Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

A fundamental question in topological graph theory is as follows: Given a surface S and an integer t > 0, which graphs drawn in S are t-colorable? We say that a graph is (t+1)-critical if it is not t-colorable, but every proper subgraph is. In 1993, Carsten Thomassen showed that there are only finitely many six-critical graphs on a fixed surface with Euler genus g. In this talk, I will describe a new short proof of this fact. In addition, I will describe some structural lemmas that were useful to the proof and describe a list-coloring extension that is helpful to ongoing work that there are finitely many six-list-critical graphs on a fixed surface. This is a joint project with Ken-ichi Kawarabayashi of the National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo.

We will present a sheaf-theoretic proof of the Riemann-Roch theorem for projective nonsingular curves.

The Reynolds number (Re) is often used to describe scaling effects in fluid dynamics and may be thought of as roughly describing the ratio of inertial to viscous forces in the fluid. It can be shown that ’reciprocal’ methods of macroscopic propulsion (e.g. flapping, undulating, and jetting) do not work in the limit as Re approaches zero. However, such macroscopic forms of locomotion do not appear in nature below Re on the order of 1 − 10. Similarly, macroscopic forms of feeding do not occur below a similar range of Reynolds numbers. The focus of this presentation is to describe the scaling effects in feeding and swimming of the upside down jellyfish (Cassiopeia sp.) using computational fluid dynamics and experiments with live animals. The immersed boundary method is used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations with an immersed, flexible boundary. Particle image velocimetry is used to quantify the flow field around the live jellyfish and compare it to the simulations.

I will discuss a conjecture that relates the degree of the Jones polynomial of a knot and its parallels with the slopes of incompressible surfaces in the knot complement. I will present examples, as well as computational challenges.