USC - Viterbi School of Engineering

Feb
19

SHPE E-Week Barbecue
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 11:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Come and join SHPE for their annual E-Week Barbecue. We
will be serving hamburgers and soda to all engineers
Location: E-Quad
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers
Feb
19

Old School Games
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 11:00 AM - 02:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Dodgeball, 4-Square, Tetherball, Jump rope, and much more. NSBE will be collaborating with SHPE on this one, so come kick it old school with NSBE!
Location: E-Quad
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
Feb
19

Investigation of Physico-Chemical Characteristics of Particulate Matter from Vehicular Sources
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 02:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Doctoral Dissertation:
Subhasis Biswas,
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental EngineeringAbstract:
Particles from vehicular sources have drawn public attention for their potential to cause health risks. Beside chemical composition of these particles, their physical attributes are considered to be critical in eliciting adverse health outcomes. This thesis provides valuable information on particle physico-chemical properties with special focus on physical parameters such as size distribution, volatility, effective density, fractal dimension, surface area etc. Particle effective density and fractal dimensions were measured near a gasoline and a mixed freeway with significant diesel fleet. Diesel vehicles emit higher fraction of low density chain agglomerates compared to gasoline vehicles. Particle density at a receptor site showed interesting diurnal trend with peaks during sunny afternoons. Overall, particles demonstrated an inverse relation between size and density. Particle volatility, an important parameter to infer exposure to commuters, was measured near a pure gasoline and diesel dominated mixed-traffic freeway. Diesel particulates were associated with higher content of non-volatiles than those generated from gasoline engines and correlated excellently with the refractory elemental carbon emissions. Particle mixing characteristics not only depend on the fleet composition but also on environmental factors. Thus, to investigate the effect of meteorological conditions on particle characteristics experimental campaigns were designed to capture seasonal and diurnal variability. Although the daytime seasonal influences on particle volatility were minimal, strong diurnal changes were observed during winter. Finally, the physical characteristics of particles from diesel vehicles retrofitted with advanced emission control technologies were determined by controlled studies with a dynamomter set-up. These after treatment devices were efficient in removing solid particles, but were less effective in controlling volatile species which formed fresh nucleation mode particles. Particle volatility, density, surface diameter and extent of agglomeration were determined and compared with respect to a baseline vehicle. Our results indicate that vehicles with strong nucleation mode particles are associated with higher volatility and density and lower agglomeration.
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes
Feb
19

From Nature and back again... Giving new life to materials for energy, electronics and the environme
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 03:30 PM
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

PresentingThe Spitzer LecturewithProfessor Angela M. BelcherDepartment of Materials Science, Engineering
and Biological EngineeringMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge. MAAbstractOrganisms have been making exquisite inorganic materials for over 500 million years. Although these materials have many desired physical properties such as strength, regularity, and environmental benign processing, the types of materials that organisms have evolved to work with are limited. However, there are many properties of living systems that could be potentially harnessed by researchers to make advanced technologies that are smarter, more adaptable, and that are synthesized to be compatible with the environment. One approach to designing future technologies which have some of the properties that living organisms use so well, is to evolve organisms to work with a more diverse set of building blocks. These materials could be designed to address many scientific and technological problems in electronics, military, medicine, and energy applications. Examples include a virus enabled lithium ion rechargeable battery we recently built that has many improved properties over conventional batteries, as well as materials for solar and display technologies. This talk will address conditions under which organism first evolved to make materials and scientific approaches to move beyond naturally evolved materials to genetically imprint advanced technologies.Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Seminar at 3:30p.m.
SAL – 101Reception Following the Lecture
The Scientific Community is Cordially Invited.

Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir
Feb
19

CS Colloq: New Primitives and Metrics for Distributed Systems
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars

Title: New Primitives and Metrics for Distributed SystemsSpeaker: Dr. Byung-Gon Chun (ICSI)ABSTRACT:
With the advent of data centers and "cloud computing", distributed
systems are becoming much larger and far more sophisticated, with
computation spread over thousands of hosts and complex execution
paths. In this talk I will discuss new approaches to securing and
understanding these complex systems.I will first describe how we can build more robust systems using a new
trusted primitive called Attested Append-Only Memory (A2M). We trade
off assumptions on trusted components for improved Byzantine fault
bounds of safety and liveness. I will then present a way of
characterizing the complexity of general networked systems. I will
describe a metric based on distributed state dependencies, and apply
it to routing and classical distributed systems.BIO:
Byung-Gon Chun is a postdoctoral researcher at the International
Computer Science Institute, funded by Intel Corporation. He received
his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2007 from the University of
California at Berkeley. His research interests span distributed
systems and networks with emphasis on fault tolerance, security,
complexity, and system troubleshooting.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: CS Colloquia
Feb
19

IEEE Professor Pie Toss
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 03:45 PM - 05:45 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Want to get back at your professor for giving you all that homework? Come to the IEEE Professor Pie Toss. That is when you will have your chance! All you need is $1 for charity and a good arm!
Location: E-Quad
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: IEEE
Feb
19

Pong Squared
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 04:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Location: E-Quad
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: ACM
Feb
19

Wii Quad
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 05:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Organizations
Student Activity

Following IEEE's Professor Pie Toss come and play some Wii and enter our Wii Tournament. The event will be held in E-Quad and people will get to play for the whole three hours! Come and enjoy some food too! It is a good way to mingle and also VSC will be handing out the FREE E-Week Shirts! Hope to see everyone there!
Location: E-Quad
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: IEEE/HKN Wii Quad
Feb
19

Thoughtworks Information Session
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 @ 05:30 PM - 06:30 PM
Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections
Workshops & Infosessions

Join representatives of this company as they share general company information and available opportunities.
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori (GFS) 106
Audiences: All Viterbi Students

Contact: RTH 218 Viterbi Career Services