On Sept. 23, 1987, opening night of a Sweet Charity revival in Washington, D.C., Bob Fosse and his ex-wife and collaborator Gwen Verdon gave the cast a final pep talk, then left the National Theater to get a bite to eat. They turned right, and about a block away, unknown to the gathering audience, or the cast, Fosse collapsed on the sidewalk. Newspapers the next morning said he died at 7:23 p.m.
I was inside that theater. I later calculated what was happening at 7:23. It was a quintessential Fosse moment: a stagewide bar rising from the floor, a line of dance hall hostesses draping themselves over it, bait for big spenders. Here you can listen to him stage the movie version a few years later.
I had seen a lot of Fosse shows by that time — Damn Yankees, Pippin, Dancin', Chicago — and I had read enough about him to know what was autobiographical in his movie All That Jazz.
So I cracked open Sam Wasson's 700-page biography figuring I knew the score. Hell, knew the score and the steps: those artfully slumped shoulders, knocked knees and pigeon-toes. The bowler hats and black vests worn without shirts, like the one Liza Minnelli sported in the number that introduced her in Cabaret on-screen, leading a chorus that knelt and stomped and sprawled, and used hard-backed chairs for everything but sitting.
But I didn't know the details Wasson gets at about how Fosse taught choreography that often made dancers seem all elbows and knees. First to Verdon, who was his muse before she was his wife, and then, with her help, to the dancers in all his shows.
In one dance the chorus girls all had to extend a foot while leaning back and shooting their arms down at their sides. Fosse gave them an image to help them see exactly how he wanted it: "Ladies," he said, "it's like a man is holding out a fur coat for you and you have to drop your arms in."
"Other directors," writes Wasson, "might give their dancers images for every scene. Bob ... had one for just about every step. These were the lines the dancers' bodies had to speak."
That, I submit, is lovely writing, as is his description of Cabaret as a film "about the bejeweling of horror [that] coruscated with Fosse's private sequins." You can lift samples just like those from virtually every page of this book.
You'll also learn how the director's dark stage imagery mirrored his own life — the wife and girlfriends he cheated on, the down-and-dirty burlesque houses he grew up in, the amphetamines that kept him going, and the barbiturates that calmed him when he lost confidence in his own "razzle-dazzle."
Wasson pictures him as harder on himself than he was on his dancers. In one year, he won a directing triple crown for which no one else had ever even been nominated — An Emmy for Liza With A Z, an Oscar for Cabaret and a Tony for Pippin. And his reaction was utter depression. But out of that depression came Chicago ... a musical vaudeville that looked great at the Tony Awards in 1976.
The revival is about to enter its 14th year on Broadway.
Fosse is filled with the kind of inside detail that comes of substantial research, and vivid descriptions that turn the research into a sort of movie in your head. All the way from little Bobby Fosse's elementary school disappointment when the spotlight faded on him, right through to the moment when Gwen Verdon, the love of his life, cradled Fosse's head on her lap on a D.C. sidewalk, just blocks from an audience he was at that very moment razzle-dazzling to beat the band.
Developing methods for quantifying uncertainty and sensitivity for complex systems
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Janet Lathrop jlathrop@admin.umass.edu 413-545-0444 University of Massachusetts at Amherst
AMHERST, Mass. Applied mathematicians Markos Katsoulakis and Luc Rey-Bellet of the University of Massachusetts Amherst will share a three-year, $2.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, with others, to develop new methods to assess and improve mathematical modeling of multi-scale, complex systems. Once developed, the new methods are expected to have applications in energy research and materials synthesis.
As Katsoulakis explains, predictive mathematical models and algorithms have long complemented theory and experiments in applied sciences and engineering, but such computational models are now more important than ever because of the increased complexity of the problems plus advances in computing capabilities. A recognition of the vast predictive potential of modeling and efficient simulation of complex systems, he points out, is the fact that the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded for the development of multi-scale models for complex chemical systems.
One of the primary practical applications planned by Katsoulakis and Rey-Bellet, with partners at Brown University and the University of Delaware, is to design highly efficient and cost-effective bimetallic catalysts using relatively inexpensive metals, allowing storage and production of clean hydrogen fuel from readily available sources such as ammonia.
Katsoulakis says, "The role of uncertainty and sensitivity quantification in this process turns out to be crucial, because the design of bimetallic catalysts rests on understanding how sensitive the catalyst's performance metrics are on its parent metals. Also, experiments have shown that performance depends on the micro-geometry of the arrangement of the two metals, that is structure and ordering of their layers. Given all the choices we have in selecting materials and geometries for the two-metal catalysts, this becomes a very complex system to model."
Being able to systematically evaluate which metal combinations in the catalyst are the most efficient and cost effective is one of the team's key goals. The challenge is an example of a model where new mathematical and computational techniques for assessing uncertainty and quantifying sensitivity can be extremely productive, the researchers say.
Over the next three years, the multi-institution team will develop new mathematical tools that describe uncertainty and model sensitivity using information theory, probability theory, statistical methods such as model selection and model reduction, rare events methods, multi-scale analysis and parameterization of coarse-grained models from finer scales and data.
Mathematical models are now routinely being asked to account for systems of
increasing complexity, that is handling millions or even billions of variables. In addition, a model must integrate data from different scales and must account for different spatial scales, for example from the molecular level all the way to the everyday macroscopic scale, and basic physical processes at different time scales.
The UMass Amherst mathematician says, "Interactions across scales are a unifying feature in all complex systems that we may experience in everyday life. Think of the effect that a single vehicle breakdown during rush hour may have to the overall traffic flow, even at very large distances from the scene." Taking all the different variables and mechanisms such as vehicle speeds, sizes, road network, weather, traffic volume and so on into account, represents a typical complex "multi-scale multi-physics" modeling, simulation and analysis problem that challenges current applied mathematical methods, he adds.
Handling real-life systems with unprecedented levels of complexity and multi-scale features requires not only more powerful computational capabilities, but also new mathematics, Katsoulakis explains. "Though high performance computing can allow us, for the first time, to simulate at least some complex systems, there are important concerns related to the effectiveness and reliability of the predictive computational models."
As in the traffic example, all such models depend on a large number of mechanisms and parameters but it is not immediately obvious which ones critically affect the final predictions and which ones can be ignored. Another, closely related, source of uncertainty is insufficient knowledge of a particular highly complex system.
Katsoulakis and Rey-Bellet believe that their research has great potential for wider impact in a number of fields because it will lay down the mathematical foundations for uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis in a broad class of complex systems typically encountered in physicochemical and biological processes, atmosphere and ocean science, and other types of complex networks.
Besides Katsoulakis and Rey-Bellet at UMass Amherst, collaborators are mathematician Petr Plechac and chemical engineer Dion Vlachos at the University of Delaware and applied mathematician Paul Dupuis at Brown University.
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Developing methods for quantifying uncertainty and sensitivity for complex systems
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Janet Lathrop jlathrop@admin.umass.edu 413-545-0444 University of Massachusetts at Amherst
AMHERST, Mass. Applied mathematicians Markos Katsoulakis and Luc Rey-Bellet of the University of Massachusetts Amherst will share a three-year, $2.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, with others, to develop new methods to assess and improve mathematical modeling of multi-scale, complex systems. Once developed, the new methods are expected to have applications in energy research and materials synthesis.
As Katsoulakis explains, predictive mathematical models and algorithms have long complemented theory and experiments in applied sciences and engineering, but such computational models are now more important than ever because of the increased complexity of the problems plus advances in computing capabilities. A recognition of the vast predictive potential of modeling and efficient simulation of complex systems, he points out, is the fact that the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded for the development of multi-scale models for complex chemical systems.
One of the primary practical applications planned by Katsoulakis and Rey-Bellet, with partners at Brown University and the University of Delaware, is to design highly efficient and cost-effective bimetallic catalysts using relatively inexpensive metals, allowing storage and production of clean hydrogen fuel from readily available sources such as ammonia.
Katsoulakis says, "The role of uncertainty and sensitivity quantification in this process turns out to be crucial, because the design of bimetallic catalysts rests on understanding how sensitive the catalyst's performance metrics are on its parent metals. Also, experiments have shown that performance depends on the micro-geometry of the arrangement of the two metals, that is structure and ordering of their layers. Given all the choices we have in selecting materials and geometries for the two-metal catalysts, this becomes a very complex system to model."
Being able to systematically evaluate which metal combinations in the catalyst are the most efficient and cost effective is one of the team's key goals. The challenge is an example of a model where new mathematical and computational techniques for assessing uncertainty and quantifying sensitivity can be extremely productive, the researchers say.
Over the next three years, the multi-institution team will develop new mathematical tools that describe uncertainty and model sensitivity using information theory, probability theory, statistical methods such as model selection and model reduction, rare events methods, multi-scale analysis and parameterization of coarse-grained models from finer scales and data.
Mathematical models are now routinely being asked to account for systems of
increasing complexity, that is handling millions or even billions of variables. In addition, a model must integrate data from different scales and must account for different spatial scales, for example from the molecular level all the way to the everyday macroscopic scale, and basic physical processes at different time scales.
The UMass Amherst mathematician says, "Interactions across scales are a unifying feature in all complex systems that we may experience in everyday life. Think of the effect that a single vehicle breakdown during rush hour may have to the overall traffic flow, even at very large distances from the scene." Taking all the different variables and mechanisms such as vehicle speeds, sizes, road network, weather, traffic volume and so on into account, represents a typical complex "multi-scale multi-physics" modeling, simulation and analysis problem that challenges current applied mathematical methods, he adds.
Handling real-life systems with unprecedented levels of complexity and multi-scale features requires not only more powerful computational capabilities, but also new mathematics, Katsoulakis explains. "Though high performance computing can allow us, for the first time, to simulate at least some complex systems, there are important concerns related to the effectiveness and reliability of the predictive computational models."
As in the traffic example, all such models depend on a large number of mechanisms and parameters but it is not immediately obvious which ones critically affect the final predictions and which ones can be ignored. Another, closely related, source of uncertainty is insufficient knowledge of a particular highly complex system.
Katsoulakis and Rey-Bellet believe that their research has great potential for wider impact in a number of fields because it will lay down the mathematical foundations for uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis in a broad class of complex systems typically encountered in physicochemical and biological processes, atmosphere and ocean science, and other types of complex networks.
Besides Katsoulakis and Rey-Bellet at UMass Amherst, collaborators are mathematician Petr Plechac and chemical engineer Dion Vlachos at the University of Delaware and applied mathematician Paul Dupuis at Brown University.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's Tourism Ministry says Paula Abdul has scaled back a Bat Mitzvah ceremony that she'd originally planned to hold at Judaism's holiest place of prayer.
The normally tireless TV personality came to Israel to connect to her Jewish roots and for a Bat Mitzvah, the coming-of-age ceremony girls typically have at age 12 or 13.
But the ministry, which is hosting Abdul, said Tuesday that she made last-minute changes to her packed itinerary because she's jet-lagged.
The ministry says Abdul was planning to hold a high-profile ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, but instead had a private weekend affair in the northern town of Safed.
Officiating Rabbi Eyal Riess of the Tzfat Kabbalah Center says Abdul wanted to escape the media circus for a more intimate ceremony.
NEW YORK (AP) — Marvel will develop four original series for Netflix in a deal that gives the streaming service one of its most high-profile content partnerships.
The companies announced Thursday that the four live-action, 13-episode series will begin streaming in 2015. Marvel Entertainment President Alan Fine says the shows will be "a serialized epic" that begins with Marvel's "Daredevil" and is followed by "Jessica Jones," ''Iron Fist" and "Luke Cage." It will conclude with a miniseries of "The Defenders."
Last year, Netflix acquired the paid-TV rights to Walt Disney Studios movie releases beginning in 2016. Marvel Entertainment is owned by Disney.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The development order is the most ambitious TV foray for the superhero factory Marvel. This fall it debuted "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." on Disney's ABC.
Facebook is moving to bigger offices in London and Dublin to accommodate its rapidly expanding European workforce.
Facebook established its international headquarters in Dublin in 2009. Relocating to a new space in the city’s Grand Canal Square will give Facebook the room it needs to accommodate the hundreds of employees it expects to hire, wrote Sonia Anne Flynn, the company’s Ireland’s site lead, on her Facebook page Thursday.
“We started pretty small, but now there are hundreds of Facebook people working hard to keep the service running,” she said.
In London the company is moving from its offices in Covent Garden to Regent’s Place, in the heart of the West End, wrote Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s vice president of EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), on her Facebook page Thursday. The office is not finished yet though, she added.
“Designed by acclaimed architect, Frank Gehry, creator of our Menlo Park campus in California, our new home will give us the space to double the number of people working at Facebook London and build on what we’ve achieved there over the past few years, including the only Facebook Engineering Centre in Europe,” she wrote.
The center was set up in 2012 in order to work on Facebook’s platform and mobile development. It was the company’s first engineering center outside the U.S.
Facebook’s Dublin office will also be designed by Gehry, Flynn wrote. He is known for designing the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
Facebook Ireland currently has 69 open positions varying from sales jobs to openings in the user operations department and engineering positions. London has 38 openings and is looking, among other positions, for software engineers, according to Facebook’s London and Dublin job pages.
The company could not immediately comment further on European expansion plans.
In Europe, Facebook also has offices in Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Stockholm and Warsaw. In September 2013, it had 5,794 employees worldwide.
Loek Essers, IDG News Service Amsterdam correspondent for IDG News Service, IDG News Service
Loek Essers focuses on online privacy, intellectual property, open-source and online payment issues. More by Loek Essers, IDG News Service
She recently said she was ready to marry her fiance Ryan Sweeting as soon as possible, but Kaley Cuoco obviously didn't expect to have the wedding to be completely televised on a talk show.
During her interview on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on Wednesday (November 6), the "Big Bang Theory" beauty announced her happiness after finding true love.
"Everything is great right now, I can't even tell you," Miss Cuoco told the audience. "We are so happy."
Ellen then asked, "Now, people don't understand [your new relationship]. How long have you known him."
"Not... It's, it's, newer. I know it looks a little crazy to some people," Kaley answered.
"When you know it, when you feel it, you just know it!" Miss DeGeneres stated.
After explaining the story about meeting Ryan, the 27-year-old actress was surprised with jewelry and flowers. Then Ellen announced that Kaley and her fiance were going to exchange their vows on stage. While enjoying a few laughs and exchanging rings at the alter with Ellen's writer officiating, Mr. Sweeting managed to ask, "This isn't legal, right?"
Check out the video below of Kaley and Ryan's "marriage" below!
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