Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The Edrei-Thoma theorem characterizes totally positive functions, and plays an important role in character theory of the infinite symmetric group. The Loewner-Whitney theorem characterizes totally positive elements of the general linear group, and is fundamental for Lusztig's theory of total positivity in reductive groups. In this work we derive a common generalization of the two theorems. The talk is based on joint work with Thomas Lam.

I will talk about new approximation algorithms for the Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem (ATSP) when the costs satisfy the triangle inequality. Our approach is based on constructing a "thin" spanning tree from the solution of a classical linear programming relaxation of the problem and augmenting the tree to an Eulerian subgraph. I will talk about Goddyn's conjecture on the existence of such trees and its relations to nowhere-zero flows. I will present an O(log n/log log n) approximation algorithm that uses a new randomized rounding method. Our rounding method is based on sampling from a distribution and could be of independent interest. Also, I will talk about the special case where the underlying undirected graph of the LP relaxation of the problem has bounded genus. This is the case for example, when the distance functions are shortest paths in a city with few bridges and underpasses. We give a constant factor approximation algorithm in that case. The first result is a joint work with A. Asadpour, M. Goemans, A. Madry and S. Oveis Gharan, and the second result is a joint work with S. Oveis Gharan.

We describe two computational frameworks for the assessment of contractileresponses of enzymatically dissociated adult and neonatal cardiac myocytes.The proposed methodologies are variants of mathematically sound andcomputationally robust algorithms very well established in the imageprocessing community. The physiologic applications of the methodologies areevaluated by assessing the contraction in enzymatically dissociated adultand neonatal rat cardiocytes. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness ofthe proposed approaches in characterizing the true 'shortening' in thecontraction process of the cardiocytes. The proposed method not onlyprovides a more comprehensive assessment of the myocyte contraction process,but can potentially eliminate historical concerns and sources of errorscaused by myocyte rotation or translation during contraction. Furthermore,the versatility of the image processing techniques makes the methodssuitable for determining myocyte shortening in cells that usually bend ormove during contraction. The proposed method can be utilized to evaluatechanges in contractile behavior resulting from drug intervention, diseasemodeling, transgeneity, or other common applications to mammaliancardiocytes.This is research is in collaboration with Carlos Bazan, David Torres, andPaul Paolini.

Attached to every homeomorphism of a surface is a real number called its dilatation. For a generic (i.e. pseudo-Anosov) homeomorphism, the dilatation is an algebraic integer that records various properties of the map. For instance, it determines the entropy (dynamics), the growth rate of lengths of geodesics under iteration (geometry), the growth rate of intersection numbers under iteration (topology), and the length of the corresponding loop in moduli space (complex analysis). The set of possible dilatations is quite mysterious. In this talk I will explain the discovery, joint with Benson Farb and Chris Leininger, of two universality phenomena. The first can be described as "algebraic complexity implies dynamical complexity", and the second as "geometric complexity implies dynamical complexity".