SoCal Minds

Scribbles on a few notable matters for the weekend

2010-07-30T09:03:27-07:00

From Loyola Marymount, the Japanese American National Museum, Zocalo & the Huntington

Because some domestic chores look as if they'll take more effort than expected, an abbreviated spin through the intellectual ferment around the Southland for today and into the weekend doings. But some stuff worth taking a look at:

In Westchester, the disccussions of the university's 20-year master plan draws a crowd estimated at 350; how will the school burgeon at the same time it acts as a good neighbor, of course, is a key concern, as parties look to the future and worry about growth, traffic, pollution, digital signage, buffer zones and other important matters.

In Little Tokyo on Saturday afternoon, documentary film makers will show off their bio-pic that should prove greatly enlightening about a familar, comedic face from television and movies. The sardonic humor of veteran star Jack Soo, appreciated for his work in everything from 'Flower Drum Song' to 'Barney Miller' and 'Monk,' may have kept wider audiences from learning his fascinating life story, including his Japanese -- not Chinese -- ancestry. There's more, of course, on this path-breaking actor and his refusal to play to harmful ethnic stereotypes at the 'You Don't Know Jack' documentary site.

And if other diversions still are called for, there is, of course, a premiere of 'Countdown to Zero,' a powerful new film tracking the history and potential harm of nuclear weapons; the Zocalo-KCRW sponsored screening is free but reservations are required. And, of course, the folks in San Marino show off from their collections starting Sunday 'British Landscape Prints.'

He'll hold nation's first chair in Korean American studies

2010-07-29T00:03:57-07:00

From UCLA

He was born in Seoul, reared in Illinois, earned a B.A. in physics and a Harvard law degree. He's written about the internment of Japanese Americans, violence against Asian Americans and civic and political engagement by people of Asian descent. He was the law professor of the year in 2007 in Westwood and has collected two major Bruin teaching accolades. And now, Jerry Kang, (shown at left) a co-founder of the law school's critical race studies specialization, has become what the university says is the first holder of a chair in Korean American studies. His post was named in honor of the folks who put out the Korea Times on this side of the Pacific and Hankook Ilbo in Korea, with Bruin alum and K Times chairman, CEO and publisher Jae Min Chang a big donor, along with Mike Hong, chairman and CEO of Dura Coat Products Inc., and Do Won Chang, co-founder and CEO of fashion retailer Forever 21. Kang's appointment will be in the university's noteworthy Asian American Studies Center, headed by David K. Yoo, a Yale Ph.D., longtime faculty member and administrator in the Claremont Colleges and himself a scholar of note on matters Asian American, Japanese American and Korean American. Los Angeles, of course, is a global capital of people of Korean descent, with their estimated population here at 300,000 -- one of the largest urban concentrations outside of the Korean peninsula.

Asian American Studies Center taps law prof as top scholar in Korean American studies

How those new 'electonic cigarettes' make you suck

2010-07-29T00:03:28-07:00

From UCR

Hate to be so rude about it, but those newfangled 'electronic cigarettes' make you suck. Harder. For real. And possibly to the detriment of your cardiovascular health. That's what experts in Riverside say after conducting experiments involving eight conventional cigarettes and five 'electronic' brands with a machine that tested what vacuum power was necessary to get a drag off the various kinds of smokes. The e cigarettes, devices that combine a battery-powered atomizer and nicotine, did not deliver uniform doses to 'smokers,' which likely would cause them to inhale more deeply and often to get the 'hit' they need -- a compensatory conduct that could lead to greater penetration of harmful substances into the lungs and cardiovascular system, as experts have seen in the case of 'light' cigarettes, the experts warn.

Machine testing shows that smokers likely take deeper, more frequent puffs with 'e cigarettes'

3 takes on how new technology could touch, alter lives

2010-07-29T00:02:52-07:00

From USC & the Keck Graduate Institute

While technology doesn't always make the heart flutter or go all a Twitter, there's no denying its advances and potential.

In Exposition Park, for example, one group of engineers envisions a day soon when flexible and transparent carbon films could be part of new kinds of solar cells, devices that would employ expanses of lab-created, graphene-polymer materials woven in ordinary-looking curtains or even T-shirts to convert sunlight into power. The new materials aren't as efficient yet as standard silicon solar cells in creating electricity. But because they're cheaper to make and so much more flexible, they could be mass-produced and worked into common products such that, experts say, those curtains could light the living room or that T-shirt might power a smart phone or MP3 player.

Could those curtains light the living room or that T-shirt power a cell phone?

Of course, at the same time, some other Trojan experts have taken note of both the ubiquity and limits of social media and our so-called Web 2.0 lives. They've tracked for a decade the American public's burgeoning use of the internet, where more than two thirds of us have bought stuff, where most of us hook in via broadband and where most of our homes have at least two or more computers tied in. While we've become huge users and consumers of net services, however, we Americans expect lots of what occurs online to be free; while half of us said in a survey that we have tried the micro-blogging and messaging service Twitter, no respondents said they would pay for it if there were a charge. While online users may be inundated with blinking, winking and prominently placed ads, half of those responding to researchers' surveys said they never click on net ads and 70% deemed them annoying.

Will Americans pay for Twitter or click on internet ads? No way, net survey finds

If some folks in Southern California say they're on the brink of shrinking powerful microscopes into cell-phone-sized electronic applications, why can't sprawling mechanisms that provide crucial diagnoses about the global scourge of drug-resistant tuberculosis be downsized, too? Researchers in Claremont have won a $3.6 million National Institutes of Health grant to work on key processes that could lead to a compact, hand-held device that costs less than $100 and could be used in far-flung parts of the planet where an important step in caring for impoverished sick people is determining if they suffer from strains of TB resistant to commonly used drugs. While these challenges prove huge in Africa, Haiti and other parts of the poor and developing world, concern about drug-resistant TB also grows in the industrialized world where the disease, for example, has been detected in Los Angeles and has caused scares such as a 2007 incident in which an infected individual criss-crossed continents on jet flights.

Can experts shrink, cut costs of devices to detect drug-resitant TB?

As fire season rages, historians document Santiago blaze

2010-07-29T00:02:29-07:00

From Cal State Fullerton

While no sooner did an unseasonably cool summer move forward a few days in the calendar and sweep in a series of wildfires that claimed more than two dozen homes in the Inland Empire than did indelible memories of past seasons of bad blazes burn anew in Southern Californians' minds. While it might seem incomprehensible now, it would only be human, however, for an inferno like the 2007 Santiago fire to slip slowly from consciousness. But those who lived through it have shared their experiences now and combined these with the historical expertise of scholars in Fullerton. The result is a new oral history project recording some of the toll of the arsonist-started calamity that scorched more than 28,000 acres, destroyed 14 homes in Modjeska Canyon and lasted for almost three weeks before it was contained. Residents of Modjeska and Silverado canyons recall their vivid, frightening memories of their lives before, during and after the blaze for the 'Gone Through Fire' documentary.

Residents of Modjeska, Silverado canyons offer oral history in documentary on '07 inferno

Click here to access online fire history archive

In Pasadena, new findings of a tight, distant astral dance

2010-07-28T08:24:20-07:00

From Caltech

Let's give it to the contemporary star-gazing set for their special capacity, perhaps tracing a part of their skill to myth-spinning Greeks and Romans, to combine science with art and imagination, scrutinizing the tiniest observable specks of light from far-distant, dying suns and theorizing,as folks are Pasadena are doing, that these tell a tale of giant astral bodies locked in a waltzing gravitational embrace. This amusing metaphor of a dancing galactic trio becomes more amazing since it involves gaseous planets more huge than Jupiter and hundreds of light years away. The researchers say they have found a duo of shuffling trios, that is not one but two systems in which two massive, lumbering exoplanets orbit subgiant stars, with one case involving big heavenly bodies in such a tight, lockstep movement that it has proved to be a stellar surprise.

Lumbering, gaseous exoplanets found in lockstep moves around dying, subgiant star

Couples urged to talk deeply about career choices

2010-07-28T08:23:53-07:00

From UCI

Modern married couples must conduct some deep, detailed career discussions, early and often, if they wish to sustain their relationships, says a researcher in Irvine, who has studied dual-career duos and developed five common scenarios on how partners resolve conflicts between their jobs and lives. Those who failed to talk out their decisions bore the most regret later on as to whether primacy, primarily for income reasons, went to his or her career, whether they took turns in neutral fashion or slightly favoring one partner. If the option presents itself, her study seems to offer a slight surprise: women and men had more lucrative long-term careers if they took the second beneficial move in a relationship, rather than the first. The research also suggests to employers, who, despite their supposed accommodations for them, need to offer even more support do dual-careerists, the expert argues.

Decisions to favor one partner's career path found to carry lifelong implications

Boorish behavior? It really is harmful to businesses

2010-07-28T08:23:20-07:00

From USC

Here's a message for companies and employers: Rude behavior, however it occurs and as long as it is somehow visible and open, really rubs customers the wrong way and it can cause them to turn against enterprises even if the boorish actions aren't directed at them, Trojan researchers say. They say businesses need to work with workers to restore and ensure the highest levels of workplace civility not just for employees' benefit but because it's good for business. They base their findings on experiments in which, for example, a jerk-weed boss jumped on a worker, calling him an 'idiot' in front of customers, or when an employee snubbed customers to gossip on the phone but then got a royal, public chewing out for doing so, even as he sought to help some patrons; in these cases, even if a rude worker had gotten to assisting them, the incivility shown led customers to negative, potentially harmful views of the business.

Customers can't stand incivility, directed at them or among workers, studies show

42 million big, new ways to aid 'vulnerable' kids, veterans

2010-07-27T08:43:46-07:00

From Cal Poly Pomona

Yup, size matters. But intent and execution end up as more decisive factors in lots of maters. So here's hoping there's plenty of snap, crackle and pop to the $42 million awarded to the Broncos by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and that big sum goes far to bolstert, as planned, the school's outreach to first-generation college students and their families, military veterans and emancipated foster youth. With all the cruel cuts in programs, support and opportunities for Cal State students linked to the economic crash and the state's massive budget crisis, the yipppeee-inducing five-year challenge grant -- which officials say is the largest gift of its kind to an institution in the system -- will give a 'transformative' shot to faculty and 'vulnerable' students at what is termed the 12th most ethnically diverse campus in the country. The Kellogg family has had a long association with the school since W.K., the breakfast cereal magnate (shown at right) whose 150th birthday was commemorated with the Bronco grant, built a winter home at the edge of the campus in the 1920s and kept on his ranch a corral full of Arabian horses, which were featured in Hollywood movies.

W.K. Kellogg grant, biggest cash gift to a Cal State, aimed at opening educational opportunities

How the Times tallies the $42 million Kellogg gift

U.S., NATO urged to aid Afghan local community forces

2010-07-27T08:42:39-07:00

From RAND

Pssst. Want a little inside info on what's going on in Afghanistan and what's happening with local communities, NATO, the U.S. and the Taliban? Click on the link below for the real stuff, man. Nah, it's not from WikiLeaks, but, yeah, it's dope from dudes who spent time on the ground. They see that the American strategy needs help to do better in what's become one of this nation's longest, more bloody overseas military incursions. They argue that Afghans aren't that crazy about the Taliban and the folks over there mostly want security from crime, violence and corruption. What, say? So this not-so-secret study urges NATO and the U.S. to support arbakai and chalweshtai, small forces that are created and backed by local, rural communities -- without foreign lucre and with the potential to help put down Taliban and outside insurgents. Check it out and pass the leaked info on ...

Rural villages' traditional troops termed potential way to tackle Taliban, foreign insurgents

Click here for RAND video slides on Afghan civilian defense forces