University of Southern California
SUMMER m TROJAN
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6. 1969, V OL. LX, NO. 13
Dr. Bauer becomes Med School interim dean
Harold Glic, former principal conductor for Rodgers and Hammerstein, has come from New York City to conduct the 59-piece, Western Division of the Congress of Strings in concert at 8:30 p.m. in Bovard Auditorium. The program is free to the public and includes music by Hindemith, Gershwin, Ellington, Kooley and Kern.
Engineering profs play big role in Mariner 6 and 7
“Members of the School of Engineering faculty contributed significantly to the success of the Mariner 6 and 7 probes,” J.W. Marshall, professor of engineering, said.
As was mentioned on several occasions by scientific observers during the flights, the quality of the Mars pictures transmitted in real time to earth would not have been possible without the high data-rate telemetry system.
Professors Solomon W. Golomb, William C. Lindsey and Lloyd R. Welch of the Department of Electrical Engineering were major contributors in the formulation and design of the telemetry system for Mariner 6 and 7. Dr. Golomb and Dr. Lindsey devised the principles of synchronization, and Dr. Welch developed the Fast Fourier Transform for decoding the data.
A focal point of the high-rate telemetry system is the special Reed-Muller code used for picture transmission. The code was developed jointly by Professor Irvin S. Reed of the Electrical Engineering Department and Professor D.E. Muller of the University of Illinois.
The fulfill the Mariner 6 and 7 requirements of minimum weight and high reliability,
DT NEEDS TOP PHOTOGRAPHER
The Daily Troian will have an opening in the fatl for a chief photographer. Editor Bill Dicke announced. Openings for cartoonists, reporters and copy readers also exist, he said.
Applications should be mailed to the newspaper offices. Student Union 432.
low-complexity encoding of the Mars pictures was a necessity. The Reed-Muller code, a binary error correcting code easy to encode and decode, was ideal for the application.
The new telemetry system plus improvements in other components, such as the antenna and power supply, enabled Mariner 6 and 7 to transmit approximately 2,000 more picture date per second than Mariner 4 with a system of essentially the same weight and reliability.
Dr. Franz K. Bauer is the interim dean of the School of Medicine. Dr. Bauer assumes the duties of the position vacated by Dr. Roger O. Egeberg, who was recently confirmed as the new Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
Among the pending matters of major importance at the medical school is a study of the new curriculum which approximately 80 faculty members of various committees have recommended to the dean.
“We expect to start the new curriculum with the incoming freshman class this fall,” Dr. Bauer said.
He explained that the revised teaching program is more patient-oriented. “Under the previous system, medical students did not really get to see sick people under the end of the second and the beginning of the third year, after they had completed their classroom work in the basic sciences. “We will now be involving them with patients beginning with their freshman year,” Dr. Bauer said.
Although details for the second, third and fourth year students have not yet been approved, the recommendation is that the teaching of the basic sciences be continued throughout the four years of medical school.
“We feel this is a great improvement in the curriculum,” Dr. Bauer said. “By combining basic and clinical sciences appropriately throughout all four years of medical school, the faculty experts in each of the medical sciences will be in continual touch with the students. This
will pretty much do away with the system of teaching in narrow, limited blocks of time where the student is exposed to a subject once and not again for the rest of his school years.”
The new curriculum under study will also allow for more elective time, so that students can, if they choose, study in depth the specialty in which they will ultimately practice.
Dr. Bauer agrees with the growing nation-wide feeling that one way to increase the number of doctors needed to meet the country’s health needs is to eliminate the rotating internship and allow the medical school graduate to begin his specialty training immediately. The curriculum proposed for the
School of Medicine could prepare the student for this by having him serve as a clinical clerk and intern in specialties and in various hospitals during his elective periods in his senior year of medical school.
The newly-appointed interim dean also mentioned that 84 students—the largest freshman class ever enrolled at the medical school—have been accepted for the new school year. “In another year we will increase that to 96 students,” Dr. Bauer said. This is the maximum enrollment for the foreseeable future, agreed to by the board of trustees and the federal government, which provided matching funds for the completion of the School’s building expansion program.
Also high on the list of priorities for the Dean’s office is a master plan for the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, which the medical school faculty and the hospital
administrators are proposing jointly. “The concept here, too, is patient-oriented,” Dr. Bauer said. “A first-rate medical center must be designed to function at optimal efficiency in order to provide quality patient care.
“We also want our medical students to work in a setting where high quality medical care can be delivered, and since the County-USC Medical Center is our primary teaching hospital the formulation of a maste;plan becomes a joint effort by the two institutions.”
The dean’s office is also (Continued on Page 7)
STUDENT DIES OF LEUKEMIA
Ahmad Philsouf, a graduate student in chemical engineering, died Monday of leukemia after one week of hospitalization in UCLA Medical Center. Mr. Philsouf, a native of Tehran, Iran, was working toward the master of sciences degree and had planned to receive it later on this month.
The Society of Iranian Students will hold a tribute to him Sunday, Aug. 10, from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Student Y. Burial wifi be in Tehran where his parents reside.
Mr. Philsouf is survived by his parents, two brothers and a sister.
sciences
best exemplified by the way the new IBM 360/65 is being handled at CSL. The university spent $75,000 to build a new room at CSL for the 360/65, yet so far no attempt has been made to remodel the rest of the building. $20,000 has been budgeted for improvements, but as of now nothing has been spent to modernize the crowded and shoddy facilities that are a carryover from the previous Honeywell days.
The turnaround time—the time it takes to submit a job to be run and get it back—has been improved from two to three days to three to four hours due to the faster computer. But because of the lack of remodeling, the tiny input/output room slows down the flow of jobs considerably. The users had to crowd into the
room, patiently waiting their turn. If the flow of users was heavy it would take as long as 30 minutes just to pick up or submit a job.
Another problem is the lab’s (Continued on Page 7)
New director for computer
By DOUGLAS BUSER
A recently initiated school policy to revamp USC’s computing services has lead to the appointment of Ross Penne, formerly a marketing representative for IBM, as the director of the Computer Sciences Laboratory.
Last month the Computer Sciences Lab (CSL) received the IBM System 360 Model 65. This
But within the short time Penne has been in charge, some somewhat drastic changes for CSL have occurred. Already some personnel have been discharged with more experienced people taking their places. The input/output room has been readapted and plans for remodeling have been given the go ahead. Penne also announced intentions to increase the size of
“We are taking steps to expand the user area, to enlarge the input/output room . . . and generally to make the facilities more convenient for users”—Penne
is a large scale multiprogramming computer that can run up to 15 jobs concurrently. The System 360/65 is the third largest computing system marketed by IBM. It is approximately 40 times faster than any other computer on campus. The 360/65 could potentially be implemented to provide every student and faculty member with access to the utility of a high speed computer. For example, the new computer will be able to satisfy the various instructional and research needs of a modern university.
the present 360/65 to include more core memory, another printer and other hardware which will increase the processing ability of the 360/65. A definite long-range plan of updating the overall facility seems decided on. It calls for a new building and terminals throughout the campus serving all students within the next five years.
The history of computers at USC has been characterized by a lack of planning and initiative on the part of the Administration.
When asking Dr. William Wagner, chairman of the
Computer Committee, what were the long-range plans for integrating the school’s computer system, he said he envisioned a centralized computing system “three or four times as big as we have now.” But as far as a definite plan, he admitted that none has been made mainly because the Administration has been hesitant to commit itself.
Resigning CSL director Dr. Glen Lewis summed it up by saying that the university only makes a decision on computers “when pressured.” The Administration was undoubtedly under a great deal of pressure to replace the tired Honeywell 800 computer that preceded the new 360/65.
By waiting so long to replace it, many users began to avoid CSL and use the facilities of
“We plan to increase the number of user consultants, making them available during both prime time and at night”—Penne
other schools such as UCLA and Caltech. This has resulted in a serious flow of funds from the university which could have been used to support a better system.
The present state of affairs is