Events Archive

Oct
23
2013
Drinking, Clapping, and Bouncing fluids
I will discuss three fluid-mechanics problems: fluid motions related to drinking, clapping, and bouncing, which you might have experienced or observed once during daily activities....
Oct
21
2013
2012 Physics Nobel Laureate: Superposition, Entanglement, and Raising Schrödinger’s Cat
Oct
21
2013
Single-atom optical clocks*
With the availability of spectrally pure lasers and the ability to precisely measure optical frequencies, it appears the era of optical atomic clocks has begun.  At the expense of signal-to-noise ratio, in one project at NIST we have used single trapped atomic ions because uncertainties in systematic effects are smallest, reaching Df/f0 = 0.8 x 10-17.  At this level, many effects, including those due to special and general relativity, must be calibrated and corrected for.
Oct
16
2013
Platinum-based spintronics
Oct
16
2013
Automated patch clamp electrophysiology of neurons in the living brain
Whole-cell patch clamp electrophysiology of neurons in vivo enables the recording of electrical events in cells with great precision, and supports a wide diversity of cellular morphological and molecular analysis experiments. However, high levels of skill are required in order to perform in vivo patching, and the process is time-consuming and painstaking. An automated in vivo patching robot would not only empower a great number of neuroscientists to perform such experiments, but would also open up fundamentally new kinds of experiment enabled by the resultant high throughput. We discovered that...
Oct
15
2013
Dynamic Organization of Biomembranes
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.   

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