Zahur Anwar, Physics and Astronomy, attended the Einstein's Centenary Celebrations held at M.I.T, sponsored by the American Physics Society and AAPT, April 1-2, in Cambridge, Mass. Physicists from across the nation participated.

Jerry Ball, Mathematics and Statistics, recently was awarded honorable mention for haiku for the year 2004 from Mainichi, in Tokyo, Japan. Mainichi is a national Japanese publication in English. Ball has published haiku in Manichi on a monthly basis for several years. The haiku is spring breeze/archers at their targets/collecting arrows. Also, he is a past president of the Haiku Society of America, has won numerous awards for haiku and recently published Pieces of Eight, a book of haiku.

Douglas Behrens, Geography, presented a paper titled "Using an astrocompass to demonstrate some concepts in introductory physical geography courses" to the Association of American Geographers' annual national meeting in Denver during April.

William J. Boylan, Student Transition and Retention Services, received board certification from the National Association of Catholic Chaplains. This is the culmination of a two-year clinical pastoral education-training program and hospital internship. He will be involved in part-time ministry at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.

Norman Carter, Geography, gave a paper in April to the Association of American Geographers' conference, "Higher than the Matterhorn: The struggle to erect a high-rise tower in Santa Ana, California.”

Frank Gossette, graduate student Maribel Enriquez, and James A. Woods, Geography, presented "Long Beach, California: America's most diverse city?" to the Association of American Geographers' annual national meeting in April.

Christine L. Jocoy, Geography, delivered a paper in April to the Denver meeting of the Association of American Geographers, which was titled "The social and spatial contexts of corporate learning: Practices for balancing diverse and shared knowledges."

Paul Laris, Geography, gave a presentation, "Three views of a burned land: how issues of scale and narrative affect mapping and monitoring anthropogenic savanna fires in West Africa" to the Association of American Geographers' annual conference in Denver. Also, he was the organizer of the session "New Perspectives on Environmental Narratives."

Noel Ludwig, Geography, delivered a talk titled, "A new method for generating quantitative expert recommendations, applied to fires in California watersheds" to the annual national conference of the Association of American Geographers in April.  

Joanne Tortorici Luna, Educational Psychology, Administration and Counseling, had her article titled "Arlington West: The Things We Carry" reprinted in the online journal Writersagainstwar.com, Spring/Summer issue. The article originally appeared on page one of the Veterans Day 2004 issue of the Santa Monica Mirror.  

Tulin Mangir, Electrical Engineering, was invited to submit a paper for the special session of IEEE ICCD meeting honoring Stanford University Electrical and Computer Engineering's Edward McCluskey. The paper was read during the session as Mangir recovered from surgery on Oct. 21, 2004, in Palo Alto. Also, she was awarded an NSF grant of $598,000 for a two-year collaboration with USC's School of Engineering in the area of Computer and Network Security and Information Assurance. Mangir initiated this grant with USC School of Engineering colleagues. She is the General Co-Chair (with Dr. Jeff Kash of IBM, Yorktown) of the 16th Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Conference on High Speed Networks, in Santa Fe, N.M., in May. The conference is co-sponsored by IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, Communications and Computer Societies, DARPA and DOE.  

William S. Moore, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration, presented a paper on April 15 titled "The California State Budget Crisis: Lessons Learned (or Not)" for the Public Finance and Budgeting section of the Western Social Science Association Conference held in Albuquerque, N.M.  

Christine M. Rodrigue, Geography, gave a paper to the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers in Denver titled "The Construction of Mediterranean Scrub in Biogeography and Ecology." Also, she presented an invited paper, "Hazard Vulnerability, Media Construction of Disaster, and Risk Management," to the International Working Conference, Education and Training in Disaster Medicine and Major Incident Management, Education Committee Working Group, World Association of Disaster and Emergency Medicine, Brussels, in October. She presented a paper titled "The State of Geography and Its Cognate Disciplines in the California State Universities" to the California Geographical Society, Yosemite, April.

Dmitrii Sidorov, Geography, delivered a presentation, "Geography of Construction Wars in Moscow: Infill high-rise constructions and the emergence of municipal civil society," to the Association of American Geographers, April, Denver. He presented "Visualizing Post-Soviet Russia" at the California Geographical Society meeting in Yosemite, April. This paper attempts to critically evaluate the current status of teaching Russia-related courses in the U.S. as well as provide some suggestions for further improvements.  Sidorov discussed possible strategies to get students interested in Russian study and the importance of applying visualization.

Clifton Snider, English, has published a review of Christopher Rice's novel, A Density of Souls, in USC's International Gay and Lesbian Review, April.

Judith Tyner, Geography, gave a talk in April titled "Nineteenth century schoolgirl cartography" to the Denver meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

Suzanne P. Wechsler, Geography, and Lisa A. Pitts have a new peer-reviewed publication, "GIS in High School Integrates Geography with Technology: A Case Study," which appeared in 2004 issue of The California Geographer. She was the first and presenting co-author of "Enhancing diversity in the geosciences" at the California Geographical Society, Yosemite, April. The other authors of this Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project paper were David Whitney (Psychology), Elizabeth Ambos (Academic Affairs), Chrys Rodrigue and Chris Lee (Geography), Rick Behl, Greg Holk, and Dan Francis (Geological Sciences), and Dan Larson (Anthropology).