When Catherine Ricafort boards an airplane, she always takes a window seat. Not to enjoy an aerial view of the scenery, but to check out the runway traffic on the ground. A junior majoring in industrial and systems engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Ricafort has been studying runway incursions and the role human error plays in those accidents for the last two years. With support from an Undergraduate Research Associates Program grant, Ricafort and an interdisciplinary team of USC undergraduates are investigating aviation safety at Los Angeles International Airport, which saw eight runway incursions in 2007 alone. “That’s eight chances for a disastrous collision,” says Ricafort. In the long run, she hopes to devise a standard approach for reporting runway incursions, improve upon the current rating system and collect incident data to build a repository of prevention information. “I hope that in my final report I will be able to propose solutions that will improve not only runway safety at LAX but also the safety of the national aviation environment,” she says. – Diane Ainsworth

To read about other research that ventures beyond classroom walls, go to www.usc.edu/uscnews/features

The House That Xiao Built

Green structures provide shelter to victims left homeless by China’s devastating earthquake.

A USC professor on sabbatical in China has created a prototype of a sturdy, quick-to-build bamboo house designed to shelter thousands of people made homeless by the Sichuan earthquake.

Yan Xiao is an expert in structural design and retrofit in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

He had been experimenting with bamboo-based materials for highly demanding structural uses in China’s Hunan province, and he had recently built the world’s first bamboo truck bridge there, in the city of Leiyang.

On May 13, the day after the earthquake, he rushed to nearby Sichuan province to offer his services. Returning to Hunan University – where he currently serves as director of the Chinese Ministry of Education Key Laboratory – Xiao immediately went to work on a bamboo housing solution.

The prototype quake relief house that Xiao built in less than two weeks can be adjusted according to specific family needs.

“The modular units are connected by bolts and are easy to manufacture and assemble,” Xiao says. “Four to six workers can assemble a 22.3-square-meter (240-square-foot) house in about four hours. The majority of the structural materials used are processed bamboo veneer sheets, a kind of bamboo fiber composite.”

Xiao says that interior detailing is similar to the wood frame houses in North America, noting that the design conforms to current U.S. building codes requirements for quake resistance.

“The relief house contains two windows, fans and locations for an LPG stove or bath unit, satisfying basic needs for shelter for a family of up to four.”

A first batch of 20 units was donated by Hunan University. A Chinese newspaper, the China Press, published an article about Xiao’s work, leading to contributions supporting the construction of more units.

The cost per square meter of the units as manufactured in China – based on local material costs – is about 350 to 500 RMB, or $50 to $70.

Xiao ticks off the advantages of the structures:

“Unlike tents, the bamboo quake relief house is insulated for heat and sound, is fireproof, allows residents to secure their possessions and is more durable,” he says. “It is also inexpensive compared with temporary houses using other traditional materials, such as light-gauge steel. Finally, bamboo is a green and sustainable construction material, widely available in China and other Asian countries.”

The Chinese government estimated that more than one million temporary relief housing units are needed in Sichuan.

– Eric Mankin

›› PHARMING OUT Representatives from Cyberjaya University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, met with USC Pharmacy Dean R. Pete Vanderveen and director of external programs Michael Wincor for help in setting up its first Pharm.D. program. Cyberjaya currently offers a five-year bachelor’s degree in pharmacy, but wants to build a graduate-level program to provide students with additional clinical training. This educational model is now emerging throughout Asia, and Cyberjaya is one of 13 institutions – in China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand – that have signed formal exchange agreements with USC.

›› ROYAL DECREE USC College chemistry professor Philip Stephens was named a fellow of the Royal Society, the highest distinction a British scientist can receive. A USC faculty member for more than 40 years, Stephens is renowned for his techniques investigating the structures of molecules using light. “It’s one of the most exciting moments in my career, especially as I’m British,” says the West Bromwich native. The Royal Society, founded in 1660, is the United Kingdom’s equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences.

›› LEARNED IN CHINA Dean Karen Symms Gallagher and Ed.D. students from USC Rossier met with Chinese educators, government officials and economic experts during a recent trip to Beijing and Shanghai. Each student is conducting a yearlong study on one aspect of educational globalization. The project’s aim is to “understand how universities are globalizing themselves – and why,” says Gallagher.

›› INDIAN SUMMER Thirteen juniors from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur participated in an eight-week summer exchange program at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Working under the direction of aerospace and mechanical engineering professor Paul Ronney, the students did hands-on research, gaining practical experience in their chosen fields. USC Viterbi’s other research and exchange collaborations include a program with Tsinghua University in China, and USC’s Summer Research Internship Program, which sends a select group of engineering students abroad.

For more information on USC’s global reach, visit www.usc.edu/globalization

Annenberg in Africa, Persian Gulf

Deals with media leaders in Nigeria and Dubai bring USC communications expertise to foreign shores.

In a move that reflects the global nature of the ongoing communication revolution, the USC Annenberg School for Communication has launched major research collaborations with two media institutions in Africa and the Middle East.

The partnerships will include technical assistance and instructional training as well as wider scholarly collaboration through mutually administered research centers.

Through the agreements, with the Nigerian Communication Commission’s Digital Bridge Institute and American University in Dubai, USC Annenberg will share its expertise in media policy and communication technology with faculty and administrators overseas.

The partnerships build on USC Annenberg’s existing international programs, which include:

• a joint degree program offered with the London School of Economics and Political Science,

• research collaborations with the Centre for Media Studies in New Delhi, and

• plans for academic partnerships with institutions in China.

“As increasing numbers of societies take advantage of the communication revolution, the need will only grow for a sophisticated analysis of the issues at play,” says USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III. “The USC Annenberg School is uniquely positioned to explore these new models of partnerships and build global capacity in media and communication around the globe.”

At the Digital Bridge Institute, USC experts in communication technology and policy will work with educators as they advance the institute’s mission of building Nigeria’s ability to invest in the rapidly growing information and communication technology sector.

Scholars from the USC Marshall School of Business’ Institute for Communication Technology Management also will assist in the research collaboration.

Through an agreement with American University in Dubai, USC Annenberg will serve as a model for the university’s new Mohammad bin Rashid Media College.

USC Annenberg faculty and scholars will work with Dubaian administrators to create a curriculum that explores emerging global issues in communication and journalism while honoring the cultural differences between the United States and the Arab world.

“We think we can really make a difference here,” says Philip Seib, USC Annenberg journalism professor and principal project director of the partnership with American University.

“The news business is much less mature in Arab countries, and as with any young industry, if it’s to develop to its highest potential, it requires some thought,” Seib says. “We’re eager to contribute to the enhancement of journalistic fundamentals in the American University program by fostering appreciation of American journalism values – everything from ethics to professional production skills. The end result, we hope, will be a new generation of Arab journalists who can contribute to the political development of their region.”

In addition to technical assistance programs and training workshops, the Dubaian partnership may involve a wide range of USC Annenberg faculty and research scholars to build elements for mid-career professional development and opportunities for research and international meetings.

Faculty and student exchange programs are also under discussion, as are further partnerships with other schools within USC.

– Alex Boekelheide

In rolling out its new multidisciplinary Institute for Global Health, USC has set the bar very high – recruiting as founding director one of the world’s leading experts on human health effects of air pollutants. Jonathan Samet comes to USC from Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. An international authority on the effects of smoking and air pollution, he chairs the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

The damage done to the environment by human activities is no longer a “quiet crisis,” says Samet, noting that USC’s Institute for Global Health “should move forward with an agenda of capacity building, research and policy formulation that will have immediate and profound impact.” In addition to his role with the new institute, Samet chairs the Keck School’s Department of Preventive Medicine, considered among the finest programs of its kind. “I found a perfect match between my view of needs in global health and what USC wanted to accomplish as an institution,” Samet says, commenting on his new responsibilities. – Jane Brust

To read more about USC’s Institute for Global Health, visit www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/15343.html

The Amazing Carbon Sink

What happens on the Amazon doesn’t necessarily stay there. In the fight against carbon, that’s a good thing.

Nutrients from the Amazon River spread well beyond the continental shelf and drive carbon capture into the deep ocean. Those are among the remarkable findings of a USC-led, multi-year study.

These findings don’t change estimates of the oceans’ total carbon uptake. But they do reveal the surprisingly large role of tropical oceans and major rivers.

The tropical North Atlantic had been long considered a net emitter of carbon from the respiration of ocean life. A 2007 study placed that ocean’s carbon contribution to the atmosphere at 30 million tons annually.

A new study by the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, published online in PNAS Early Edition, found that almost all the respiration is offset by organisms called diazotrophs, which pull nitrogen and carbon from the air and use them to make organic solids that sink to the ocean floor.

Diazotrophs “fix” nitrogen from the air, enabling them to thrive in nutrient-poor waters. They also require small amounts of phosphorus and iron, which the Amazon River delivers far offshore.

That’s all the diazotrophs need to pull carbon from the air and sink it in the ocean.

The other great tropical rivers of the world also may contribute to carbon capture, says marine scientist Doug Capone, a professor at USC’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies and a senior author on the study.

Results from the current research present new options for the controversial practice of iron fertilization. Some biologists believe that seeding the oceans with iron could increase production of carbon-fixing organisms and help mitigate climate change.

However, upwelling circulation in cooler waters makes them unlikely candidates for long-term carbon capture, says Capone. A permanent carbon sink instead may be more feasible in the warm oceans.

Capone says that iron fertilization would increase diazotroph activity and that the stratified tropical waters should be able to keep captured carbon solids from returning to the surface in the short term.

“The most appropriate places are probably not the high latitudes but rather the low-latitude areas where nitrogen fixation is a predominant process,” he says.

But Capone also warns there are risks to iron fertilization, including increased production of other greenhouse gases and unpredictable effects on the food web.

Nevertheless, he says, “if we choose as a human society to fertilize areas of the oceans, these are the places that probably would get a lot more bang for the buck in terms of iron fertilization than we would at high latitudes.”

– Carl Marziali

›› INFINITE DIVIDE USC researchers discovered a new mechanism to allow embryonic stem cells to divide indefinitely and remain undifferentiated. The study, published in Nature, reveals how embryonic stem cell multiplication is regulated, which may be important in understanding how to control tumor cell growth. “Our findings will likely change the research direction of many stem cell laboratories,” says lead author Qi-Long Ying, a Keck School neurobiologist and researcher at USC’s Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research.

›› TO THE BONE USC researchers have improved on a surgical procedure called “accelerated orthodontics” developed by Pennsylvania-based periodontist Tom Wilcko. In Wilcko’s procedure, dentists score the bone holding the teeth in place and apply bone graft material over the grooves. As the bone heals, it softens slightly, allowing teeth to be moved into alignment using dental braces in a matter of months, rather than years. Recently a team of USC dentists led by researcher Hessam Nowzari published the first case study of the successful use of a patient’s own bone material for the grafting, which eliminates the risk of any disease transmission

›› PRENATAL PALPITATIONS A new study found that becoming pregnant can double or triple your risk for heart attack. “This is a unique phenomenon in the sense that these are young women who are not supposed to have [heart attacks],” says lead researcher and Keck School cardiologist Uri Elkayam. Each year, about 250 pregnant women in the United States suffer heart attacks, Elkayam says.

›› WIMPS WIN Turns out tough guys don’t always get the girl. A new USC study on fruit flies shows even the most genetically aggressive flies can lose out to wimps. The findings help explain the large variation in levels of aggression in most species. “If aggression makes you more likely to father children, all males should be selected to be very aggressive,” says study leader Brad Foley, a postdoctoral researcher in biology at USC College. “Male fruit flies (like humans and other animals) show a lot of genetic variation in aggression, and we wanted to find out why.”

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

Crunching at MySpace

USC researchers help the social networking site keep serving millions by beefing up overwhelmed servers.

Imagine a moment – a thousandth of a second – in the life of a MySpace computer.

In that blink of the eye, thousands of fingers, spread across thousands of square miles, click-in urgent requests for large chunks of data: a photo requested in Minneapolis, video needed in Des Moines, a forum comment registered in Detroit.

As the vast social networking system grows, each millisecond becomes more and more crowded with requests. To address this, a USC researcher is working to make sure the answers keep coming back quickly, even as tens of millions of new users join the party.

“If MySpace were less successful,” says Shahram Ghandeharizadeh of USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, “there would be no problem. But at the current volume of transactions, getting to the data quickly becomes an issue.”

The key to speed and capacity is called DRAM. “Ideally,” says Ghandeharizadeh, the director of the USC Database Laboratory, “you want all the data requested to be in the quick-access cache memory of the servers – the DRAM – rather than having to retrieve it from the servers’ disc memory, which is much slower.”

But the total volume of data created by users far exceeds what the DRAM cache will hold. And as the user population grows at an accelerating pace, more and more requests arrive to query a larger and larger body of information. Even the innovative Berkeley DataBase system that MySpace uses to keep interactions quick is coming under increasing strain.

The Berkeley system keeps MySpace information flowing by quadruple redundancy: Each section of users is served not by one but by four overlapping servers that share DRAM space, making the system faster, more reliable and more scalable.

“Now it works,” says Felipe Cariño MBA ’95, who heads MySpace Research, the company’s in-house R&D facility, “but if you double it, it may not.” And the user population may indeed double as people in other countries learn to meet and greet each other on their own sites, he says.

Ghandeharizadeh is working with Cariño, a graduate of the executive MBA program at the USC Marshall School of Business, to find a way around the impending squeeze. Cariño dubs their effort the “Gemini Project,” after the famous twins: “Two heads, Viterbi and MySpace, coming together.”

The collaborators have been exploring a new method for maintaining and replacing the data kept in DRAM.

Until now, their methodology has been simple, but there is room for improvement: Data that have remained in the DRAM longest without being accessed are overwritten by new data.

Another method is potentially more effective: “heuristic” replacement, in which data are given simple but useful characterizations. A program uses these characterizations to guide replacement.

The heuristic algorithm that the MySpace Intrapreneurial Research Group is adapting to the MySpace database comes out of a recent Ph.D. thesis written by USC graduate student Shahin Shayandeh, who is a member of the team, along with three MySpace computer scientists.

The key element is taking file size as well as creation date into account. Large objects, like video files, kick out many small objects from the memory when they load. While the general solution is based on how frequently objects are accessed, another rule is not to let very large objects into DRAM.

Based on their research, Cariño and Ghandeharizadeh are hopeful that the new algorithm will adapt to MySpace demands and deliver the desired improvements in performance.

– Eric Mankin

Years ago, Olga Solomon’s outgoing border collie dropped a Frisbee at the feet of a little girl in the park. She picked it up and gave it a toss. Moments later, the child’s father approached Solomon, tears in his eyes. The little girl was autistic, he explained, and such interactions were very rare. The man offered to buy the dog on the spot at any sum. “I never forgot that moment,” says Solomon, a researcher in USC’s Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. She recently analyzed more than 65 hours of video chronicling years of therapy-animal sessions with five autistic children. Solomon documented breakthroughs in the kids’ social interaction skills, increases in attention levels and improvements in family relationships. Next up, Solomon hopes to develop a model for how animal therapy can improve clinical autism programs. “Dogs could be like a catalyst in a chemical reaction,” she suggests. – Beth Dunham

To read more about this research, go to www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/15411.html

Bugs Like It Hot

New study points to heat, not light, as the engine responsible for polyglot pools of bacteria.

What causes tropical life to thrive: temperature or sunlight?

The answer isn’t necessarily “both.”

According to a study published online in PNAS Early Edition, the explosion of species at the tropics has much more to do with warmth than with light.

“The diversity was unrelated to productivity [from photosynthesis], but it was strongly related to temperature,” says USC College biologist Jed Fuhrman, who led a group that analyzed bacterial samples from warm and cold oceans.

Fuhrman’s group found far greater diversity in samples taken near the equator. In particular, samples from low-productivity waters still contained many bacterial species, suggesting that photosynthesis has little influence on diversity.

Many researchers have tried to separate the influence of temperature and sunlight, Fuhrman says, but they have found it hard to do by studying higher organisms. Bacteria are ideal subjects because of their wide distribution and the recent availability of genetic fingerprinting, he adds.

The question of what drives diversity is important to biologists who seek to uncover the basic rules governing life.

The so-called kinetic law links the rates of metabolism, reproduction and many other biological processes to the motion of atoms and molecules. Such motion increases with temperature, presumably speeding up the biological processes.

Fuhrman calls this “the Red Queen runs faster when she is hot” hypothesis.

Productivity also is thought to promote diversity by increasing the food supply. This is “the larger pie can be divided into more pieces” hypothesis.

Fuhrman says both hypotheses may be valid, but his group’s results show that “the kinetics of metabolism, setting the pace for life, has strong influence on diversity.”

Biologists have known for centuries that animal and plant biodiversity is greatest at the tropics, though they have not agreed on whether temperature or productivity was the cause. The Fuhrman group is the first to show that bacteria follow the same pattern. And as the PNAS study shows, bacteria are useful vehicles for probing the causes of biodiversity.

Fuhrman, holder of the McCulloch-Crosby Chair for Marine Biology, has been studying bacteria since the early 1980s, when new instruments and techniques greatly improved scientists’ ability to identify microbial species.

Since then, marine biologists have realized that bacteria play a dominant role in the oceans. More than half of the carbon dioxide respired by marine organisms comes from bacteria, Fuhrman says. Bacteria also comprise most of the diversity on earth, control vital biogeochemical cycles and form an integral part of the food chain.

“I study them because, even though they’re invisible, they’re incredibly important,” he says.

The National Science Foundation supported the group’s research.

– Carl Marziali

A new study by researchers Songtao Shi and Takayoshi Yamaza of the USC School of Dentistry’s Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology bolsters aspirin’s claim to be a powerful weapon in the fight against osteoporosis. In mice, the over-the-counter drug appears to function in dual ways: preventing both improper bone resorption and the death of bone-forming stem cells. An aspirin regimen has been linked in earlier epidemiological studies to better bone mineral density, but Shi and Yamaza take the research to the next stage – deciphering the biochemical mechanisms of this interaction. Another exciting aspect of their research: The aspirin dose they administered to increase bone mineral density in lab mice is proportional (when adjusted for body weight) to a typical human aspirin regimen. Species difference remains a factor, but early findings are promising. Shi and Yamaza hope their work will translate into new clinical strategies for osteoporosis. “We have opened a door,” Shi says. “We hope other scientists can confirm what we’ve found and move the treatment forward.” – Beth Dunham

To read a longer article on this research, visit www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/15399.html

Imagineering in Fort Worth

USC Roski alum Van Romans transfers Disney magic-making skills to a Texas science museum.

Thirty-five years after earning his MFA in three-dimensional arts, Van Romans ’73 is immersed in what you might call his largest sculpture. As president of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Romans is spearheading the creation of a new museum facility to open in fall 2009.

The 160,000-square-foot structure will house exhibits on topics ranging from paleontology to energy to cattle-raising. It also will integrate an existing OMNI theatre into a complex that boasts a museum school, expe-rimental studios, a new planetarium and exhibit spaces.

Sited next to museums built by 20th-century icons Phillip Johnson, Louis Kahn and Tadao Ando, the new Fort Worth Museum of Science and History is designed by innovative Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.

The challenge of creating an entirely new museum structure appeals to Romans.

“This will be a very hands-on, innovative place,” Romans says. In one fully immersive exhibit – “CSI: The Experience” – guests will step into crime scenes and identify and log evidence. The museum trade group Themed Entertainment Association has already awarded the CSI exhibit one of its 2008 “Thea” citations for outstanding work.

“Education and entertainment can come together and be a very powerful tool for learning,” Romans says.

He speaks from experience: Romans spent 30 years mixing the two at the Walt Disney Company, eventually as executive director for cultural affairs.

His move to museum work evolved gradually. At Walt Disney Imagineering, he established museum standards for the care of the division’s 100,000-piece art collection. He negotiated with governments and cultural institutions and oversaw exhibition development for theme parks worldwide.

The World Showcase pavilions at Epcot, Disneyland and Disneyland Tokyo were created on his watch, and he’s worked with American museums as varied as the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill., the D-Day Museum in New Orleans and the Smithsonian.

One project with the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles led to an assignment at Fort Worth’s National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, which stands adjacent to the future science and history museum. In 2004, Romans was recruited to direct the larger project.

Romans remains an active Trojan. He maintains close ties with USC Roski School of Fine Arts Dean Ruth Weisberg, and returns often to guest lecture and speak at the school’s graduation ceremonies.

“We’re a Trojan family,” he says of his own brood. “I went to ’SC, my father-in-law went to ’SC, my son went to ’SC.”

– Eric Althoff

›› JUDAS AND THE DREAM As proof of their thespian prowess, graduating students in the USC School of Theatre’s elite MFA in acting program perform two otherworldly plays in repertory. One night it’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, a lighthearted courtroom fantasy by playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis that asks audiences to pity the ultimate traitor, and the other night it’s the classic Shakespearean comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. November 12-23, McClintock Theatre.

›› OF SKIES SCRAPED Hungarian-French architect and artist Yona Friedman, considered one of the most influential figures in architecture today, reflects on globalization, migration, sustainability and “spontaneous architecture” in a Visions and Voices presentation titled “Irregular Structures: Conversations with Yona Friedman.” His work, which spans more than 50 years, includes drawings and theoretical writings that blend architecture, fine arts, sociology, economics, communication theory, mathematics and philosophy. November 19, Bovard Auditorium.

›› DAMNATION IN HI-DEF Live, from New York! The Metropolitan Opera production of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust gets beamed to USC via satellite in high-definition digital video and exquisite 5.1 sound – continuing a series of live broadcasts that began last year. The matinee screening is preceded by a live discussion hosted by the USC Thornton School of Music. James Levine conducts the opera, based on a co-production of the Saito Kinen Festival in Japan and the Opéra National de Paris. November 22, Norris Cinema Theatre/ Frank Sinatra Hall.

›› GIMME COVER Back in the day, inno-vative artists such as Jim Flora, Raymond Pettibon and Andy Warhol wrapped their artwork around long-playing records for jazz and rock performers. Although the heyday of LPs happened between the 1960s and ‘80s, vinyl has found new life at indie labels serving the DJ and hip-hop cultures. A Sound Design: The Art of the Album Cover exhibits more than 50 iconic album covers, including several that eclipsed the music inside. Through December 15, Doheny Memorial Library/Ground Floor Rotunda.

For a complete listing of upcoming cultural events at USC, visit www.usc.edu/calendar

All about Boris Pasternak

USC College acquires a rich archive of published material by and about the famous author of Doctor Zhivago.

Forced by the Kremlin to refuse the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature, Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak penned these tortured lines:

Am I a gangster or murderer?
Of what crime do I stand
Condemned? I made the whole world weep
At the beauty of my land.

The prize had been awarded for Doctor Zhivago, a novel banned in Pasternak’s homeland for its perceived criticism of life under communism.

But Lev Ladyzhensky owned a copy.

A young math professor at Latvia State University, he had been collecting Pasternak’s writings long before the 1958 Nobel Prize debacle.

Now Ladyzhensky’s collection, spanning more than a half-century of turbulent Russian history, resides in USC College’s Institute of Modern Russian Culture – a library and research facility housed in the Shrine Auditorium adjacent to campus.

“This is probably the fullest collection of Pasternak published materials in the Western world,” says Slavic languages professor John Bowlt, the institute’s director.

In addition to rare books, the Ladyzhensky collection includes many rare photographs and Russian, Soviet and Western imprints. It also contains articles and essays published in newspapers and magazines around the world, chronicling the Soviet regime’s growing disapproval of Pasternak’s work.

Outside of Russia, Pasternak is known mainly for Doctor Zhivago. “But for Russians, Pasternak is foremost a poet,” says USC Slavic languages professor Alex Zholkovsky, an internationally recognized expert on the author. “People know his poetry by heart. He’s one of the great names of Russian poetry in the 20th century.”

Pasternak – along with poets Alexander Blok, Osip Mandelshtam, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva – was part of the early 20th-century literary period known as the Silver Age. Although he was never arrested, as were many of his contemporaries, Pasternak was dismissed from the Union of Soviet Writers as punishment for perceived anti-revolutionary views in Doctor Zhivago. When he won the Nobel Prize, all publication of his work was suspended.

Even so, he never considered leaving his motherland: “I am tied to Russia by birth, by life and work,” he said. Pasternak spent the remainder of his life in rural Peredelkino. His health deteriorated and in 1960, two years after winning the Nobel Prize, he died.

As for Ladyzhensky, he continued collecting until 1973. The Kiev-born computer scientist was arrested that year for distributing government-suppressed literature. He served three years in labor camps in the Urals. In 1980, he was forced to leave the Soviet Union; he moved his family to New York, where he worked as a senior consultant for Standard & Poor’s.

After retiring in 1998, he moved to Brookline, Mass., where he continued to expand his Pasternak collection, which was by then one of the finest in the world.

Upon his death in 2004, Ladyzhensky’s widow, Aviva, and her son, Alex Brodsky, searched for the best way to preserve and make the collection available to researchers. With the help of Harvard-based Russian art expert Musya Glants, they contacted Bowlt, who arranged the transfer of the collection.

The acquisition is a major gain for USC, Bowlt says. It will be a primary resource for faculty and graduate students as well as undergraduates conducting research on Russia’s cultural history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“This is a unique collection,” adds archivist Mark Konecny, associate director of USC’s Institute of Modern Russian Culture.

“Without a doubt there’s nothing like this in the world – all in one place.”

– Pamela J. Johnson

For 70 years, the familiar brick building facing Exposition Park has been known as the USC Fisher Gallery. Now, the university celebrates its renaming as the USC Fisher Museum of Art. Why the switch? The institution has always been accredited by the American Association of Museums. But the term “gallery” has changed meaning since the days of founder Elizabeth Holmes Fisher (1867-1955). “It’s confusing,” explains chief preparator Conor Thompson. ”People keep calling to ask if we’re selling artwork.” To mark the change, the upcoming exhibition highlights rarities from a permanent collection that runs from old masters to contemporary iconoclasts. Seven Decades of Collecting: Celebrating the USC Fisher Museum of Art is on display December 3, 2008, through February 7, 2009.

For more information about the Fisher Museum of Art, visit www.uscfishermuseumofart.org

The Thurgood Marshall Plan

Before he was a Supreme Court justice, the famous civil rights lawyer worked to create a bill of rights for Kenya’s first democratic government.

Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey
By Mary L. Dudziak
Oxford University Press, $24.95

A lesser-known chapter in the life and career of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is the subject of a new book by USC Gould School of Law professor Mary L. Dudziak.

Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey explores the jurist’s ventures to Africa and his participation in the formation of Kenya’s first democratic government in the early 1960s.

Marshall already was a celebrated American civil rights lawyer by the time he made his African journey. He had argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court six years earlier.

He went to Kenya searching for a new way to change society through law, Dudziak writes, and found it in his contributions to the new democracy’s Bill of Rights.

Dudziak details Marshall’s complicated engagement in both Kenyan constitutional politics and the civil rights movement in America, where the first sit-in took place in Greensboro, N.C., in February 1960.

“In his experience, in the United States and in Kenya, law was a way to move forward in a context laced with violence,” says Dudziak, who is the Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science.

“What we learn from both stories together is Marshall’s deep belief that for equality and full citizenship to be achieved, legal change was, for him, a critical component.

“This came in part from his understanding of history, and in part from his own experience trying to achieve social change in the face of violent opposition to racial equality.”

Dudziak gives the first account of Marshall confronting Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyatta, whom he greatly admired, over discrimination against Asians in 1963. Kenyatta had just become prime minister during a short period of self-rule before the country achieved independence that December.

“An interesting issue is how Marshall could be so disappointed with Kenyatta and yet so proud to be part of Kenya’s independence later that year,” Dudziak says. “Berl Bernhard, who traveled to Kenya with Marshall in 1963, told me, ‘He wanted to protect that independence, period.’ Marshall had to confront the reality that nation-building sometimes collided with full protection of the equality rights he cared so deeply about.”

Dudziak became interested in the role of American law and lawyers in the world while writing her first book, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. She decided to focus solely on Marshall after learning about his role in Kenya.

She conducted research in a number of archives in the United States and overseas, and received a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Studies and a USC Zumberge Grant to support her work.

“The most interesting research trip was to Kenya, and while I did research at the Kenya National Archives, the most important thing about the trip was to try to find places where events in the story unfold,” Dudziak says. “That sort of travel helped with the way I wrote the book, so that I could put the reader in the location of the action in the story.”

– Lori Craig

Negotiating the Net in Africa: The Politics of Internet Diffusion
Ed. by Ernest J. Wilson III and Kelvin R. Wong
LYNNE RIENNER PUBLISHERS, $49.95

Why do national patterns of Internet expansion differ so greatly throughout Africa? To what extent does politics trump technology? Using case studies from Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania, USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III and his co-editor explore the politics, economics and technology of Internet diffusion across Africa. The book underscores the importance of the information sector for developing countries.

There has never been a straightforward definition of “Californian,” argues USC Thornton professor Mina Yang, but she suggests an answer lies at the intersection of musicology, cultural history and politics. Using a series of musical case studies of major ethnic groups in the Golden State, Yang approaches the notion of Californian identity from diverse perspectives, each nuanced by class, gender and sexuality.

Poring through more than 100 interviews and scores of newly declassified government documents, communications scholar Nicholas Cull, director of USC Annenberg’s master of public diplomacy program, provides an exhaustive account of how U.S. foreign policy was done during the Cold War. He relates both achievements and flaws of American public diplomacy from the end of World War II, offering remarkable insights into the Cold War era.

To see more recent releases by USC faculty, visit www.usc.edu/uscnews/features/in_print.html

Why Dolphins Go Ape

A cross-town team of scientists uncovers surprising resemblances between cetaceans and primates.

Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins
By Craig B. Stanford and Maddalena Bearzi
Harvard University Press, $24.95

Did dolphins and apes develop complex societies because they have big brains? Or did they develop big brains because of their complex societies?

“The answer might inform us about ourselves,” says anthropologist Craig Stanford, co-director of USC’s Jane Goodall Research Center. “Why did we evolve big brains? That’s a hard question.”

Stanford and UCLA dolphin biologist Maddalena Bearzi believe they may be closer to the answer after comparing decades of research that became the basis for their book Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins.

Dolphins and apes have precious little in common physically or environmentally. The former, shaped like cruise missiles, have no arms or legs and live in the ocean. The latter, similar in shape to humans, are covered in body hair and live in the forests of Africa and Asia.

Though both are mammals, cetaceans and primates have had no common ancestor for more than 100 million years. Yet the similarities – outside their appearance and habitat – are striking.

Dolphins and apes live in complex societies featuring male alliances and temporary sub-groupings centered on food sources. They use highly sophisticated communications systems and exhibit cultural traditions. Both invented tools to assist in the quest for food.

“They evolved similar traits because of their parallel societies,” Stanford says.

Stanford believes that to survive in their complex social structures, both animals needed to develop a big brain, a trait they share with humans and elephants.

Apes live in a fluid community, splitting up families and forming temporary alliances in a seemingly unstructured group as they search for fruit trees. Dolphins form temporary, fluid alliances as they search for fish to eat as well as protection from predators.

It took renowned primatologist and USC professor Jane Goodall 17 years of research to discern a pattern in what seemed like random movement, a community structure now called “fission-fusion.”

It was an even more difficult task to arrive at the same findings for creatures living underwater in territories that stretch hundreds of miles. Only recently has technology allowed Bearzi to break through in ways that made this book possible.

About 10 years ago, Stanford saw Bearzi’s work featured on CNN and was amazed to learn that dolphins divide up food much the way chimpanzees do. He contacted her to see if there might be other parallels with the behaviors of the great apes.

What he discovered – as the two compared notes over the years – continued to surprise him. Stanford and Bearzi published their scholarly findings last year in the journal Contributions to Zoology.

Dolphins, for example, put sponges on the top of their beaks to protect themselves from abrasive sand encountered on the bottom of the ocean while searching for food.

In recent years, researchers have seen chimpanzees create spears from branches to hunt small animals, while gorillas have used sticks to gauge water depth as they wade across swamps.

Unfortunately, dolphins and apes also share another trait. Both are endangered because of overfishing and habitat loss.

– Eddie North-Hager

“One good murder a night, with a fire and a hold-up thrown in,” boasted proto-paparazzo Arthur Fellig (better known as Weegee), when asked how he stayed in business. His tabloid-style photographs captured the underbelly of New York City, introducing wartime America to the pleasures of gawking at crime scenes and misbehaving millionaires. For the first time since their original publication, Weegee’s photos are presented as they appeared in tabloids from the ‘30s and ‘40s. Weegee and ‘Naked City’ (University of California Press, $19.95), by USC art historian Richard Meyer and co-author Anthony W. Lee, provides a close look at how the photographer’s landmark book, Naked City, brought art-world credibility to his work and made the lowbrow tabloid form acceptable to highbrow audiences. Meyer explains, “Naked City allowed people who would not otherwise want to admit that they liked to look at these sorts of images, to look at the photography under the guises of art or literature.”

– Lauren Walser

To read a longer version of this story, visit http://college.usc.edu/news/2008/07/meyer.html