Past Events
Scientific, Seminar
DG-MP-PDE Seminar: Volume Growth, Brownian motion, and Conservation of the heat kernel on a Riemannian manifold
October 6, 2009
University of British Columbia
Abstract: The minimal heat kernel on a Riemannian manifold is conservative if it integrates to 1. If this is the case, the manifold is said to be stochastically complete. Since the heat kernel is the transition density function of Brownian motion, a...
Scientific, Seminar
SCAIM Seminar: Reconstruction Techniques for Inverse Problems in Microscopy and Tomography
October 6, 2009
University of British Columbia
Abstract: We address the task of reconstructing images corrupted by Poisson noise, which is important in various applications, such as fluorescence microscopy, positronemission- tomography (PET) or astronomical imaging. We focus on reconstruction...
Scientific, Seminar
Discrete Math Seminar: Skew Schur Functions of Sums of Fat Staircases
October 6, 2009
University of British Columbia
We introduce the notion of a fat staircase and define when a skew diagram D is a sum of fat staircases. We give a collection of Schur-positivity results that may be obtained from each sum of fat staircases. Further, we determine conditions on when a...
Scientific, Seminar
Math Biology Seminar: Models and manipulations: Min oscillations inside an E. coli bacterium
October 6, 2009
University of British Columbia
Subcellular oscillations of Min proteins within individual cells of E. coli serve to localize division to midcell. While significant progress has been made to understand the Min oscillation both experimentally and in modeling, I will present three...
Scientific, Seminar
A Graph of Matrices
October 2, 2009
University of Regina
Free probability is a variation of probability theory for matrix valued random variables. It has many aspects: combinatorial, analytic, theoretical, and applied. I will discuss a problem on a graph of matrices arising from a random matrix problem in...
Scientific, Seminar
Number Theory Seminar: On the Báez-Duarte criterion for the Riemann hypothesis
October 1, 2009
University of British Columbia
Define $e_{n}(t)=\{t/n\}$. Let $d_N$ denote the distance in $L^2(0,\infty ; t^{-2}dt)$ between the indicator function of $[1,\infty[$ and the vector space generated by $e_1, \dots, e_N$. A theorem of B\'aez-Duarte (2003) states that the Riemann...
Scientific, Seminar
Number Theory Seminar: Linear (in)dependence of zeros of L-functions
October 1, 2009
University of British Columbia
In this hastily prepared talk, I will describe some preliminary results of Nathan Ng and myself that concern linear dependencies (with integer coefficients) among zeros of Dirichlet L-functions. We can show, for example, that given a Dirichlet L...
Scientific, Seminar
Probability Seminar: The Infinite rate mutually catalytic branching model
September 30, 2009
University of British Columbia
Scientific, Seminar
SCAIM Seminar: Numerical Approaches to Solving the Problems of Utilising Wood
September 29, 2009
University of British Columbia
Wood is nature’s solution to the structural and hydraulic problems faced by the World’s largest living organisms-trees. The solutions to these problems are both elegant and energy efficient and are starting to inspire new (biomimetic) approaches to...
Scientific, Seminar
DG-MP-PDE Seminar: On an isoperimetric inequality for a Schroedinger operator depending on the curvature of a loop
September 29, 2009
University of British Columbia
Let \gamma be a smooth closed curve of length 2\pi in R^3, and let \kappa(s) be its curvature regarded as a function of arc length s. We associate with this curve the one-dimensional Schroedinger operator H_\gamma = -d^2/ds^2 + \kappa^2(s) acting on...