Past

TBA

Part of the series 'What do historians of mathematics do?'

In this talk, we will survey the movement of mathematical ideas in the 17th century. We will explore, in particular, the mathematical cultures of Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Cape Town, Goa, Kyoto, Beijing, and London, as well as the journey of mathematical knowledge on a global scale. As it will be an ambitious task to complete a round-the-world history tour in an hour, the focus will be on East Asia. By employing the digital humanities technique, this presentation will use digital media to effectively show historical sources and help the audience imagine the world as a “round” entity when we discuss a global history of mathematics.

I will present a variation of positive model theory which addresses the issues of approximations of conventional geometric structures by sequences of Zariski structures as well as approximation by sequences of finite structures. In particular I am interested in applications to quantum mechanics.

I will report on a progress in defining and calculating oscillating in- tegrals of importance in quantum physics. This is based on calculating Gauss sums of order higher or equal to 2 over rings Z/mZ for very specific m. 

Some natural moduli problems give rise to stacks with infinite stabilizers. I will report on recent work with Dan Edidin where we give a canonical sequence of saturated blow-ups that makes the stabilizers finite. This generalizes earlier work in GIT by Kirwan and Reichstein, and on toric stacks by Edidin-More. Time permitting, I will also mention a recent application to generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariants by Kiem-Li-Savvas.

We construct a space of vector fields that are normal to differentiable curves in the plane. Its basis functions are defined via saddle point variational problems in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs). First, we study the properties of these basis vector fields and show how to approximate them. Then, we employ this basis to discretise shape Newton methods and investigate the impact of this discretisation on convergence rates.

We prove that the dimension of every poset whose comparability graph has maximum degree $\Delta$ is at most $\Delta\log^{1+o(1)} \Delta$. This result improves on a 30-year old bound of F\"uredi and Kahn, and is within a $\log^{o(1)}\Delta$ factor of optimal. We prove this result via the notion of boxicity. The boxicity of a graph $G$ is the minimum integer $d$ such that $G$ is the intersection graph of $d$-dimensional axis-aligned boxes. We prove that every graph with maximum degree $\Delta$ has boxicity at most $\Delta\log^{1+o(1)} \Delta$, which is also within a $\log^{o(1)}\Delta$ factor of optimal. We also show that the maximum boxicity of graphs with Euler genus $g$ is $\Theta(\sqrt{g \log g})$, which solves an open problem of Esperet and Joret and is tight up to a $O(1)$ factor. This is joint work with Alex Scott (arXiv:1804.03271).

Structure from Motion (SfM) is a problem which asks: given photos of an object from different angles, can we reconstruct the object in 3D? This problem is important in computer vision, with applications including urban planning and autonomous navigation. A key part of SfM is bundle adjustment, where initial estimates of 3D points and camera locations are refined to match the images. This results in a high-dimensional nonlinear least-squares problem, which is typically solved using the Gauss-Newton method. In this talk, I will discuss how dimensionality reduction methods such as block coordinates and randomised sketching can be used to improve the scalability of Gauss-Newton for bundle adjustment problems.

Over the past decade, the randomized singular value decomposition (RSVD)
algorithm has proven to be an efficient, reliable alternative to classical
algorithms for computing low-rank approximations in a number of applications.
However, in cases where no information is available on the singular value
decay of the data matrix or the data matrix is known to be close to full-rank,
the RSVD is ineffective. In recent years, there has been great interest in
randomized algorithms for computing full factorizations that excel in this
regime.  In this talk, we will give a brief overview of some key ideas in
randomized numerical linear algebra and introduce a new randomized algorithm for
computing a full, rank-revealing URV factorization.

I will present a procedure for perturbatively constructing the field content of gravitational theories from a convolutive product of two Yang-Mills theories. A dictionary "gravity=YM * YM" is developed, reproducing the symmetries and dynamics of the gravity theory from those of the YM theories. I will explain the unexpected, yet crucial role played by the BRST ghosts of the YM system in the construction of gravitational fields. The dictionary is expected to develop into a solution-generating technique for gravity.
 

Wikipedia has more than 40 million articles in 280 languages. It represents a decent coverage of human knowledge.
Even with its biases it can tell us a lot about what's important for people. London has an article in 238 languages and
Swansea has in 73 languages. Is London more "culturally" important than Swansea? Probably. 
We use this information and look at various factors that could help us model "cultural" importance of a city and hence
try to find the driving force behind sister city relationships.
We also look at creating cultural maps of different cities, finding the artsy/hipster, academic, political neighbourhoods of a city.

Hilbert's 19th problem asks if minimizers of "natural" variational integrals are smooth. For the past century, this problem inspired fundamental regularity results for elliptic and parabolic PDES. It also led to the construction of several beautiful counterexamples to regularity. The dichotomy of regularity vs. singularity is related to that of single PDE (the scalar case) vs. system of PDEs (the vectorial case), and low dimension vs. high dimension. I will discuss some interesting recent counterexamples to regularity in low-dimensional vectorial cases, and outstanding open problems. Parts of this are joint works with A. Figalli and O. Savin.

Stochastic analysis on a Riemannian manifold is a well developed area of research in probability theory.

We will discuss some recent developments on stochastic analysis on a manifold whose Riemannian metric evolves with time, a typical case of which is the Ricci flow. Familiar results such as stochastic parallel transport, integration by parts formula, martingale representation theorem, and functional inequalities have interesting extensions from

time independent metrics to time dependent ones. In particular, we will discuss an extension of Beckner’s inequality on the path space over a Riemannian manifold with time-dependent metrics. The classical version of this inequality includes the Poincare inequality and the logarithmic Sobolev inequality as special cases.

I will prove that the knot Floer homology group
HFK-hat(K, g-1) for a genus g fibered knot K is isomorphic to a
variant of the fixed points Floer homology of an area-preserving
representative of its monodromy. This is a joint work with Gilberto
Spano.
 

A C^infinity scheme is a version of a scheme that uses a maximal spectrum. The category of C^infinity schemes contains the category of Manifolds as a full subcategory, as well as being closed under fibre products. In other words, this category is equipped to handle intersection singularities of smooth spaces.

While originally defined in the set up of Synthetic Differential Geometry, C^infinity schemes have more recently been used to describe derived manifolds, for example, the d-manifolds of Joyce. There are applications of this in Symplectic Geometry, such as the describing the moduli space of J-holomorphic forms.

In this talk, I will describe the category of C^infinity schemes, and how this idea can be extended to manifolds with corners. If time, I will mention the applications of this in derived geometry.

The signature of a parametric curve is a sequence of tensors whose entries are iterated integrals, and they are central to the theory of rough paths in stochastic analysis.  For some special families of curves, such as polynomial paths and piecewise-linear paths, their parametrized signature tensors trace out algebraic varieties in the space of all tensors. We introduce these varieties and examine their fundamental properties, while highlighting their intimate connection to the problem of recovering a path from its signature. This is joint work with Peter Friz and Bernd Sturmfels. 

I will overview my research for a general math audience.

 First I will present the biological questions and motivate why systems biology needs computational algebraic biology and topological data analysis. Then I will present the mathematical methods I've developed to study these biological systems. Throughout I will provide examples.

Jan Sbierski

Title: On the unique evolution of solutions to wave equations

Abstract: An important aspect of any physical theory is the ability to predict the future of a system in terms of an initial configuration. This talk focuses on wave equations, which underlie many physical theories. We first present an example of a quasilinear wave equation for which unique predictability in fact fails and then turn to conditions which guarantee predictability. The talk is based on joint work with Felicity Eperon and Harvey Reall.

Andrew Krause

Title: Surprising Dynamics due to Spatial Heterogeneity in Reaction-Diffusion Systems

Abstract: Since Turing's original work, Reaction-Diffusion systems have been used to understand patterning processes during the development of a variety of organisms, as well as emergent patterns in other situations (e.g. chemical oscillators). Motivated by understanding hair follicle formation in the developing mouse, we explore the use of spatial heterogeneity as a form of developmental tuning of a Turing pattern to match experimental observations of size and wavelength modulation in embryonic hair placodes. While spatial heterogeneity was nascent in Turing's original work, much work remains to understand its effects in Reaction-Diffusion processes. We demonstrate novel effects due to heterogeneity in two-component Reaction-Diffusion systems and explore how this affects typical spatial and temporal patterning. We find a novel instability which gives rise to periodic creation, translation, and destruction of spikes in several classical reaction-diffusion systems and demonstrate that this periodic spatiotemporal behaviour appears robustly away from Hopf regimes or other oscillatory instabilities. We provide some evidence for the universal nature of this phenomenon and use it as an exemplar of the mostly unexplored territory of explicit heterogeneity in pattern formation.
 

Classical work of Jeffery from 1922 established how at low Reynolds number, ellipsoids in steady shear flow undergo periodic motion with non-uniform rotation rate, termed 'Jeffery orbits'.  I will present two problems where Jeffery orbits play a critical role in understanding the transport and aggregation of rod-shaped organisms.  I will discuss the trapping of motile chemotactic bacteria in high shear, and the sedimentation rate of negatively buoyant plankton. 

In this talk I will present a unified approach for the effect of fast rotation and dispersion as an averaging mechanism for, on the one hand, regularizing and stabilizing certain evolution equations, such as the Navier-Stokes and Burgers equations. On the other hand, I will  also present some results in which large dispersion acts as a destabilizing mechanism for the long-time dynamics of certain dissipative evolution equations, such as the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. In addition, I will present some new results concerning two- and three-dimensional turbulent flows with high Reynolds numbers in periodic domains, which exhibit ``Landau-damping" mechanism due to large spatial average in the initial data.

Single parameter persistent homology has proven to be a useful data analytic tool and single parameter persistence modules enjoy a concise description as a barcode, a complete invariant. [Bubenik, 2012] derived a topological summary closely related to the barcode called the persistence landscape which is amenable to statistical analysis and machine learning techniques.

The theory of multidimensional persistence modules is presented in [Carlsson and Zomorodian, 2009] and unlike the single parameter case where one may associate a barcode to a module, there is not an analogous complete discrete invariant in the multiparameter setting. We propose an incomplete invariant derived from the rank invariant associated to a multiparameter persistence module, which generalises the single parameter persistence landscape in [Bubenik, 2012] and satisfies similar stability properties with respect to the interleaving distance. Our invariant naturally lies in a Banach Space and so is naturally endowed with a distance function, it is also well suited to statistical analysis since there is a uniquely defined mean associated to multiple landscapes. We shall present computational examples in the 2-parameter case using the RIVET software presented in [Lesnick and Wright, 2015].

Let $f_1,\dots,f_k$ be real polynomials with no constant term and degree at most $d$. We will talk about work in progress showing that there are integers $n$ such that the fractional part of each of the $f_i(n)$ is very small, with the quantitative bound being essentially optimal in the $k$-aspect. This is based on the interplay between Fourier analysis, Diophantine approximation and the geometry of numbers. In particular, the key idea is to find strong additive structure in Fourier coefficients.

In this talk we present a framework for discretely compounding
interest rates which is based on the forward price process approach.
This approach has a number of advantages, in particular in the current
market environment. Compared to the classical Libor market models, it
allows in a natural way for negative interest rates and has superb
calibration properties even in the presence of persistently low rates.
Moreover, the measure changes along the tenor structure are simplified
significantly. This property makes it an excellent base for a
post-crisis multiple curve setup. Two variants for multiple curve
constructions will be discussed.

As driving processes we use time-inhomogeneous Lévy processes, which
lead to explicit valuation formulas for various interest rate products
using well-known Fourier transform techniques. Based on these formulas
we present calibration results for the two model variants using market
data for caps with Bachelier implied volatilities.

Tubing issues: 

- Moving a sphere in a narrow pipe

What is the force required to move an object inside a narrow elastic pipe? The constriction by the tube induces a normal force on the sphere. In the case of solid friction, the pulling force may  be simply deduced from Coulomb’s law. How does is such force modified by the addition of a lubricant? This coupled problem between elasticity and viscous flow results in a non-linear dependence of the force with the traction speed.

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- Baromorphs

When a bicycle tyre is inflated the cross section of the pipe increases much more than its circumference. Can we use this effect to induce non-isotropic growth in a plate?  We developed, through standard casting techniques, flat plates imbedded with a network of channels of controlled geometry. How are such plates deformed as pressure is applied to this network? Using a simplified mechanical model, 3D complex shapes can be programmed and dynamically actuated. 

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A very common problem in Science is that we have some Data Observations and we are interested in either approximating the function underlying the data or computing some quantity of interest about this function.  This talk will discuss what are best algorithms for such tasks and how we can evaluate the performance of any such algorithm.
 

We consider the discrete Bilaplacian on a cube in two and three dimensions with zero boundary data and prove estimates for its Green's function that are sharp up to the boundary. The main tools in the proof are Caccioppoli estimates and a compactness argument which allows one to transfer estimate for continuous PDEs to the discrete setting. One application of these estimates is to understand the so-called membrane model from statistical physics, and we will outline how these estimates can be applied to understand the phenomenon of entropic repulsion. We will also describe some connections to numerical analysis, in particular another approach to these estimates based on convergence estimates for finite difference schemes.

tba

Symplectic cohomology is a Floer cohomology invariant of compact symplectic manifolds 
with contact type boundary, or of open symplectic manifolds with a certain geometry 
at the infinity. It is a graded unital K-algebra related to quantum cohomology, 
and for cotangent bundle, it recovers the homology of a loop space. During the talk 
I will define symplectic cohomology and show some of the results on its (non) vanishing. 
Time permitting, I will also mention natural TQFT algebraic structure on it.

There is currently a large interest in the applications of the Blockchain technology. After the well known success of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, several other real-world applications of Blockchain technology have been proposed, often raising privacy concerns. We will discuss the potential of advanced cryptographic tools in relaxing the tension between pros and cons of this technology.

The Simonyi Lecture is an annual lecture under the auspices of the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Marcus du Sautoy. It is not part of the Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures series but its themes and topics touch not only on mathematics but the wider natural sciences and beyond. All are very welcome and there is no need to register.

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In this year’s Simonyi Lecture Geoffrey West discusses universal laws that govern everything from growth to mortality in plants, animals, cities and companies. These remarkable laws originate in the networks that sustain life from circulatory to social systems and help us address big, urgent questions from population explosion, urbanization, lifespan and cancer, to the accelerating pace of life and global sustainability. Why do we stop growing and live about 100 years rather than 1000, or just two like mice? Why do we sleep eight hours a day and not three like elephants? Why do all companies and people die whereas cities keep growing? How are these related to innovation, wealth creation, and “singularities”? And is any of this sustainable? 

Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests have been in fundamental questions in physics, biology and social organizations  West is a distinguished professor at the Sante Fe Institute, where he served as the president from 2004-2008. He is author of the recent best-selling book 'Scale'.

We reflect on the set-theoretic ineffability of the Cantorian Absolute of all sets. If this is done in the style of Levy and Montague in a first order manner, or Bernays using second or higher order methods this has only resulted in principles that can justify large cardinals that are `intra-constructible', that is they do not contradict the assumption that V, the universe of sets of mathematical discourse, is Gödel's universe of constructible sets, namely L.  Peter Koellner has advanced reasons that this style of reflection will only have this rather limited strength. However set theorists would dearly like to have much stronger axioms of infinity. We propose a widened structural `Global Reflection Principle' that is based on a view of sets and Cantorian absolute infinities that delivers a proper class of Woodin cardinals (and more). A mereological view of classes is used to differentiate between sets and classes. Once allied to a wider view of structural reflection, stronger conclusions are thus possible.
 

Obtaining Woodin's Cardinals

P. D. Welch, in ``Logic in Harvard: Conference celebrating the birthday of Hugh Woodin''
Eds. A. Caicedo, J. Cummings, P.Koellner & P. Larson, AMS Series, Contemporary Mathematics, vol. 690, 161-176,May 2017.

Global Reflection principles, 

           P. D. Welch, currently in the Isaac Newton Institute pre-print series, No. NI12051-SAS, 
to appear as part of the Harvard ``Exploring the Frontiers of Incompleteness'' Series volume, 201?, Ed. P. Koellner, pp28.
 

Over the past decade, the randomized singular value decomposition (RSVD) algorithm has proven to be an efficient, reliable alternative to classical algorithms for computing low-rank approximations in a number of applications. However, in cases where no information is available on the singular value decay of the data matrix or the data matrix is known to be close to full-rank, the RSVD is ineffective. In recent years, there has been great interest in randomized algorithms for computing full factorizations that excel in this regime.  In this talk, we will give a brief overview of some key ideas in randomized numerical linear algebra and introduce a new randomized algorithm for computing a full, rank-revealing URV factorization.

 A law for a group G is a non-trivial equation satisfied by all tuples of elements in G. We study the length of the shortest law holding in a finite group. We produce new short laws holding (a) in finite simple groups of Lie type and (b) simultaneously in all finite groups of small order. As an application of the latter we obtain a new lower bound on the residual finiteness growth of free groups. This talk is based on joint work with Andreas Thom.

In oil and gas reservoir simulation, standard preconditioners involve solving a restricted pressure system with AMG. Initially designed for isothermal models, this approach is often used in the thermal case. However, it does not incorporate heat diffusion or the effects of temperature changes on fluid flow through viscosity and density. We seek to develop preconditioners which consider this cross-coupling between pressure and temperature. In order to study the effects of both pressure and temperature on fluid and heat flow, we first consider a model of non-isothermal single phase flow through porous media. By focusing on single phase flow, we are able to isolate the properties of the pressure-temperature subsystem. We present a numerical comparison of different preconditioning approaches including block preconditioners.

Algebraic quantum field theories (AQFTs) are traditionally described as functors that assign algebras (of observables) to spacetime regions. These functors are required to satisfy a list of physically motivated axioms such as commutativity of the multiplication for spacelike separated regions. In this talk we will show that AQFTs can be described as algebras over a colored operad. This operad turns out to be interesting as it describes an interpolation between non-commutative and commutative algebraic structures. We analyze our operad from a homotopy theoretical perspective and determine a suitable resolution that describes the commutative behavior up to coherent homotopies. We present two concrete constructions of toy-models of algebras over the resolved operad in terms of (i) forming cochains on diagrams of simplicial sets (or stacks) and (ii) orbifoldization of equivariant AQFTs.

With the advent of large-scale data and the concurrent development of robust scientific tools to analyze them, important discoveries are being made in a wider range of scientific disciplines than ever before. A field of research that has gained substantial attention recently is the analytical, large-scale study of human behavior, where many analytical and statistical techniques are applied to various behavioral data from online social media, markets, and mobile communication, enabling meaningful strides in understanding the complex patterns of humans and their social actions.

The importance of such research originates from the social nature of humans, an essential human nature that clearly needs to be understood to ultimately understand ourselves. Another essential human nature is that they are creative beings, continually expressing inspirations or emotions in various physical forms such as a picture, sound, or writing. As we are successfully probing the social behaviors humans through science and novel data, it is natural and potentially enlightening to pursue an understanding of the creative nature of humans in an analogous way. Further, what makes such research even more potentially beneficial is that human creativity has always been in an interplay of mutual influence with the scientific and technological advances, being supplied with new tools and media for creation, and in return providing valuable scientific insights.

In this talk I will present two recent ongoing works on the mathematical analysis of color contrast in painting and measuring novelty in piano music.

I will present a recent result on the structural stability of 3-D axisymmetric subsonic flows with nonzero swirl for the steady compressible Euler–Poisson system in a cylinder supplemented with non-small boundary data. A special Helmholtz decomposition of the velocity field is introduced for 3-D axisymmetric flow with a nonzero swirl (=angular momentum density) component. This talk is based on a joint work with S. Weng (Wuhan University, China).
 

 We provide in this work a robust solution theory for random rough differential equations of mean field type

$$

dX_t = V\big( X_t,{\mathcal L}(X_t)\big)dt + \textrm{F}\bigl( X_t,{\mathcal L}(X_t)\bigr) dW_t,

$$

where $W$ is a random rough path and ${\mathcal L}(X_t)$ stands for the law of $X_t$, with mean field interaction in both the drift and diffusivity. Propagation of chaos results for large systems of interacting rough differential equations are obtained as a consequence, with explicit convergence rate. The development of these results requires the introduction of a new rough path-like setting and an associated notion of controlled path. We use crucially Lions' approach to differential calculus on Wasserstein space along the way. This is a joint work with I. Bailleul and R. Catellier.

Joint work with I. Bailleul (Rennes) and R. Catellier (Nice)

(joint work with Françoise Dal'Bo and Andrea Sambusetti)

Given a finitely generated group G acting properly on a metric space X, the exponential growth rate of G with respect to X measures "how big" the orbits of G are. If H is a subgroup of G, its exponential growth rate is bounded above by the one of G. In this work we are interested in the following question: what can we say if H and G have the same exponential growth rate? This problem has both a combinatorial and a geometric origin. For the combinatorial part, Grigorchuck and Cohen proved in the 80's that a group Q = F/N (written as a quotient of the free group) is amenable if and only if N and F have the same exponential growth rate (with respect to the word length). About the same time, Brooks gave a geometric interpretation of Kesten's amenability criterion in terms of the bottom of the spectrum of the Laplace operator. He obtained in this way a statement analogue to the one of Grigorchuck and Cohen for the deck automorphism group of the cover of certain compact hyperbolic manifolds. These works initiated many fruitful developments in geometry, dynamics and group theory. We focus here one the class of Gromov hyperbolic groups and propose a framework that encompasses both the combinatorial and the geometric point of view. More precisely we prove that if G is a hyperbolic group acting properly co-compactly on a metric space X which is either a Cayley graph of G or a CAT(-1) space, then the growth rate of H and G coincide if and only if H is co-amenable in G.  In addition if G has Kazhdan property (T) we prove that there is a gap between the growth rate of G and the one of its infinite index subgroups.

Abstract:
We present a numerical investigation of stochastic transport for the damped and driven incompressible 2D Euler fluid flows. According to Holm (Proc Roy Soc, 2015) and Cotter et al. (2017), the principles of transformation theory and multi-time homogenisation, respectively, imply a physically meaningful, data-driven approach for decomposing the fluid transport velocity into its drift and stochastic parts, for a certain class of fluid flows. We develop a new methodology to implement this velocity decomposition and then numerically integrate the resulting stochastic partial differential equation using a finite element discretisation. We show our numerical method is consistent.
Numerically, we perform the following analyses on this velocity decomposition. We first perform uncertainty quantification tests on the Lagrangian trajectories by comparing an ensemble of realisations of Lagrangian trajectories driven by the stochastic differential equation, and the Lagrangian trajectory driven by the ordinary differential equation. We then perform uncertainty quantification tests on the resulting stochastic partial differential equation by comparing the coarse-grid realisations of solutions of the stochastic partial differential equation with the ``true solutions'' of the deterministic fluid partial differential equation, computed on a refined grid. In these experiments, we also investigate the effect of varying the ensemble size and the number of prescribed stochastic terms. Further experiments are done to show the uncertainty quantification results "converge" to the truth, as the spatial resolution of the coarse grid is refined, implying our methodology is consistent. The uncertainty quantification tests are supplemented by analysing the L2 distance between the SPDE solution ensemble and the PDE solution. Statistical tests are also done on the distribution of the solutions of the stochastic partial differential equation. The numerical results confirm the suitability of the new methodology for decomposing the fluid transport velocity into its drift and stochastic parts, in the case of damped and driven incompressible 2D Euler fluid flows. This is the first step of a larger data assimilation project which we are embarking on. This is joint work with Colin Cotter, Dan Crisan, Darryl Holm and Igor Shevchenko.
 

We study Brownian motion and stochastic parallel transport on Perelman's almost Ricci flat manifold,  whose dimension depends on a parameter $N$ unbounded from above. By taking suitable projections we construct sequences of space-time Brownian motion and stochastic parallel transport whose limit as $N\to \infty$ are the corresponding objects for the Ricci flow. In order to make precise this process of passing to the limit, we study the martingale problems for the Laplace operator on Perelman’s manifold and for the horizontal Laplacian on the corresponding orthonormal frame bundle.

As an application, we see how the characterizations of two-sided bounds on the Ricci curvature established by A. Naber applied to Perelman's manifold lead to the inequalities that characterize solutions of the Ricci flow discovered by Naber and Haslhofer.

This is joint work with Robert Haslhofer.

I will review the concept of duality in quantum systems from the 2D Ising model to superconformal field theories in higher dimensions. Using some of these latter theories, I will explain how a generalized concept of duality emerges: these are dualities not between full theories but between algebraically well-defined sub-sectors of strikingly different theories.

TBC

An interval exchange transformation is a map  of an 
interval to 
itself that rearranges a finite number of intervals by translations.  They 
appear among other places in the 
subject of rational billiards and flows of translation surfaces. An 
interesting phenomenon is that an IET may have dense orbits that are not 
uniformly distributed, a property known as non unique ergodicity.  I will 
talk about this phenomenon and present some new results about how common 
this is. Joint work with Jon Chaika.

The uniformly degenerate elliptic equation is a special class of degenerate elliptic equations. It appears frequently in many important geometric problems. For example, the Beltrami-Laplace operator on conformally compact manifolds is uniformly degenerate elliptic, and the minimal surface equation in the hyperbolic space is also uniformly degenerate elliptic. In this talk, we discuss the global regularity for this class of equations in the classical Holder spaces. We also discuss some applications.

The restricted isometry property is arguably the most prominent tool in the theory of compressive sensing. In its classical version, it features l_2 norms as inner and outer norms. The modified version considered in this talk features the l_1 norm as the inner norm, while the outer norm depends a priori on the distribution of the random entries populating the measurement matrix.  The modified version holds for a wider class of random matrices and still accounts for the success of sparse recovery via basis pursuit and via iterative hard thresholding. In the special case of Gaussian matrices, the outer norm actually reduces to an l_2 norm. This fact allows one to retrieve results from the theory of one-bit compressive sensing in a very simple way. Extensions to one-bit matrix recovery are then straightforward.
 

The 5th Oxford Neuron and Brain Mechanics Workshop will take place on 22 and 23 March 2018, in St Hugh’s College, Oxford. The event includes international and UK speakers from a wide variety of disciplines, collectively working on Traumatic Brain Injury, Brain Mechanics and Trauma, and Neurons research.

The aim is to foster new collaborative partnerships and facilitate the dissemination of ideas from researchers in different fields related to the study of brain mechanics, including pathology, injury and healing.

Focussing on a multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach to aspects of brain mechanics research, the workshop will present topics from areas including Medical, Neuroimaging, Neuromechanics and mechanics, Neuroscience, Neurobiology and commercial applications within medicine.

This workshop is the latest in a series of events established by the members of the International Brain Mechanics and Trauma Lab (IBMTL) initiative *(www.brainmech.ox.ac.uk) in collaboration with St Hugh’s College, Oxford.

Speakers

Professor Lee Goldstein MD, Boston University
Professor David Sharp, Imperial College London
Dr Ari Ercole, University of Cambridge
Professor Jochen Guck, BIOTEC Dresden
Dr Elisa Figallo, Finceramica SPA
Dr Mike Jones, Cardiff University
Professor Ellen Kuhl, Stanford University
Mr Tim Lawrence, University of Oxford
Professor Zoltan Molnar, University of Oxford
Dr Fatiha Nothias, University Pierre & Marie Curie
Professor Stam Sotiropoulos, University of Nottingham
Professor Michael Sutcliffe, University of Cambridge
Professor Alain Goriely, University of Oxford
Professor Antoine Jérusalem, University of Oxford

Everybody is welcome to attend but (free) registration is required.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/5th-oxford-international-workshop-on-neu…

Students and postdocs are invited to exhibit a poster.

For further information on the workshop, or exhibiting a poster, please contact: @email

The workshop is generously supported by the ERC’s ‘Computational Multiscale Neuron Mechanics’ grant (COMUNEM, grant # 306587) and St Hugh’s College, Oxford.

The International Brain Mechanics and Trauma Lab, based in Oxford, is an international collaboration on projects related to brain mechanics and trauma. This multidisciplinary team is motivated by the need to study brain cell and tissue mechanics and its relation with brain functions, diseases or trauma.

The BSHM meeting on “The history of computing beyond the computer” looks at the people and the science underpinning modern software and programming, from Charles Babbage’s design notation to forgotten female pioneers.

Registration will be £32.50 for standard tickets, £22.00 for BSHM members and Oxford University staff, and £6.50 for students. This will include tea/coffee and biscuits at break times, but not lunch, as we wanted to keep the registration fee to a minimum. A sandwich lunch or a vegetarian sandwich lunch can be ordered separately on the Eventbrite page. If you have other dietary requirements, please use the contact button at the bottom of this page. There is also a café in the Mathematical Institute that sells hot food at lunchtime, alongside sandwiches and snacks, and there are numerous places to eat within easy walking distance.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-history-of-computing-beyond-the-comp…

Programme

21 March 2018

17:00 Andrew Hodges, University of Oxford, author of "Alan Turing: The Enigma” on 'Alan Turing: soft machine in a hard world.’
http://www.turing.org.uk/index.html

22 March 2018

9:00 Registration

9:30 Adrian Johnstone, Royal Holloway University of London, on Charles Babbage's design notation
http://blog.plan28.org/2014/11/babbages-language-of-thought.html

10:15 Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, Universitetet i Agder, on early numerical methods in the analysis of the Northern Lights
https://www.uia.no/kk/profil/reinhars

11:00 Tea/Coffee

11:30 Julianne Nyhan, University College London, on Father Busa and humanities data
https://archelogos.hypotheses.org/135

12:15 Cliff Jones, University of Newcastle, on the history of programming language semantics
http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/cliff.jones/

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Mark Priestley, author of "ENIAC in Action, Making and Remaking the Modern Computer"
http://www.markpriestley.net

14:45 Marie Hicks, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of "Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge In Computing"
http://mariehicks.net

15:30 Tea/Coffee

16:00 Panel discussion to include Martin Campbell-Kelly (Warwick), Andrew Herbert (TNMOC), and Ursula Martin (Oxford)

17:00 End of conference

Co-located event

23 March, in Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Symposium for the History and Philosophy of Programming, HaPoP 2018, Call for extended abstracts
http://www.hapoc.org/node/241

Andrew Hodges, University of Oxford, author of "Alan Turing: The Enigma” on 'Alan Turing: soft machine in a hard world.’

http://www.turing.org.uk/index.html

This event is free but you need to register:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-history-of-computing-beyond-the-comp… 2018