Talks for the week October 20-24, 2008 (previous week)
Student Research Seminar: "An introduction to the
LHC''  | |
| Date | Monday, October 20, 2008 |
| Time | 10:00 am - 10:50 am CDT |
| Where | Room G-4 Rolla Building |
| Event Type | Lectures & Seminars |
| Presenter | Gordon Stangler |
| Sponsored by | Mathematics and Statistics Department |
| Contact | Dr. Matt Insall |
| Description | The Large Hadron Collider, the largest and most sophisticated piece of machinery ever created, was scheduled to start experimentation in mid-October, but was delayed until March 2009 due to faulty wiring. This is a discussion on how the collider processes the enormous amounts of data it produces every second. The standard model of particle physics will be discussed as well as the LHC's role in determining how models beyond the standard model will shape up. Little math and physics is needed to come and enjoy the lecture. |
| Student Research Seminar: "The effects of
dimensionality on black holes'' | |
| Date | Wednesday, October 22, 2008 |
| Time | 10:00 am - 10:50 am CDT |
| Where | Room G-4 Rolla Building |
| Event Type | Lectures & Seminars |
| Presenter | Gordon Stangler |
| Sponsored by | Mathematics and Statistics Department |
| Contact | Dr. Matt Insall |
| Description | One of the most exciting and counter intuitive aspects of string theory is the discussion of multiple dimensions curled up into compactified Calabi-Yau spaces, and their effects on gravity. The existence and properties of Calabi-Yau spaces influences both black hole production and black hole properties, in some cases dramatically. This discussion will focus on integer dimensionality. Fractal dimensions will also be covered if time permits. |
| Time Scales Seminar: "On the finiteness of the number
of eigenvalues of Jacobi operators below the essential
spectrum" | |
| Date | Wednesday, October 22, 2008 |
| Time | 4:00 pm - 4:50 pm CDT |
| Where | Room G-5 Rolla Building |
| Event Type | Lectures & Seminars |
| Presenter | Karl Ulrich |
| Sponsored by | Department of Mathematics and Statistics |
| Contact | Martin Bohner |
| More | http://web.mst.edu/~bohner/seminar/ts.html |
| Topology/Algebra Seminar: "Intro to Contact Algebras"
(Continued) | |
| Date | Thursday, October 23, 2008 |
| Time | 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm CDT |
| Where | Room G-4 Rolla Building |
| Event Type | Lectures & Seminars |
| Presenter | Dr Matt Insall |
| Sponsored by | Mathematics and Statistics |
| Contact | Robert Roe |
| Description | In [1], Dimiter Vakarelov describes the concept of a
contact algebra, which was introduced by Dimov and Vakarelov in [2]
to help formalize a notion, championed by whitehead in [3], of
"contact" between regions in space. Formally, a contact algebra is a
pair A=(B, C), where B=(B,0,1,^,v,~) is a Boolean algebra, and C is
a binary relation on the set B, such that the following
hold: (C1) xCy implies x>0; (C2) xC(yvz) if either xCy or xCz; (C3) xCy implies yCx; (C4) x^y>0 implies xCy. Examples of contact algebras include the algebra of regular closed subsets of a topological space, and the algebra of regular open subsets of a topological space. This kind of "pointless" topology, or "pointless" geometry, has applications in artificial intelligence and knowledge representation, via qualitative spatial reasoning, and represents a fertile area of interaction between classical Boolean algebra, topology and logic. [1] D. Vakarelov, Region-Basel Theory of Space: Algebras of Regions, Represent at ion Theory, and Logics, In: Mathematical Problems from Applied Logic. Logics for the XX-Ist Century. II. Edited by Dov M. Gabbay et. al. Int'l Mathematical Series, 5, Springer, 2007. [2] G. Dimov and D. Vakarelov, Contact algebras and region-based theory of space. A proximity approach. I, Fundam. Inform. (2006) [3] A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality. New York, MacMillan, 1929. |