SoCal Minds

LA issues environmental report on big Trojan development

From USC

A long-running plan by the university to upgrade parts of the campus in Exposition Park took a step forward with the city of Los Angeles announcing that it has completed the environmental impact report on the project, a study that now is available for review in various spots. The proposed University Park development, the Trojans say, will provide by its completion 12,600 jobs and generate $1 billion in economic impact. It includes 2.15 million square feet of new faculty and student housing and 5,400 new 'student beds' in various kinds of units, as well as retail that will include a new grocery, drug store, restaurants and movie theaters to serve both the campus and community. The school plans 2.5 million square feet of academic and university-use space. The project, its backers say, will provide one of the largest incremental increases in tax revenue in South Los Angeles.

Public can review plan to add 5,400 student beds, grocery, theaters, more near campus

In Santa Barbara, a new center on race, ethnic studies

From UCSB & Keck Graduate Institute

Hmmmm. Color us fascinated by the UC system's decision to grant the wonderful folks up in Santa Barbara a $1.73 million grant out of the president's office to establish a systemwide center on racial studies, an effort, as described, to develop a network of scholars to advance the study, consideration and teaching of race and ethnicity as it affects the nation and especially California. The center, which will run its own web site and will be guaranteed five years of funding, will take a thematic approach, with the first topic that starts on July 1 to be 'The Nation and Its Peoples: Citizens, Denizens and Migrants.' Well, OK, while taking absolutely no shots at the superb scholarship in beautiful Santa Barbara, it's an interesting moment to put a race and ethnic studies emphasis in the pastoral, ex-urban spot even as the folks in Westwood, for example, are marking the 40th anniversary of their pioneering ethnic studies programs, which are rooted in some of the nation's, largest most diverse and influential racial and ethnic communities. Meantime, the folks in Claremont are taking their own interesting academic step, offering a one-year certificate program to assist asipiring medical students enhance their skills before applying to med school. The school says its special approach combining science and business, with a unique emphasis on drug studies, will give students a leg up in the furious competition to get into med school.

A scholarly push to network, organize thematic UC studies on race, ethnicity

Stinks in Bucharest, San Marino; a whiff of Little Tokyo fun

From CalArts, the Japanese American National Museum & the Huntington

It's supposed to be a balmy, sunny holiday weekend in Southern California and if the weather alone doesn't provide the pleasure of living in this spot on the planet, well, you could be in Bucharest...

That's where an artist-scholar who splits her time between LA and Vienna discovered that a few influential Bulgarians may be a tad behind modern thinking, as they banned her work at the Bucharest Bienale. Maybe that could become its own bizarre badge of honor?  And, no, as can be seen from the image at left, Kaucyila Brooke's art, though provocatively titled, wouldn't raise the fussiest of eyebrows in Los Angeles where saucier views assault the senses on any street at any moment. Hah! 

As long as we're on the topics of making a stink, the folks in San Marino are stirring the pot yet again as the son of the son of ol' smelly, they say, soon will bloom. Say what? Though it's a little inexplicable the popularity of the supposedly rare phenomenon, yet another amorphophallus titanum, aka corpse flowers, is shooting up and ready to make its odiferous opening in the next bit. For those smitten by this botantical bounty, well, there's an online spot to follow the stinky plant and its flowering, blow by blow. Phew.

So we leave you with a more pleasant thought and smelling like a rose, the folks over in Little Tokyo will be celebrating their Asian Pacific Islander and Native American Heritage Festival starting at 11 on Saturday. There will be movies, lectures, exhibits and the museum says it will admit one and all on a 'pay what you can' basis. Donate lots, eh?

Hungry for LA stories? Sign up for cell-phone novels

From LACMA

It's more than a tweet or a haiku, for better or verse. Those technology loving Japanese are the true pioneers of the form. But starting this weekend, artist Steve Fagin hopes to bring to Los Angeles keitai shosetsu, aka Cell Phone Stories, nifty narratives and essays spread from mobile to mobile in cell phone text and featuring the work of such diverse folk as actor Rainn Wilson, artist Kianga Ford, writer Barry Yourgrau, and fashion designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodart. The audience for this writing experiment, of course, must pay their own phone company's text message charges, as appropriate, and the museum is promising to keep private their shared contactables. They can text “LACMA” to 67553 to receive weekly text-message links to each new installation of the project.

An artistic experiment in mobile narratives, essays spreads to Southland

A 'Salon' explanation of the 'keitai shosetsu' or 'thumb novel'

New data on cartoid artery surgery vs. stents in strokes

From USC

There's some key new information available now for patients who are at risk of stroke or who have had one and who must pick between two prevailing kinds of surgery to prevent the potentially deadly and debilitating blood flow blockages associated with the condition. The data comes from a major, nine-year study at 116 sites with more than 2,500 participants, including several Trojan patients, on the results and effectiveness of cartoid endarterectomy, a surgery to clear clogs in that key artery, versus another less invasive procedure, in which a stent and a small protective device are inserted to widen any stopped up areas and to capture dislodged plaque. Both procedures were found to be safe and effective, for men and women and for those who had suffered strokes and those who had not. Those who underwent surgery, however, in follow-up were found to have suffered more heart attacks; those with stents had more strokes. Those who were 69 or younger had better results with stents; those 70 and older fared better with surgery. Strokes are the No. 3 cause of death in the U.S. and buildups of cholesterol and plaque in the arteries in the neck, which provide the major flow of blood to the brain, are often implicated in incidence of the disease, along with similar coronary blockages.

Major clinical trial finds both procedures safe, effective with variances in followup results

New U.S. policies urged for problematic Pakistan

From RAND

Pakistan will continue to pose giant foreign policy challenges for the United States, which must shift its approach toward the South Asian nation, recognizing that it, not Afghanistan, is the central concern in what also must become a regional strategy that also takes into account relations with India, researchers in Santa Monica say. They have produced a new book that asks whether the U.S. can help secure the insecure nation, based on interviews with elites and research on polling, demographic, economic and other data. At best, they say, the deeply riven nation will muddle along, neither collapsing into religious and ethnic strife that could engulf the region nor becoming a theocracy nor a militarily controlled state. To see any progress, however, Washington must keep its focus on aiding and building civilian rule in Pakistan and recognize that its size, resources, influence, population and power make it more key to regional and U.S. interests than Afghanistan; the U.S. must help the Pakistanis and Indians resolve their long enmities; Washington cannot keep throwing money and other aid at Islamabad, particularly its military, without greater accountability and transparency about where those sums end up. And the U.S. Air Force may have a particularly important part it can play in influencing the Pakistani military, the researchers say.

Click here for summary, full RAND report on Pakistan

A snapshot of 2 key ways our brains sort out the world

From Caltech

In a complex and rapidly changing world, the human brain relies on at least two basic kinds of mental methods to figure appropriate responses, say researchers in Pasadena who also have parsed out with computer experiments and functional magnetic resonance imaging where in the brain the systems function. In brief, an area in the middle of the brain fires up to handle one kind of human learning, an approach in which the mind relies on trial-and-error results in response to set circumstances; two areas on the surface of the brain respond, however, when a more sophisticated mental reaction is required, with comparisons of known information and a more complicated analysis of possible reactions. The brain also can tap both ways at the same time. Researchers say their work suggests the limits of human processing power and how the brain deploys a natural, efficient way to tap the best, least taxing approach to problem solving.

Experiments, imaging techniques show simple, complex learning in brain

A snappier online way to see your 'carbon footprint'

From UCI

Who doesn't want to be a better planetary citizen, to live greener and to reduce that 'carbon footprint' that scientists have tied to global warming and climate change? Problem is that many of the online information efforts, especially on calculating a personal carbon footprint, get complicated and time-consuming. Which is why some researchers in Irvine turned to technology developments made most popular by Netflix, those folks who rent online videos to the masses and employ data on users' choices and similar movie ratings and selections to group them and predict what films might appeal to them as individuals. They've turned the technique into the Better Carbon Calculator, which asks only minimal questions to give consumers a quick notion of their impact on their environment and how they might reduce it. Researchers say the beta site is based on the finding that folks in neighborhoods, environmentally speaking, share greater similarities than differences; just by knowing where consumers live, they can tell them a lot about their probable carbon footprint, how to reduce it -- and more, if they wish to give up more personal data so the information can be further tailored to them.

New technology simplifies questions to determine consumers' personal green action plan

Trojan insight, data on foundations, charter schools

From USC

While a certain segment of society looks to public policy and engages in a kind of magical thinking about the role of the private sector, the Trojans have offered two different looks at how some key non-government institutions function in Southern California.

• The center on philanthropy and public policy has updated its 2002 report examining foundations and their activities. The latest revisit to this crucial area has a data-driven limit, however, and refreshes the view of foundations to 2007 -- a year before the big crash and when the institutions were at their recent economic and activity peak. Researchers say that Los Angeles foundations differ from their counterparts elsewhere in their relative youth. Many have only recently sprung up and they're all really still emerging as a local force, though they play key financial roles in multiple sectors. In terms of grant-making dollars, the LA-area foundations pay most attention to education, arts and culture, and health and human services. They provide more than half of the funding for regional nonprofits. The foundation bigs, of course, donate the most, with the top 25 foundations giving more than half of the grants in the area. While the foundations' giving patterns remain relatively stable, the researchers say that the relative youth of the many organizations present opportunities for them to be more flexible and cooperative in how they do business.  

How private foundations affect public life in Southern California

• And speaking of how goes business, the education school has examined the financial and academic standing of charter schools statewide, offering parents, educators and policy-makers a new, online and interactive database so they can see and compare individual institutions' performance and ranking, as well as gain an overall look at charters, which grow in importance by the day on the educational landscape. The researchers say that, despite overall cuts in education funding, the charters are improving their fiscal health; they're getting better scores on their teachers' qualifications; and they're showing advances in getting kids reclassified as to their fluency in English.

An online, interactive way to compare academics, finances of charter schools

How parental income carries lifelong effect on kids

From UCI & the Cal States

As politicians and policy-makers slash and burn social programs in their effort to stanch the flow of government red-ink, especially in Sacramento, an education professor in Irvine has some noteworthy research they might consider. He has examined the deep, sweeping data from a study that has followed more than 9,000 U.S. families and individuals for more than four decades. And, with colleagues, the researcher asked what would happen to kids younger than 5 if their parents got more annual income but nothing else changed in the picture -- mom and dad don't get more education, they don't alter their parenting practices, the family structure remains the same and genetic factors don't shift a whit. Well, look down the road and those youngsters show higher incomes and less use of food stamps (social programs) when they become adults, the researchers found, arguing for the importance of governmental efforts, if necessary, to supplement the incomes of families with youngsters to break a long cycle of potential poverty.

A key insight into breaking the cycle of poverty

And speaking of funding arguments, the Cal State system, like its powerful siblings in the UC network, has been lobbying furiously to try to stem the budgetary bloodletting now under way in public higher education in California. Part of the latest campaign aims to show the economic impact of the various CSU campuses, and, finally, there are detailed, online break-outs on the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs that can be linked to each of the institutions.

Click here for online look at Cal States' economic impact