Seminar Calendar
for Mathematics in Science and Society events the year of Monday, August 20, 2012.

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events for the
events containing

Questions regarding events or the calendar should be directed to Tori Corkery.
      July 2012             August 2012           September 2012
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa   Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa   Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1  2  3  4  5  6  7             1  2  3  4                      1
8  9 10 11 12 13 14    5  6  7  8  9 10 11    2  3  4  5  6  7  8
15 16 17 18 19 20 21   12 13 14 15 16 17 18    9 10 11 12 13 14 15
22 23 24 25 26 27 28   19 20 21 22 23 24 25   16 17 18 19 20 21 22
29 30 31               26 27 28 29 30 31      23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30


Thursday, March 15, 2012

Mathematics in Science and Society (MSS)
4:00 pm   in Great Hall, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts,  Thursday, March 15, 2012
 Del Edit Copy
Submitted by kapovich.
 Noam Elkies (Harvard University)Canonical forms: A mathematician's view of musical canonsAbstract: To write a musical canon -- be it "Three Blind Mice" or the climax of a Bach fugue -- one constructs a melody that can act as its own harmony. Thinking about this task leads us to look at musical structure from points of view usually associated with science and mathematics, not the arts. The lecture will be illustrated with diagrams as well as musical examples form various eras and genres (including at least one improvised on the spot), and will require no technical background in either music or mathematics.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Mathematics in Science and Society (MSS)
4:00 pm   in 245 Altgeld Hall,  Tuesday, April 3, 2012
 Del Edit Copy
Submitted by kapovich.
 Igor Rivin (Temple University)Conformal matching of proteinsAbstract: The question of whether two proteins can bind, and how, is one of the canonical problems in molecular biology, where it is sometimes known as the protein docking problem. This question has, so far, been studied primarily by ad hoc methods (such as Monte Carlo simulation). In this talk I will discuss some ideas and work in progress (some joint with Joel Hass of UC Davis) on using discrete (and not so discrete) conformal geometry to attack the problem, and the interesting (to the speaker, anyhow) mathematical questions which arise.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Mathematics in Science and Society (MSS)
4:00 pm   in 245 Altgeld Hall,  Tuesday, November 13, 2012
 Del Edit Copy
Submitted by kapovich.
 Mireille Boutin (School of ECE and Dept. of Math, Purdue University)Light-weight Methods for Automatic Recognition in Mobile ApplicationsAbstract: Portable computing devices such as tablets and smart phones are now ubiquitous. For better or for worse, society now expects these devices to replace and even outperform human experts in many domain of applications. In this talk, I will describe some automatic recognition problems which I came across as part of my research on portable device applications, namely the problems of automatically recognizing HAZMAT placards, automatically reading Arabic characters, and interpreting gang graffiti. These problems, I will argue, justify the need for a mathematical theory of shape that is amenable to discrete, noisy data. As a tentative first step towards such a theory, I will define the Pascal Triangle of a discrete gray-scale image as a pyramidal arrangement of complex-valued moments and explore its geometric significance. In particular, we will observe that the entries of row k of this pyramid correspond to the Fourier series coefficients of the order k moment of the Radon transform of the image. Group actions on the plane can be naturally prolonged onto the entries of the Pascal triangle; we will propose simple tests for equivalence and self-equivalence under some common group actions. This is joint work with my graduate students Shanshan Huang and Andrew Haddad.