USC in the News 10/28/2009

The Chronicle of Higher Education featured Brian Shepard of the USC Thornton School and the videoconferencing software he developed to enable remote master classes. "There's a great deal of information that is there if you're in the same room with somebody singing or performing an instrument, but that is often not transmitted in a videoconference," Shepard said. His system removes the echo that results when signals travel over the Internet, while allowing the full spectrum of sound to be transmitted, the story stated. "We're not trying to eliminate the in-person meetings, but there are times when that is impossible," Shepard noted.

The Washington Post featured Tim Page of the USC Annenberg School, holding an online Q&A session with the paper's readers. Page discussed living with Asperger's syndrome, which is the subject of his book "Parallel Play: Life As an Outsider." "For me, at least, Asperger's Syndrome was most debilitating during my youth," Page wrote. "And yet there is no doubt that I am still affected by it today. I sometimes feel that I have spent my life in a state of parallel play (hence the title) -- alongside but disconnected from most of my fellow human beings. And it gets lonely sometimes." Page also discussed teaching at USC: "I'm liking the University of Southern California a lot. At this stage in the game, I'm much more interested in what my students have to say about an event than I am in attending it myself."

The Wall Street Journal cited Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development regarding the media's treatment of President Obama. "There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it," Jeffe has said.

USA Today quoted Valerie Folkes of the USC Marshall School in an article on the popularity of designer hand sanitizers as a result of the H1N1 flu. Folkes said it's a good thing that hand sanitizers have become fashionable. "Concern about germs has grown from a small segment of people to a culturally accepted practice," she said.

The New Yorker featured work by Maja Mataric of the USC Viterbi School and Carolee Winstein of the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy. Mataric developed robots to use with stroke and Alzheimer's patients and autistic children, specifically to encourage physical and cognitive rehabilitation, the story stated. Mataric and Winstein started a pilot program for stroke patients, using the robot to persuade them to use weakened limbs again. "It's as if I wanted to show you how to swing a racquet in tennis," Mataric said. "I stand behind you and grab your arm and put you through it. But you have to learn to generalize on your own. If you keep doing it with me holding you, you are not actually going to learn. You have to learn how to reach for the cereal on your own, based on your own motivation and your own mode of guiding."

Fortune quoted Susan Metros, USC deputy chief information officer, in an article about Blackboard, the online software program that allows professors to upload their reading lists and class notes and communicate with students. "Our students come to school demanding that we have technology in the classroom," Metros said. "They don't want to be just lectured to. They want to be participants."

Associated Press quoted Karen Sternheimer of the USC College in a story about nightclubs that cater to overweight people. Sternheimer said that while obesity is a serious problem, creating a place where people can feel good about themselves can build self-esteem, which in turn can prompt people to do something about their weight. "As the country gets heavier and ultimately unhealthier, in many instances the problem is people feeling bad about themselves, and feeling bad about themselves doesn't motivate people to lose weight," Sternheimer said.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch featured Tim Page of the USC Annenberg School and his book "Parallel Play: Life As an Outsider," which describes his struggles with Asperger's syndrome. "Now 55, he has another new career, as a professor of journalism and music at the University of Southern California, and he says it's a good fit," the story stated. "I feel lighter, in a strange way, having talked about all this stuff. I like to hope it will [help] other people," Page said. "I'm just a little bit out there, and I consider myself profoundly lucky that I've found jobs that work for me."

Asian News International highlighted work by Zhong-Lin Lu of the USC College and colleagues that demonstrated the workings of a curveball in baseball. Their animation of the curveball took first place in the Best Visual Illusion of the Year contest, the story noted. When batters try to gauge their approach to the ball, they must make a mid-swing switch between peripheral and central vision, the researchers found.

Presse Ocean (France) quoted Sandra Buffington of the USC Annenberg School, director of the Hollywood, Health & Society program of the Annenberg School's Norman Lear Center, which provides the entertainment industry with health information. Buffington said that when a television series is convincing, the viewer is completely transported into that world and is therefore more receptive to learning.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Germany) stated that USC is one of the institutions that collaborates with the Wende Museum.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in a HealthDay News story, quoted Amytis Towfighi of the Keck School of USC about a Danish study which found that the location of excess body fat appears to affect the risk of dangerous blood clots in veins. "There is information that obesity contributes to inflammation, and it is associated with the metabolic syndrome, which predisposes to stroke," Towfighi said. "There may be similar effects in thrombotic disease, as well as mechanisms that are not well understood at this point."

KPCC-FM interviewed Richard Green of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate about the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers. It's hard to know whether the credit has helped the market, Green said. "Did it just move sales that were going to happen anyway next year forward to this year? Like when the Cash for Clunkers program went away and car sales went back down to where they were before."

Los Angeles Business Journal reported that USC Marshall School has named Robert Hermanns director of the school's food industry program.

Billboard featured research by Feng Zhu of the USC Marshall School and a Harvard University colleague on strategies used by fee- and subscription-based companies to compete with ad-supported rivals. Zhu and colleague suggested that the best response to an ad-supported rival is usually to compete through business models, or to change the business model to address the competitor.

Star-Tribune featured research by Amytis Towfighi of the Keck School of USC which found that while middle-aged men are at much greater risk of a heart attack than women their age, the gap may be narrowing. The Times of India (India) reported that while the incidence of heart attacks has increased for women, women have also experienced a greater increase than men in their chances of survival following a heart attack. Daily News & Analysis (India) and Xinhua News Agency (China) also featured the research.

The Wrap quoted Jean Rosenbluth of the USC Gould School about filmmaker Roman Polanski, who is being held in Swiss custody in connection with a 1977 statutory rape conviction. Rosenbluth said that American authorities tend to reflexively trust the legal systems of treaty signatories, and that most other countries ignore local trial controversies when considering extradition requests. "The whole point of the treaty is that the countries who belong to it trust that the other countries will do the right thing and that whatever legal disputes are involved in a case will get straightened out in the country where the crime was committed," she said. A second story in The Wrap also quoted Rosenbluth.

The Sacramento Bee stated that in 1998 the California Department of Motor Vehicles hired USC to educate its management and higher-level employees.

La Opinion cited research by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC which stressed the importance of getting students out from under the designation of "English-language learner" before they enter high school. Harry Pachon of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, who is president of the institute, said that about a third of boys who were learning English in the first grade still had not emerged from the learner classification at the end of the eighth grade, which could be used against them as they get older.

La Opinion noted that USC is among the schools that use Google Apps software.

Los Angeles Times quoted Karen Sternheimer of the USC College in an article about how some local high schools are drafting contracts that would prohibit sexually suggestive dance moves at school dances. Sternheimer said that schools and parents will always find teen behavior that causes anxiety. "Anxiety often doesn't match the behavior," she added. "It might offend the sensitivities of onlookers, but I don't know that anyone ever got a sexually transmitted disease or pregnant from dancing."

San Angelo Standard-Times reported that Gregory Stevens of the Keck School of USC attended the E. James Holland Symposium on American Values this week. Stevens discussed the problems and challenges in the health care system, specifically the need to improve care for the vulnerable, which could improve workforce productivity. "If we're designing a health care system to really optimize the health of the population, we should be providing health services to those in greatest need. But this in fact tends to not be true," Stevens said.

San Gabriel Valley Tribune quoted Mary Andres of the USC Rossier School about the motivation that drives some men to patronize prostitutes. "It is very transactional. It is a clear contract. They say, 'I'm paying someone for a sex act. It's on my own terms completely,'" Andres said. "Understanding that is important, particularly if you are looking at men who have a lot of power in their life. They are always in situations where things feel unfinished, there are always bigger projects, deadlines looming, budgets. So they can look at going to a prostitute as a very efficient transaction."