SoCal Minds

New ways for a new generation of Korean Americans

From USC & Cal State Fullerton

It's one of the significant populaces of people of Asian descent and signs abound as to how its members are hitting a key point in a crucial demographic shift with important implications to the nation and Southern California. As Korean Americans move into their second generation in this country, they're strengthening their community bonds, flexing their organizing muscle and even seeing changes in the practice of their faith, according to recent posts that also show the ethnic group's care and cultivation by members of the scholarly community. The Trojans, for example, supported a Washington summit recently of 175 Korean American influentials who took part in a program on Asian American empowerment and community outreach. It's notable that participants, in discussing how to build up the Korean American community, themselves had ties to corporations and institutions including Goldman Sachs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Pentagon, Johns Hopkins and MTV. In Fullerton, a sociologist who has studied the religiosity of Korean Americans notes that many younger believers still engage in tongsongkido, an emotionally charged, fervent fashion of prayer. But a burgeoning numer of churches founded by younger, second-generation Americans of Korean descent distinguish themselves from their paretns' immigrant congregrations with their English-based, multiracial, more communal and community oriented approach to faith, writes Sharon Kim (shown in photo at right). She herself is a pastor's wife and has published a new tome based on her decade of study on what she terms the central cultural institution of the quarter-million or so Korean Americans in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Trojans give a boost to Washington summit of influentials

In Fullerton, a focus on how churches change for younger faithful

 

Trojan trustee donates $50 million for cancer nano-research

From USC

Wow. Now that's a way to put an imprint on a place. The Trojans, just as they inaugurate their new president, have announced that trustee and alum Ming Hsieh has donated $50 million for a permanent endowment for an eponymous institute for research and development in nanoscience, nanomedicine and cancer. Hiseh's latest gift comes atop his recent $35 million donation to the electrical engineering deparment, renamed in his honor. The new institute will, among its other pursuits, research how at the molecular and atomic level drugs and therapeutics, perhaps with special encapsulation, can be targeted at and delivered into cancerous cells and tumors; its experts will seek to advance imaging and other methods to assess the effectiveness of this nanomedicine, which also will be scrutinized and undergo trial in clinical care for the safe but swift benefit of cancer patients, the school says. Officials note the institute will tie together multiple areas of the institution, including its engineering and medical schools, as well as the Norris comprehensive cancer center. Hsieh, born and raised in northern China, earned his bachelor's and master's in Exposition Park before going on to found AMAX Technology and Pasadena-based Cogent, a firm the school says revolutionized fingerprint technology.

As school inaugurates president, a 2d gift from alum who had given $35 million before

A $50-million Annenberg donation for new com building

From USC

OK, so the new president gets another whopping inaugural gift, with the Trojans announcing that the foundation which bears the same name has committed $50 million for the construction of a new, state-of-the-art home for the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The multi-story, 90,000-square-foot structure, under preliminary plans, would be at McClintock Avenue and 34th Street, though more concrete and detailed plans and funding must be completed still as part of the proposals that can proceed due to the leadership commitment made by the Annenberg Foundation, chaired by Wallis Annenberg, a noteworthy Southern California philanthropist, the longest serving Trojan trustee and a scion of a publishing family that has donated $350 million to the university over the years (shown at right in Robin Layton photo). The new communications building, the school says, will be jammed with the 21st century technology that has proved crucial to the digital revolution, allowing students and researchers to keep the institution at the fore.

Latest gift boosts work onstate-of-art, tech-laden home for communications school

 

A new swing at why curveballs 'break,' fastballs 'rise'

From USC

Just in time for the oft-chilly dash to the World Series and from an institution with huge bona fides in the sport, this scientific debunking of a fundamental of the all-American pastime of baseball: curveballs really don't much 'break' and neither do fastballs much 'rise,' say Trojan experts in vision and illusion. Instead, they say that hitters, as the adage commends them to do, need to keep their eye on that zipping baseball because all that 'junk' on it, the speed and spin, combine with natural shifts in human vision -- that spheroid moving from peripheral to central (close) vision -- to create funky deceptions of the curve or rise. The ball, the experts say, stays on a curve that can be plotted in the one type of pitch and in the other, it 'breaks' at a consistent rate.  By the way, while high-speed photography shows otherwise, the illusory factors affecting athletes' views also can fool viewers of a television broadcast as they fail to see the first part of a pitch when seeing it in a camera shot from behind home plate. Credit the fun video here to Mira Zimet and Zane Fried at the school with some impressive helpers listed at the end:

 

Curveball's 'break,' fastball's 'rise' found to be visual illusion

A giant LGBT archive donated to Trojan libraries

From USC

Where will 21st century scholars turn to research the watershed changes affecting gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered, especially to see how their lives and society changed in Los Angeles? Trojan officials say they likely will trek to Exposition Park, especially as the university libraries have received a donation of what's termed the world's largest LGBT archives, the ONE collection. It chronicles key events including the Stonewall riots, the identification of HIV and the debate over Proposition 8, California’s controversial Marriage Protection Act, archivists say, and includes 'records from several media, historical and political groups, complete publication runs of The Advocate and Barazoku, Japan’s oldest and longest-running gay-themed magazine, as well as the archives of the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles and the Harvey Milk for City Council campaign.' The materials, while now part of the university's holdings, will remain at their current ONE home on West Adams.

Trojans call ONE collection 'world's largest LGBT research archive

A geek-out over Iron Man 2 and a G-rated gender gap

From Caltech & USC

Never can forget that Los Angeles is the movie capital of the world and that inescapable reality extends even to the whiz kids in Pasadena who, at 8 tonight, get to geek out, boy style, with a free, open and public panel with the thinly academic-sounding title about the 'science behind Iron Man 2,' the Marvel Studios movie starring Robert Downey Jr. (shown at right). The session, moderated by the always terrific Geoff Boucher of the Times, will feature physics and computer science profs (right, right) as well as the macho movie's conceputal illustrator and the 'physical suit effects supervisor' and, of course, an uber Hollywood suit -- a studio SVP. Wonder how the draw for this program will be as compared with the campus watch-in last night of the Meg and Jerry show?

In Pasadena, expert panel tonight will tackle (right, right) 'Science of Iron Man'

Hollywood's 'family' fare found to short-shrift females

While we're on the topic of Hollywood's testosterone fare -- cue the buddy shot and the massive explosions, please -- who wudda thunk this about the industry's so-called 'family' fare, films from 'Bee Movie' to 'You Don't Mess with Zohan:' Trojan researchers say that for women, this broad section of flicks could be a kind of gender G whiz in which females are scarce in front and behind the cameras.  In analyzing 150 G-, PG- and PG-13-rated movies in 14 years, the researchers led by Stacy L. Smith, Ph. D., (shown at left) found more than 5,500 speaking characters, only 29.2% of which were female; scarcer than hen's teeth, too, were women working in family films as directors, writers and producers. The study, in which materials were coded for multiple variables including race, gender and body type, included careful cross-checking and the employ of lots of social science techniques and analysis, which also offered eager student-researchers the opportunity to learn and participate.  The study also found a point for small optimism: a recent uptick in women characters in the G-rated fare.

G whiz: Only 1 in 3 female characters in widest-audience flicks?

Click here to read full study on gender disparity in G-rated movies

 

For young Jews nationwide, Trojans a No. 11 school pick

From USC

It may be time to rethink that Tommy Trojan stereotype, the dated idea of the bronzed, statuesque, Hellenic warrior as the emblem of a goyish student body.  A publication that proudly proclaims it's the 'world's largest circulated Jewish magazine,' has posted its fifth annual back-to-school material, including its finding that Exposition Park has become the 11th most popular choice among private schools for young Jews nationwide, with 12% of the undergrad student body self-defining as members of the faith. By sheer numbers of students, several Southland campuses tally many more Jewish undergrads, though they rank lower among their peer, public institutions as popular choices: the Bruins weigh in at 23, while Northridge and Santa Barbara stand at Nos. 27 and 28, respectively.

Exposition Park a popular place for Jewish students, magazine says

Click here for 'Reform Judaism' magazine's back-to-school stuff

Click here to see magazine's school lists and rankings

Where are all the engineers? Tackling 'grand challenges'

From USC

Look around the halls, classrooms and labs across the Southland that normally will be filled with engineers and their aspiring students and hold that mental picture, because all those spaces soon may be deserted and those folks gone. No, it won't be permanent. But for at least a few days this week, downtown and Exposition Park will be packed with a ginormous conclave of some of the top engineers, educators, corporate execs, policy-makers and others who hope to determine, lead, deepen and expand their field. It's part of the national 'grand challenge,' a gauntlet thrown down last year by the engineering national academy and answered, initially, by deans of the Trojan and Blue Devil schools who spearheaded the first summit on the Duke campus. This week a second such event will be here, with a student program already sold out, the added endorsement of the wizards in Pasadena, an address on educators' roles in the field by the top Mudder and RSVPs from a who's who of corporate and academic engineering. Skip the cliches about the slide rule crowd. But those in the field face some formidable labors as they respond to challenges they've been issued in four key categories: health, sustainability, vulnerability (security) and the 'joy of living.' What's all that means? Read deeper into the planned program ...

A who's who in the field gathers in L.A. to answer professional 'grand challenges'

Click here to learn more about the national academy's 'grand challenges'

2 gestures with insight about, benefit to real people

From USC

Huh? What did those hand movements mean, exactly? What was that person trying to signal? Researchers in Exposition Park, based on functional magnetic resonance imaging of 18 ethnic Chinese volunteers, have found that the brain requires deliberation to decide the meaning of gestures, processing the familiar in one way and the unfamiliar in very different fashion. The results provide a surprise, as people seem to react so swiftly and intuitively to others' body language, facial expression, gaze, tone of voice and other signs of interest. Inside the nogging, though, the MRIs showed heightened activity in the mirror neuron system as volunteers' brains processed, say, gestures amounting to foreign words from the American Sign Language system; if they viewed a 'thumb's up' familiar move from the specially trained white and Chinese actors, though, that triggered reaction in a 'mentalizing' section of the brain that's tied to reflective, nonintuitive reasoning.

MRI scans show brain's deliberations about humans' signals

'Virtual humans' offer clues to better inter-cultural relations

And while the topic's how we react to external signals, consider some other stimulating research under way in Exposition Park, where, at the Institute for Creative Technologies, they're hard at work developing 'virtual humans.' It's more than a gesture of human kindness, of course, as what they figure out will be invaluable not only in video and online gaming but also potentially in education and training; at the institute, they're studying, for example, how to improve the reaction and interaction between members of different cultures. That's a cool gesture, eh?

$23.8 million in grants on homeland security, health reform

From USC

Golly, we've been here before, lots, haven't we? So here we go again: Roll that cash register tape because the Trojans have announced a total of $23.8 million in grants for work on homeland security and health care reform. The largest share of that sum, $15.3 million, comes in a five-year, federal government renewal of a center in Exposition Park dedicated to improving 'the nation's security by evaluating the risks, costs and consequences of terrorism, and by helping to guide cost-effective investments in homeland security.' The Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events says it already has contributed to making more secure airports (by figuring how to decrease the predictability of patrols, checkpoints and searches at spots like LAX) and ports (by developing systems to ensure legitimate traffic flows unimpeded while potential threats get addressed, too) and modeling recovery and resilience plans after disasters (such as what might occur after huge temblors in Southern California). As for that other $8.1 million, well, it flows to the school in health care reform projects akin to the $11.4 million awarded to pharmacy researchers who aim to stem unwarranted prescribing of antibiotics for respiratory infections; $5.5 million will go to work to advance  science and Medicare reform, while $3 million will be devoted to figuring better outcomes for depressed diabetics.

A $15.3 million U.S. renewal for center on terrorism, risk and economics

Millions for multiple projects aimed at health care reform