Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Spectral Dynamics and Critical Thresholds in Nonlinear Convective Equations

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Friday, March 13, 2009 - 16:05 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Eitan TadmorUniversity of Maryland, College Park
We discuss the global regularity vs. finite time breakdown in Eulerian dynamics, driven by different models of nonlinear forcing. Finite time breakdown depends on whether the initial configuration crosses intrinsic, O(1) critical thresholds (CT). Our approach is based on spectral dynamics, tracing the eigenvalues of the velocity gradient which determine the boundaries of CT surfaces in configuration space. We demonstrate this critical threshold phenomena with several n-dimensional prototype models. For n=2 we show that when rotational forcing dominates the pressure, it prolongs the life-span of sub-critical 2D shallow-water solutions. We present a stability theory for vanishing viscosity solutions of the 2D nonlinear "pressureless" convection. We revisit the 3D restricted Euler and Euler-Poisson equations, and obtain a surprising global existence result for a large set of sub-critical initial data in the 4D case.

On the theory and applications of the longtime dynamics of 3-dimensional fluid flows on thin domains

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, March 13, 2009 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
George SellUniversity of Minnesota
The current theory of global attractors for the Navier-Stokes equations on thin 3D domains is motivated by the desire to better understand the theory of heat transfer in the oceans of the Earth. (In this context, the thinness refers to the aspect ratio - depth divided by expanse - of the oceans.) The issue of heat transfer is, of course, closely connected with many of the major questions concerning the climate. In order to exploit the tools of modern dynamical systems in this study, one needs to know that the global attractors are "good" in the sense that the nonlinearities are Frechet differentiable on these attractors. About 20 years ago, it was discovered that on certain thin 3D domains, the Navier-Stokes equations did possess good global attractors. This discovery, which was itself a major milestone in the study of the 3D Navier-Stokes equations, left open the matter of extending the theory to cover oceanic-like regions with the appropriate physical boundary behavior. In this lecture, we will review this theory, and the connections with climate modeling, while placing special emphasis on the recent developments for fluid flows with the Navier (or slip) boundary conditions

Dynamic Server Allocation for Tandem Queues with Flexible Servers

Series
Stochastics Seminar
Time
Thursday, March 12, 2009 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Hayrie AyhanISyE, Georgia Tech
We consider Markovian tandem queues with finite intermediate buffers and flexible servers and study how the servers should be assigned dynamically to stations in order to obtain optimal long-run average throughput. We assume that each server can work on only one job at a time, that several servers can work together on a single job, and that the travel times between stations are negligible. Under various server collaboration schemes, we characterize the optimal server assignment policy for these systems.

A homology theory for hyperbolic dynamical systems

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Thursday, March 12, 2009 - 11:05 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Ian F. Putnam U. Victoria, BC, Canada
Motivated by Smale's work on smooth dynamical systems, David Ruelle introduced the notion of Smale spaces. These are topological dynamical systems which are hyperbolic in the sense of having local coordinates of contracting and expending directions. These include hyperbolic automorphisms of tori, but typically, the spaces involved have a fractal nature. An important subclass are the shifts of finite type which are symbolic systems described by combinatorial data. These are also precisely the Smale spaces which are totally disconnected. Rufus Bowen showed that every Smale space is the image of shift of finite type under a finite-to-one factor map. In the 1970's, Wolfgang Krieger introduced a beautiful invariant for shifts of finite type. The aim of this talk is to show how a refined version of Bowen's theorem may be used to extend Krieger's invariant to all (irreducible) Smale spaces. The talk will assume no prior knowledge of these topics - we begin with a discussion of Smale spaces and shifts of finite type and then move on to Krieger's invariant and its extension.

The Adwords problem under random permutations

Series
ACO Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - 16:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Klaus 2100
Speaker
Nikhil DevanurMicrosoft Research
We consider the problem of a search engine trying to assign a sequence of search keywords to a set of competing bidders, each with a daily spending limit. The goal is to maximize the revenue generated by these keyword sales, bearing in mind that, as some bidders may eventually exceed their budget, not all keywords should be sold to the highest bidder. We assume that the sequence of keywords (or equivalently, of bids) is revealed on-line. Our concern will be the competitive ratio for this problem versus the off-line optimum. We extend the current literature on this problem by considering the setting where the keywords arrive in a random order. In this setting we are able to achieve a competitive ratio of 1-\epsilon under some mild, but necessary, assumptions. In contrast, it is already known that when the keywords arrive in an adversarial order, the best competitive ratio is bounded away from 1. Our algorithm is motivated by PAC learning, and proceeds in two parts: a training phase, and an exploitation phase. Joint work with Tom Hayes, UNM.

PDE Techniques in Wavelet Transforms and Applications Image Processing

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - 12:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Hao Min ZhouSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
In this talk, I will present an brief introdution to use partial differential equation (PDE) and variational techniques (including techniques developed in computational fluid dynamics (CFD)) into wavelet transforms and Applications in Image Processing. Two different approaches are used as examples. One is PDE and variational frameworks for image reconstruction. The other one is an adaptive ENO wavelet transform designed by using ideas from Essentially Non-Oscillatory (ENO) schemes for numerical shock capturing.

"Feel Sick? Follow the money!" - New Perspectives on Global Human Mobility and Disease Dynamics

Series
Mathematical Biology Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Dirk BrockmannNorthwestern University
Human Mobility in our globalised world has reached a complexity and volume of unprecedented degree. More than 60 million people travel billions of kilometres on more than 2 million international flights each week. Hundreds of millions of people commute on a complex web of highways and railroads most of which operate at their maximum capacity. Human mobility is responsible for the geographical spread of emergent human infectious diseases and plays a key role in human mediated bioinvasion, the dominant factor in the global biodiversity crisis. I will report on the recent discovery of scaling laws in global human traffic (obtained from online bill-tracking at www.wheresgeorge.com) and mathematical models that can account for it. I will present a complex network perspective on multi-scale human traffic networks, report on their statistical properties and show that they can be used to identify geographically coherent communities that only vaguely resemble administrative ones. The approach provides an operational segmentation of maps into a hierarchical set of effective regions and boundaries based on human behavior. I will briefly talk about European transportation networks, geocaching and trackable items.

Tolerance Graphs and Orders

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Ann TrenkDepartment of Mathematics, Wellesley College
Tolerance graphs were introduced in 1982 by Golumbic and Monma as a generalization of the class of interval graphs. A graph G= (V, E) is an interval graph if each vertex v \in V can be assigned a real interval I_v so that xy \in E(G) iff I_x \cap I_y \neq \emptyset. Interval graphs are important both because they arise in a variety of applications and also because some well-known recognition problems that are NP-complete for general graphs can be solved in polynomial time when restricted to the class of interval graphs. In certain applications it can be useful to allow a representation of a graph using real intervals in which there can be some overlap between the intervals assigned to non-adjacent vertices. This motivates the following definition: a graph G= (V, E) is a tolerance graph if each vertex v \in V can be assigned a real interval I_v and a positive tolerance t_v \in {\bf R} so that xy \in E(G) iff |I_x \cap I_y| \ge \min\{t_x,t_y\}. These topics can also be studied from the perspective of ordered sets, giving rise to the classes of Interval Orders and Tolerance Orders. In this talk we give an overview of work done in tolerance graphs and orders . We use hierarchy diagrams and geometric arguments as unifying themes.

Classical solutions in Hölder and Sobolev spaces for the thin film equation

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - 15:05 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Hans KnüpferCourant Institute, New York
We consider the the following fourth order degenerate parabolic equation h_t + (hh_xxx)_x = 0. The equation arises in the lubrication approximation regime, describing the spreading of a thin film liquid with height profile h >= 0 on a plate. We consider the equation as free boundary problem, defined on its positivity set. We address existence and regularity of classical solutions in weighted Hölder and Sobolev spaces.

Fluctuation Theorems

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Monday, March 9, 2009 - 16:30 for 2 hours
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Mark PollicottUniversity of Warwick
The Cohen-Gallavotti Fluctuation theorem is a result describing the behaviour of simple hyperbolic dynamical systems. It was introduced to illustrate, in a somewhat simpler context, anomalies in the second law of thermodynamics. I will describe the mathematical formulation of this Fluctuation Theorem, and some variations on it.

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