Events Archive

Oct
09
2013
The Tidal Disruption Process For a White Dwarf and a Massive Black Hole
Oct
09
2013
Circadian rhythms of the microscopic green alga Ostreococcus tauri: a robust and flexible clock in all weather and seasons
Circadian clocks rely on the alternation of light and dark to synchronize to the day/night cycle. However, a consequence of weather fluctuations and seasonal variations is that the driving signal received by the clock is highly variable not only from one day to the next but also throughout the year, which may compromise robust entrainment. The microscopic green alga Ostreococcus tauri has recently emerged as a promising circadian model in the green lineage. Its clock is based on a central loop featuring orthologs of Arabidopsis TOC1 and CCA1 clock genes, yet seems to have a simpler architecture than Arabidopsis. The...
Oct
08
2013
Dynamics and Regulation of Sec-Facilitated Protein Translocation and Integral Membrane Protein Insertion
Oct
07
2013
Understanding an hourglass, and other granular flows in under an hour
Flows of particulate material, such as sand discharging in an hourglass, are ubiquitous in nature and industry. The flow and transport of granules, powders, or grains is complex and can differ considerably from that associated with a single-phase material. This presentation will highlight some unique features of granular materials (such as the discharge from an orifice) and describe some recent work at Caltech on wave propagation, booming sand dunes, and granular flow rheology.   
Oct
01
2013
Unraveling Knotted Fields
To tie a shoelace into a knot is a relatively simple affair. Tying a knot in a field is a different story, because the whole of space must be filled in a way that matches the knot being tied at the core. The possibility of such localized knottedness in a space-filling field has fascinated physicists and mathematicians ever since Kelvin’s 'vortex atom' hypothesis, in which the atoms of the periodic table were hypothesized to correspond to closed vortex loops of different knot types. Perhaps the most...
Sep
30
2013
How the Planck constant is better than a kilogram artifact, or how the history of measuring physics constants will lead to a “new” International System of metric units
Sep
27
2013
3rd Annual SESICB Meeting
We are pleased to announce that the 3rd Annual SESICB Southeastern Regional conference will be held on Friday, September 27, 2013 at Georgia Institute of Technology, located in the midtown district of Atlanta, Georgia. The conference will be held in Technology Square Research Building, Auditorium, located at 85 Fifth Street NW, Atlanta, Georgia 30332.  The meeting will begin...
Sep
24
2013
Isostatic Lattice: From Jamming to Topological Surface Phonons
Sep
23
2013
What Low Surface Brightness Galaxies Tell Us About Dark Matter
Dark matter plays an important role in our current understanding of the universe.  Low surface brightness spiral galaxies are particularly excellent laboratories for probing the dark matter distribution and placing constraints on theoretical models.  I will discuss the observational techniques used to study these galaxies and their dark matter halos.  I will also discuss how well current dark matter models describe the observations and suggest how they might need to be updated.
Sep
18
2013
Vortex Dynamics in Cerebral Aneurysms
Computational fluid dynamic simulations are providing new insights into the connections between patient-specific hemodynamic flows and the initiation, progression and treatment of cerebral aneurysms. Recent studies linking aneurysm rupture to the formation of vortices have motivated the need for a more fundamental understanding of swirling blood flow patterns and their evolution during the cardiac cycle. In this talk, I describe how dynamical systems theory is being used to advance our knowledge of vortex dynamics within cerebral aneurysms.

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