cas : associates 2008-2009


CAS Associates are tenured UIUC faculty members whose proposals are selected in an annual competition. These appointments grant one semester of teaching release time in order to pursue an individual scholarly or creative project. With the Professors and Fellows, they form the core of the Center for Advanced Study Community. Associates also participate in a yearly roundtable discussion of research interests and are invited to offer a future CAS presentation.




Waïl S. Hassan
comparative and world literature

AN ARAB-AMERICAN CENTURY: ORIENTALISM AND CULTURAL TRANSLATION IN ARAB-AMERICAN LITERATURE
From its beginnings in the early twentieth century and continuing up to the present, Arab-American literature has formed a substantial literary tradition. Yet it has received scant scholarly attention – an omission Professor Hassan intends to correct with a book-length critical survey of Arab-American writers and the reception of their work in the United States.

Arab-American literature falls into three periods. Its pioneers, such as Ameen Rihani and Kahlil Gibran, conceived of themselves as cultural translators and mediators between Eastern and Western civilizations. Located in the United States and writing in both Arabic and English, they conceived of East and West as either complementary in a ying-yang fashion or as parties of a dialectic leading to a higher form of civilizational synthesis.

A second generation of Arab-American writers emerged in the middle decades of the twentieth century. This period was influenced by passage of the Asian Exclusion Act in 1924, which effectively stopped Arab immigration to the United States until new immigration laws were passed in 1965. Writers during this period were striving for assimilation into American culture, and their work is dominated by the stigma of foreignness, the anxieties of fitting in, the loss of cultural roots, and the search for identity. The figure of the Arab fades in the work of writers from this period, leaving behind a sense of fracture or a disquieting sense of being haunted by a disturbing past.

From the 1970s on, enabled by such social awakenings as multiculturalism and the movements for civil rights, Arab-American writers begin to foreground their Arab heritage and to question its representation in American culture. Scores of new writers who identify as Arab-Americans have emerged over the past few decades, and their work exemplifies a broad range of experiences with a renewed, and much transformed, focus on cultural translation.

During his Center appointment Professor Hassan will be completing his study and preparing the book for publication.
whassan@illinois.edu



Lillian Hoddeson
history

ANALOGY AND INVENTION IN THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY: THE IMPLICATIONS OF STANFORD OVSHINSKY'S NERVE CALL ANALOGY
Analogy has been an important theme in cognitive science for some years, but historians of technology have paid little attention to this subject despite the productive use that many inventors, including Edison and the Wrights, made of analogy. During her Center appointment Professor Hoddeson will work with cognitive scientists to investigate analogy as a motor of invention, building on a study of a prolific American inventor of energy and information technologies who employed analogy in a dramatic way.

The fact that Stanford Ovshinsky, a self-educated machinist and tool-maker with no formal training beyond high school, typically invented by drawing analogies between widely separated domains (e.g., machines and cells) makes him an interesting case study for an historian. In his early career Ovshinsky was obsessed with making machines “intelligent.” Reading widely in the literatures of cybernetics, neuroscience, and neural disease, while also studying mammalian nerve cells experimentally, Ovshinsky developed an analogy between a nerve cell and an electronic control device. Realizing that the plasticity of the cell membrane is the basis of its learning, and that the membrane’s disordered structure offers this capability, Ovshinsky stumbled on the new scientific field of amorphous and disordered solids. His work resulted in numerous practical technologies, including switches, an environmentally friendly nickel metal hydride battery, rewritable CDs and DVDs, flat-screen monitors, and flexible solar panels. Some writers predict that these, along with Ovshinsky’s more radical inventions that have not yet found widespread use (his cognitive computer and hydrogen car) will help solve today’s fossil-fuel crisis. Professor Hoddeson plans to spend extended periods in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, studying the endangered documentation of Ovshinsky’s inventive work.
hoddeson@illinois.edu

K. Jimmy Hsia
mechanical science & engineering

CELL-CNT INTERACTIONS: CELL-MEDIATED CNT ALIGNMENT, ALIGNED CNT-GUIDED CELL MOVEMENT
The living cell is an extremely complex system, not only because of its complex dynamically evolving structures with multiple functionalities but also because of its dynamical interactions with the environment. A living cell’s cytoskeleton is a network of force-bearing filaments that provides structural integrity and determines the cell’s shape. These filaments are constantly lengthened (shortened) through polymerization (depolymerization) by the addition (removal) of proteins at their ends, giving rise to a continually changing shape. The process through which a cell attaches to and detaches from a substrate appears to involve both “feeling” biochemical signals at its adhesion points and responding through its filaments. Adherent cells probe elasticity as they anchor and pull on the extracellular matrix (ECM), and respond to topographic features of the ECM at all length-scales, from micron down to tens of nanometers, by adjusting their adhesion, cytoskeleton, and shape.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are macromolecules consisting of pure carbon sheets rolled into a tube-like configuration. Among their extraordinary properties is an intrinsic biocompatibility, with a geometry resembling that of natural collagen fibers. CNTs physically interact with each other and often form bundles through van der Waals interaction (see image). As with many nanoscale materials, CNTs also interact with living cells, resulting in beneficial or detrimental effects on the cells. It is of significant interest to study the interactions between living cells and CNTs, in particular, to determine whether such interactions can induce alignment of an initially random CNT network – a result with large implications for the field of regenerative medicine. During his Center appointment Professor Hsia will explore the mechanics underlying cell-CNT interactions.

In Professor Hsia’s research project, cells’ behavior on a CNT-coated substrate will be studied. He will fabricate a biocompatible substrate coated with a uniform film of CNTs. The substrate will feature different surface patterns on its surface. The cells’ interactions with the CNTs will be observed through microscopy.

The project aims to answer several fundamental questions: Will the cells exert forces through their focal adhesion points onto the CNTs? Will the cell-CNT interaction induce reorganization and alignment of CNTs? Will the aligned CNTs act as preferred tracks that reorient and/or polarize cells to produce directed cell migration? And what are the underlying mechanisms for such an alignment or self-assembly process? The answers to these questions will help guide future applications of nanomaterials in bio- and health-related fields.
kjhsia@illinois.edu


Jeffrey Magee
music

IRVING BERLIN AND THE AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATER
For his songs and shows, his influential roles in the entertainment industry, and his ability to distill and define the musical, social, and political spirit of his times, Irving Berlin stands as one of the most powerful forces in twentieth-century American music and theater. Professor Magee is writing a book about Berlin’s work for the stage. During his Center appointment he will complete three remaining chapters and finalize the manuscript for publication.

Chapter 1 will survey Berlin’s various biographies and analyze the ways his story has been told by successive generations of biographers. It also defines Berlin’s approach to entertainment, informed by his immigrant experiences in the uniquely dense and diverse population of Manhattan’s Lower East Side around the turn of the century. Those experiences taught him to see songs and musicals not just as light diversion but as forms of survival and exhibitions of citizenship in his adopted country.

Chapter 2 will present an overview of the two fundamental elements of Berlin’s craft: writing songs and creating shows. Professor Magee will argue that Berlin’s songwriting style must be understood together with a conception of musical theater that, although ostensibly disdaining “integration,” reflects a deep concern with how words and music work together with other theatrical elements – a concern that dates from his earliest stage efforts.

Chapter 8 deals with Berlin’s final stage shows, Call Me Madam (1950) and Mr. President (1962). These collaborations with playwrights Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse both feature a likeable, well-meaning Everyman (or Everywoman) protagonist thrust into the center of politics and into situations that test the durability of personal relationships. Striving to do the right thing, the protagonists are forced to confront their strengths and limitations.

The book has been accepted for publication by the Yale Broadway Masters series, Yale University Press.
jmag@illinois.edu



Neal Roese
psychology

JUROR JUDGEMENTS DRAWN FROM ANIMATED RECONSTRUCTIONS OF HINDSIGHT BIAS
Jurors in court cases increasingly are presented with computer-animated reconstructions of past events, especially when the forensic evidence involves complex dynamics of motion (e.g., skid marks from a car accident). Forensic details are entered as parameters into computer models, which then apply basic laws of physics to project a result; the end product is a visually rich and realistic cinematic recreation of the past event.

How such animations affect the phenomenon of hindsight bias is a matter of some concern. Hindsight bias is a widely studied bias in human information processing that involves an inability to recapture earlier frames of mind. After the facts about a focal outcome (an election victory, a stock market crash, etc.) become known, people tend to feel as though they “knew it all along,” failing to appreciate their earlier state of predictive uncertainty. For the most part, hindsight bias is a normal byproduct of the mechanisms of human memory. Hindsight bias is clearly counterproductive in court cases involving liability, negligence, or malpractice, where the goal is to gauge what a defendant could reasonably have foreseen at the time of his or her action – without the benefit of hindsight.

In his earlier research, Professor Roese and his students found that hindsight bias was at least doubled when computer animation was used to portray the key events in legal cases, relative to presentation of the same material with text and static diagrams. During his Center appointment he will conduct additional experiments to answer many new questions of both theoretical and practical importance, such as whether repeated viewings of animation or use of slow motion exacerbate hindsight bias even further. An overarching goal of this project is to specify broadly useful courtroom guidelines for how best to present forensic animations without undue effects from hindsight bias.
roese@illinois.edu


John Ashley Rogers
materials science and engineering

FLEXILE PHOTOVOLTAIC MODULES BASED ON ULTRATHIN, MONOCRYSTALLINE SILICON
Developing a low-cost, renewable source of energy is one of the most urgent and technically difficult challenges currently facing the world community. The abundance of solar energy makes it one of the most promising candidate solutions – but the photovoltaic technologies currently used to capture solar energy haven’t yet achieved a level of cost-efficiency that encourages their widespread use.

Professor Rogers’s research group will attempt to address this problem by developing ultrathin implementations of monocrystalline silicon in lightweight, mechanically flexible photovoltaic modules. Detailed cost-modeling studies indicate the potential for this approach to obtain costs of $0.33/Watt in high-volume production, less than half the U.S. Department of Energy’s target goal of $0.70/Watt. Another advantage to the thin geometries is that the lightweight, mechanically flexible designs are easy to transport and can be laminated against or wrapped around almost any surface (from buildings to interior walls to rooftops).

This research effort is coupled with the corporate activities of large and small companies. These collaborations will help to speed the transition from theoretical research to large-scale manufacturing.

As principal investigator, Professor Rogers will use his Center for Advanced Study appointment to launch this research effort. He will study the underlying physics and materials science of these unusual silicon solar cells and assess their broader economic and societal implications. He will also work toward fostering collaborations with industry groups.
jrpgers@illinois.edu



R. Srikant
electrical and computer engineering, coordinated science laboratory

WHY AND HOW SHOULD THE INTERNET BE FAIR?
A central question in Internet design is how its finite capacity can be shared most fairly among users. Early work in this area assumed that the number of Internet users is fixed; in reality, the number of users varies over time. For example, a user might download a document or video and then not access the Internet until she needs to transfer another file. What might a user in such a dynamic situation desire? Among other things, she would certainly like to minimize the length of time required for file transfers.

At least two considerations arise in this context. First, it is well known that file sizes on the Internet are not exponentially distributed but instead exhibit heavy tails (i.e., most of the files are small, but a few large files comprise most of the Internet traffic). And second, the current limiting factor in traffic flow is relatively scarce capacity at the access points compared to the core.

During his Center appointment Professor Srikant will lead an investigation that takes these considerations into account. His team will apply statistical models to file arrivals and departures to analyze the performance of various resource-allocation schemes. They will also explore how fair-resource allocation affects file transfer when wireless components are involved – a very different environment with variations in both channel capacity and interactions between users.

Professor Srikant expects the project will narrow the possible choices of fair-resource allocations that should be considered when designing algorithms to provide high-quality service to Internet users. The work will also contribute to several areas of applied mathematics, such as Markov decision processes, stochastic control theory, queueing theory, Brownian motion models, convex optimization, and combinatorial algorithms.
rsrikant@illinois.edu

Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow
educational psychology

AGING AND PROCESS-KNOWLEDGE INTERACTIONS IN UNDERSTANDING TEXT
In our literate culture, the ability to grasp written language is a critical skill throughout the adult lifespan. Reading is a primary avenue for acquiring new knowledge, attaining certain experiential and emotional benefits, and maintaining social ties. How adult age differences affect this skill, and the mental representation created during comprehension, are the subject of Professor Stine-Morrow’s research project.

In her first experiment, she will measure the eye movements of younger and older readers as they encounter texts that are inconsistent with what they know or with what they have just read. She expects that when readers recognize either kind of inconsistency, they will spend longer on the target sentence and be more likely to look back at the set-up paragraph to try to resolve the inconsistency. To the extent that a reader might fail to create a durable mental representation early in the text (as might be expected for older readers encoding text-based facts that are not integral to the situation described by the text), he or she would not notice the inconsistency. When the target and set-up are near each other, Professor Stine-Morrow expects the results will be similar for both younger and older readers; but that in cases of situational inconsistency, with the target and set-up spaced far apart, older readers will show longer reading times and more backtracking than they do for textual inconsistency, in comparison with younger readers.

The differences have to do with dynamic change in two areas affecting adult cognition. Whereas mental mechanics (i.e., the ability to quickly transform information and effectively control attention in response to changing demands) decline through adulthood, crystallized abilities such as vocabulary and knowledge increase as a consequence of experience.

A second experiment, again with younger and older readers, will introduce various text modifications to examine age differences in the representational format constructed at reading. Results from these two experiments should increase our understanding of how the process-knowledge interaction in reading changes with adult development.
eals@illinois.edu