Doug Wright
Department of Mathematics
Drexel University
Title:
Nonlinear waves: Where do they come from? What do they do?
Abstract:
Not all systems react to input in a linear way. That is to say, it is not always the case that if you put twice (or thrice) as much into the system, you get twice (or thrice) as much out. It might be that if you put twice (or thrice) as much in, you get four times (nine times!) as much out. Or the relationship between in and out might be yet more complicated. It turns out that this sort of "non-linearity" is extremely important when investigating the propagation of signals and waves in many different physical settings, be they on the surface of the ocean or in an axon in your nervous system. In this talk, I will discuss the crucial role non-linearity has in the generation and behavior of these types of waves, as well as giving many examples where these waves are useful (in fiber optic communications), catastrophic (tsunamis) or just plain strange.
4:00 PM
Thursday, February 18th
Julia Arciero
Department of Mathematics
University of Pittsburg
Analyzing the role of probiotics and the inflammatory response in necrotizing enterocolitis.
4:00 PM
Friday, March 19th
Victor Matveev
Department of Mathematical Sciences
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Quantifying Calcium Sensitivity of Synaptic Neurotransmitter Release.
3:00 PM
SC 183
Thursday, March 25th
Artie Sherman
National Institudes of Health (NIH)
Mathematical Modeling and Dynamical Systems Analysis of Pancreatic Beta-Cell Oscillations
4:00 PM
Friday, April 2nd
Peter Petraitis
Department of Mathematics
University of Pennsylvania
From forest to grasslands and from mussel beds to seaweed stands: multiple stable states and how different communities can co-occur in the same ecosystem
3:00 PM
SC 183
Friday, April 9th
(Rescheduled from Feb 26th)
Mike Sears
Department of Biology
Bryn Mawr College
Toward a spatially-explicit theory of behavioral thermoregulation, or how I gave up lizards for electrons
Abstract
A pressing question for ecologists is to understand the responses of organisms to climate change. A central focus for this problem lies in predicting present and future geographical ranges of species. Unfortunately, much of the basis for predicting ranges relies on theories of behavioral thermoregulation that were constructed under the implicit assumption that the spatial and thermal structure of environments have a negligible effect on the ability of organisms to thermoregulate. Here, I present a set of simulation models that relax this basic assumption. Results from these models suggest that fine grained patterns in the spatial arrangements of environmental temperatures can have drastic effects on the thermoregulatory performance of individuals, which likely contribute to the poor performance of currently implemented models of species ranges.
3:00 PM
SC 183
Friday, April 16th
Kathleen Hoffman
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Maryland Baltimore County
Modeling the Central Pattern Generator for Lamprey Locomotion
3:00 PM
SC 183