Really Simple Stuff

Similar to popular Web sites with syndicated news, PolyCentric, the university’s electronic magazine, has added a feature that allows readers to create a customized RSS (Rich Site Summary) feed.

The advantages of RSS are simple: It saves time and bandwidth. News from Cal Poly Pomona comes directly to your computer daily or any set interval. Most RSS feeds contain just links, headlines or brief synopses of new information only. This means a small amount of Web data can be sent to any device with the proper software — cell phone, pager or handheld computer — without a lengthy download process.

More importantly, RSS allows browsers to control their information. Categories, such as agriculture, athletics or science, tailor Cal Poly Pomona news based on college or interest. To link to the university’s RSS feed, visit http://polycentric.csupomona.edu/ and click on the orange “XML” box.

Mosaic in Motion

Maribell Perez is one of the nearly 50 students creating the elaborate mosaic.

Using colored glass that is hand-cut, nearly 50 art students have worked painstakingly since last fall on mosaic panels that will eventually be installed as an impressive amphitheatre in the Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies.

The concept was created by art lecturer Joyce Hesselgrave, who sketched her design in pastel then digitally reconfigured it to an existing concrete amphitheatre. The swirls and designs depict a topographic map of the center.

“The rhythmic lines and vortex of the drawing are meant to evoke the power of water, which sustainable resources rely heavily on,” says Hesselgrave. “In this way, we can make an aesthetic of the dynamics of the Lyle Center work.”

This form of installation is considered a new application of the traditional mosaic art form, which spread from Greek Asia Minor in the 2nd century B.C. to Italy where it was fully developed, especially in Pompeii and Rome.

Installation is slated for this June. To view the students’ progress, visit www.csupomona.edu/~ibuenrostro/.

Anka Swings at University Fundraiser

It isn’t every day that a world-renowned celebrity performs at a university function and even more unlikely that he comes back for a second year. Founders’ Celebration 2006: Anka’s Back! featured an encore performance by Paul Anka that thrilled nearly 600 alumni and university supporters, as well as faculty and staff who attended the annual gala in March.

More than $334,000 was raised, making the total since the inception of Founders’ Celebration in 1999 approximately $1.8 million, going toward scholarships and academic programs. This year, President Ortiz announced the recipient of the inaugural Paul Anka Scholarship for Music, which was established in 2003. Anka presented the scholarship to music sophomore Candice Brown, who told guests that she aspires to write and perform with the same passion for music as Anka.

For Your Bioinformation

Dennis Livesay (top left) uses the sophisticated equipment in the CM3D lab he and colleagues helped create. His study of protein flexibility and stability may contribute to cystic fibrosis and Alzheimers research.

Thanks to a four-year $960,000 research grant from the National Institutes of Health, chemistry associate professor Dennis Livesay is exploring the balance between protein flexibility and stability. Improper protein folding is linked to a variety of medical conditions, including cystic fibrosis, Alzheimers and even Mad Cow disease.

Livesay, who will share the grant with a colleague at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, specializes in computational biology and bioinformatics, the use of techniques from applied physics, mathematics, informatics, statistics and computer science to solve biological problems.

“This grant will allow us to build a theoretical framework for deciphering these complex physical relationships that are so critical to protein function and disease,” says Livesay.
 
The grant will support research on developing the next generation of the Distance Constraint Model (DCM), a unique biophysical modeling scheme that simultaneously calculates stability and flexibility metrics.

“The DCM is extremely computationally efficient and thus provides a means to quantify stability/flexibility relationships within thousands of proteins,” explains Livesay, whose research was done in the university’s Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Material Design (CM3D), which he helped develop.

CM3D centralizes a pair of interdisciplinary labs that bring chemists, physicists, engineers and computer scientists into one research center. By networking 44 personal computers, the professors created a networked computer cluster powerful enough to run millions of DCM calculations. This year, they received a $500,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to create a state-of-the-art experimental facility that will complement the existing computational facility.