Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Relative Symplectic Caps, 4-Genus and Fibered Knots

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, September 30, 2013 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Dheeraj KulkarniGeorgia Tech
The $4$-genus of a knot is an important measure of complexity, related tothe unknotting number. A fundamental result used to study the $4$-genusand related invariants of homology classes is the Thom conjecture,proved by Kronheimer-Mrowka, and its symplectic extension due toOzsvath-Szabo, which say that closed symplectic surfacesminimize genus.Suppose (X, \omega) is a symplectic 4-manifold with contact type bounday and Sigma is a symplectic surface in X such that its boundary is a transverse knot in the boundary of X. In this talk we show that there is a closed symplectic 4-manifold Y with a closed symplectic submanifold S such that the pair (X, \Sigma) embeds symplectically into (Y, S). This gives a proof of the relative version of Symplectic Thom Conjecture. We use this to study 4-genus of fibered knots in the 3-sphere.We will also discuss a relative version of Giroux's criterion of Stein fillability. This is joint work with Siddhartha Gadgil

Localization for the quasi 1D operators

Series
Math Physics Seminar
Time
Friday, September 27, 2013 - 16:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Stanislav MolchanovUNC Charlotte
The talk will present several recent results on the singular and pure point spectra for the (random or non-random) Schrӧdinger operators on the graphs or the Riemannian manifolds of the “small dimensions”. The common feature of all these results is the existence in the potential of the infinite system of the “bad conducting blocks”, for instance, the increasing potential barriers (non-percolating potentials). The central idea of such results goes to the classical paper by Simon and Spencer. The particular examples will include the random Schrӧdinger operators in the tube (or the surface of the cylinder), Sierpinski lattice etc.

Compactness and finitely forcible graphons

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, September 27, 2013 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Jan VolecUniversity of Warwick
Graphons are limit objects that are associated with convergent sequences of graphs. Problems from extremal combinatorics and theoretical computer science led to a study of graphons determined by finitely many subgraph densities, which are referred to as finitely forcible graphons. In 2011, Lovasz and Szegedy asked several questions about the complexity of the topological space of so-called typical vertices of a finitely forcible graphon can be. In particular, they conjectured that the space is always compact. We disprove the conjecture by constructing a finitely forcible graphon such that the associated space of typical vertices is not compact. In fact, our construction actually provides an example of a finitely forcible graphon with the space which is even not locally compact. This is joint work with Roman Glebov and Dan Kral.

No Talk Today

Series
Geometry Topology Working Seminar
Time
Friday, September 27, 2013 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
NoneNone
No talk today. Ga Tech will be hosting a prospective graduate students day for undergraduates in the Georgia area.

Inverse Theory of Set Addition

Series
ACO Student Seminar
Time
Friday, September 27, 2013 - 13:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Ernie CrootSchool of Math, Georgia Tech
If A is a set of n integers such that the sumset A+A = {a+b : a,b in A} has size 2n-1, then it turns out to be relatively easy to prove that A is an arithmetic progression {c, c+d, c+2d, c+3d, ..., c+(n-1)d}. But what if you only know something a bit weaker, say |A+A| < 10 n, say? Well, then there is a famous theorem due to G. Freiman that says that A is a "dense subset of a generalized arithmetic progression" (whatever that is -- you'll find out). Recently, this subject has been revolutionized by some remarkable results due to Tom Sanders. In this talk I will discuss what these are.

Superimposed codes

Series
Joint School of Mathematics and ACO Colloquium
Time
Thursday, September 26, 2013 - 16:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skyles 005
Speaker
Zoltan FurediRenyi Institute of Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Please Note: Refreshements served at 4:00pm

There are many instances in Coding Theory when codewords must be restored from partial information, like defected data (error correcting codes), or some superposition of the strings.These lead to superimposed codes, close relatives of group testing problems.There are lots of versions and related problems, likeSidon sets, sum-free sets, union-free families, locally thin families, cover-free codes and families, etc.We discuss two cases {\it cancellative} and {\it union-free} codes.A family of sets $\mathcal F$ (and the corresponding code of0-1 vectors) is called {\bf union-free} if $A\cup B = C\cup D$ and $A,B,C,D\in \mathcal F$ imply $\{ A,B\}=\{ C, D \}$.$\mathcal F$ is called $t$-{\bf cancellative}if for all distict $t+2$ members $A_1, \dots, A_t$ and $B,C\in \mathcal F$ $$A_1\cup\dots \cup A_t\cup B \neq A_1\cup \dots A_t \cup C. $$Let $c_t(n)$ be the size of the largest $t$-cancellative code on $n$elements. We significantly improve the previous upper bounds of Alon, Monti, K\"orner and Sinaimeri, and introduce a method to deal with such problems, namely to investigate first the constant weight case (i.e., uniform hypergraphs).

The Power of Localization for Active and Passive Learning of Linear Separators

Series
Stochastics Seminar
Time
Thursday, September 26, 2013 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Nina BalcanGeorgia Tech College of Computing
We analyze active learning algorithms, which only receive the classifications of examples when they ask for them, and traditional passive (PAC) learning algorithms, which receive classifications for all training examples, under log-concave and nearly log-concave distributions. By using an aggressive localization argument, we prove that active learning provides an exponential improvement over passive learning when learning homogeneous linear separators in these settings. Building on this, we then provide a computationally efficient algorithm with optimal sample complexity for passive learning in such settings. This provides the first bound for a polynomial-time algorithm that is tight for an interesting infinite class of hypothesis functions under a general class of data-distributions, and also characterizes the distribution-specific sample complexity for each distribution in the class. We also illustrate the power of localization for efficiently learning linear separators in two challenging noise models (malicious noise and agnostic setting) where we provide efficient algorithms with significantly better noise tolerance than previously known.

Symplectic fillings of 3-torus.

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - 14:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006.
Speaker
Amey KalotiGeorgia Tech
The aim of this talk is to give fairly self contained proof of the following result due to Eliashberg. There is exactly one holomorphically fillable contact structure on $T^3$. If time permits we will try to indicate different notions of fillability of contact manifolds in dimension 3.

Modeling Stochasticity and Variability in Gene Regulatory Networks with Applications to the Development of Optimal Intervention Strategies

Series
Mathematical Biology Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - 11:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles Bld Room 005
Speaker
D. MurrugarraSoM, GaTech
Modeling stochasticity in gene regulation is an important and complex problem in molecular systems biology due to probabilistic nature of gene regulation. This talk will introduce a stochastic modeling framework for gene regulatory networks which is an extension of the Boolean modeling approach. This framework incorporates propensity parameters for activation and degradation and is able to capture the cell-to-cell variability. It will be presented in the context of finite dynamical systems, where each gene can take on a finite number of states, and where time is also a discrete variable. Applications using methods from control theory for Markov decision processes will be presented for the purpose of developing optimal intervention strategies. A background to stochastic modeling will be given and the methods will be applied to the p53-mdm2 complex.

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