Thu, 03 Mar 2016

14:00 - 15:00
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, nr Didcot

Sparse iterative solvers on GPGPUs and applications

Dr Salvatore Filippone
(Cranfield University)
Abstract

We will review the basic building blocks of iterative solvers, i.e. sparse matrix-vector multiplication, in the context of GPU devices such 
as the cards by NVIDIA; we will then discuss some techniques in preconditioning by approximate inverses, and we will conclude with an 
application to an image processing problem from the biomedical field.

Mon, 22 Feb 2016
14:15
L4

The Gromoll filtration, Toda brackets and positive scalar curvature

OAC-manifolds meeting: Diarmuid Crowley
(Aberdeen)
Abstract
An exotic (n+1)-sphere has disc of origin D^k if k is the smallest integer such that some clutching diffeomorphism of the n-disc which builds the exotic sphere can be written as an (n-k)-parameter family of diffeomorphisms of the k-disc.
 
In this talk I will present a new method for constructing exotic spheres with small disc of origin via Toda brackets.  
 
This method gives exotic spheres in all dimensions 8j+1 and 8j+2 with disc of origin 6 and with Dirac operators of non-zero index (such spheres are often called "Hitchin spheres").
 
I will also briefly discuss implications of our results for the space of positive scalar curvature metrics on spin manifolds of dimension 6 and higher, and in particular the relationship of this project to the work of Botvinnik, Ebert and Randal-Williams.
 
This is part of joint work with Thomas Schick and Wolfgang Steimle.
Mon, 15 Feb 2016
16:30
C1

Partition regularity of $x+y=z^2$ over $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$

Sofia Lindqvist
((Oxford University))
Abstract

Consider the following question. Given a $k$-colouring of the positive integers, must there exist a solution to $x+y=z^2$ with $x,y,z$ all the same colour (and not all equal to 2)? Using $10$ colours a counterexample can be given to show that the answer is "no". If one instead asks the same question over $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ for some prime $p$, the answer turns out to be "yes", provided $p$ is large enough in terms of the number of colours used.  I will talk about how to prove this using techniques developed by Ben Green and Tom Sanders. The main ingredients are a regularity lemma, a counting lemma and a Ramsey lemma.

Mon, 01 Feb 2016
16:30
C1

Linear (in)equalities in primes

Aled Walker
((Oxford University))
Abstract

Many theorems and conjectures in prime number theory are equivalent to finding solutions to certain linear equations in primes -- witness Goldbach's conjecture, the twin prime conjecture, Vinogradov's theorem, finding k-term arithmetic progressions, etcetera. Classically these problems were attacked using Fourier analysis -- the 'circle' method -- which yielded some success, provided that the number of variables was sufficiently large. More recently, a long research programme of Ben Green and Terence Tao introduced two deep and wide-ranging techniques -- so-called 'higher order Fourier analysis' and the 'transference principle' -- which reduces the number of required variables dramatically. In particular, these methods give an asymptotic formula for the number of k-term arithmetic progressions of primes up to X. In this talk we will give a brief survey of these techniques, and describe new work of the speaker, partially ongoing, which applies the Green-Tao machinery to count prime solutions to certain linear inequalities in primes -- a 'higher order Davenport-Heilbronn method'. 

Mon, 25 Jan 2016
16:30
C1

Iterating the algebraic étale-Brauer obstruction

Francesca Balestrieri
((Oxford University))
Abstract

A question by Poonen asks whether iterating the étale-Brauer set can give a finer obstruction set. We tackle the algebraic version of Poonen's question and give, in many cases, a negative answer.

Fri, 04 Mar 2016

10:00 - 11:00
L4

Fault prediction from time series data

Mike Newman
(Thales)
Abstract

On the railway network, for example, there is a large base of installed equipment with a useful life of many years.  This equipment has condition monitoring that can flag a fault when a measured parameter goes outside the permitted range.  If we can use existing measurements to predict when this would occur, preventative maintenance could be targeted more effectively and faults reduced.  As an example, we will consider the current supplied to a points motor as a function of time in each operational cycle.

Fri, 26 Feb 2016

10:00 - 11:00
L4

Ionic liquids - a challenge to our understanding of the liquid state

Susan Perkin
(Department of Chemistry)
Abstract
Ionic liquids are salts, composed solely of positive and negative ions, which are liquid under ambient conditions. Despite an increasing range of successful applications, there remain fundamental challenges in understanding the intermolecular forces and propagation of fields in ionic liquids. 
I am an experimental scientist, and in my laboratory we study thin films of liquids. The aim is to discover their molecular and surface interactions and fluid properties in confinement. In this talk I will describe the experiments and show some results which have led to better understanding of ionic liquids. I will then show some measurements which currently have no understanding attached! 
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