Colloquia in the Department of Mathematics
Upcoming colloquia:
- May 9, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Jeremiah Heller, University of Western Ontario, Interactions of geometry and topology in cohomology
Given a complex algebraic variety one can associate to it a variety of interesting cohomological invariants. For example the "classical" topological invariants such as singular cohomology or complex K-theory or more geometric invariants such as motivic cohomology or algebraic K-theory. In between there are also invariants such as morphic cohomology defined by Friedlander-Lawson and semi-topological K-theory defined by Friedlander-Walker. In this talk we will discuss these invariants and some interesting relations between them.
- May 27, 2008 at 16:00, in LaSells Stewart Center: (Lonseth Lecture) John Lee, Weierstrass Approximation Theorems
Weierstrass published his celebrated approximation theorems in July of 1885. I will start with brief speculations on the antecedents of Weierstrass' work and move on to a selective survey of results and/or proofs related to Weierstrass' original theorems. The survey will include results and/or proofs of Lebesgue, Landau, de la Vallee Poussin, Bernstein, Korovkin, and Stone, as time permits.
- May 30, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Brigitte Servatius, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Combinatorial rigidity and the molecular conjecture
Graph theory has successfully been used by several authors to predict protein flexibility, in particular, combinatorial rigidity is an important tool. The most important new result in combinatorial rigidity is the characterization of global rigidity while one of the most intriguing open problems is called "the molecular conjecture". We will explain the state of the art in the progress toward the conjecture and the implications of recent progress in rigidity theory, including the concept of combinatorial allostery, toward understanding the behavior of molecules.
- Jun 6, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Dargan Frierson, University of Washington, A Hierarchy of Mathematical Models for Studying the Earth's Climate
The Earth's climate is a remarkably complex physical system; constructing models to study it is a difficult task which requires parameterization of a multitude of physical processes. Not surprisingly, such models quickly become difficult to understand due to the vast number of nonlinear processes that are active in them.
Therefore, an important line of work in atmospheric science involves the development and use of intelligently chosen idealized models, designed to better understand the results of comprehensive climate models as well as the fundamental dynamics of atmospheric circulations. These models are simpler to interpret than the full climate models, but hopefully can still provide insight into the dynamics of their more complex cousins.
In this talk, we give a summary of some topical problems in climate dynamics, and the hierarchical modeling approach we have used to study them. We will discuss physical problems such as the predicted poleward shift of the midlatitude jet stream with global warming, and changes in energy fluxes and temperature gradients in the atmosphere. Focusing on the effect of moist convection on these issues, we present a variety of idealized models that we have used to study these problems. These range from models of 3-D fluid motion on a rotating sphere in the presence of condensation, to highly idealized 1-D PDE models of diffusive energy transport.
Past colloquia (this academic year):
- Apr 25, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Lorenz Schwachhoefer, University of Dortmund, Manifolds with lower curvature bounds
- Apr 15, 2008 at 16:00, in *In Eugene* Willamette 100 (UO): (Colloquium) Thomas A. Schmidt, Euclidean triangles and affine diffeomorphisms of Riemann surfaces
- Mar 14, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Konstantin Lipnikov, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mimetic discretization method for PDEs
- Mar 7, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Gautam Iyer, Stanford University, A stochastic Lagrangian approach to the Navier-Stokes equations.
- Feb 29, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Dusan Repovs, University of Ljubljana, The Bing-Borsuk and the Busemann Conjectures
- Feb 15, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Matthias Beck, San Francisco State University, Combinatorial Reciprocity Theorems
- Feb 1, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Rosa Orellana, Dartmouth College, Descents and Peaks
- Jan 11, 2008 at 16:00, in Kidder 364: (Colloquium) Dušan Repovš, University of Ljubljana, This colloquium by Dušan Repovš is canceled.
- Nov 30, 2007 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Jim Brown, California Institute of Technology, Dirichlet's class number formula and generalizations
- Nov 16, 2007 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Bret Benesh, Harvard University, Some Maximal Subgroups of Symmetric Groups
- Nov 9, 2007 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) Erin McNicholas, Willamette University, From One-Face Maps to Planar Trees: An Investigation of the Eigenvalue Statistics of Random Three-Regular Graphs
- Nov 2, 2007 at 16:00, in Kidd 364: (Colloquium) John Smillie, Cornell U., Polygonal Billiards and Surface Topology