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Mansfeld, Ronney and Wang photos by Brian Morri
Viterbi Researchers are Part of $10 Million in Defense Projects In 2006, USC was one of seven universities to win more than one Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the Department of Defense. Viterbi School faculty are heavily involved in both of the research projects, each of which has been funded with up to $5 million over five years. Florian Mansfeld, professor of chemical engineering and materials science; Paul Ronney, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering; and Hai Wang, associate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering are working to develop microbial fuel cells that could act as remote power supplies for a multitude of purposes, ranging from remote sensors to tiny insect-like drones. Kenneth Nealson, professor of earth sciences and biological sciences in the USC College, leads the project. Florian Mansfeld Researchers from Rice University and from the Korean Institute of Science and Technology are also part of the project. The second project is an attempt to automatically track large groups of moving targets. Isaac Cohen, research assistant professor of computer science (currently at Honeywell); Paul Cohen, deputy division director of the Information Sciences Institute and Christos Papadopoulos, assistant professor of computer science, are working with researchers from the USC College, from UCLA and from the University of Illinois-Champaign. Paul Ronney That project is led by Boris Rozovsky, professor of mathematics in the USC College, who also has an appointment in the Viterbi School’s department of aerospace and mechanical engineering. The MURI program is administered by the Department of Defense and funds multidisciplinary projects at U.S. universities with both military and commercial potential. Projects generally intersect more than one traditional science or engineering discipline. A goal of funding the projects is to hasten the transition of research findings to practical application. Hai Wang
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Faculty Book Review
by Eric Mankin
We often call the era we live in the “information age,” but it could equally well be called the “age of noise.” This is the premise of a stimulating new book by Viterbi School polymath Bart Kosko, a professor of electrical engineering who recently added a law degree to existing credentials in philosophy, economics, mathematics and, of course, electrical engineering. Kosko’s look at what Ambrose Bierce called “undomesticated music; a stench in the ear, the chief product Bart Kosko and authenticating sign of civilization,” illustrates just how far-reaching the issue of noise is. He finds paradoxes in noise. He even finds the good side of noise; indeed, he speculates noise may have been the energy that started evolution. Kosko opens by serving as an eloquent guide to the epochally important work by Claude Shannon in defining information in his classic 1948 paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” which involves a rigorous rethinking of the definition of noise into an “unwanted signal.” What had been a general and open-ended term for unwelcome sound suddenly became a precisely formulated concept that could be quantified, analyzed and understood. With this as the background, all kinds of other familiar problems of modern life pop into unexpected focus. “Your signal is my noise” becomes a continuing thread in the discussion. Kosko examines what can and cannot be done about noise under the legal system, how too much noise can damage hearing and even health in a text full of striking examples. (Perhaps the most striking: an estimate that a single motorcyclist with a faulty muffler can wake up 200,000 people in a single late night ride through Paris.) A wonderful sidetrack explores the wartime work of Hedy Lamarr in patenting ‘frequency hopping,’ a way of sending signals that sounded like noise to listening enemies. Kosko also covers the subject he has been researching: the beneficial or useful effects of noise. An intriguing chapter visits “stochastic resonance,” a paradoxical effect in which background noise functions as an energy source that some systems can use to power the reception of messages, an effect that Kosko speculates may have been instrumental in the development of life: “Biochemical evolution appears to have adapted to the constant assault of thermal noise by using it to build motive structures.” Noise is great accompaniment to a quiet afternoon. USC Viterbi Engineer
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