The Nottingham Group of a finite field is an object of great interest in profinite group theory, owing to its extreme structural properties and the relative ease with which explicit computations can be made within it. In this talk I shall explore both of these themes, before describing some new work on efficient short-word approximation in the Nottingham Group, based on the profinite Solovay-Kitaev procedure. Time permitting, I shall give an application to the dynamics of compositions of random power series.

This talk concerns the numerical solution of elliptic partial differential equations posed on general smooth surfaces by the Closest Point Method. Based on the closest point representation of the surface, we formulate an embedding equation in a narrow band surrounding the surface, then discretize it using standard finite differences and interpolation schemes. Numerical convergence of the method will be discussed. In order to solve the resulting large sparse linear systems, we propose a specific geometric multigrid method which makes use of the closest point representation of the surface.
 

We discuss the iterative solution of a finite element discretisation of the magma dynamics equations.  These equations share features of the Stokes equations, however, Elman-Silvester-Wathen (ESW) preconditioners for the magma dynamics equations are not optimal. By introducing a new field, the compaction pressure, into the magma dynamics equations, we have developed a new three-field preconditioner which is optimal in terms of problem size and less sensitive to physical parameters compared to the ESW preconditioners.

 Voevodsky asked what the topology of the universe is in a 
continuous interpretation of type theory, such as Johnstone's 
topological topos. We can actually give a model-independent answer: it 
is indiscrete. I will briefly introduce "intensional Martin-Loef type 
theory" (MLTT) and formulate and prove this in type theory (as opposed 
to as a meta-theorem about type theory). As an application or corollary, 
I will also deduce an analogue of Rice's Theorem for the universe: the 
universe (the large type of all small types) has no non-trivial 
extensional, decidable properties. Topologically this is the fact that 
it doesn't have any clopens other than the trivial ones.