In this talk, he started from basic and led audience into this specific topic. The talk was very focused on the topic. I wish many of you were there.

Yesterday we had our first department colloqium, which was given by Dr. Melko from University of Waterloo.  Dr. Melko did really good job in organizing his talk, and if you are interested in his other talks, please kindly go to this link.

References from yesterday’s talk (partial) are as follows.

• Sandvik, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 227202 (2007)
• Wolf et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 070502 (2008)
• Levin and Wen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 110405 (2006)
• Kitaev and Preskill Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 110404 (2006)
• Sandvik, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 207203 (2005)
• Holzhey et al. Nucl. Phys. B 424 44 (1994)
• Calabrese and Cardy, J. Stat. Mech: Theory Exp. P06002 (2004)

“There is no perfect solar model.”

“standard model is good, but not perfect.”

Selected References

1. Basu S, Dappen W, Nayfonov A. Helioseismic analysis of the hydrogen partition function in the solar interior. Astrophys J 1999;518(2):985-93.

2. Christensendalsgaard J, Dappen W. Solar oscillations and the equation of state. Astronomy and Astrophysics Review 1992;4(3):267-361.

3. Dappen W, Mihalas D, Hummer DG, Mihalas BW. The equation of state for stellar envelopes .3. thermodynamic quantities. Astrophys J 1988;332(1):261,&.

4. Elliott JR, Kosovichev AG. The adiabatic exponent in the solar core. Astrophys J 1998;500(2):L199-202.

5. Gough DO, Kosovichev AG, Toomre J, Anderson E, Antia HM, Basu S, Chaboyer B, Chitre SM, ChristensenDalsgaard J, Dziembowski WA, EffDarwich A, Elliott JR, Giles PM, Goode PR, Guzik JA, Harvey JW, Hill F, Leibacher JW, Monteiro MJPFG, Richard O, Sekii T, Shibahashi T, Takata M, Thompson MJ, Vauclair S, Vorontsov SV. The seismic structure of the sun. Science 1996;272(5266):1296-300.

6. Hummer DG, Mihalas D. The equation of state for stellar envelopes .1. an occupation probability formalism for the truncation of internal partition-functions. Astrophys J 1988;331(2):794-814.

7. Mihalas D, Dappen W, Hummer DG. The equation of state for stellar envelopes .2. algorithm and selected results. Astrophys J 1988;331(2):815-25.

1. Albert FJ, Katine JA, Buhrman RA, Ralph DC. Spin-polarized current switching of a co thin film nanomagnet. Appl Phys Lett 2000;77(23):3809-11.

2. Bilzer C, Devolder T, Kim JV, Counil G, Chappert C, Cardoso S, Freitas PP. Study of the dynamic magnetic properties of soft CoFeB films. J Appl Phys 2006;100(5).

3. Katine JA, Albert FJ, Buhrman RA, Myers EB, Ralph DC. Current-driven magnetization reversal and spin-wave excitations in Co/Cu/Co pillars. Phys Rev Lett 2000;84(14):3149-52.

4. Paluskar PV, Kohlhepp JT, Swagten HJM, Koopmans B. Co72Fe20B8: Structure, magnetism, and tunneling spin polarization. J Appl Phys 2006;99(8).

5. Parker JS, Watts SM, Ivanov PG, Xiong P. Spin polarization of CrO2 at and across an artificial barrier. Phys Rev Lett 2002;88(19).

References are as followed.

Brendan M. Kayes, Harry A. Atwater, and Nathan S. Lewis, “Comparison of the Device Physics Principles of Planar and Radial p-n Junction Nanorod Solar Cells”, J. Appl. Phys., 2005, 97(11), 114302.

Santiago D. Solares, Hongbin Yu, Lauren J. Webb, Nathan S. Lewis, James R. Heath, and William A. Goddard, III, “Chlorination-Methylation of the Hydrogen-Terminated Silicon(111) Surface Can Induce a Stacking Fault in the Presence of Etch Pits”, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, 128(12), 3850.

Hossam Haick, Patrick T. Hurley, Allon I. Hochbaum, Peidong Yang, Nathan S. Lewis, “Electrical Characteristics and Chemical Stability of Non-Oxidized, Methyl-Terminated Silicon Nanowires”, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, 128(28), 8990.

For all of his publications, please refer his page.

The second part of his presentation was about “applications of fMRI in understanding the neural mechanisms of attention”. His publications can be found at http://lobes.usc.edu/articles.htm, including full-text access to most reference he cited in this talk.

The best on-line abstracts & indexes to access articles in this fields are

• Web of Science
• PsycINFO
• BIOSIS
• MEDLINE

I was impressed to see my seminar was well attended. Thank you all to be there! I was even glad that we had such a lively discussion about USC Libraries services and resources, which helped me know where to go and how to provide you services and resources.

Some concerns from audience in the seminars were

• proxy server should be more stable and much faster for users’ off campus access
• USC catalog records should be more accurate and complete
• Grand depository’s access is better than before, but still needs to be cleaned up in order to access many collection there

It was also good to know that

• physics and astronomy users are excited to know the Springer e-collection available at USC
• current journal e-subscription satisfies users’ needs at some degree
• many enjoy the back file access of Science Citation Index via WoS (yeah!)

last but not the least, I want to thank you all again! Please keep in mind that I am your librarian. Please do feel free to contact me for any questions, concerns and advice you might have.

Let’s build Norah’s ideal library together!

Dr. Heijnsbergen began his seminar by collecting questions from audience. Prof. Johnson and many were very interested to know current acceptance rate of PRL, especially the number for domestic researchers. The other biggest concern from audience was the on-line submission system of PRL, which is not user-friendly according to some users’ experience.

During the presentation, Dr.  Heijnsbergen gave different statistical information to USC users, which answered the question 1. It showed that the acceptance rate for domestic researchers has not changed much, while due to faster research growth of other regions, especially researchers from Pacific Rim have been sumbitting a lot. User also questioned how PRL keep itself as pinnacle in the field, if there are more and more articles published. Dr. Heijnsbergen admitted that it was not easy for anyone. To help users know more about peer-review process of PRL, he then explained it to audience step by step, which was my first time to go through with an insider.

Overall it was a very informative presentation. As Dr. Heijnsbergen hoped that it can “culminate in a lively debate about the imminent changes in the landscape of scientific publishing”, I think he did it.

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Some background information:

• USC Libraries has the entire e-access to the APS publications.
• Physics highlights exceptional papers from the Physical Review journals. To accomplish this, Physics features expert commentaries written by active researchers who are asked to explain the results to physicists in other subfields. These commissioned articles are edited for clarity and readability across fields and are accompanied by explanatory illustrations.

[2] K. Khodjasteh and D.A. Lidar, “Performance of Deterministic Dynamical Decoupling Schemes: Concatenated and Periodic Pulse Sequences”, Phys. Rev. A 75, 062310 (2007).

[3] K. Khodjasteh and D.A. Lidar, “Rigorous Bounds on the Performance of a Hybrid Dynamical Decoupling-Quantum Computing Scheme”, Phys. Rev. A 78, 012355 (2008).

If you’d like to know more about Dr. Yap’s research, please visit his research group.

The talk covers almost all research fields Dr. Yap has been working on, so his publication page is the best resource for afterwards learning. Here is Dr. Yap’s publication work page.