‘Love, Rock and Revolution’ features legendary music photographer Jim Marshall’s work

Never-before-seen 1960s photographic work by legendary San Francisco rock and roll

photographer Jim Marshall (1936-2010) will be featured in “The Haight: Love, Rock and Revolution,” an exhibit opening Friday, Feb. 6, in the halls of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

JimMarshallExhibit-410aThe show will run through May at the school’s Reva and David Logan Gallery of Documentary Photography at North Gate Hall, located on campus near the intersection of Hearst and Euclid avenues. It is free and open to the public.

The Center for Photography at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism has joined with Marshall’s estate to launch the Jim Marshall Fellowships in Photography, with a goal of raising $500,000 to $1 million to  support the visual arts at the journalism school.

Marshall was widely known for his documentary photos of big-name musicians from the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Santana and the Rolling Stones, as well as Johnny Cash’s groundbreaking live concerts at Folsom and San Quentin prisons. His work appeared on more than 500 album covers and in magazines such as Rolling Stone.

Marshall’s photos also captured street life in San Francisco and New York, a Kentucky coal mining town’s despair and Mississippi civil rights demonstrations. He received an honorary Grammy lifetime achievement award posthumously in 2014, the only photographer to ever receive such an honor.

At the opening reception on Feb. 6, longtime San Francisco music critic and Marshall friend Joel Selvin and Amelia Davis, a photographer and Marshall assistant, will be on hand to discuss Marshall’s work.

The 6:30-8:30 p.m. event also will feature a psychedelic light show, in keeping with the popular rock programming of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, free psychedelic posters resembling those made famous during that era by the Fillmore music hall in San Francisco will be given away at the reception, while they last.

The exhibit was curated by Ken Light, the Reva and David Logan Chair in Photojournalism.

The Center for Photography at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, founded in 1996, offers courses in hands-on photojournalism and social documentary photography. The center routinely exhibits world-class photographers and hosts programs with distinguished photojournalists.

For more information about the event, contact Julie Hirano at juliehirano@berkeley.edu.

For more details about the Jim Marshall Fellowships in Photography, contact Marlena Telvick at marlenatelvick@berkeley.edu.

Source: UC Berkeley

From video camera to driverless shuttle vehicle

The EZ 10 shuttle vehicle. Credit: © EasyMile

A new type of driverless shuttle vehicle has been developed thanks to innovative computer vision guidance technology that enables the vehicle to locate itself on a roadway reliably and inexpensively. The technology, which is based on the use of simple video cameras, was developed by researchers at Institut Pascal (CNRS/Université Blaise Pascal de Clermont Ferrand/IFMA)[1]. It lies at the heart of the EZ-10 autonomous shuttle vehicle developed by Ligier Group[2], which will be unveiled at the Michelin Challenge Bibendum in Chengdu (China) from 11 to 14 November 2014.

Since the 2000s, a number of companies have sought to make cars autonomous using expensive and sometimes unreliable technologies[3]. In 2003, researchers at Institut Pascal decided to work on automated driving of urban electric vehicles using simple video cameras. 
The technology they developed is based on two stages. The aim of the first stage is to identify all the significant points in the immediate environment of the path followed, in a video recorded during an initial journey in which the vehicle is driven manually. The second stage corresponds to the automatic mode during which the vehicle continuously monitors its path, ensuring that the images provided by the on-board cameras correspond as far as possible to the sequence initially filmed. The initial video thus plays the role of a virtual track that the vehicle must follow when it travels in autonomous mode.

Since 2006, the researchers at Institut Pascal, in collaboration with Ligier Group, have been developing automatic driverless shuttle vehicles that can transport up to 10 people along short routes (in the region of one kilometer), rather like a horizontal elevator. The vehicles, which are designed to be used at specific sites such as industrial sites, airports and amusement parks, are able to deal with obstacles thanks to laser rangefinders fitted on all four sides of the vehicle. The shuttle vehicle can detect the presence of an obstacle at a distance of 50 meters and in this way modify its speed or even stop, depending on the potential danger. The researchers now intend to turn their attention to running a fleet of five vehicles at the Michelin Europe Technology Center at Ladoux. The aim is to deal with multiple and potentially simultaneous requests from call points or smartphones, in real time and on a large industrial site, rather like an automatic taxi service.

The localization technology, which is reliable and inexpensive, will be unveiled at the Michelin Challenge Bibendum in Chengdu (China) from 11 to 14 November 2014. Equipped with an access ramp for people with reduced mobility, the new EZ-10 shuttle vehicle will provide visitors with a completely automated transport service.

[1] Within the framework of the IMobS3 Laboratory of Excellence.

[2] It is marketed by the EasyMile company, a joint venture between Ligier and Robosoft Technology.

[3] For example: differential GPS (which is different from the GPS commonly used in cars) is not always reliable, especially in city centers, where the satellite signals can be reflected off the façades of buildings. This phenomenon can lead to erroneous location calculations.

Source: CNRS

Mode of action of protein channelrhodopsin-2 decoded: Findings facilitate manufacture of optogenetic tools

The pore of the ion channel is opened by removing the amino acid E90. Water molecules enter and tilt Helix H2, thus opening the continuous channel. Credit: © RUB, graphics: Eisenhauer

Researchers have shed light upon the mode of action of the light-controlled channelrhodopsin-2 with high spatiotemporal resolution. This biomolecule is used in optogenetic applications, which is deployed to control the activity of living cells with light.

"The model we developed makes it possible to create customised optogenetic tools for individual applications," says Prof Dr Klaus Gerwert from the Department of Biophysics at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Together with colleagues at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin from the team headed by Prof Dr Peter Hegemann, the Bochum researchers report about their finding in the magazine "Angewandte Chemie."

Channelrhodopsin-2 has revolutionised optogenetics

Discovered by Peter Hegemann in green algae, channelrhodopsin-2 is the central light-activated channel protein in optogenetics. If this ion channel is applied to nerve cells, the channels can be opened by light, thus activating the cell. "The application of channelrhodopsin-2 in optogenetics has revolutionised neurobiology in the recent years," says Klaus Gerwert. The magazine "Nature Methods" awarded this process as "Method of the Year" in 2010. "However, scientists had not been aware of what is actually happening inside a protein and thus ultimately triggers its activation," continues the Bochum researcher. But it is the understanding of processes on the atomic level that is essential for optimising the protein specifically for its applications.

"EHT" model describes the mode of action of channelrhodopsin-2

With time-resolved vibrational spectroscopy and bio-molecular simulations, the Bochum-Berlin team has now closed that gap. The EHT (E90-Helix2-tilt) model describes the mode of action of channelrhodopsin-2 as follows: the light-sensitive group of the protein, i.e. the retinal, is twistedunder incidence of light. This twist then continues in the protein and opens a pore ultra fast, which is closed by amino acid E90 in the dark. E90 marks the narrowest place in the pore and opens it through a downward move , similar to the motion of a swing door, so that water can enter an empty vestibule above the narrowest place in the pore. The entering water then tilts the protein helix H2, which eventually triggers a protein-traversing open ion channel. When forming this model, the Bochum researchers benefitted from their comprehensive experience that they had gained resolving the mechanism of light-driven proton pump bacteriorhodopsin in detail.

"Protein engineering": pioneering novel optogenetic tools

"With this structural model, the next step, i.e. protein engineering, will become possible," explains Klaus Gerwert. Through mutation of the amino acid E90, the protein's properties can be controlled in a targeted manner. The conductivity or the selectivity for certain ions could be customised for specific applications, and the protein could be specifically activated with different wavelengths.

Source: Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum