Faculty and staff contributed over $1 million in 2007 to USC’s pioneering community partners grant program.

USC’s Good Neighbors Campaign, which for 14 years has supported collaborations between neighborhood organizations and groups of USC faculty and staff, has surpassed the $1 million mark in a single year.

President Steven B. Sample, who initiated the program in 1993, called this a “wonderful affirmation of the spirit of USC’s staff and faculty and of the extraordinary partnership the university has developed with its neighbors. “When you see university employees contributing over $1 million from their own paychecks to fund joint university-community projects that make our neighborhoods better, you know there is something special going on,” he said.

About 4,400 employees donated to the program in 2007-08, with nearly 500 of them pledging 1 percent or more of their salaries. This is a statistic that is particularly gratifying to the president, who increased his own giving this year to 3 percent of his annual salary.

The 2007 campaign – titled “A Tradition of Giving” – which began Oct. 1, exceeded its $1 million goal by “tens of thousands of dollars,” said Carolyn Webb de Macias, vice president of external relations, who oversees the campaign. “We are all thrilled that the USC faculty and staff were so generous.”

Last year’s campaign raised a then-record $911,000 from 3,922 donors. The difference this year, said Carolina Castillo, director of external relations, who manages the campaign, was the “energy and momentum” of the 97 campaign leaders, key administrators, deans, faculty and staff. “The enthusiasm was contagious, and you could feel it across both campuses.”

David Galaviz, director of community outreach on the Health Sciences campus, said that the HSC campaign focused on identifying the three distinct neighborhoods that make up that area – Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights and El Sereno – and promoted the opportunity to help local schools during a time of public budget shortfalls.

Individual academic and administrative units within the university brought their skills into the campaign. The video used to promote the campaign – which can be seen on USC’s YouTube channel (www.YouTube.com/usc) – was created by students at the School of Cinematic Arts. Auxiliary Services sponsored an antique car show. And the USC Marshall School of Business has turned its campaign into a year-round fund-raising project involving alumni, students and friends.

The Good Neighbors Campaign began two years after Sample became president of the university. When he arrived in 1991, Webb de Macias said, he embarked on a listening tour. “He talked to people in all areas of the city and all areas of USC. He asked ‘What are the issues? What’s important? What should USC do?’ ”

He then outlined five community initiatives to address what he heard, focusing on safety, education, housing, employment and economic development. He also established the Good Neighbors Campaign to encourage faculty and staff to support community partnership projects.

Since its inception, the Good Neighbors Campaign has awarded nearly 300 grants – more than $8 million – to fund these partnerships. The university covers all of the campaign’s administrative costs, so 100 percent of the money raised goes to programs. Funds are allocated through the USC Neighborhood Outreach Program and the United Way.

Now that the campaign has passed the $1 million/year mark, Sample said, “it has clearly demonstrated how USC’s culture of public service serves as a model for universities and cities nationwide. People here can see the importance of the campaign, and they want to continue to develop it.”

For information about the Good Neighbors Campaign, including a full list of funded programs, visit www.usc.edu/gnc.

Campus Crystal Ball

Looking Ahead: USC in 2030

A new master plan offers a glimpse into the future of the University Park campus and its neighborhoods.

USC has embarked on an ambitious master planning process that will guide development of the University Park campus and its surrounding neighborhoods through the year 2030.

The project – directed by Curtis Williams, vice president for campus development, and Carolyn Webb de Macias, vice president for external relations – was begun four years ago, when a group of university planners began meeting with consultants from A.C. Martin Partners to develop goals and articulate the vision for future development.

“The senior administration authorized this formal planning process in order to ensure stewardship of the University Park campus and our surrounding neighborhoods well into the future,” Williams said. “We want to accommodate future needs in a way that is thoughtful, that uses our limited land effectively and that will create a safe, attractive, sustainable campus and neighboring urban community.”

The plan, still in draft stage, calls for “a 30,000-foot-level framework for carrying us through the next 20 years,” Williams says. “It is not a specific plan for specific buildings; rather, it is a vision of how we see the area developing in the future. We are not developers; the only purpose of this plan is to be sure that we will be able to support our academic mission through the next two decades.”

Main concepts include:

››  An “academic core campus” area that is primarily dedicated to teaching and research, as well as some additional undergraduate housing, with a goal of preserving the historical buildings and the park-like character of the campus.

›› Development on university-owned property north of Jefferson Boulevard (the current University Village Shopping Center and Cardinal and Century apartments as well as property east of Hoover Street). The vision is to create a new mixed-use University Village; housing for 6,000 students and 400 households; new retail space and space for academic use; an executive education or conference space; and a boutique hotel of 700 beds (with parking). As part of the planning process, the university is working with the City of Los Angeles relative to the long-term status of the fire station located in the Village and with the Los Angeles Unified School District in order to better understand the long-term plans for 32nd Street School, which currently is housed primarily in modular buildings near Jefferson and Hoover.

›› Narrowing of Jefferson Boulevard between Royal Street and Orchard Avenue and realigning and narrowing Hoover Street south of 32nd Street, to create a more unified and pedestrian-friendly campus. To accommodate traffic affected by these reconfigurations, through-traffic would be redirected to Vermont Avenue, Figueroa Street and the freeway.

“Underlying these proposals is the need to offer students affordable university-sponsored housing that will encourage them to live on campus or closer to campus, thus relieving pressure on our surrounding neighborhoods,” Williams said. “We also want to provide housing for faculty and staff so that they can live closer to the campus.

“We also recognize the increasing difficulty of parking, both on campus and in the neighborhoods,” he added. “Our basic approach is an attempt to get people out of their cars by creating housing within walking distance of academic buildings and by encouraging the use of the new light rail system and other public transportation.”

Another goal of the plan is to provide better streetscapes, lighting and green space in the neighborhoods surrounding the campus, Williams said.

USC has worked closely with neighbors and the surrounding business community throughout the planning process. 

A Master Plan Advisory Committee made up of representatives from various neighborhood organizations, churches, museums and other stakeholders was formed in 2006. Chaired by Jackie Dupont-Walker, president of the Ward Economic Development Corp., the group was responsible for drafting a set of guiding principles for future development that were formally adopted by the university last year.

“We have been very assertive about providing neighborhood groups and individuals with opportunities for input into this process,” Webb de Macias said.

“In addition to the advisory committee, we have conducted focus groups and made presentations to a variety of neighborhood institutions and organizations. We want our neighbors to understand the impacts of living near a major research university, to be aware of both the challenges and the benefits this provides for local residents and institutions.”

As the project progressed, a number of other consultants were brought in, including experts in housing, parking, transportation, civil engineering and historical resources.

The draft Master Plan that evolved through this process of consultation and planning was presented to various campus and community groups for advice and input during the winter and spring.

A final Master Plan will go to the Board of Trustees for approval. Once this happens, the plan will be submitted to the city for an environmental review and entitlement process, which could take two to three years.

For details on USC’s master planning process, visit www.usc.edu/masterplan.

 – Susan Heitman

CapitalCONNECTIONS

›› FUNDING SCIENCE A delegation of USC trustees and senior administrators, led by President Steven B. Sample, met with key members of Congress and the administration in March about the university’s science and education priorities. In addition to urging legislators to fully fund science priorities in the next budget, the group updated members of Congress about making a USC education affordable with one of the largest student-aid pools in the country.

›› JAPAN FEST Faculty violinist Midori Goto, chair of the strings department at the USC Thornton School of Music, performed with the Miró Quartet at the John F. Kennedy Center Family Theatre as part of the center’s “Japan! Culture + Hyper Culture” festival in February. The festival was a showcase of the best in Japanese music, theatre, dance, architecture, literature and other arts. Midori’s program included two works by Toru Takemitsu, one of Japan’s most distinguished 20th-century composers.

›› UNREPORTED DANGERS Violence prevention authority Ron Avi Astor of the USC School of Social Work and the USC Rossier School of Education met with the House Education and Labor Committee to talk about research he and visiting social work professor Rami Benbenishty from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have done on school violence and implications for the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. The act allows schools to self-designate as dangerous, Astor said, and not one of California’s more than 9,000 schools has adopted the designation.

›› DIPLOMATIC TALKS The British Embassy and the British Council teamed up with Nicholas Cull of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Lisa Larsen from the USC Center on Public Diplomacy for a reception that included representatives from the U.S. State Department and Washington think tanks. Cull spoke about “the new public diplomacy,” an idea that diplomacy has changed fundamentally since the Cold War, with new technologies, new techniques and new players – including more non-governmental organizations – in the mix.

For more Capital Connections, visit www.usc.edu/uscnews/features/capital_connections

[Election 2008] Faculty Pundits

Journalists covering the 2008 presidential election have a new resource: a special Web site that provides a range of cross-disciplinary views and opinions of the U.S. election cycle by faculty experts. Topics range from domestic to global, from Latino issues to ballot measures, from health care policy to the required leadership skills for a presidential hopeful. The site (http://election2008.usc.edu) went live in January, and by the end of February, it was averaging 4,500 visits and 8,000 page-views per week. Traffic spiked around the “super Tuesday” primaries, when visits hit 1,400 on the day of the election and 1,100 the day after.

“Journalists tend to seek a ‘neutral’ voice at universities – where scholars can put breaking news into context,” says James Grant, USC’s executive director of media relations, who developed the site. 

“In creating Election 2008, we are seeking to expand these connections – to give journalists a new way to access USC faculty members’ knowledge of the broad social and policy discussions surrounding the election.”

Recent highlights on the site have included a primer on ballot propositions across the country from John Matsusaka of the USC Marshall School of Business, the USC Gould School of Law and the USC Initiative and Referendum Institute; a call for a new foreign policy strategy on Iran from Najmedin Meshkati of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering; and an opinion piece on health care in America by David Goldstein of the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics.

Edward Schneider, former dean of the USC Davis School of Gerontology, offered a commentary on whether John McCain’s age was a factor in his ability to take on the presidency. Pat James of the School of International Relations asked: “Where is the Republican Obama?” Historian Steven J. Ross chronicled the “long love affair” between Hollywood stars and American politics.

Grant said that communicators across USC were involved in putting together the Web site. USC’s Web Services team gave the site a compelling look and feel and a range of interactive features.

To keep track of election issues with help from USC experts, visit http://election2008.usc.edu

Streaming Troy

USC on YouTube

The university is on view at YouTube.com/usc, with videos on the academic, the aesthetic and the esoteric.

USC has established one of the first institutional channels on YouTube, the world’s leading online video community that allows people to discover, watch and share originally created videos.

The channel, which went live in early October, contains hundreds of videos from the arts to the sciences and social sciences. In addition to the main university channel, nine schools – USC College, the School of Architecture, the USC Marshall School of Business, the School of Cinematic Arts, the USC Annenberg School for Communication, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, the USC Gould School of Law, the USC Thornton School of Music, and the School of Social Work – have set up subchannels of their own. Other schools are lining up to join.

“Our goal with this channel is to showcase faculty research and teaching and to share our students’ work – especially in the arts and sciences – with the rest of the world,” said Suh-Pyng Ku, chief technology officer for distance learning, who was instrumental in setting up the channel with YouTube.

“The enormous reach and power of YouTube will help us connect with people who may not be aware of USC’s remarkable breadth of programs. We see this as an important outreach opportunity for the university.”

Highlights include USC College professor Marianne Wiggins discussing her new novel, The Shadow Catcher, while standing on the beach in Malibu; 24 clips from the School of Cinematic Arts’ First Look Film Festival; a performance by USC Thornton’s student jazz ensemble Superaxe; a tour of the virtual world of Second Life, introduced by an avatar of USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III, and tips from faculty pianist Daniel Pollack on preparing for a life as a musician.

Other content includes community outreach videos on USC’s Good Neighbors Campaign; the public service spot “Our Choice,” which airs nationally during USC football games; and interviews with USC legends such as Norman Topping and Rod Dedeaux from the USC Emeriti Center’s H. Dale Hilton Living History project. 

SupportREPORT

››  A BIG SPLASH Town & Gown signed an agreement with USC to invest its scholarship endowment fund of more than $37 million in the university endowment pool. Town & Gown, founded in 1904, is responsible for many campus enhancements, including Hubbard Hall and the Von KleinSmid Center carillon. Its scholarship program, launched in 1958, has supported thousands of USC students.

››  A BUSS FROM BUSS The Department of Chemistry has received a $7.5 planned gift from Jerry Buss PhD ’57, chairman and majority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers. The gift will fund two endowed chairs in the department and a scholarship fund for graduate students. Buss, an inaugural member of the USC College Board of Councilors, named the two chairs in honor of his mentors, friends and former USC chemistry professors Sidney Benson and David Dows.

››  HAPPY DAY The founder and CEO of the Freeman Cosmetic Corp. donated $5 million to the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center to name the Judy and Larry Freeman Cancer Day Hospital, a current outpatient facility. Freeman said the couple’s reasons for the gift were extraordinarily personal. “I have a son who is alive today in part due to some of the work done here at USC,” Larry Freeman said. “It is a debt I can never repay.”

››  FAMILY HQ USC Trustee Daniel J. Epstein ’62, an honors graduate of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, has made a $4 million lead gift to create a new headquarters for the USC Alumni Association. The Epstein Family Alumni Center will occupy the third floor of the new Ronald Tutor Campus Center’s east wing. (For more on the center and Epstein, click here.)

››  HEF’S SPACE Multimedia entrepreneur and longtime USC supporter Hugh Hefner has donated $2 million to the School of Cinematic Arts. The gift funds the central exhibition space in the heart of the school’s new 137,000-square-foot complex, as well as an archival repository to house decades of student films, production-related records and other historic resources. Hefner has been a benefactor of the school for more than 15 years. 

For information on making a gift to USC, visit www.usc.edu/giving

People Watch

Forgotten Giants of Science

Deborah Harkness reclaims the unheralded naturalists who trailblazed the Scientific Revolution.

It took “blissful ignorance,” dogged determination and 10 years of research for Deborah Harkness to arrive at her startling pre-history of the Scientific Revolution – a tale she has set out in The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (Yale University Press, 2007).

A professor of history at USC College, she was clearing the decks from her last book project – on controversial natural philosopher John Dee – when she fell to musing over a list of works penned by Dee’s English contemporaries.

“I looked at this list of books,” she recalls, “and I thought: ‘Who are all these people?’ I had never heard of most of them and I became very interested. As I started reading these scientific books, I realized that they were referring to each other, referring to other books, and suddenly a whole new world started taking shape.”

She decided to go to the British Museum and libraries in London to learn more about these long-dead scientists. Once there, she waded through piles of barber-surgeon, ironmonger and other guild records. She tracked down their wills, tax and property records. One name led to another and her list of 300 Elizabethan Londoners who had contributed to the sciences soon grew to 1,500.

The result of her skill and tenacity is a vivid book that examines colorful scientific communities whose members set the stage for the Scientific Revolution.

In her digging, Harkness has unearthed some of Francis Bacon’s contemporaries – major scientific figures of their day whose contributions have been neglected by later historians. One of these was early social scientist Hugh Plat, who fought to establish a scientific basis for examining recurring phenomena such as famine and starvation.

“Newton gets huge amounts of credit for the very good reason that he made the major scientific breakthrough in universal gravity,” Harkness says. “But Newton himself said, ‘If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.’”

Some of those giants, Harkness argues, are largely unstudied and unknown scientists such as Plat – a bold assertion that Scientific Magazine predicted would spur debate.

Harkness acknowledged that her book may rankle some traditionalists.

“Showing the ways in which little changes were taking place even before those magical moments is going to be something that’s going to be controversial,” she says. “Not everyone is going to like the fact that I think Hugh Plat deserves as much attention as Francis Bacon.”

But she wasn’t seeking to change people’s beliefs by sharing the stories of everyday scientists in Elizabethan London.

“These are stories that deserve to be told,” she says. “They shed light on how people figured out what science should be before there were any set of rules, regulations or protocols. For me, it was suddenly seeing the impulse that led to the big breakthroughs.”

– Pamela J. Johnson

Conversation with SHERRY BEBITCH JEFFE

A Woman of Many Words

Election season finds USC’s political pundit-at-large in her element, offering up opinions right, left and center.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior scholar at the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, is one of the most-quoted faculty members on campus, particularly during election seasons. Her spot-on observations on politics are sought out by reporters from coast to coast. She is the regular political analyst for KNBC Channel 4 in Los Angeles and writes a weekly online column, “Political Perspectives,” for the station. She spoke with USC Trojan Family Magazine’s Allison Engel.

What has surprised you most in the presidential race thus far? The drama and closeness of the Democratic nomination race. In the beginning, the entire race was seen as inevitable: Hillary Clinton versus Rudy Giuliani. The early line on this election was useless.

You have a real gift for explaining complicated issues in engaging ways that the average person can understand. Did you study creative writing? One of the most shaping experiences of my life was high school. I was in the first class of a special humanities program at Trenton (N.J.) Central High School. For three years, we all had English, history and drama together. Much focus was placed on writing and articulating orally, and we had an extremely broad education in literature. The other really shaping experience was going to an all-women’s college, Goucher College [in Baltimore], which is now coed.

What are your opinions of the “pajamadeen” (bloggers who work from home in pajamas) and other online pundits who are changing social and political discourse? You cannot deny that blogs are having an impact politically. They really came of age during the 2004 presidential campaign. The bloggers, it can be argued, got Dan Rather, among others. Bloggers, because they are easily accessible, have had an impact on whom the media talks to and what goes into the mainstream media. The plus side is that it’s getting a lot of young people involved. The minus side is that they don’t have the foundation on which to judge what is being said. It concerns me that many people go to those blogs that only confirm their prejudices and ideology. And that’s not what I call knowledge.

What are your favorite Web sites? The very best, the one I always look at, is Rough & Tumble (www.rtumble.com). It’s a roundup of all of the news about California politics and government for the day. I also look at ABC News’ The Note, which is probably the best broad look at what’s happening not only on the national level but on state levels. I look at the Washington Post and New York Times sites, not just their blogs, although I am getting a little hooked on the Washington Post’s politics blog The Fix.

Are you a registered Democrat, Republican or Independent? I am registered “decline to state” and have been for a while. My last partisan campaign was 1972, the McGovern California primary.

Recently, you said there appear to be no rules for political spending, and billionaires are throwing huge amounts of money to back initiatives. Do you think the initiative process works as a democratic check and balance on legislators? Initiatives weren’t exactly supposed to be a democratic check and balance on the legislature. They were supposed to be an end-run around the legislature by citizens who were shut out of the process. They’ve become an end-run by interests that have the money and the organization to do it. Ordinary citizens can’t qualify an initiative anymore. It costs too much. And they certainly can’t pay for the media campaign that’s necessary to get the point across.

How does this presidential race compare with others you’ve observed? I haven’t seen a race with such electricity and enthusiasm since 1968, when Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy were running. When I was on the ground in Iowa and in New Hampshire this year, I saw the energy and commitment of a whole new wave of younger people, which I haven’t seen since 1968, when I was one of them.

For a longer version of this interview, visit http://uscnews2.usc.edu/more/12778

The High Priest of Production Design

Oscar for an Architect?

Good thing architect Robert Boyle lost his job during the Depression. His loss was Hollywood’s timeless gain.

Legendary production designer and USC School of Architecture alumnus Robert Boyle ’33 was awarded an honorary Oscar statuette during the 80th Academy Awards ceremony.

“Oh, thank you all,” he told the audience, after an introduction by actress Nicole Kidman. “That’s the good part of getting old. I don’t recommend the other.

“It’s not possible for me to express my appreciation to the countless people who helped me on this great trip, this wonderful journey of being in the movies,” he said, and proceeded to list the most important. The USC School of Architecture made the list.

Born in Los Angeles on Oct. 10, 1909, Boyle trained as an architect at USC, graduating with a B.Arch. in 1933. When the Depression cost him his job in that field, he found work in films as an extra.

In 1933, Boyle was hired as a draftsman in the Paramount Studios art department, headed by supervising art director Hans Dreier. He went on to work on a variety of films as a sketch artist, draftsman and assistant art director before becoming an art director at Universal in the early 1940s.

Boyle has earned four Academy Award nominations in the art direction category for his work on North by Northwest, Gaily, Gaily, Fiddler on the Roof and The Shootist.

In his career, he has gone to great heights, literally, as when he dangled from Lincoln’s head on Mount Rushmore, sitting in a boatswain’s chair supported by rusty cables, while photographing it for North by Northwest. That experience provided the title for an Academy Award-nominated documentary short on him, The Man on Lincoln’s Nose (2000).

“Robert Boyle’s career is truly worthy of this honor,” said academy president Sid Ganis. “From his multiple collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock to his top-quality work on so many other films, this is a master film artist.”

Boyle’s nearly 100 credits began in 1942 with Hitchcock’s Saboteur and include Shadow of a Doubt, It Came from Outer Space, The Birds, Marnie, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, In Cold Blood, The Thomas Crown Affair, Portnoy’s Complaint, Private Benjamin, Rhinestone and Dragnet.

“Since I’ve been around here for almost a century, I’ve noted a lot of conflicts,” Boyle concluded in his acceptance speech. “But there was one bright image in this whole life of ours, and that was the arts, and particularly the art of the moviemakers, of the moving image that we all love.”

[Trojan Touchdown] Crash the Super Bowl

Kina Grannis ’07, a USC College alum in psychology and social sciences who completed the USC Thornton School of Music songwriting curriculum, won the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” national songwriting competition. Her victory was announced after the first quarter of Super Bowl XLII on February 3. Grannis is a singer-songwriter in the vein of Sarah McLachlan, Joni Mitchell and Norah Jones, writing personal and intimate songs where the lyrics matter, notes Chris Sampson, who was Grannis’ songwriting professor at USC Thornton. She also is incredibly prolific, he says. “She used to bring in a new song every week, and they were all strong.” In addition to having a singing voice with unique qualities and guitar-playing ability, “she has an innate sense of melody, with the ability to find a beautiful arc and line to it. It’s a natural gift,” Sampson says. Grannis’ songwriting productivity included writing a tune about the Web site digg.com, which turned out to be a brilliant idea. The song ran on the site, garnering the singer-songwriter thousands of new fans. After Grannis was announced as the winner during the Super Bowl, a 60-second version of her song “Message from Your Heart” was aired. The same day, she signed a contract with Interscope Records. Sampson anticipates we will be hearing much more from his former student.

To see Kina Grannis’ video, visit www.youtube.com or www.kinagrannis.com.

Lab Work

Of Yeast and Old Age

Record longevity for baker’s yeast suggests ways to help humans live longer and healthier lives.

Biologists have created baker’s yeast capable of living to the ripe old age of 800 (in yeast years) without apparent side effects.

This basic but important discovery, achieved through a combination of dietary and genetic changes, brings science closer to controlling the survival and health of the unit of all living systems: the cell.

“We’re setting the foundation for reprogramming healthy life,” says USC study leader Valter Longo, who has joint appointments in the USC Davis School of Gerontology and USC College.

Longo’s group put baker’s yeast on a calorie-restricted diet and knocked out two genes, RAS2 and SCH9, that promote aging in yeast and cancer in humans. “We got a 10-fold life span extension that is, I think, the longest one that has ever been achieved in any organism,” Longo says.

The study appeared in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal PLoS Genetics; a companion study, showing that the same genetic changes in yeast reverse the course of an accelerated aging syndrome, appeared in the Jan. 14 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.

In 2005, the same research group reported a five-fold life span extension in the journal Cell. Normal yeast organisms live about a week.

“I would say 10-fold is pretty significant,” says Anna McCormick, chief of the genetics and cell biology branch at the National Institute on Aging and Longo’s program officer. The NIA funds such research in the hope of extending healthy life span in humans through the development of drugs that mimic the life-prolonging techniques used by Longo and other researchers.

Baker’s yeast is one of the most studied and best understood organisms at the molecular and genetic level. Remarkably, in light of its simplicity, yeast has led to the discovery of some of the most important genes and pathways regulating aging and disease in mice and other mammals. A study recently published in Cell reported that a mouse with a gene mutation first identified by Longo’s group lived 30 percent longer than normal and also was protected against heart and bone diseases without apparent side effects.

Longo’s group next plans to further investigate life span extension in mice and also is studying a human population in Ecuador with mutations analogous to those described in yeast. “People with two copies of the mutations have very small stature and other defects,” he says. “We are now identifying the relatives with only one copy of the mutation, who are apparently normal. We hope that they will show a reduced incidence of diseases and an extended life span.”

Longo cautioned that, as in the Ecuador case, longevity mutations tend to come with severe growth deficits and other health problems. Finding drugs to extend the human life span without side effects will not be easy, he says. An easier goal would be to use the knowledge gained about life span “in a fairly limited way, to reprogram disease prevention.”

– Carl Marziali

InquiringMINDS

›› STROKE OF MIDLIFE Rising obesity rates are linked to more strokes among women ages 35 to 54, reports Amytis Towfighi, assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Towfighi looked at data from 1988-1994 and from 1999-2004; 1.79 percent of middle-aged women in the later survey reported having a stroke, versus 0.63 percent a decade earlier. The possible culprit? The women in the later study were significantly more obese.

›› TRACK CHANGES Jean-Pierre Bardet, chair of the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at USC Viterbi, has been spending a lot of time lately at the racetrack at Santa Anita Park, but for a good cause. He was called in to solve a drainage problem on the synthetic surface in December after rain turned the turf to mush. He worked with Australian racetrack builder Ian Pearse, who has patented a new polymeric binder, to make the surface more water repellent and stable without using wax, which was clogging up the base of the racetrack. 

›› BABY’S FIRST BIOFILM A sludgy substance seen on the ultrasound images of about 15 percent of pregnancies is in fact a bacterial biofilm in the amniotic fluid, according to USC School of Dentistry researcher William Costerton. “It was originally thought that pregnancy was a sterile process until the baby was born,” Costerton says. “But it turns out that the baby is encountering bacteria in the amniotic fluid as early as a couple months of gestation.” It’s generally not a problem for babies, and researchers are thrilled to be able to view the notoriously hard-to-culture biofilms.

›› COLD, COLD ART For the first time, neuroscientists have visualized cold fibers – strands tuned to sense different kinds of cold. David McKemy, a USC College assistant professor of biological sciences, and his USC research team genetically engineered mice so their neurons that expressed a protein known as TRPM8, known to relay cold signals to the brain, included a fluorescent tracer to light up the fibers. Humans and other mammals appear to share the same cold-sensing mechanism, said McKemy, whose findings appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience.

For the latest USC faculty research updates, visit www.usc.edu/research

Giving it Their BEST SHOT

Of Mouse Vaccine and Men

A vaccine blocks prostate cancer in mice prone to the disease. The strategy might also work in men.

Researchers at USC have developed a prostate cancer vaccine that prevented the development of cancer in 90 percent of young mice genetically predestined to develop the disease.

In a recent issue of Cancer Research, they suggest the same strategy might work for men with rising levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a potential diagnostic indicator of prostate cancer.

“By early vaccination, we have basically given these mice lifelong protection against a disease they were destined to have,” says the study’s lead investigator, W. Martin Kast, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “This has never been done before and, with further research, could represent a paradigm shift in the management of human prostate cancer.”

Now, men with rising PSA levels but no other signs of cancer are advised to have “watchful waiting” – no treatment until signs of the cancer appear, Kast says. “But what if instead of a watchful wait, we vaccinate? That could change the course of the disease.”

The study findings also represent a new way to think about the use of therapeutic prostate cancer vaccines, Kast says. Vaccines now in testing are designed to treat men whose cancers are advanced and unresponsive to therapy, and results have offered limited clinical benefit, he says. This novel approach targets the precancerous state with the aim of preventing cancer from developing.

The researchers created a vaccination scheme using two kinds of vaccines and tested it in eight-week-old mice that were genetically altered to develop prostate cancer later in life.

“Confronting the immune system in two different ways forces it to mount a strong response,” Kast says.

In the experimental group, two of 20 mice developed prostate cancer at the end of one year. By contrast, all of the control mice had died of the disease. Researchers found that mice in the experimental group had all developed very small tumors that did not progress.

“There were tiny nodules of prostate cancer in the mice that were surrounded by an army of immune system cells,” Kast says. “The vaccination turned the cancer into a chronic, manageable disease.”

The vaccination strategy also works with other antigens. The researchers recently tried another prostate cancer membrane target and found that after 18 months, 65 percent of experimental mice were still alive. And of those that died, the suspected cause was old age.

Investigators further found that treated mice did not develop autoimmune disease, a known possible side effect.

[Handiwork] Prestidigitation Demystified

Quickly moving your fingertips to tap or press a surface are essential tasks for everyday life. Biomedical engineer Francisco Valero-Cuevas of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering says these actions result from a complex neuro-motor-mechanical ballet orchestrated with precision timing by the brain, nervous system and muscles of the hand. “When you look at the hand, you think: ‘Five fingers. What could be more straightforward?’” the USC researcher says. But it is difficult to know how each of the hand’s 30-plus muscles work. He and co-investigator Madhusudhan Venkadesan of Cornell University recorded the 3-D fingertip force plus the muscle coordination pattern from all seven muscles of the index finger. “Our data suggest that specialized neural circuitry may have evolved for the hand because of the time-critical neural control that is necessary,” says Valero-Cuevas.

 – Diane Ainsworth

For the full story on hand coordination, tap out http://uscnews2.usc.edu/more/14839

Shelf Life

Mind Melds

High-performing “tribes” are often found in young, flexible business organizations.

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
By Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright
COLLINS, $26.95

Most people think of organizations as almost monolithic in their internal culture and mindset, near-unitary structures that may involve thousands or tens of thousands of employees who share a similar approach to the issues they face.

But that’s not the way USC Marshall School of Business lecturer Dave Logan says managers should think about or, more importantly, lead their organizations. That’s the conclusion he reached after eight years of surveying 24,000 people at companies like biotech giant Amgen and design firm IDEO.

Logan is co-author, with Halee Fischer-Wright ’06 and John King, of Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization.

A USC Marshall doctoral alum and former associate dean, Logan recently taught the book’s basic tenets to a few hundred USC managers as part of a university-wide executive-education program.

The book’s basic points are straightforward: People within organizations tend to organize themselves into small groups, or “tribes,” ranging in size from a few to a few hundred people. These groups tend to share similar values and mindsets regarding their work, their company and their colleagues.

Most importantly, how you manage those groups depends on where they fall on a scale of 1 through 5 (1 being the most difficult) in terms of cultural development.

“The things that matter most are culture,” Logan said. “You can diagnose one of these five types of culture. And once you diagnose the culture, you can begin to address it.”

Level 1 is quite rare, the sort of despairing mess that spawns workplace violence and other problems, said Fischer-Wright, a physician and graduate of USC Marshall’s master’s program in medical management.

About a quarter of the time, a tribe is at Level 2, where each person feels isolated from others and may be locked in an endless loop of criticism about their colleagues and themselves.

The most common sort of organization, about half of the total, is at Level 3, which Fischer-Wright described as an attitude of “I’m great, and you’re not.”

To help evolve a tribe from the self-defeated Level 2, Logan said it’s important to find the people who, usually privately, voice a desire to be better. One option: Give them opportunities to become stars and to succeed and rise in the organization. “Find the people on the cusp who want things to be different,” Logan said. “You’re trying to change the way those people talk.”

Level 3 tends to be particularly common in academic institutions where the star system is the basis for recognition, tenure, advancement and more. Logan said USC has many pockets of higher-achieving tribes, at Level 4 or even 5.

Such higher-performing tribes are often found in young, flexible and highly successful organizations, such as Amgen and Pixar. But they can be found in older and more bureaucratic organizations where there is a  strong esprit de corps and a sense of a larger, shared purpose.

Members of Level 4 tribes are connected with each other but tend to see their organization in terms of its superiority to other groups. A successful athletic team is a classic Level 4, defining its superiority by the teams it has beaten.

To reach Level 5, organizations need to aim beyond merely beating rivals. To use the language of Steve Jobs at Apple (which often has reached the heights of Level 5), the organization should seek to create something “insanely great.”

“If you want an example of a Level 5, look at the Manhattan Project,” Fischer-Wright said. “All the best minds worked in that project to create something that would end the war. Forty and 50 years later, they still talked about that as the great experience of their lives, even people who won the Nobel Prize.”

The key is to get people to invest in something larger than themselves. To do that, you have to carefully grow your organization and its tribes, so they’re ready to embrace and pursue a truly life-changing achievement. The challenges of making that happen explain why Level 5 is so rare.

“The vast majority of people have never been in a Level 5 organization and frankly don’t believe it exists,” Logan said.

– David Bloom

[In Print] China Dreams

“This year, I am sad in school. I lost my best friend Yayeko Akiyama, who was sent to the Manzanar internment camp with her family.” So begins one of the pages of Mei Ling in China City (East West Discovery Press, $18.95), a children’s book written by Icy Smith about the story of Marian Leng, who lived in the Los Angeles neighborhood known as China City, built in 1938 after Old Chinatown was destroyed to make way for Union Station. The book has vibrant watercolor illustrations by Los Angeles native Gayle Garner Roski ’62, the namesake of the USC Roski School of Fine Arts. Working from vintage black and white photographs of China City, Roski brought the unusual location back to life. China City, which burned in a fire in 1949, was a replica of a Chinese village that was a tourist destination and movie set for The Good Earth, among other films. In the book, Mei Ling and Yayeko exchange letters, depicting the hardships of Americans of Chinese and Japanese ancestry during World War II.

For more books by USC faculty, visit www.usc.edu/uscnews/features/in_print.html

The Whole World In Their Hands

Pentecostal Power

Religion scholar Donald Miller takes the global temperature of the movement that started in Los Angeles.

Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement
By Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, $24.95

As Europeans and Americans slowly turn away from mainline churches, Pentecostalism is winning the souls of those in developing nations.

It’s a worldwide phenomenon that Donald Miller, the Leonard K. Firestone Professor of Religion in USC College, experienced firsthand as he traveled to more than 20 countries on four continents.

He documents the movement in his book Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement, which he co-authored with Tetsunao Yamamori of Food for the Hungry, an international aid organization.

Miller calls Pentecostalism a complex social movement within Protestant Christianity with many different strains that emphasizes the gifts of the Holy Spirit – specifically, speaking in tongues as well as supernatural healing and other manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

It is the fastest-growing Christian movement in the world. Miller, executive director of USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, personally witnessed the tangible life-changing programs of those churches around the world. He observed that families often experienced upward social mobility because money that had been used on alcohol or gambling was now available to educate children or invest in a small business.

One of its biggest draws is the church’s agenda to create social programs to improve people’s health or to spur economic development in the community. That surprised Miller, who had believed in the stereotype that Pentecostals were more interested in “saving souls rather than helping society.”

Miller also credits Pentecostalism’s popularity to its ability to adopt contemporary music, creating ecstatic worship services that are “the heart of the movement,” Miller said. “Their worship is vibrant. They use the musical idiom of the people.” The authors include a DVD with the book, so readers could experience this dimension.

Pentecostalism first took hold just over 100 years ago in an abandoned church on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. Today, Pentecostal growth in the United States is nearly flat compared to its explosion around the globe.

– Eddie North-Hager

NewRELEASES

It’s So French! Hollywood, Paris and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture
By Vanessa R. Schwartz
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, $25

Films like Gigi and Funny Face marked the beginning of the globalization of culture, when the influence of French culture began showing itself in American films, argues USC College’s Vanessa R. Schwartz. This marketing of “Frenchness” along with icons such as Brigitte Bardot and the Cannes Film Festival created a cosmopolitan culture. Film stills, publicity photos and paparazzi shots enhance this colorful account of the birth of global culture.

Why is there so much violence in Russian history and culture? Some blame Russia’s huge size, unforgiving climate and exposed geographical character. Others place the blame on cultural and religious traditions or despotic rulers. USC College’s Marcus C. Levitt and his co-editor have compiled a collection of essays investigating Russian history as well as depictions of violence in the visual arts and in literature.

When young Chinese printmakers began making woodcuts in the early 20th century, they heralded the arrival of both artistic and political modernity. In this first comprehensive account of the Chinese woodcut movement available in English, Xiaobing Tang of USC College explains the aesthetic, intellectual and social appeal of this revolutionary art form and shows how this was one of the most significant artistic forms to emerge from this tumultuous time in Chinese history.

Faculty books can be purchased at Trojan Bookstore. Call 213-740-9030 or visit www.uscbookstore.com

Arts & Culture

Violin Valhalla

The presence of Ralph Kirshbaum, Hagai Shaham and Midori signals an exciting new era for the music school.

With the hiring this year of Hagai Shaham and Ralph Kirshbaum and the promotion of Midori Goto to chair of the strings program, a new era has begun for the USC Thornton School of Music.

“Any change of teacher must bring, by definition, different points of view and different emphases,” said Kirshbaum, whose appointment as holder of the Gregor Piatigorsky Chair in Violoncello made international headlines in November.

Although born in Texas, Kirschbaum had been based in Europe, where his career flourished for nearly 40 years. His accep-tance of the position at USC meant relocating his family to Los Angeles.

Having embraced the tradition of the strings program, which has featured some of the most famous names in classical music, his sights now are set on the future.

“I see my role at USC as encouraging the highest ideals personally, instrumentally and musically among my students,” he said.

“While I am proud to follow in the footsteps of my childhood idol, Gregor Piatigorsky, I am not so exercised by tradition per se. I am much more concerned with values, confident that whatever ‘identity’ arises from this will be consistent with the storied legacy of the USC Thornton strings program.”

The program is led by Midori Goto –  one of today’s legendary violinists – whose appointment as holder of the Jascha Heifetz Chair in Violin in 2004 resulted in a similar wave of international excitement.

“From the very beginning, I was impressed by the high standards and reputation of USC Thornton as an institution of higher musical education,” she said.

“It is intriguing to be surrounded by such wonderful, generous and dedicated faculty, and I appreciate the community-minded student body as well as the school’s serious interest in cultivating the concept of an artist-teacher role.”

USC Thornton added another celebrated artist to its strings program this year with the appointment of Hagai Shaham, an internationally renowned violinist from Israel who, like Kirshbaum, moved his family here to teach at USC.

“I am thrilled to join such a prestigious school and esteemed faculty, located in a most friendly climate and state,” Shaham said. “I believe that an open-minded program like that at USC Thornton is the best option, not because it is different than ‘traditional’ ones, but based on them.”

Together, the three artists represent the international identity for which the program has long been known.

“Working with young musicians all over the world reaffirms the notion of music as a global means of communication,” Midori said. “There is so much to learn from other cultures’ approach to music education and appreciation, which I am eager to share with my own students. It is both a privilege and a responsibility to offer my students the best knowledge that I have acquired through my own experiences.”

With its new era under way, the future of the USC Thornton strings program is in capable hands.

“The development of the students is what really matters,” Kirshbaum said. “I want each of them to succeed to the best of their abilities – and thereby to respect themselves and grow in self-awareness and self-confidence.

“Knowledge and mastery are powerful tools, and an atmosphere of openness and mutual trust provides a fertile ground for attaining them.”

– Evan Calbi

[Piano Legends] Watts Up? Brahms.

Composer Johannes Brahms and pianist André Watts have a few things in common. Both were born in Germany and got their big breaks when they were championed by top composers of their day (Robert Schumann and Leonard Bernstein, respectively). Watts first played Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 at age 19 and recorded it with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic two years later. He performed the piece at USC this spring, as part of the President’s Distinguished Artist Series, with the USC Thornton Symphony in a simulcast on KUSC. “André Watts certainly is one of America’s most formidable musicians,” said principal conductor Carl St.Clair, who had collaborated with Watts on Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 three years earlier. “His interpretations of this great work of Brahms are virtually unparalleled.” Amazingly, the late Romantic composer was once in danger of lapsing into obscurity. Two decades after his death, detractors maligned his work as “monumentalized chamber music.” Enter tone-row wizard Arnold Schoenberg, a lifelong Brahms fan, who declared that his intricate textures and thematic variations made possible the “unrestricted musical language” of the 20th century. And Schoenberg, who taught composition at USC, orchestrated the composer’s Piano Quartet in G minor and dubbed it his “Fifth Symphony.” Brahms’ Concerto No. 2 is full of those qualities Schoenberg admired.

– Laura Kaufman

For up-to-date event listings, visit USC’s Arts and Events Calendar at www.usc.edu/calendar

On-Stage Metamorphosis

Classical Revenge Gets Updated

British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker was in residence at USC for a revival of her award-winning play.

On the voyage home from Athens, King Tereus of Thrace brutally rapes his wife’s beloved sister. That’s the lurid premise of The Love of the Nightingale, a postmodern retelling of the myth of Philomele and Procne, which took the stage at Bing Theatre this past February.

In the hands of celebrated British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, this dark legend from Ovid’s Metamorphoses is itself metamorphosed into a contemporary discourse on male dominance and female resistance, on the violence that inevitably erupts when victims’ voices are silenced, and, ultimately, on the individual’s powers of self-reinvention.

To silence Philomele, the rapacious king cuts out her tongue. Years pass, but his victim waits patiently for the chance to “tell” Procne of her husband’s crimes. When she does, all hell breaks loose.

The prolific Wertenbaker was in residence at USC for the revival of her award-winning drama, which received its world premiere 20 years ago by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. This is actually the second time USC has produced Nightingale – but this time, it was a no-holds-barred staging, complete with marble columns, Greek chorus and gripping special effects.

A classic revenge tragedy, Nightingale involves human sacrifice, cannibalism and, of course, the divine intervention without which there can be no poetic justice. (In this case, mortals transfigure into birds.) 

Wertenbaker is “probably one of the more famous contemporary writers of her generation,” said the School of Theatre’s Paul Backer, who directed last year’s production of Wertenbaker’s The Ash Girl, a retelling of the Cinderella myth. Though Wertenbaker is best known for her 1988 play Our Country’s Good – based on a Thomas Keneally novel set in an Australian penal colony – the Basque-reared, British-educated author is a noted classical scholar who has translated several Greek and French dramas, and has written screenplays for film adaptations of Edith Wharton’s The Children and Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove.

During her stay at USC, sponsored in part by a grant from Visions and Voices (USC’s arts and humanities initiative), Wertenbaker led audience talkbacks after two evening performances of Nightingale. She also made the rounds in various School of Theatre courses, including Backer’s seminar on world theatre history and theory.

But the undisputed highlight of the playwright’s residence was a Friday lunchtime talk in the Doheny Library Intellectual Commons on the reasons for mythmaking and the power of myths in classical texts. Focusing on the strict meaning of words and the checkered past of “history” versus legend, she debunked some existing myths of the theatre and how it relates to her own work.

– Diane Krieger

[On-Screen Glamour] Scripter Turns 20

No Country for Old Men author Cormac McCarthy and screenwriters Joel and Ethan Coen received the 20th annual USC Libraries Scripter Award at a gala ceremony in February, and screenwriter Steven Zaillian – who adapted Schindler’s List, Awakenings, and A Civil Action for the screen – was given the first Scripter Literary Achievement Award. Sponsored by the Friends of the USC Libraries, the event featured Tony Award-winning actor Jason Alexander as emcee. Reflecting on the pool of potential awardees, Alexander noted “more films than ever before were eligible for Scripter consideration. We had sweeping war epics, polar bears with magical armor and a phalanx of Calvin Klein models fighting for the honor of Sparta.” USC trustee Glenn A. Sonnenberg, president of the Friends of the USC Libraries, co-founded the award with Marjorie Lord in 1988 to recognize both the author and screenwriter behind the year’s best film adaptation. Proceeds from the black-tie gala are used to support the creation of new library spaces for instruction, collaboration and materials preservation.

 – Bill Dotson

Inside the Mantra

Pianos and Computers, Unite!

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mantra gets a teched-out treatment with an immersive audio-rendering system.

When USC’s Visions and Voices program brought world-class pianists Katherine Chi and Hugh Hinton to REDCAT (the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre) for a performance of Mantra, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s landmark piece for two pianos, students knew they were about to be exposed to something special.

They were not disappointed.

Thanks to a unique immersive audio-rendering system developed at USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center, the sounds created by the artists were distributed in space throughout the audience, placing them literally inside the music.

Mantra requires the pianists to go beyond the confines of their keyboards, to incorporate mallet work on woodblocks and crotales (tuned metal discs), weave in Morse code and use their voices and acting ability in the style of Japanese Noh theatre.

But on this night they went even farther: Each pianist also was “playing” a MIDI controller with eight sliders and knobs. Three microphones in each piano captured sounds and sent them to a computer, where a custom-written musical processing program performed the ring modulation called for in the score.

Electrical engineer Chris Kyriakakis, the founding director of USC’s Immersive Audio Lab, organized the event along with CalArts. The audio lab is developing an interdisciplinary field focusing on algorithms for capturing and rendering sound to create environments indistinguishable from reality. This concert showcased the lab’s unique sound rendering system that was developed jointly with Tomlinson Holman of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. It used next-generation 10.2 channels of sound to recreate the most enveloping acoustical impressions possible today.

The concert marked the first time that new algorithms for moving sound in space over an arbitrary speaker configuration were used on a 10.2 system. Sounds from the piano and the ring modulators were placed in space around the audience, but also moved with varying tempos to create the sense of being immersed in the music. The project required significant processing power and the tight collaboration of the performers and the rendering team.

The immersive sound synthesis was done by Yvonne Lee, a Boston-based pianist and composer; and the immersive sound rendering was done by James Donahue, principal recording engineer at WGBH Radio in Boston and a longtime collaborator at the USC Immersive Audio Lab.

– Allison Engel

Talking POINTS

›› HIGH-TECH TINKERING Tinkering, which played an important role in inventions 200 years ago, had basically disappeared by 1980, USC senior fellow John Seely Brown told The Chronicle of Higher Education. “You can’t open the hood of a car any longer and understand how it works….Starting in about 1995, tinkering came back, but nobody recognized it. It came back in terms of remix. Mash-ups. Media. Imagery.”

›› TOP TEASERS USC Annenberg’s Charles Fleming opined in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about the poetic teaser lines of spam emails. “I’ve become a connoisseur – while suffering through offers of bank loans, hair-replacement formulas, penis-enlargement pills and Canadian prescriptions for Vicodin, Viagra and Cialis – of the peculiarly artful language of the spam come-on,” he writes.

›› UNCOOL DADDY-OS The Washington Post quoted Jerry Del Colliano of the USC Thornton School about the future of music radio. Traditional radio is being rejected by a generation that resents undesirable interruptions. “Young consumers don’t have that need that we older folks have to have someone knowledgeable about the music tell them what’s new. They have their social network to tell them what’s cool.”

›› RATINGS TRAP “If you believe that all the activity, hype and buzz on the Web translates into viewership, then Snakes on a Plane should have been a blockbuster,” Jeffrey Cole of the USC Annenberg School told the Los Angeles Times. “The disconnect seems to be with teens who love to speculate and comment online but rarely turn it into direct viewing. Teens, while still interested in television, are less interested in television than any generation that has come before them.”

›› GOT IT? CLICK A study by neuroscientist Irving Biederman of USC College finds that when we grasp a new concept, the “click” of comprehension triggers a shot of heroin-like opioids to reward the brain. “We are designed to be info-vores,” Biederman told The Times (London) and The Australian. “When you’re trying to understand a difficult theorem, it’s not fun. But once you get it, you feel fabulous.”

For more USC faculty quoted in the media, visit www.usc.edu/uscnews/usc_in_the_news