a roundtable discussion on the role of SCCiM and future activities. For program details, please visit the symposium website at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~sccim/2007i .
  

  Location: Olin Hall (OHE), 3650 McClintock Ave., Room 122

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Elaine Chew

  

• Feb

  17

  Southern California Computing in Music (Inaugural) Symposium

  Sat, Feb 17, 2007 @ 09:30 AM - 06:00 PM

  Integrated Media Systems Center

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Organizers: Elaine Chew (USC) and Shlomo Dubnov (UCSD)Organizing Committee: Arshia Cont (UCSD), Jie Liu and Arpi Mardirossian (USC)Event url: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~sccim/2007i (poster at www-scf.usc.edu/~sccim/sccimPoster.jpg)We are pleased to announce the founding, and inaugural symposium, of the Southern California Computing in Music (SCCiM) network, to be held at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, on Saturday, February 17, 2007. This meeting is jointly organized by USC and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).The establishing of the SCCiM network celebrates the growing nucleus of researchers and research groups focussing on computing applications in music. The network will facilitate collaborations and joint meetings among music computing researchers, educators, and industry experts in Southern California. The inaugural symposium will feature both faculty and student presentations on music and computing research and programs not only at USC and UCSD, but also at UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine. The symposium will conclude with a roundtable discussion on the role of SCCiM and future activities. For program details, please visit the symposium website at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~sccim/2007i .
  

  Location: Olin Hall (OHE), 3650 McClintock Ave., Room 122

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Elaine Chew

  

• Feb

  20

  Interface Object Model Framework for Systematic Model-Based Interface Management

  Tue, Feb 20, 2007 @ 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Speaker:
  Qian (Victoria) Chen,
  Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Building Construction, Virginia Tech,Abstract: Various interface issues significantly lower overall project performance and implicitly hinder industrialization of construction. Ignored by traditional project management, interface management (IM) is now regarded by researchers and practitioners as critical to the success of multidisciplinary construction projects. Several challenging problems associated with IM include: 1) how to build a holistic understanding of interface issues in the current built environment for developing all-around IM solutions; 2) how to define and present interface information in a unified, accurate, and efficient way to improve information sharing and implementation among IT applications; and 3) how to resolve interrelated interface issues as a whole to optimize the performance of IM in a project. These problems have neither been well studied nor resolved in the construction management literature. This research is aimed at enhancing overall performance of a project delivery process by improving interface information modeling through systematic model-based interface management. Specifically, this research conducts multi-perspective interface-related analysis to identify comprehensive cause factors for interface issues, and creates an Interface Object Model (IOM) framework that presents the basic data structure and contextual relationships of interface information. This conceptual research also develops a systematic model-based strategy incorporating IOM, project processes, and other IT tools to perform more effective and efficient IM in an integrated project delivery environment.

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall 203

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  20

  The Mechanics of Cell Migration and the Cytoskeleton

  Tue, Feb 20, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

  Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Juan Carlos del Alamo Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering DepartmentUniversity of California at San DiegoSan Diego, CA Motility of eukaryotic cells is essential for many biological processes such as embryonic development or tissue renewal, as well as for the function of the immune and nervous systems. If misregulated, motility plays an important part in diverse diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, and mental retardation. Cell migration over surfaces is an integrated chemical and physical process involving the cytoskeleton and its mechanical interaction with the substrate through discrete adhesion regions. Precise quantitative knowledge of the bio-physical processes involved in cell migration is limited. Better measurements are needed to ultimately build models with predictive capabilities. The free-living soil amoeba Dictyostelium has proven to be a valuable model system for the investigation of cell motility with extensive similarities to higher eukaryotes in general, and leukocytes in particular. We present an improved force cytometry method and apply it to the analysis of the dynamics of the chemotactic migration of the amoeboid form of Dictyostelium discoideum. Our explicit calculation of the adhesion force field takes into account the finite thickness of the elastic substrate and improves the accuracy and resolution compared to previous methods. This enables us to quantitatively study the differences in the mechanics of the migration of wild-type and mutant cell lines up a chemoattractant gradient. The time evolution of the elastic energy exerted by the crawling cells on their substrate is quasi-periodic and can be used as a simple indicator of the different phases of the cell crawling cycle. We find that the period of the elastic energy cycle correlates strongly with the mean velocity of migration regardless of cell type. Furthermore, we show that when cells adhere to the substrate, the exert opposing pole forces that are orders of magnitude higher than the force required to overcome the resistance from their environment.

  Location: Von Kleinsmid Center (VKC) Room 101

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: April Mundy

  

• Feb

  20

  Talk: Kathleen Allen, USC Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies

  Tue, Feb 20, 2007 @ 04:30 PM - 06:00 PM

  Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  What makes a great idea for commercialization? Kathleen Allen talks about technology and how to build a business out of it.

  Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

  Audiences: Graduate

  Contact: EGSA

  

• Feb

  21

  Physical Chemical and Toxicological Characteristics of Ultrafine Particulate Matter (PM).....

  Wed, Feb 21, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Physical, Chemical and Toxicological Characteristics of Ultrafine Particulate Matter (PM): Summary of 6 years Research by the US EPA Southern California Particle Center Speaker:
  Prof. Costas Sioutas,
  USC- Department of Civil and Environmental EngineeringIncreasing epidemiological and toxicological evidence links cardio-respiratory health effects with exposures to ultrafine particles (diameter < 0.1 µm). Emission inventories suggest that motor vehicles may be primary direct emission sources of ultrafine particles to urban atmospheres. Given the amount of traffic in the Los Angeles Basin, it is important to understand how ultrafine particles behave after emission as they are transported away from busy roadways. Understanding the characteristics of ultrafine particle volatility and how these traffic-emitted ultrafine particles penetrate indoor environments is also vitalThe goals of our research undertaken by the Southern California Particle Center and Supersite were to create an extensive inventory on what is known about the physical and chemical characteristics of atmospheric ultrafine particles. Utilizing a mobile particle concentrator, researchers set about characterizing the physical and chemical PM characteristics and volatility on/near freeways, in source and receptor areas of the Los Angeles Basin, the impact of mobile sources on indoor environments as well as ultrafine PM characteristics and emission factors in roadway tunnels with light-duty or heavy-duty vehicles.The data provided an increased understanding of how physical and chemical characteristics of ultrafine particles change on/near heavily trafficked areas; this information is necessary to better understand exposure outcomes. Relative concentrations of CO, black carbon and particle number decreased exponentially and tracked each other well as one moves away from the freeway. Our studies also showed that particles emitted from vehicles are externally mixed; different particles of the same size can have different chemical compositions. Depending on ambient conditions, between 70-90% of the particles by number, and 10-30% by mass consisted of semi-volatile material originating from condensation of organic vapors from fuel and lube oil. The non-volatile portion is known to primarily consist of elemental carbon, which is often coated with more volatile organic species. The volatility of these particles explains the more rapid decay in their concentration with respect to distance from a roadway, compared to that of non-labile PM species (such as EC) or gaseous co-pollutants such as CO and NOx, the concentration decrease of which would be affected mostly my atmospheric dilution. Our studies also showed that the volatile component of these particles may likely be present in its gaseous phase in indoor environments, causing particle shrinkage and-or compete evaporation as they infiltrate indoors. In future research, given that the majority of people's exposure during commute will be dominated (at least based on particle numbers) to these particles, it would be useful to know whether the non-volatile or semi-volatile material is more toxic.A better understanding of ultrafine particle characteristics and their volatility allows for the narrowing of the search for the most toxic PM components, and would also suggest new emissions control technologies that better protect the public health. Current particle traps remove non-volatile soot particles but not the precursors of the smaller semi-volatile particles. An unintended result of this reduction of the larger, non-volatile particles from the exhaust is the potential increase in the formation/emission of the smaller, semi-volatile PM as seen in our experiments performed at the Caldecott tunnel in which we determined size fractionated emission factors for heavy and light duty vehicles and compared them to those of previous studies in the same location.

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - rielian Hall, 203

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  21

  NanoSystems Biology and New Technologies for in vitro and in vivo Diagnostics of Cancer

  Wed, Feb 21, 2007 @ 03:30 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  THE MORK FAMILY DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCEPresents the The First
  William G. Spitzer LecturebyProfessor James R. Heath
  Department of Chemistry
  The California Institute of Technology
  Pasadena, CAonNanoSystems Biology and New Technologies for
  in vitro and in vivo Diagnostics of Cancer
  Wednesday, Feb 21, 2007
  3:30 – 5:00 PM
  Andrus Gerontology Center (GER 124)
  University Park Campus
  The emerging world of personalized, preventative, predictive, and
  participatory (P4) medicine will likely be enabled by the developing field of
  systems biology. Systems biology and P4 medicine are both data driven and,
  accordingly, both require new tools for making large numbers of measurements
  rapidly, quantitatively, and inexpensively. Microfluidics, chemical, and
  nanotechnologies will revolutionize our ability to generate comprehensive data sets
  that span from individual cells to patients, and will allow us to build
  multiparameter analysis tools (quantitating genes, proteins, and cells) for achieving
  an informative in vitro disease diagnosis, as well as in vivo molecular imaging
  probes for spatially localizing specific diseases. Using cancer as a theme, I will
  describe the state-of-the-art in terms of network models of human diseases, and I
  will describe how those models may be harnessed for information that can impact
  clinical care of cancer. I will then describe a suite of in vitro and in vivo
  multiparameter diagnostics technologies that we are developing in my lab in
  concert with other groups, in the context of both near term and far term
  applications.Reception 5:00-5:45 PM
  Host: Anupam Madhukar, (213) 740-4325.

  Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Auditorium, GER 124

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Petra Pearce

  

• Feb

  21

  Collective Motion and Decision-Making in Animal Groups

  Wed, Feb 21, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

  Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Iain Couzin Royal Society University Research Fellow
  Department of Zoology
  University of Oxford
  Oxford, UK and Visiting Research Fellow
  Pew Program in Biocomplexity
  Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 Our research focuses on understanding collective behavior; how large-scale biological patterns result from the actions and interactions of the individual components of a system. We study self-organised pattern formation in a wide range of biological systems, including ants, fish schools, bird flocks, locust / cricket swarms and human crowds.

  Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) Room 150

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: April Mundy

  

• Feb

  21

  USC Association of General Contractors Student Chapter Symposium XIII

  Wed, Feb 21, 2007 @ 05:45 PM - 09:00 PM

  Viterbi School of Engineering Alumni

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  The theme of the 13th Annual Symposium is "L.A. Live," the nearby development in downtown Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District and L.A. Live is a civic center currently under development and construction in the City of Los Angeles. It will feature six city blocks of apartments, ballrooms, bars, concert theaters, condominiums, restaurants and movie theaters. The centerpiece of the district will be a 50+ story, 1,100 room hotel constructed in the parking lot directly north of the Staples Center. Our guest speakers will talk about the project from their perspective of involvement.Guest Speakers include: Ed Reynolds of the Reynold's Group; Adriana Maritnez, the L.A. Business Team and M.O.H.E.D director; Steve Dell'Orto, the project manager from Clark Construction Group LLC; Andrew Cohen the Gensler and Associates Executive Director; and TedTanner the Executive V.P. of Real Estate, AEG. Register before February 10th and your entrance fee is $75 per person and $25 per student. (After February 10th the entrance fee is $85 per adult and $25 per student)For more information or to register please contact Cesar Aviles or Arturo Diaz at usc.agc.symposium@gmail.com.
  

  Location: Tower Hall (TOW) - n and Gown

  Audiences: Civil Engineering Students/Alumni

  Contact: Kirstin Strickland

  

• Feb

  22

  Harnessing Vacuum Fluctuations: Exotic Physics and Micromechanics of the Casimir effect

  Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Federico CapassoHarvad UniversityAbstract
  The Casimir effect is the attraction between uncharged metals in vacuum due to quantum mechanical fluctuations of the electromagnetic field (zero point energy). A similar force, but weaker, exists between dielectrics. From a physical point of view these forces are interesting because they represent macroscopic manifestations of quantum mechanics and because they can be designed by altering the shape and nature of the interacting materials. Interestingly these forces have enabled new functionalities in suitably scaled MEMS (nanometric position sensors) and will need to be accounted for in future generations of MEMS technology. The talk will also discuss on going experiments aiming at measuring repulsive Casimir forces, which could be used in frictionless bearings based on the phenomenon of "quantum floatation" and the search for the predicted "vacuum torque" between suitable birefringent materials.Bio
  Federico Capasso received the doctor of Physics degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Rome, Italy, in 1973 and after doing research in fiber optics at Fondazione Bordoni in Rome, joined Bell Labs in 1976. In 1984 he was made a distinguished Member of Technical Staff and in 1997 a Bell Labs Fellow. In addition to his research activity Capasso has held several management positions at Bell Labs including Head of the Quantum Phenomena and Device Research Department and the Semiconductor Physics Research Department and Vice President of Physical Research. His current research in quantum electronics deals with the design of new light sources based on giant optical nonlinearities in quantum wells such as Raman injection lasers, inversioless injetcion lasers and widely tunable sources of TeraHertz radiation based on difference frequency generation and Raman lasers. He has also carried out research on quantum chaos in deformed microlasers which led he and his collaborators to invent microlasers opearting on bow-tie modes. More recently his research has expanded to high-precision measurements of Casimir forces using MEMS (MicroElectroMechanicalSystems)
  and other quantum electrodynamical effects such as the torque between birefringent materials due to vacumm fluctuations. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics (UK), the Optical Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, IEEE and SPIE. He holds an honorary doctorate in Electronic Engineering form the University of Bologna, Italy. Capasso has co-authored over 300 papers, edited four volumes, and holds over 50 US patents.Website: ee.usc.edu/munushian

  Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Ericka Lieberknecht

  

• Feb

  22

  MECHANISMS OF TRANSPORT ACROSS THE ALVEOLAR EPITHELIAL BARRIER: FROM IONS TO NANOPARTICLES

  Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 12:45 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Enginering and Materials SciencePresents a Distinguished Lecture by Professor Edward CrandallMECHANISMS OF TRANSPORT ACROSS THE ALVEOLAR EPITHELIAL BARRIER: FROM IONS TO NANOPARTICLESAbstract Interest in nanotechnology has greatly expanded in recent years, driven in part by growth in manufacturing and applications that range widely from fabrication of useful nanoscale circuitry and robotics to biological applications of nanomaterials in imaging and transduction at the cellular and molecular levels. Nanoparticles promise to be useful for many biomedicine-related applications, yet their toxicity, trafficking characteristics across cells, and specific pathways and mechanisms of uptake into pneumocytes are not well known. The lung can serve as a portal for entry for nanomaterials (ambient and/or manufactured) into the systemic circulation. Inhaled nanoparticles can be found in heart, bone marrow, blood vessels and other organs, and their most likely route of entry into the circulation is across the epithelia of the lung, especially the alveolar epithelium with its very large surface area and thin barrier thickness. Further knowledge about the mechanisms by which particles injure, interact with and/or are transported across the alveolar epithelium is thus of considerable importance for understanding health effects related to inhalation of nanoparticles in ambient air. Nevertheless, nanoparticle-based drug/gene delivery and other biological applications may be important to pursue, even though biocompatibility and toxicity of such nanomaterials are not yet well defined. To explore interactions with the air-blood barrier of distal lung, nanoparticle injury of, uptake into and trafficking across alveolar epithelial cells were investigated. Polystyrene nanoparticles (PNP) of different surface charge and size were utilized as models of defined manufactured nanomaterials. Results indicate that (1) all PNP are non-toxic to the cells, (2) PNP translocate transcellularly across rat alveolar epithelial cell monolayers, and (3) transepithelial trafficking of PNP is markedly influenced by nanoparticle surface charge density and size. Specific mechanisms underlying these interactions remain to be fully determined.

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Petra Pearce

  

• Feb

  22

  Optimal Computation with Noisy Quantum Walks

  Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  SPEAKER: Dr. Viv Kendon, University of LeedsABSTRACT: Quantum versions of random walks on the line and cycle show a quadratic improvement in their spreading rate and mixing times respectively. The addition of decoherence to the quantum walk produces a more uniform distribution on the line, and even faster mixing on the cycle by removing the need for time-averaging to obtain a uniform distribution. By calculating the entanglement between the coin and the position of the quantum walker, the optimal decoherence rates are found to be such that all the entanglement is just removed by the time the final measurement is made. This requires only O(log T) random bits for a quantum walk of T steps.Bio: Viv Kendon works in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, funded by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, in the new Quantum Information group headed by Vlatko Vedral. Before this she was part of Peter Knight's Quantum Information and Quantum Optics Theory Group at Imperial College, and prior to Imperial (April 2000), was in the Computational Nonlinear & Quantum Optics group at Strathclyde University working on quantum measurement with Steven Barnett. Viv Kendon finished her PhD at Edinburgh in July 1999, in the Soft Condensed Matter group. Before her PhD, she used to work for GreenNet, a non-profit Internet service provider (now TWENTY years old!) and member the Association for Progressive Communications. She has also done work for Oxfam and Amnesty International. Prior to joining GreenNet she lived in Glasgow and was an active campaigner for Scottish Campagin for Nuclear Disarmament. Her first degree is from Oxford University, in Physics, and she has a Masters in Physics from UC Berkeley.Host: Todd Brun, tbrun@usc.edu

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

  

• Feb

  22

  How Do You Count Individual Biological Bonds

  Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

  Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Todd Sulchek Staff ScientistBiosecurity and Nanosciences LaboratoryLawrence Livermore National Laboratory My research program focuses on the measurement and prediction of how multiple individual biological bonds produce a coordinated function within molecular and cellular systems. In particular I focus on two complementary goals. The first is to understand the kinetics of multivalent pharmaceuticals during their targeting of disease markers. The second is to quantify the host cell signal transduction resulting from pathogen invasion. We develop and employ several tools to accomplish these goals. The primary platform for study is the atomic force microscope (AFM), which controls the 3D positioning of biologically functionalized micro- and nanoscale mechanical probes. This talk will describe our method of using single molecule dynamic force spectroscopy to determine the binding strength of antibody- protein complexes as a function of binding valency in a direct and simple measurement. We used the atomic force microscope to measure the force required to rupture a single complex formed by the MUC1 protein, a cancer indicator, and therapeutic antibodies that target MUC1. We will show that nanomechanical polymer tethers can be used in a completely novel manner to count the number of biological bonds formed. Mechanical work (on the scale of a few kBT!) will disrupt these bonds and can quantify the overall kinetics. This ability to form, count and dissociate biological bonds with nanomechanical forces provides a powerful method to study the physical laws governing the interactions of the biological molecules.

  Location: Troyland Apartments (TAP) - er Hall of Humanities, (THH) Rm 116

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: April Mundy

  

• Feb

  22

  CS Colloquium- Julia Chuzhoy

  Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Dr. Julie ChuzhoySchool of MathematicsThe Institute for Advanced StudyTitle: Cuts and Flows in Directed GraphsAbstract:Cuts and flows are among the most basic graph theoretic notions.
  Applications that require solving graph cut or flow problems arise in almost every area of computer science. The study of the connection between flows and cuts dates back to the late fifties when Ford and Fulkerson proved that in the single-commodity environment, minimum cut equals maximum flow in any graph. A natural generalization of this result would be establishing the relationship between flows and cuts in the presence of multiple commodities. This relationship is usually expressed via the notion of flow-cut gap:
  the maximum ratio, achievable for any graph, between the maximum multi-commodity flow and the corresponding cut value, called minimum multicut.Flow-cut gaps have been extensively studied for more than five decades now, and they are widely used in the design and the analysis of algorithms. One of the major breakthroughs in this area is a complete understanding of the flow-cut gap in undirected graphs, which was proved to be logarithmic. In spite of this success, the flow-cut gaps have remained poorly understood in directed graphs. In particular, it has remained an open question whether the flow-cut gap in directed graphs is also logarithmic. In this talk we will answer this question in the negative by showing that, in sharp contrast to the undirected case, the flow-cut gap in directed graphs is polynomial.Bio:Julia Chuzhoy is a member in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Technion, Israel, and spent two years as a postdoctoral associate at MIT and University of Pennsylvania. Chuzhoy's research area is theoretical computer science, with the main emphasis on design and analysis of algorithms, approximation of NP-hard problems and hardness of approximation proofs.Hosted by David KempeSnacks will be served
  

  Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Nancy Levien

  

• Feb

  22

  Everything You Wanted to Know About Innovation at USC Krisztina Holly, Vice Provost and Executive D

  Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 04:30 PM - 06:00 PM

  Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Where does innovation begin?
  With an idea.
  Your idea.Have an idea and don't know what to do? Interested in the "do's and don'ts" of innovation? Want to know more about the innovation resources available from the USC? Many inventors fail to realize how important it is to protect their work in order to receive funding as a start up. Protecting ideas is usually a requirement to successfully moving an innovation to market. Krisztina Holly provides an overview on USC Stevens, hosts an interactive discussion on innovation programs and answers your questions on starting your own company or licensing your innovation. Bring all your questions!Did you know?
  University start-ups are 100 times more likely to go public than the average U.S. start-up. Over the last 10 years, USC has produced 63 start-ups from technology licenses alone!

  Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 200

  Audiences: Graduate

  Contact: EGSA

  

• Feb

  23

  Stochastic Uncertainty Quantification Approaches for Large Scale Subsurface Problems

  Fri, Feb 23, 2007 @ 11:15 AM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Graduate SeminarStochastic Uncertainty Quantification
  Approaches for Large Scale Subsurface
  ProblemsProfessor Dongxiao Zhang
  Petroleum and Geological Engineering
  The University of OklahomaAbstract
  Prediction of subsurface flow and transport is subject to uncertainties, which can
  result from the heterogeneity of the media and our incomplete knowledge about
  their properties. Such uncertainties render the model parameters random and the
  equations describing flow and transport in the media stochastic. Monte Carlo
  simulation method (MCS) is the most common and conceptually straightforward
  approach. However, it requires large computational efforts, especially for large scale
  problems. Recently, a number of alternative stochastic approaches have been
  developed to quantifying prediction uncertainties. This talk discusses four
  representative methods: The moment equation method (ME); the Galerkin
  polynomial chaos expansion method (PCE); the Karhunen-Loeve based moment
  equation method (KLME); and the probabilistic collocation method (PCM). The
  efficiency of these methods depends on how the random (probability) space is
  approximated. Detailed theoretical analyses and numerical computations are
  performed to compare these methods against MCS in terms of accuracy, efficiency,
  validity range, and compatibility with existing deterministic simulators. It is found that
  the KLME, PCE and PCM are generally more efficient than the MCS and the ME for
  larger-scale problems. The expansions in representing the dependent random fields
  and the ways for evaluating the expansion coefficients distinguish among the KLME,
  PCE and PCM.Friday, February 23, 2007
  Seminar at 11:15 a.m.
  HED 116The Scientific Community is cordially invited.

  Location: Hedco Pertroleum and Chemical Engineering Building (HED) - 116

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Petra Pearce

  

• Feb

  23

  Honors Program Colloquium: Reconfigurable Systems

  Fri, Feb 23, 2007 @ 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM

  Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Lecture given by Dr. Christos Christodoulou, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico.

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 122

  Audiences: Faculty and Honors Program Students

  Contact: Erika Chua

  

• Feb

  23

  DEFORMATION AND FAILURE OF COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

  Fri, Feb 23, 2007 @ 02:45 PM

  Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  THE MORK FAMILY DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCEPRESENTS A JOINT SEMINAR
  BYChiara Bisagni
  Ph.D., Fulbright FellowDepartment of Mechnical Engineering
  Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDEFORMATION AND FAILURE OF COMPOSITE STRUCTURESABSTRACTAfter a brief presentation of the research activities and experimental facilities of the Department of Aerospace Engineering of Politecnico di Milano, Italy, the lecture will focus on the experimental and numerical investigations carried out by Chiara Bisagni during the last years concerning mainly composite structures under buckling and energy absorption requirements.The first part of the presentation will consider the structural behavior of composite structures under buckling requirements. Some results on stringer stiffened composite panels subjected to buckling under compression and shear will be presented. In particular, the investigation of fuselage panels and of a helicopter tailplane performed during two European projects (POSICOSS, "Improved post-buckling simulation for design of fibre composite stiffened structures", and COCOMAT, "Improved MATerial Exploitation at Safe Design of COmposite Airframe Structures by Accurate Simulation of Collapse") will be presented. Also, the first results of the research now under way will be presented. It considers cyclic buckling tests on composite boxes with combined loads, and the detection of damage propagation during the tests on stiffened buckling structures.The second part of the presentation will consider energy absorption requirements. Indeed, crashworthiness related to composite materials has now become a serious issue, as composite structures have the possibilities to absorb an even superior amount of energy compared to metals, with contained costs. But the crash analysis of composite structures remains particularly challenging due to the complexity and diversity of failure modes that composites exhibit under crushing loads.
  The experimental and numerical investigation on the energy absorbing capabilities of intersection elements for helicopter subfloor, and of Formula One car components will be presented. In particular, a building block approach has been used to calibrate the numerical model, analyzing at first coupon testing and tube crushing experiments, and then crash tests of the helicopter and Formula One car componentsFebruary 23, 2007
  2:45-3:45 PM
  (Refreshments will be served at 2:30 PM)
  SLH 102**ALL FIRST YEAR MATERIALS SCIENCE MAJORS ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND**
  

  Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Petra Pearce

  

• Feb

  26

  BME Seminar Series

  Mon, Feb 26, 2007 @ 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM

  Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  "Imaging Assessment of Bone in Children and Adolescents"Tishya Wren, PhD
  Assistant Professor of Research, Orthopaedics
  Children's Hospital of Los Angeles

  Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Adam Wyatt

  

• Feb

  26

  The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System

  Mon, Feb 26, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Dr. Richard StallmanAbstract:Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free
  Software Movement, and the status and history the GNU operating system, which
  in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users
  world-wide.Bio:Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of
  computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's
  Pioneer award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.
  

  Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Nancy Levien

  

• Feb

  27

  Rate Control Protocol (RCP): Congestion Control to Make Flows Complete Quickly

  Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  "Rate Control Protocol (RCP): Congestion Control to
  Make Flows Complete Quickly"Nandita DukkipatiStanford UniversityAbstract:Users typically want their flows to complete as quickly as possible. This makes Flow Completion Time (FCT) an important - arguably the most important - performance metric for the user. Yet research on congestion control focuses entirely on maximizing link throughput, utilization and fairness, which matter more to the operator than the user. This talk is about a new congestion control algorithm - Rate Control Protocol (RCP) - designed for fast download times (i.e. aka user response times, or flow-completion times). Whereas other modifications/replacements to TCP (e.g. STCP, Fast TCP, XCP) are designed to work for specialized applications that use long-lived flows (scientific applications and supercomputer centers), RCP is designed for the typical flows of typical users in the Internet today.I will show that with typical Internet flow sizes, existing (TCP Sack) and newly proposed (XCP) congestion control algorithms make flows last much longer than necessary - often by one or two orders of magnitude. In contrast, RCP makes flows finish close to the minimum possible, leading to a perceptible improvement for web users, distributed computing, and distributed file-systems. I will also talk about a few of the many addressed issues under RCP - stability of a RCP network, coping with sudden network changes such as flash-crowds (the main weakness under RCP), RCP's router buffer-size requirements, proportional bandwidth-sharing with RCP and implementation of RCP in routers and end-hosts.Speaker Bio:Nandita Dukkipati received her Bachelor's degree from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, and her Master's degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She is expecting a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in June 2007. Her research focus is on the design and analysis of various building blocks of network infrastructure, including congestion control, routing, protocol design, router/switch architectures for wired as well as wireless networks. She is particularly interested in building practical networking systems while making use of theoretical tools where applicable.Hosted by: Prof. Bhaskar Krishnamachari, bkrishna@usc.edu

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Rosine Sarafian

  

• Feb

  27

  The Canterbury, New Zealand, Network and CUSP Strong Motion Seismographics

  Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  
  Speaker:
  John B Berrill,
  University of Canterbury, and
  Canterbury Seismic Instruments Ltd.,
  Christchurch, New Zealand
  (www.csi.net.nz)Seminar Abstract:Motivated by an expected ~M8 rupture on the Alpine Fault, New Zealand, the engineering seismology group at Canterbury University sought to install a strong-motion network of about 80 instruments in the region. The Canterbury Network (CanNet), now part of the NZ national network, GeoNet, has three main components:
  1. A dense array of 15 to 20 instruments to capture details of the rupture mechanism.
  2. A network of 40 instruments distributed across the central South Island to record regional attenuation.
  3. A local network to study the response of the highly variable 20–25 m layer of post-glacial soil beneath the city of Christchurch.
  In order to deploy such a number of instruments at affordable cost, the group collaborated with the Electrical Engineering Department of the University to design a low-cost digital accelerograph. The original 12-bit CUSP-3A (CUSP: Canterbury University Seismograph Project) accelerograph, designed to put more points on the map for a fixed budget and low maintenance costs, has been evolved to the 13-bit CUSP-3B and the 17-bit CUSP-3C instrument. Both instruments are web-based for ease of monitoring and down loading of data and, where possible, use off-the-shelf components such as industrial single-board computers and MEMs accelerometers. At this time (February 2007), about half the CanNet instruments have been installed.For the past 15 months, a central-recording system, CUSP-M, developed for monitoring structural response, has been undergoing trials in a building on campus, and will be installed in several structures throughout NZ. It uses the web-based communications of the 3B/C instruments, simple Ethernet wiring to connect up to 32 three-component sensors to the central unit and features digitization at the sensor and synchronized sampling. A hardened version will be employed for the dense, rupure-mechanism array.The speaker is conscious of the isolation of his group on their South Seas islands, and invites your feedback on this program and the instruments.

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  27

  Narrative Generation and Interactive Storytelling

  Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Dr. Mark RiedlResearch ScientistUSC Institute for Creative TechnologiesAbstract:Storytelling is a pervasive part of the human experience; it is a common element in entertainment including modern computer games, it commonly occurs in human-to-human communication, and it is an element found in education and training. Some psychologists believe the pervasiveness of narrative is due to the possibility that the same cognitive processes used to process and generate narrative descriptions are the same as those used in every-day sense-making activities. In this talk, I will describe research into two applications of artificial intelligence to narrative: narrative generation, and interactive narrative. Narrative generation is the problem of computationally creating a narrative from minimal user input. I will describe research efforts into an AI planning-based algorithm for generating narrative sequences. Stories are complicated constructs; the narrative generator I will present reasons about two important criteria for stories: plot coherence - the notion that events in a narrative form causal chains that are relevant to an outcome - and character intentionality - the notion that characters actions in a narrative appear to be intentional and believably motivated. Interactive narrative is a form of interactive entertainment in which a computer system attempts to tell a story in which an interactive user is able to influence the direction and/or outcome of the narrative. I will present a generative approach to interactive narrative that uses automated narrative generation to dynamically adapt the expected narrative structure to accommodate the user's actions without abandoning the goal of delivering a coherent narrative experience. The generative drama management has been applied to entertainment contexts and training and education contexts.Biography:Mark Riedl is a research scientist at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). Mark received a bachelor's degree and MS in Computer Science from North Carolina State University with a minor in Psychology. In 2004, he receive a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University for his work in artificial intelligence techniques for generating stories with recognizable plot structures and character fidelity. Mark joined the ICT in 2004, applying his work in narrative generation to create interactive narrative experiences for leadership training. In addition to his work on interactive narrative, Mark is also working on projects for intelligent, adaptive opponents in training simulations, automated scenario authoring, and intelligent virtual camera control for Machinima generation. Mark has numerous academic publications on narrative generation, interactive narrative, and other computer game AI related topics. In 2006, he received best paper awards at the 15th Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation and the 3rd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment.Host: Rajiv MaheswaranSnacks will be provided.

  Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Nancy Levien

  

• Feb

  27

  Race, Rap and Redemption

  Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 07:30 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Race, Rap and Redemption will take rap music seriously as a source of penetrating commentary on the nature of blame and punishment, guilt and innocence and, ultimately, of spiritual transcendence. Where can we look for change, and which things always remain the same? What is redeemable, and what lies beyond redemption? How do we bring ourselves to brotherhood and sisterhood with one another? This event will bring together contemporary recording artists, USC students and faculty to explore the way that rap artists--functioning as griots, poets, prophets and pundits--engage these questions and the debates surrounding them. At evening's end, each of us will have joined in the questioning and debating, and lifted our voices in and through the music.For more information, please visit:http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861438&active_category=Upcoming

  Location: Bovard Auditorium

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Daria Yudacufski

  

• Feb

  28

  Network Inference using Network Coding Techniques

  Wed, Feb 28, 2007 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

  Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  CENG SEMINAR SERIES"Network Inference using Network Coding Techniques"Dr. Athina MarkopoulouUniversity of California, IrvineAbstract:Monitoring is an important component in the operation of any network. We are particularly interested in a family of monitoring techniques, known as network tomography, which aim at inferring internal network characteristics by sending and collecting probe packets from the edge of the network. Prior work on network tomography considered networks that implement multicast and unicast forwarding. Independently, the network coding community advocates that additional functionality should be added to network nodes, to allow for processing of incoming packets before forwarding them. This functionality comes at the cost of additional processing but also brings the potential of significant performance benefits. In this work, we consider networks where internal nodes implement network coding and we re-visit two network tomography problems: (i) link loss inference and (ii) topology inference. We develop new techniques that make use of the network coding capabilities and we show that they improve several aspects of the inference problem (including identifiability of links, accuracy of estimation, and complexity of probe path selection) over traditional techniques. Our rationale is that if network coding is to be deployed in some networks, e.g. to bring throughput benefits, then one can exploit this opportunity to also boost the performance of other operations, such as monitoring. This is joint work with Christina Fragouli and Suhas Diggavi from EPFL, Lausanne.Bio:Athina Markopoulou is an assistant professor with the EECS Dept, UC Irvine. She received the Diploma degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1996. She received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees both in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, in 1998 and 2002 respectively. Prior to joining UCI, she worked at Stanford University, Sprint Advanced Tech. Labs, and Arastra, a startup, as postdoctoral research fellow, member of technical staff, and research scientist, respectively. Her research interests are in the area of networking, including voice and video over IP networks, Internet Denial-of-Service, network measurement and control, and applications of network coding techniques to networking problems.Host: Prof. Konstantinos Psounis, kpsounis@usc.edu

  Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Rosine Sarafian

  

• Feb

  28

  NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE AND FUNCTIONALLY GRADED SHELL STRUCTURES

  Wed, Feb 28, 2007 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  JOINT SEMINAR FOR AME & CIVIL ENGINEERINGSPEAKER: J. N. Reddy,
  Advanced Computational Mechanics Laboratory,
  Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77843-3123
  jnreddy@tamu.eduABSTRACT
  A tensor-based finite element formulation for the nonlinear analysis of laminated shell structures and through-thickness functionally graded shells will be discussed. A tensor-based finite element formulation is used to describe the deformation and 3-D constitutive laws of a shell in a natural and simple way by using curvilinear coordinates. In addition, a family of high-order elements with Lagrangian interpolations is used to avoid membrane and shear locking. A first-order shell theory with seven parameters is derived with exact nonlinear deformations and under the framework of the Lagrangian description. This approach takes into account thickness changes and, therefore, 3D constitutive equations are utilized. Numerical comparisons of the present results with those found in the literature for typical benchmark problems involving isotropic and laminated composite plates and shells as well as functionally graded plates and shells are found to be excellent and show the validity of the developed finite element model. Moreover, the simplicity of this approach makes it attractive for applications in contact mechanics and damage propagation in shells. A number of examples of applications to laminated composite shell structures are presented.Keywords: Finite element model, nonlinear shell theory, multilayered composites, functionally graded shells, numerical examples.Acknowledgement. The research results reported herein were obtained while the authors were supported by the Structural Dynamics Program of the Army Research Office (ARO) through Grant . 45508EG.References
  1. R. A. Arciniega and J. N. Reddy, "Tensor-based Finite Element Formulation for Geometrically Nonlinear Analysis of Shell Structures," Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, Vol. 196, Nos. 4-6, pp. 1048-1073, 2007.
  2. R. A. Arciniega and J. N. Reddy, "Large deformation analysis of functionally graded shells," International Journal of Solids and Structures, Vol. 44, pp. 2036-2052, 2007.
  3. J.N. Reddy, Mechanics of Laminated Composite Plates and Shells: Theory and Analysis, 2nd edition, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 2004.
  

  Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - RIELLIAN HALL, 203

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  28

  Earthquake Damage Detection in Two Buildings.....

  Wed, Feb 28, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM

  Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Earthquake Damage Detection in Two Buildings - Comparative Analysis of Several Structural Health Monitoring Methods Including a New Wave MethodSpeaker: Dr. Maria Todorovska,
  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
  USCAbstract:The only true validation of real time structural health monitoring methods is in terms of sensory data recorded in instrumented structures during a damaging event. For civil structures, damaging events are e.g. earthquakes, explosions, blasts, etc. Due to the high cost of instrumentation and the low frequency of occurrence of such events, data in damaged civil structures are rare, but do exist, e.g. vibrational data recorded in buildings by seismic monitoring arrays during a damaging earthquake. Yet, the existing data are rarely used, and methods are usually tested only on numerically simulated data of response with postulated damage and assumed additive Gaussian noise. Results will be presented of a critical comparative analysis of several structural health monitoring methods applied to detecting damage in two instrumented buildings th the 1971 San Fernando and 1994 Northridge earthquakes, and for which records of 10 other earthquakes are also available.The first method is a new method, based on measuring wave travel times through the building using impulse response functions, applied to structural health monitoring for the first time in the presented work. This method is more reliable than monitoring changes in the apparent building frequencies, which are sensitive to the effects of soil-structure interaction and environmental factors, such as weather. Further, it is local and can detect the location of damage with relatively few sensors as compared to the methods based on detecting changes in curvature of the mode shapes of vibration, which require extensive instrumentation. Another relatively new method is based on detecting novelties in the recorded response using wavelets, previously tested on numerically simulated data but not conclusively on real data. This method is superior to all other methods in its resolution of the estimate of the time of the occurrence of damage. The analysis of this method also revealed that the noise in this method, consisting of high frequency pulses from the ground motion traveling through the building, contains useful information about the travel times through the building, and hence can also be used to infer about the changes of the state of health of the structure. The results by these two methods are compared with the distribution and degree of the observed damage, and with results of analyses based on other indicators of damage, such inter-story (dynamic) drifts estimated from the recorded accelerations, observed changes of the "instantaneous" apparent frequencies of vibration as functions of the amplitudes of response, estimated from the ridges and skeletons of the Gabor transform, and finally by analysis of simulated response using ETABS. The mutual consistency of the results by different analyses methods, and their consistency with the observed damage are discussed and several important conclusions are drawn.

  Location: KLaprielian Hall 203

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Evangeline Reyes

  

• Feb

  28

  Ion Mobility Analysis of Gaseous and Particulate Pollutants

  Wed, Feb 28, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM

  Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  
  ANTHONY S. WEXLERDepartment of Mechanical and Aeronautical EngineeringDepartment of Civil and Environmental EngineeringDepartment of Land, Air and Water ResourcesUniversity of California, DavisAbstract:USC faculty, staff and students have played a leading roll internationally in elucidating the physical and chemical constituents in the atmosphere and the health effects that they elicit. But like investigators everywhere, this work has been limited by the spatial resolution of the instruments that are available. Usually, a few measurements in a vast urban area such as Los Angeles must suffice due to instrument costs even though there are tremendous spatial inhomogeneities for many of the toxic pollutants. This talk will present a nascent effort at UC Davis to design and build an inexpensive, easily manufactured ion mobility spectrometer that is suitable for analyzing many common pollutants, especially the organic ones.

  Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) Room 150

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: April Mundy

  

• Feb

  28

  Jimmy Joyced! A Performance by Donal OKelly

  Wed, Feb 28, 2007 @ 07:00 PM

  USC Viterbi School of Engineering

  Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

  
  

  Prominent Irish actor Donal O'Kelly performs a hilarious monologue that takes us on a journey from Joyce's fraught 22nd birthday in February 1904 to his departure from Ireland with Nora Barnacle in October of that same year. The performance will be preceded by a roundtable discussion featuring several James Joyce specialists.Jimmy Joyced! examines the events leading up to James Joyce's departure from Ireland in 19. This energetic and colorful production is a punchy combination of physical performance and vocal delivery. The performance will be preceded by a roundtable discussion featuring several James Joyce specialists.

  Location: Ground Zero Coffeehouse

  Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

  Contact: Daria Yudacufski