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ARCHIVES
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FALL 2006 Monday, August 28, 2006 Topic: Beginning-of-the-year College of Science & Engineering faculty and staff meeting Sponsor: COSE Monday September 11, 2006 Topic: Faculty Research Interests - Part 1 Prof. Maarten Golterman:
Sponsor: Physics and Astronomy Department
Wednesday September 13, 2006 Topic: Convex Dynamics: The invariant sets for piecewise-isometric transformations Abstract: Many real-life technical problems such
as greyscale or color printing, scheduling or production planning demand
a continuous-to-discrete transformation, a coding of data which by nature
are analog, but must be stored or transmitted in a digital version (decision
making). Such transformation or representation or quantization is erroneous
by nature, but if lucky, the cumulative error is bounded.
Speaker: Tomasz Nowicki, IBM Research
Thursday September 14, 2006 Topic: DNA replication and genome integrity: insights on a novel fission yeast Speaker: Dr. Sally Pasion, Assistant Professor,
Department of Biology, SFSU Monday September 18, 2006 Topic: Faculty Research Interests - Part II Prof. Barbara Neuhauser:
Sponsor: Physics and Astronomy Department
Wednesday September 20, 2006 Topic: Schmidt's game, its modifications, and a conjecture of Margulis Abstract: Let BA denote the set of real numbers
with bounded continued fraction coefficients. This is a set of zero
Lebesgue which is also meager (small in the sense of category). Nevertheless
it was shown by W. Schmidt in 1966 that for any sequence a_1, a_2, ...
of reals, the countable intersection of BA + a_i is nonempty. In proving
this result Schmidt introduced a powerful (yet amusing) method based
on a game for two players, which can be played on any complete metric
space. In recent work with Dmitry Kleinbock we describe variants of
Schmidt's game which make it possible to show that certain dynamically
defined sets have nonempty intersection. As a consequence we verify
a conjecture of Margulis from 1990.
Speaker: Barak Weiss, Ben Gurion University of
the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel
Thursday September 21, 2006 Topic: Working on the Margins: Speaker: Dr. Sam Pleasure, Assistant Professor,
Department of Neurology, UCSF Monday September 25, 2006 Physics & Astronomy Students D.J. Chapman:
Tersi Arias
Greg Zicarelli
Mahndisa Rigmaiden
Sponsor: Physics and Astronomy Department
Tuesday, September 26, 2006 Topic: Enhancing the Quality, Significance
and Availability of Speaker: Paul Sweeney,
executive officer for the State Board of Geologists and Geophysicists
Thursday September 28, 2006 Topic: Shedding light on the neural regulation of ecdysis in insects Speaker: Dr. Megumi Fuse, Assistant Professor,
Department of Biology, SFSU Sunday, October 1, 2006
Come to Discovery Day at SFSU Romberg
Tiburon Center!
Monday October 2, 2006 Physics & Astronomy Students Rachel Strickler
Sponsor: Physics and Astronomy Department
Tuesday, October 3, 2006 Topic: What's Mud Got to do With It?:
Speaker: James S.
Kuwabara, Hydrologist, United States Geological Survey Menlo Park Wednesday October 4, 2006 Topic: On-Line Science: Abstract: Computational science has historically meant simulation; but, there is an increasing role for analysis and mining of online scientific data. As a case in point, half of the world's astronomy data is public. The astronomy community is putting all that data on the Internet so that the Internet becomes the world's best telescope: it has the whole sky, in many bands, and in detail as good as the best 2-year-old telescopes. It is useable by all astronomers everywhere. This is the vision of the Virtual Observatory-- also called the World Wide Telescope (WWT). As one step along that path I have been working with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and federate their data in web services on the Internet, and to make it easy to ask questions of the database (see http://skyserver.sdss.org). This talk explains the rationale for the WWT, discusses how we designed the database, and talks about some data mining tasks. It also describes computer science challenges of publishing, federating, and mining scientific data, and argues that XML web servicesare key to federating diverse data sources. Speaker: Jim Gray, Microsoft Research Thursday October 5, 2006 Topic: TBA Speaker: Dr. Miguel Ramalho-Santos, Program
in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, UCSF Monday October 9, 2006 Topic: Celestial Engineering: Resonance and the Dynamical Architecture of Planetary Systems ABSTRACT: The music of the spheres can
be heard in resonant Speaker: Prof. Eugene Chiang, Univ.
of California, Berkeley
Thursday October 12, 2006 Topic: Olfactory adaptation in C. elegans Speaker: Dr. Noelle L'Etoile, Assistant Professor,
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UC Davis Monday October 30, 2006 Topic: The View from the Center of the
Universe: ABSTRACT: Cosmology is going through a scientific revolution that is creating humanity's first picture of the universe that might actually be true. This lecture explains and visualizes the evolution of the Universe, the fact that the universe is made mostly of dark matter and dark energy with visible matter making up only about half a percent of the total, and the remarkable fact that humans - and indeed intelligent life anywhere in the universe - must have a size that is in the middle of all possible size scales. Drs. Primack and Abrams alternate frequently during the presentation, presenting scientific and philosophical viewpoints. They show spectacular new images and videos, using both updated ancient symbols and the latest astronomical data and simulations. They also use humorous cartoons to illustrate how cosmological ideas have widespread cultural implications. The talk is both entertaining and educational, and it can be enjoyed by everyone from people who know nothing about modern astronomy to experts in the field. Speakers: Prof. Joel Primack, Physics
Dept., Univ. of California, Santa Cruz and Dr. Nancy Abrams
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 Topic: Mantle Plumes: Top to Bottom Speaker: Norm Sleep,
Stanford University, Dept. of Geophysics Thursday November 2, 2006 Topic: Role of beta-catenin in axonal arborization Speaker: Tamira Elul, Assistant Professor, Touro
University Thursday November 9, 2006 Topic: The Evolution of Animal Segmentation and Pattern Formation Speaker: Nipam Patel, Howard Hughes Investigator
and Professor, UC Berkeley Thursday November 16, 2006 Topic: Developmental plasticity and regeneration during vertebrate organogenesis Speaker: Dr. Didier Stainier, UCSF Wednesday December 6, 2006 Topic: Chromatic numbers, morphism complexes, and Stiefel-Whitney characteristic classes Speaker: Dmitry Feichtner-Kozlov (ETH Zürich/Universität
Bremen) Thursday, December 7, 2006 Topic: Peering into the hurricane intensity problem using NASA satellites, aircraft, and models Speaker: Dr. Scott
Braun, NASA Meteorologist and SFSU Alumnus Monday December 11, 2006 Topic: New Directions in the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence ABSTRACT: The basic premise behind SETI searches has recently been revisited in a major study. From this has come the recognition that, although searches for radio signals are still the most promising approach to SETI, searches for optical signals show substantial promise also. From this has grown a number of serious optical searches. With regard to radio searches, the latest development in our own civilization, the information age, suggests that single powerful signals may be less common than once thought, and that realistic radio SETI searches must be prepared to examine very large numbers of stars, and to examine these stars many times, since detectable signals may be transient. To this end, a major development, the Allen Array Telescope, is now funded and underway. A longer time goal of a very comprehensive SETI search system awaits further improvements in computer technology. Speakers: Dr. Frank Drake, Director,
SETI Institute Center for Study of Life in the Universe, Professor Emeritus,
Univ. of California, Santa Cruz Tuesday December 12, 2006 Topic: Image Noise Removal based on the Variational Approach and Wavelets Abstract: The background of this work is the standard problem of minimization of some total energy functional, but with specific choices of the internal energy density functions g(x). Our interest in this study is motivated by the search of effective solutions to certain inverse problems, particularly for real-time image noise removal for digital cameras. In general, depending on the objectives of the inverse problems under investigation, such as curve fitting, image noise removal, and feature extraction, the internal energy in our study is governed by g(|Lu|); with (Lu)(x) = u''(x), (Lu)(x,y) = (Grad u)(x,y), and Lu being some wavelet transform of u in any dimension. For digital image noise removal, in particular, a suitable choice of g(x) leads to the anisotropic diffusion model, the discretization of which, in turn, is relevant to the design of certain content-dependent filters, notably the bilateral filters. A natural generalization of this approach also gives rise to the notions of diffusion maps and geometric harmonics that constitute the foundation for the recent research investigations in diffusion wavelets for analyzing complex data in high dimensions. Speaker: Charles Chui(Stanford University/University
of Missouri-St. Louis)
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