Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Thin Elastic Materials Under Confinement

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, September 29, 2008 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Silas AlbenSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
We discuss two problems. First: When a piece of paper is crumpled, sharp folds and creases form. These are distributed over the sheet in a complex yet fascinating pattern. We study experimentally a two-dimensional version of this problem using thin strips of paper confined within rings of shrinking radius. We find a distribution of curvatures which can be fit by a power law. We provide a physical argument for the power law using simple elasticity and geometry. The second problem considers confinement of charged polymers to the surface of a sphere. This is a generalization of the classical Thompson model of the atom and has applications in the confinement of RNA and DNA in viral shells. Using computational results and asymptotics we describe the sequence of configurations of a simple class of charged polymers.

Three closed, nonselfintersecting geodesics on the sphere

Series
Geometry Topology Working Seminar
Time
Friday, September 26, 2008 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Jim KrysiakSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
This will be a presentation of the classical result on the existence of three closed nonselfintersecting geodesics on surfaces diffeomorphic to the sphere. It will be accessible to anyone interested in topology and geometry.

Robust Nonparametric Multivariate Outlier Identification

Series
Stochastics Seminar
Time
Thursday, September 25, 2008 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Robert Serfling Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas
Robustness of several nonparametric multivariate "threshold type" outlier identification procedures is studied, employing a masking breakdown point criterion subject to a fixed false positive rate. The procedures are based on four different outlyingness functions: the widely-used "Mahalanobis distance" version, a new one based on a "Mahalanobis quantile" function that we introduce, one based on the well-known "halfspace" depth, and one based on the well-known "projection" depth. In this treatment, multivariate location outlyingness functions are formulated as extensions of univariate versions using either "substitution" or "projection pursuit," and an equivalence paradigm relating multivariate depth, outlyingness, quantile, and centered rank functions is applied. Of independent interest, the new "Mahalanobis quantile" outlyingness function is not restricted to have elliptical contours, has a transformation-retransformation representation in terms of the well-known spatial outlyingness function, and corrects to full affine invariance the orthogonal invariance of that function. Here two special tools, also of independent interest, are introduced and applied: a notion of weak covariance functional, and a very general and flexible formulation of affine equivariance for multivariate quantile functions. The new Mahalanobis quantile function inherits attractive features of the spatial version, such as computational ease and a Bahadur-Kiefer representation. For the particular outlyingness functions under consideration, masking breakdown points are evaluated and compared within a contamination model. It is seen that for threshold type outlier identification the Mahalanobis distance and projection procedures are superior to the others, although all four procedures are quite suitable for robust ranking of points with respect to outlyingness. Reasons behind these differences are discussed, and directions for further study are indicated.

Avoiding Grid-Points in Affine or Linear Spaces of Small Dimension

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Thursday, September 25, 2008 - 12:05 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Hanno LefmannTechnical University Chemnitz, Germany
Motivated by a question raised by P\'or and Wood in connection with compact embeddings of graphs into the grid {\mathbb Z}^d, we consider generalizations of the no-three-in-line-problem. For several pairs (d,k,l) we give algorithmic or probabilistic, combinatorial lower, and upper bounds on the largest sizes of subsets S of grid-points in the d-dimensional T \times ... \times T-grid, where T is large and no l distinct grid-points of S are contained in a k-dimensional affine or linear subspace.

A Turning Point Theory for Difference Equations

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - 12:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Jeff GeronimoSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
A Turning point is where solutions to differential equations change behavior from exponential to oscillatory. In this region approximate solutions given by the powerful WKB method break down. In a series of paper in the 30's and 40's Langer developed a transformation (the Langer transformation) that allows the development of good approximate solutions (in terms of Airy functions) in the region of the Turning point I will discuss a discrete analog of this transformation and show how it leads to nice asymptotic formulas for various orthogonal polynomials.

Algebraic models in systems biology

Series
Mathematical Biology Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Reinhard LaubenbacherVirginia Bioinformatics Institute and Department of Mathematics, Virginia Tech
Since John von Neumann introduced cellular automata in the 1950s to study self-replicating systems, algebraic models of different kinds have increased in popularity in network modeling in systems biology. Their common features are that the interactions between network nodes are described by "rules" and that the nodes themselves typically take on only finitely many states, resulting in a time-discrete dynamical system with a finite state space. Some advantages of such qualitative models are that they are typically intuitive, can accommodate noisy data, and require less information about a variety of kinetic and other parameters than differential equations models. Yet they can capture essential network features in many cases. This talk will discuss examples of different types of algebraic models of molecular networks and a common conceptual framework for their analysis.

Segregation of Granular Materials - Experiments, Modeling, Analysis and Simulations

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - 15:15 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Michael ShearerDepartment of Mathematics, North Carolina State University
Granular materials are important in a wide variety of contexts, such as avalanches and industrial processing of powders and grains. In this talk, I discuss some of the issues in understanding how granular materials flow, and especially how they tend to segregate by size. The segregation process, known scientifically as kinetic sieving, and more colorfully as The Brazil Nut Effect, involves the tendency of small particles to fall into spaces created by large particles. The small particles then force the large particles upwards, as in a shaken can of mixed nuts, in which the large Brazil nuts tend to end up near the lid. I'll describe ongoing physics experiments, mathematical modeling of kinetic sieving, and the results of analysis of the models (which are nonlinear partial differential equations). Movies of simulations and exact solutions illustrate the role of shock waves after layers of small and large particles have formed.

Correlation Decay and Deterministic Approximation Algorithms

Series
ACO Student Seminar
Time
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
ISyE executive classroom
Speaker
Prasad TetaliSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
The notion of a correlation decay, originating in statistical physics, has recently played an important role in yielding deterministic approximation algorithms for various counting problems. I will try to illustrate this technique with two examples: counting matchings in bounded degree graphs, and counting independent sets in certain subclasses of claw-free graphs.

Spectral invariants, the energy-capacity inequality, and the non-squeezing theorem

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, September 22, 2008 - 16:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Room 322, Boyd Graduate Studies UGA
Speaker
Michael UsherDepartment of Mathematics, University of Georgia
Based on work of Schwarz and Oh, information coming from a filtration in Hamiltonian Floer homology can be used to construct "spectral invariants" for paths of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of symplectic manifolds. I will show how these invariants can be used to provide a unified approach to proving various old and new results in symplectic topology, including the non-degeneracy of the Hofer metric and some of its variants; a sharp version of an inequality between the Hofer-Zehnder capacity and the displacement energy; and a generalization of Gromov's non-squeezing theorem.

Pages