In her role, Jones-Bos helps to foster the understanding of Dutch views while expanding Netherlands-U.S. relations. She oversees several government institutions and departments at the American Embassy in The Hague.

“Public diplomacy aims to present a realistic and favorable image of the Netherlands abroad,” she said. “I see myself as an instrument for many departments at the embassy to engage with Americans on issues that are relevant to us and to you.”

The course, taught by Mai’a Davis Cross, assistant professor of international relations at USC Dornsife, delves into European foreign and security policy operations, as well as the relationship between the United States and the European Union.

“It was a wonderful and unique experience for students to be able to benefit from the Dutch ambassador’s vast expertise,” said Cross, who invited Jones-Bos to speak to the class. “I always try to find ways to bring the study of European politics to life in the classroom, and there is no better way to do this than to have a European ambassador speak directly with students.”

During her visit to USC, Jones-Bos helped the students see the connections between the Netherlands and America: Despite its small size, the Netherlands is much more than windmills, supermodel Rebecca Romijn (whose parents are Dutch) and master artist Rembrandt, she said.

“Our goal is for the U.S. to see the Netherlands as a country with shared history and values,” Jones-Bos said. “We have an entrepreneurial spirit, believe in tolerance, openness and aim for sustainability. Economically, the Netherlands is very strong and a relevant partner in investment and trade.”

The second largest agricultural export in the world, the Netherlands’ strengths include creating innovative sustainable solutions for water management, energy, gaming and nutrition.

With a population of 17 million and much of the land below sea level, the Netherlands is susceptible to heavy flooding.

“Water has always been a threat coming from the seas and the rivers but it has become an opportunity [to help others] as well,” Jones-Bos said.

For example, the Netherlands has brought its knowledge and expertise on water management to New Orleans and the Florida Everglades. Netherland water experts also plan to speak with California authorities about water issues in the California Delta, she said.

The Netherlands has created dams and water draining systems to defend the country from massive flooding. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Netherlands officials worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies to strategize how to prevent similar flooding. In addition, the country provided aid and brought water pumps to the area, becoming among the first countries to provide relief.

Jones-Bos also emphasized the country’s long history with the United States. As early as the 17th century, Dutch seafaring explorers navigated the Indian Ocean to discover distant countries and traded throughout the world including with America.

In addition, the United States and the Netherlands share some defense policies, with Dutch soldiers stationed in Afghanistan and in the Caribbean. The two countries also share views on peacekeeping and human rights, Jones-Bos said.

The United States benefits from several Dutch trade investments and businesses, Jones-Bos continued, such as The Philips Co., Shell Oil Co., Dove and Heineken. Jobs created in America by investments in Dutch firms and exports total 624,636, according to economicties.org. These economic ties place the Netherlands as the third largest foreign trade investor in the United States.

Students asked Jones-Bos questions that ran the gamut, from what her job entails to if she enjoys her career to why the Netherlands continues to support the United States even as its popularity wanes.

“It is very important not to forget old friendships and strong economic relations,” Jones-Bos answered.

She has traveled to 46 of the 50 states educating people about the Netherlands and is working to attract American investments in the Netherlands.

“We are very much in favor of looking at new possibilities of free trade agreements between the European Union and the U.S. because that could add to economic growth and create more jobs,” she said.

Priya Gupta, a sophomore majoring in international relations global business at USC Dornsife, said the ambassador’s visit and talk provided her with a new perspective.

“The ambassador inspired me to change my mindset about smaller countries,” Gupta said. “The size of the country doesn’t matter as much anymore when you have globalization, exportation, and the outsourcing of jobs and technology.”

The results of their study appear this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the most widely circulated medical journal in the world.

“We believe this is the first major study to clearly demonstrate that changes in air pollution exposure affect cardiovascular disease mechanisms in healthy, young people,” said Junfeng “Jim” Zhang, the study’s senior author and professor of environmental and global health at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Beijing, plagued by chronic air pollution, was awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics after promising to improve air quality for the duration of the event. Spending $17 billion on environmental cleanup, the government shut down factories and limited automobile traffic from July 20 to Sept. 17 to encompass the Olympic Games (Aug. 8-24) and the Paralympic Games (Sept. 6-17). Pollution control measures relaxed after the Paralympics.

“Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and the Chinese government had proposed to reduce pollution levels to be comparable to other Olympic host cities,” Zhang said. “We wanted to take advantage of such a huge intervention and look at what happens to people biologically.”

Zhang’s team, which included scientists from the University of Rochester, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Peking University in Beijing, recruited 125 male and female resident doctors who worked at a central Beijing hospital, all of whom never were smokers and were disease-free. The participants, whose average age was 24, visited the clinic six times: twice prior to the air pollution controls, twice while the pollution controls were in play and twice after the games had ended.

The researchers examined biomarkers for systemic inflammation and blood clotting, as well as heart rate and blood pressure. During the Olympics, they observed statistically significant reductions in Von Willebrand factor and soluble CD62P levels, both of which are associated with blood coagulation, among the study participants. Soluble CD62P and systolic blood pressure levels also increased significantly after the Olympics.

These changes indicate that exposure to higher air pollution levels are associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular problems. Changes among other measured indicators that support this association also were observed, although not statistically significant.

“Changes in cardiovascular physiology and inflammation contribute to the instability of atherosclerotic plaques, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke if ruptured,” Zhang said. “The changes in Von Willebrand factor and soluble CD62P are consistent with their roles in rapid thrombotic response.”

Each biomarker observed in the study has been related to cardiovascular morbidity or mortality in clinical studies, but few studies have considered how the environment affects the markers. In fact, it is only recently that population studies have linked air pollution exposure to risk for cardiovascular disease, according to professor Jonathan Samet, holder of the Flora L. Thornton Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School.

This new study offers important evidence that air pollution exposure harms the health of the public, added Samet, chairman of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

“This study shows how air pollution exposure may act to increase cardiovascular disease risk, supporting the more general findings on air pollution and this very important group of diseases,” said Samet, who also is director of the USC Institute for Global Health. “We need to remember that large numbers of people in cities around the world are still exposed to high levels of air pollution as they are in Beijing.”

The study underscores the fact that people’s health and the environment are indelibly linked, said Caroline Dilworth, program administrator from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which provided funding for the study.

“When air pollution levels are lowered, the health benefits can be immediate,” Dilworth said.

Other USC co-authors included postdoctoral research associate Jicheng Gong and Duncan Thomas, professor of preventive medicine.

The study was jointly funded by the NIEHS (1R01ES015864, P30ES005022, 5P30ES007048), Health Effects Institute, Beijing Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection and Beijing Council of Science and Technology.

The revised agreement follows the breakdown of the previous lease, signed in 2008. The commission had promised major improvements but was unable to pay for them.

The agreement is not yet final. The state needs to approve key conditions, such as giving USC control of parking lots around the stadium. USC officials said they are hoping for state approval in the near future and praised the agreement with the commission.

“We look forward to restoring the Coliseum to its former glory and ensuring its viability for many generations to come. We believe this agreement will once again make the Coliseum a proud landmark and gathering place for all Angelenos,” said Thomas S. Sayles, senior vice president for University Relations.

The commission approved the lease on Monday, May 14 by an 8 to 1 vote in open session.

One by one, commissioners praised the agreement and the university’s longstanding involvement with the Coliseum and the community.

Zev Yaroslavsky credited USC’s financial and volunteer investments for the “renaissance” of Exposition Park and surrounding areas.

“USC has had a very positive impact on this neighborhood and on this park,” he said, adding that the agreement follows the successful template of the Hollywood Bowl, owned by the county but managed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Don Knabe called USC “a great corporate citizen,” and Johnathan Williams described the university as an “outstanding model” whose academic mentoring programs, such as the Neighborhood Academic Initiative, are responsible for many kids being the first in their families to attend college.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Tom LaBonge, attending as an alternate, noted that USC stayed in the neighborhood even as many other institutions left during and after the unrest of the 1960s.

“I don’t think we could find a better steward going forward than the University of Southern California,” William Chadwick added.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Bernard Parks cast the dissenting vote without comment.

Established in 1946 and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright Program awards approximately 8,000 grants every year. Approximately 310,000 “Fulbrighters” have participated in the program since its inception.

As the flagship international fellowship program of the United States, the Fulbright Student Grant supports one year of independent study, research and teaching in one of more than 140 countries around the world. Each year, nearly 6,000 students from around the United States compete for about 1,000 Fulbright grants.

The 2012-13 Fulbright Student Grant recipients include:

Caitlin Bradbury ’12 will participate in the Binational Business Internship program in Mexico. Recipients of this grant complete a 10-month internship while enrolled in courses at a university. Bradbury previously studied abroad in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and Santiago, Chile. She graduated in May with a major in international relations (global business) and a minor in organizational leadership and management.

Nelly Chavez ’12 is a recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Grant to Spain. Chavez enjoys helping students with literacy and linguistic challenges, especially English-language learners. She hopes to bring this intimate knowledge to her secondary school teaching assignment in Madrid. Chavez graduated from USC with majors in American studies and ethnicity and French, and a minor in Latin American studies.

Huibin A. Chew PhD ’12 will explore the interplay between Filipino anti-imperialist movements and transnational feminism by examining the activities of GABRIELA, the largest federation of women’s groups in the Philippines. This study will serve as a foundation of Chew’s dissertation research on gendered violence, the state and the transnational politics of urban women organizing in the Philippines.

Joanne Cho MPH ’09 will study the cultural and social stigmas of mental health care utilization and its correlation to high suicide rates among younger women in South Korea. She will be based at the Yonsei Graduate School of Public Health, where she will work with Sun-Ha Jee to identify participants for the study.

Sarah Goodrum PhD ’12 will spend one year in Germany to complete research for her dissertation, which examines photography in the Cold War period in East Germany under the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party. Goodrum seeks to unite the study of the visual with the study of structures of power. She will examine state archives and interview photographers, curators and East German scholars during her time in Berlin.

Nina Gordon-Kirsch ’12 graduated USC with a major in environmental studies and a minor in marketing. She plans to spend her Fulbright year researching levels of endocrine disrupting compounds in Israeli water, starting from treatment sites and ending in natural ecosystems. Her research methods will consist of water samples, water testing, evaluations and coursework at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Ayushi Gummadi ’12 received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Grant to South Africa. Graduating with a major in business administration (international relations) and a minor in neuroscience, Gummadi is committed to enacting positive social change at the grassroots level. In addition to teaching, she hopes to create a regional dance program and visit the village of Mpumalanga, where she previously worked on a community based microenterprise project.

Christine Lee ’09 graduated from USC with a degree in health promotion and disease prevention studies, and minors in health communication and professional and managerial communications. She will spend her Fulbright year in South Korea exploring the role of media as a source of reproductive health information among adolescents. Her project will involve conducting an analysis of sources available to and accessed by adolescents, including schools, nonprofits and media.

Daniel Paly ’12 graduated from USC with a degree in economics and international relations. As a Fulbright fellow, he will study the role of public policy support for private industry in the nascent Brazilian solar energy sector by examining regulatory infrastructure, government direct investment and a potential Feed-In-Tariff. Paly will conduct his study from the Universidade de São Paulo.

Teddy Raven ’10 graduated from the USC Thornton School of Music with a focus in saxophone performance and composition in jazz studies. He will study Bulgarian folk music at the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and seek to fuse his background in jazz and western music with more traditional forms. In addition, he will perform with the world-renowned Karandila Gypsy Brass Orchestra and help them carry out an education initiative for underprivileged Roma youth.

Michael Shashoua ’12 received a Fulbright grant to study in Madrid. He will explore the use of microfinance in Spain to supplement the knowledge of microfinance in developed countries. He plans to conduct a study of client profiles, sustainable lender practices and structural weaknesses. Shashoua graduated with a major in business administration (international relations), and a minor in communication law and media policy.

Selected by a committee of distinguished USC faculty members, the award recipients represent a breadth of disciplines, with fields ranging from business to cinematic arts to geological sciences.

Each awardee received a monetary prize and the students’ faculty mentors also were recognized with a mentoring award.

“This award is not only a huge honor, but it also opens many doors,” said Rowan Martindale, a College Doctoral Fellow and Ph.D. Achievement Award recipient. “With the job market for tenure-track professors being so competitive, being a recipient of this prestigious award will make me much more likely to get interviews, have my grants funded and hopefully get a tenure-track job at a top university.”

Martindale has made a name for herself beyond this award. Earning her Ph.D. in geological sciences this month from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Martindale is an expert on Triassic reef paleoecology. She has authored six peer-reviewed articles, and has presented more than a dozen posters and oral presentations at national and international conferences, receiving “Best Oral Presentation” at the 2011 Southern California Geobiology Symposium. She also earned the USC Dornsife Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for two consecutive semesters. Martindale has received offers for two postdoctoral positions, one with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the other with Harvard University.

Suresh Nallareddy, another College Doctoral Fellow and Ph.D. Achievement Award recipient, worked his way from a small village in Southern India with few educational opportunities to the USC Marshall School of Business. At USC Marshall, Nallareddy received the Mary Pickford Foundation Doctoral Teaching Award and has earned six job offers from international universities for his innovative research on accounting’s market anomaly of post-earnings-announcement drift. He will join Columbia University as an assistant professor in the Accounting Division this summer.

In addition to excellence in research, another important characteristic of the honorees is the scope of their interests.

“One of my favorite aspects of USC is the university’s commitment to bridging the divide between theory and practice, between academia and the broader world,” said awardee Eric Hoyt, a Provost Fellow. “This award … tells me that the university considers my work as living up to these important goals.”

Hoyt brings the unique, melded perspective of industry practice and academic research to the USC School of Cinematic Arts’ Critical Studies doctoral program. Through his research, he has had a tangible effect on the entertainment industry, serving as digitization coordinator for the Media History Digital Library, a project that received the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s 2012 Award for “Best Electronic Reference Site.” He also is developing Lantern, a second data sharing and analysis tool, to bring his vision for a collaborative and dynamic field of film and media studies closer to fruition. Hoyt will join the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a tenure-track assistant professor of communications arts this fall.

For honoree Nicholas Scurich, the Ph.D. Achievement Award is the capstone of an exemplary career at USC. Beginning at USC as an undergraduate, Scurich completed his doctorate in psychology this month at USC Dornsife.

“The faculty and resources of USC have furnished [me] with unparalleled experiences, opportunities and simply the best possible education,” Scurich said.

With his eye on the goal of creating a coherent model of legal decision-making through the testing of behavioral assumptions, Scurich has published 11 peer-reviewed articles and is the primary author of eight. His work has earned him a Mental Health Law Fellowship with the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at the USC Gould School of Law, and a position as an assistant professor of psychology and law at the University of California, Irvine, beginning in the fall.

Elizabeth Zuniga received the award for her accomplishments in neuroscience. The daughter of an immigrant family from Mexico, Zuniga grew up in the farming communities of the San Joaquin Valley. She delved into developmental neuroscience research during her undergraduate career at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Biology Fellows Grant from the university. As a Ph.D. candidate at USC, Zuniga has focused her research on signaling pathways involved in craniofacial development. She has earned numerous awards for her research in cell and neurobiology, including “Best Poster” at multiple conferences and an NIH NRSA F31 Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Zuniga also was honored as the 2011-12 Graduate Student of the Year by the USC Neuroscience Program. She will join the laboratory of S. Larry Zipursky at UCLA as a postdoctoral fellow.

Surrounded by the names of past honorees, USC president C. L. Max Nikias, USC Libraries dean Catherine Quinlan and Skull and Dagger Society president Jerry Papazian joined hundreds of family members, friends, faculty and staff in congratulating the graduating students.

The Skull and Dagger Society, USC’s oldest honor society, created the Wall of Scholars in 1995. Each spring, the names of students who have been awarded a national or international scholarship, or who have earned certain USC academic accolades, are added to the wall’s glass panels in the library’s Weingart Reading Room.

Papazian welcomed the crowd and secured a round of applause “for a group that rarely gets acknowledged publicly: the parents and other family members who have been so supportive to our students.”

Emphasizing the rarity of the distinction, Nikias called the students’ inclusion on the Wall of Scholars “a tremendous tribute to your exceptional talents, your passion for knowledge and your dedication to scholarship.”

He said: “You are now part of a very select group of outstanding students whose accomplishments will always be recorded in this prominent place. When you return to campus in a few months or a few years or a few decades, you can always return to this place in this room. And when you do, you can proudly show your friends and your families, and even your own children or grandchildren, that you have a special place in the history of academic excellence in this university.”

Quinlan noted that Leavey Library, which students visit more than 1 million times each year, is a fitting place to honor the academic success of USC students.

“This is our only library that is open 24 hours a day, so I know that many of the students with us today know this library particularly well,” she said. “The Weingart Reading Room is one of our most popular study places on campus, and if you walk through at 3 o’clock in the morning, it is full. That’s a testament to the quality of our students, and why we are honoring so many today.”

The 2012 Wall of Scholars honorees include:

Valedictorian: Genevieve Hoffman

Salutatorians: J. “Ryan” Hill and Sonam Ghanshyam Kapadia

Fulbright Graduate Study and Research Abroad grant recipients: Caitlin Bradbury, Nelly Chavez, Huibin A. Chew, Joanne J. Cho, Sarah Goodrum, Ayushi Gummadi, Nina Gordon-Kirsch, Christine Lee, Daniel Paly, Teddy “Edward” Raven and Michael Shashoua

Truman Scholar: Travis Glynn

Goldwater Scholar: Matthew Orr

Andrew W. Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship recipients: Sarah J. Butler, Nelly Chavez, Jennifer Escobar and Wanjiku Karanja

Steven and Kathryn Sample Renaissance Scholars Program recipients: Julie A. Guerin, Sonam Ghanshyam Kapadia, Lauren Maldonado, Cody Shaw Nelson, Tran Bao Nguyen, Noa Oldak, Michael Salvatore, Dorothy Wang, Gregory Woodburn and Alexandria Yen

Global Scholars: Michelle Ackerman, Erin Cuevas, Theodore Curran, Isabelle M. Feldhaus, Katherine N. Finnegan, Sequoia Kaul, Scott J. Macklin, Michael Shashoua, Jena Sussex and Rachel Will

Discovery Scholars: Enoch Chow, Lei “Lisa” Cui, Landry Doyle, Emily Gee, Alexander Hofmann, Kevin Maloney, Philip Meyer, Elizabeth Nonemaker, Brien O’Loughlin, Zlatan Sehovic and Courtney Whang

University Trustees: J. Ryan Hill and Cody Shaw Nelson

Emma Josephine Bradley Bovard Award recipients: Sonam Ghanshyam Kapadia, Ashley Michelson and Jeannie Y. Zhang

Rockwell Dennis Hunt Scholastic Award: Emily Chin

Dean Joan Metcalf Schaefer Scholarship recipients: Jasneet Aulakh, Michael L. Carlson, Samantha Coxe, Zhisen Jiang, Ana Paulina Lee, Thien-Huong Ninh, Andres Park, Abhinav Prem, Kevin Rutkowski, Alison Spirito, Rebecca S. Wertman and Erli Zhou

Arnold S. Dunn Renaissance Scholarship for the Sciences, Arts and Humanities: Ruth M. Madievsky

J. Welsey Robb Endowed Scholarship in Human Values: Tori Holland and Jeffery A. Spurgin

The names also have been added to the USC Libraries’ virtual Wall of Scholars. The site provides the physical location for all the names on the wall.

Recognizing outstanding seniors in the English department who have demonstrated a commitment to the arts, the Jimmy Award is named for Jimmy Gauntt, a USC Dornsife alumnus who graduated in 2006 with a bachelor’s in English. Gauntt was just 24 when he was struck by a car and killed in the summer of 2008. The award, which includes a $500 prize, was created in his honor by David Román, Gauntt’s mentor and friend.

“It is an incredibly brave and bold move to announce oneself a poet or a writer,” said Román, professor of English and American studies and ethnicity at USC Dornsife. “As professors, it’s our job to let students know we value what they do.”

Román chose to honor the legacy of his former student, who was a poet, playwright and screenwriter, by acknowledging the work of up-and-coming writers and scholars.

“This award honors those students who, like Jimmy, invest in the world of ideas,” he said. “These are creative and intelligent young people whose commitment to the literary, visual and performing arts inspires those around them.”

The 2012 Jimmy Award recipients and their professor nominators include Sydni Chiles and Román; Julia Cooperman and professor Kate Flint; Aishlin Cortell and professor Tania Modleski; Andrew Ramirez and professor Dana Johnson; Diana Vaden and professor Michelle Gordon; and Billy Youngblood and professor Mark Irwin.

Over dinner at Reservoir restaurant in Silver Lake, where Román first announced to a group of friends in 2009 that he would launch the annual award, the awardees and their professors shared their academic and personal journeys as writers at USC.

“You don’t know this,” Gordon confided to Vaden and the audience, “but I have waited four years for you to graduate so that I could nominate you for this award.”

Gordon, an assistant professor of English and gender studies, met Vaden four years ago, when the then-freshman enrolled in the first class Gordon taught at USC Dornsife.

As a writer, dancer and actor, Vaden embodies a commitment to the arts and the arts communities, Gordon said. “I just knew that she was exactly the kind of student that this award was about.”

Ramirez, also met his mentor, Johnson, an associate English professor at USC Dornsife, during his freshman year. Meeting Johnson was “refreshing,” Ramirez recalled.

“Like someone had opened the refrigerator door. Like an instant cooling sensation,” he said. “I had never felt more comfortable doing something as sticky and [as] confusing as creative writing. After four years of being at USC, I feel like I have my people now … I have a community.”

In introducing Cooperman, Flint, provost professor of English and art history, acknowledged that she intellectually benefitted from the relationship with her mentee.

“Julia writes fabulously,” Flint said. “She is somebody who can turn a sentence to make you really rethink and re-examine a text that you thought you knew pretty well. I certainly learned from her about novels that I considered myself to be very familiar with.”

Gauntt’s parents, Hilary and Casey, also attended the award ceremony. Casey Gauntt told the students how proud he was of them.

“We see Jimmy in each of you,” he said in his closing comments to the small group. “You’ve found your passion, you’ve found your purpose and hopefully this will just be more fuel to do unbelievably greater things than you’ve already done.”

He added: “As I listen here tonight, I’m just thinking: Jimmy is loving this!”

For Román, the annual ceremony was an opportunity to shine a light on the importance of the student-professor relationship. On top of issuing grades to students, there’s a more subtle mentorship that takes place during office hours, over emails or in the hallways that makes a deeper impression, Román said.

“With this event, students can get a full sense of their impact on professors and get a full sense of their talents,” Román said. “What we want to do here is put a spotlight on the exchange between a faculty member and a student that’s about providing the student an opportunity to become whoever he or she sets out to be in the world.”

In 1990, at the beginning of China’s economic transformation, a large majority of Chinese people across age, education, income levels and regions reported high levels of life satisfaction: Sixty-eight percent of those in the wealthiest income bracket and 65 percent of those in the poorest income bracket reported high levels of satisfaction.

But life satisfaction has fallen dramatically among the poorest Chinese in the last two decades, according to the study, reflecting a growing unease about employment prospects and the dissolution of the social safety net.

Despite happiness parity just 20 years ago, the percentage of the poorest Chinese who say they are satisfied with their lives has fallen more than 23 percentage points. Only 42 percent of Chinese people in the lowest income bracket reported high levels of life satisfaction in 2010, while, at the same time, the percentage of the wealthiest Chinese who said they were satisfied with their lives grew about 3 percentage points, to 71 percent.

The paper, appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), comes on the heels of the revelation that the Chinese government has not released an official report about wealth distribution in the country in more than a decade.

“There are many who believe that well-being is increased by economic growth and that the faster the growth the happier people are. There could hardly be a better country than China to test these expectations,” said Easterlin, University Professor and professor of economics at USC.

“But there is no evidence of a marked increase in life satisfaction in China of the magnitude that might have been expected due to the enormous multiplication in per capita consumption,” Easterlin said. “Indeed people are slightly less happy overall, and China has gone from being one of the most egalitarian countries in the world in terms of life satisfaction to one of the least.”

Overall, life satisfaction among Chinese fell sharply in the early 1990s, bottomed out in the 2000s and has since recovered to about the same or slightly lower levels of individual happiness ­­– despite the largest period of economic growth in history and a quadrupling of China’s gross domestic product per capita.

The analysis uses a wide range of data sets on self-reported life satisfaction and is the first to track happiness trends in China over a long period (from 1990 to 2010) rather than using simple comparisons of points in time.

The overall downward trajectory in life satisfaction among low-income people in China, the most populous country in the world, is similar to observed trends in the transition countries of central and eastern Europe, and in both areas reflects the emergence of substantial unemployment and the dissolution of the social safety net, correlating to declining satisfaction in particular areas of life, such as household finances and health.

On one of the surveys included in the latest PNAS analysis, people in China were asked a general question about how they viewed their own health. In 1990, a majority of Chinese people in both the wealthiest bracket and the poorest bracket rated their health as “good” or “very good” – with only a 4 percentage point divide across income levels. By 2007, the divide in perception about personal health had grown to 28 points, driven by a decline in self-reported health among the poorest Chinese and an increase among the wealthiest.

“One may reasonably ask how it is possible for life satisfaction not to improve in the face of such dramatic per capita economic growth,” said Easterlin, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “There is more to life satisfaction than material goods, and there is an important policy lesson here for the Chinese government and policymakers generally: Among ordinary Chinese people, especially the less educated and lower-income, jobs and income security, reliable and affordable health care, and provision for children and the elderly are of critical importance to life satisfaction.”

USC’s Robson Morgan, Malgorzata Switek and Fei Wang were co-authors of the study.

The result: Electricity flowed through the wires, as evidenced by a volt meter.

At that point, the eyes of the 32nd Street School/USC MaST Magnet student widened.

“I liked science before, but I really like it now,” Zakar said with enthusiasm. “What I like most about it is learning that an everyday fruit can make energy. That’s pretty cool.”

For Zakar and 42 other children, the exercise helped to demystify the complexities of science. A main objective of the Young Scientist Program (YSP), overseen by the Joint Educational Project (JEP) at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, is to erase any fear of physics, science or engineering.

Another objective is to encourage students to think about careers in science. YSP serves as a response to President Obama’s national Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) initiative to increase achievements in science and math over the next decade.

On April 26, the children participated in the YSP Energy and Motion Studio hosted by JEP in partnership with USC’s Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE).

“We really want to get fourth- and fifth-graders ready for life sciences or engineering,” said Nadine Afari, YSP program director and lecturer at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “This Energy and Motion Studio is laying a foundation that physics, math and science can be fun and interesting.”

Under YSP, USC graduate students and undergraduates teach natural, life, earth and engineering sciences to fourth- and fifth-graders at five USC community schools during their allotted time in science class.

As students at the studio rotated between four stations, they received a crash course on the principles essential to learning how energy and motion work. Each station allowed the pupils to put into practice what they learned about food energy, light energy, matter, atoms and Newton’s laws of motion.

Allyson Brown, a senior majoring in neuroscience with minors in forensics and criminality at USC Dornsife, was among the mentors.

“It is important that they have a strong science base,” said Brown, a YSP teaching assistant. “We want them to understand science so they are not scared away from a wonderful field of study.”

At the “Lemon Battery and Squishy Circuit” station, youngsters tasted astronaut food and learned that the calories in the treats are converted into energy.

Alice Hall-Partyka, a sophomore majoring in environmental studies at USC Dornsife, helped fourth-grader Steven Delu create a “lemon battery.”

“I’ve noticed in working with the students that they love science, and they tell me they want to pursue careers in science,” said Hall-Partyka, a YSP volunteer. “Doing activities like this helps them understand science in a way a textbook doesn’t.”

Handling the lemon, Delu didn’t mind getting his hands sticky as he carefully connected wires to a penny and nail.

“It was fun,” he said. “I learned that if you use liquids like a grapefruit or lemon and you put a metal and copper object in it, then you can make electricity.”

Throughout the afternoon students learned about force and the center of mass at the “WiSE Dance and Newton’s Laws” station, where they watched a video on movement to better understand how motion relates to the body.

In the “WiSE Balance and Core Motion” station, the children learned about weight distribution and balance as they stood on two feet, then one.

Jill McNitt-Gray, professor of biological sciences and director of the Integrative and Evolutionary Biology Graduate Program at USC Dornsife, helped students understand the importance of nutrition and body movement. If you want to generate a force, such as throwing a ball, she told the children, you must have the energy to do so, which is where nutrition comes in.

“We wanted to show them that science is fun, and it’s meaningful to how they interact with the world,” said McNitt-Gray, who also holds an appointment in biomedical engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “They had a good time.”

Tina Koneazny, associate director of JEP’s administration and educational outreach, was pleased with the event.

“You have a picture in your mind about what it might look like, and it’s great to see it with your own eyes,” Koneazny said. “It’s great to see the kids laughing, learning and having fun.”

For fourth-grader Danielle Lopez, the studio planted a seed in her brain.

“Maybe I’ll be a scientist,” she said.

“My most fervent hope is that you will find a passion,” said Amanpour, global affairs anchor at ABC News and chief international correspondent for CNN International. “Unless you love what you do, you can’t really be good at what you do.”

Amanpour spoke of her love for journalism and her belief in its ability to make a difference, adding that she hoped graduates also would find and devote themselves to careers that they love.

“This is what your 20s and 30s are for,” she said. “Now is your moment, and the world is waiting for you.”

Amanpour also urged graduates to be bold risk-takers: “Whatever you do, one day you will be called to take a stand. Say yes and embrace what life puts in front of you.”

Recalling the Roman poet Virgil, USC president C. L. Max Nikias told the crowd that “to be a Trojan is to be an adventurer.”

He said: “The Trojans always seized destiny. That is the adventure, the great journey that now calls you by name. But here is the key: You do not go forward alone. You go forward as a member of a global Trojan Family.”

Months of planning and weeks of labor went into preparing the University Park campus for the main Commencement ceremony. Fountains were drained and repainted, while roughly 44,000 white folding chairs were set up in perfect rows for the main ceremony and individual schools’ satellite ceremonies around campus.

On the cool, overcast morning, the Trojan Family swelled its ranks at the ceremony to 13,734, more than half of whom were students earning master’s or doctorate degrees.

Specially honored among those joining the Trojan Family were USC’s Nisei students who were forced to abandon their studies during World War II. In 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the internment of some 120,000 American citizens of Japanese descent and Japanese nationals living along the Pacific Coast, some of those who were interned were USC students working toward their degrees.

At Commencement, Nikias conferred honorary USC degrees on these students.

“Candidates, the entire university community feels privileged to honor you for your accomplishments, your fortitude and your determination,” Nikias said. “I warmly salute you.”

Eight global leaders, including Amanpour, also received honorary degrees for contributions to the civic, academic and arts worlds. The group included Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Canadian senator and former force commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda; Dana Dornsife, USC benefactor and international humanitarian; David Dornsife ’65, USC trustee whose family’s dedication to advancing the university’s work in neuroscience and medicine dates back several decades; Victoria Hale, pharmaceuticals scientist and social entrepreneur; Armas C. “Mike” Markkula ’64, MS ’66, entrepreneur, innovator and engineer, who played a key role in the founding and growth of Apple Inc.; Julie Mork, philanthropic leader and advocate of youth and visually impaired children; and John Mork ’70, USC trustee and CEO of Energy Corp. of America.

In addition, Nikias recognized valedictorian Genevieve Hoffman and salutatorians Sonam Kapadia and Ryan Hill. Hoffman, who will start law school at the University of Virginia in the fall, graduated summa cum laude with degrees in international relations and economics from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in just three-and-a-half years.

“We have been given a gift of higher education,” Hoffman said, noting that less than 7 percent of the world’s population is as educated as the newly minted graduates. That privilege comes with responsibilities, she noted. “We are not born, and we do not live for ourselves alone,” she said, quoting Cicero.

Graduates have an obligation to act with integrity, to empower others by sharing their knowledge and to voice their opinions, Hoffman added.

“As graduates of USC, we are prepared and empowered to face the challenges of the new century,” she said.

In closing her address, as the sun finally began to break through the clouds, Amanpour urged graduates not to be in a hurry on their life’s journey and not to feel a need to be at the top of their professions a week after graduating.

“It takes time, and it’s great,” she said. “In the end, I really believe it’s the journey that counts and the amount of love that we put into it.”

Read stories about the graduates at news.usc.edu/tag/academic-highlights/