Seminars and Colloquiums
for the week of September 14, 2009
Speaker:
Mr. Fei Xing, Monday
Dr. Carrie Manore, Tuesday
Mr. Nick Gewecke, Tuesday
Mr. Jared Bunn, Wednesday
Asst Prof Remus Nicoara, Wednesday
Dr. Blair D. Sullivan, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Wednesday
Dr. Alex Freire, Wednesday
Mr. Jared Bunn, Friday
Monday, September 14
PROBABILITY SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: HBB 132
SPEAKER: Mr. Fei Xing
TITLE: Markov Chains and Mixing Times: Approaches and Examples" (II)
Tuesday, September 15
NIMBioS SEMINAR
TIME: 3:30 p.m.
ROOM: 4th Floor conference room
SPEAKER: Dr. Carrie Manore, Oregon State University and Los Alamos Nat’l. Laboratory
TITLE: “How Mathematical Models Can Help Control the Spread of Animal Diseases”
ABSTRACT: Animal diseases, such as foot-and-mouth disease and avian flu, are
increasingly important in world economics, national security, and biodiversity. Rinderpest is an important animal disease related to human measles. It is a highly virulent and often lethal virus affecting cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep, and pigs. Rinderpest pandemics have caused wide-spread herd loss in Europe and Africa. If the disease enters the United States, it could be devastating to animal agriculture and the economy. To help prepare for this possibility, we create a spatially explicit stochastic model for multi-host animal diseases to better understand their spread in the United States. We explore the effectiveness of mitigation strategies such as quarantine, vaccination, and culling in a case study on rinderpest. Spread of rinderpest is modeled using county-level data and animal transportation rates to capture the within-county and between-county behavior. We compare different mitigation strategies and analyze the sensitivity of final epidemic size to these strategies in order to minimize loss due to an outbreak of rinderpest. Generalizations of control strategies for rinderpest are effective for other contagious animal diseases, such as foot and mouth disease.
www.nimbios.org
GRADUATE STUDENT FORUMS
TIME: 3:35 – 4:35 P.M.
ROOM: Temple 303
SPEAKER: Mr. Nick Gewecke
TITLE: "LaTeX Seminar #1 - Introduction to LaTeX"
ABSTRACT: LaTeX is an excellent way to typeset mathematics, whether it be for journal articles, homework, books, or dissertations. In this talk, we will discuss everything you need to know to get started using LaTeX, as well as why LaTeX tends to be preferable to something like MathType in Word. We will start with what needs to be installed on your computer in order to utilize LaTeX, and proceed through general document structure and how to include mathematics. Finally, we will talk about how to generate output files such as PostScript (.ps) or Portable Document Format (.pdf).
Wednesday, September 16
COARSE GEOMETRY SEMINAR
TIME: 11:15 – 12:05 p.m.
ROOM: HBB 112
SPEAKER: Mr. Jared Bunn
TITLE: "Other Characterizations of Property A"
ABSTRACT: We discuss some equivalent definitions of Yu's Property A for discrete metric spaces of bounded geometry. We are particularly interested in the characterization given by Nigel Higson and John Roe. We will also discuss Property A in terms of partitions of unity. This definition is similar to the one by Roe and Higson, but is a bit easier to understand for topologists. The main source of the proofs of equivalence comes from an expository paper by Rufus Willett.
ANALYSIS SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 – 4:30 p.m.
ROOM: AC 113
SPEAKER: Remus Nicoara
TITLE: “A finiteness result for lattices of matrix algebras, III"
ABSTRACT: We prove a finiteness result for 2x3 lattices of matrix algebras satisfying a certain "large relative commutant" condition. As a consequence, we obtain finiteness results for the standard invariants of large classes of subfactors.
JUNIOR COLLOQUIUM
TIME: 3:35 – 4:35 p.m.
ROOM: HBB 102
SPEAKER: Dr. Blair D. Sullivan, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
TITLE: “Why Graph Theory is Strongly-Connected”
ABSTRACT: Worried about the job market, but still want to be a mathematician? Perhaps graph theory is just what you need. Come hear how it prepares you for a diverse set of careers - including matchmaking, mapmaking, and truck driving! On a more serious note, this talk will provide a motivated introduction to graph theory, highlighting several active research areas, connections to other branches of mathematics, and real-world applications (including Facebook, as illustrated above).
***Free pizza will be available at 3:15 in AC113***
GEOMETRIC ANALYSIS SEMINAR
(Optimal Transportation)
TIME: 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
ROOM: HBB 102
SPEAKER: Alex Freire
TITLE: “Brenier's theorem on rearrangements of vector-valued functions”
(Chapter 3 of Villani's 2003 textbook)
Friday, September 18
TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
TIME: 11:15 – 12:05 p.m., Friday, September 18, 2009
ROOM: JHB 12
SPEAKER: Mr.Jared Bunn
TITLE: “Introduction to Jones polynomial II”
If you are interested in giving or arranging a talk for one of our seminars or colloquiums, please review our calendar.
If you have questions, or a date you would like to confirm, please contact Dr. Steve Wise.
Week of:
Past notices:
Seminars from 2008-2009 academic year
Seminars from 2007-2008 academic year
Seminars from 2006-2007 academic year