Department Colloquium:"The Maps Inside Your Head"

Vijay Balasubramanian (UPenn) hosted by: Joe Kroll
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A8

How do our brains make sense of a complex and unpredictable world? In this talk, I will discuss a physicist's approach to the neural topography of information processing in the brain. First I will review the brain's…



Astro Seminar: "The New Ly-alpha Power Spectrum Measurements and constraints on WDM"

Vid Irsic (University of Washington)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A4

With the X-Shooter XQ-100 Legacy survey, 100 QSO measurements at intermediate resolutions were available to measure the Lyman-alpha power spectrum in the similar redshift range to SDSS (z=3 - 4.2), but to smaller…



Dissertation Defense: "Understanding the Implications of Neural Population Activity on Behavior"

John Briguglio (UPenn)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, 3W2



Dissertation Defense: Toric Elliptic Fibrations Over Hirzebruchs

Prashant Subbarao (UPenn)
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, 3C6



Experimental Particle Physics: "Search for Supersymmetry in Events with Four or More Leptons at ATLAS "

Matthew Klein (Columbia University)
David Rittenhouse Laboratory, 4C8



Math-Bio seminar: "Controlling the rate of false discoveries in tandem mass spectrum identifications"

Uri Keich, University of Sydney
- 318 Carolyn Lynch Laboratory

A typical shotgun proteomics experiment produces thousands of tandem mass spectra, each of which can be tentatively assigned a corresponding peptide by using a database search procedure that looks for a peptide-…



High Energy Seminar: "Shaving off Black Hole Soft Hair"

Massimo Porrati (New York University)
David Rittenhouse Laboratory, 2N36

After recalling a definition of a black hole "hair" we explain why the only interesting hairs are those that are also remnants. Next, we will examine a recent proposal by Hawking, Perry and Strominger, who suggest…



Where Did Half the Light in the Universe Go?

Professor Mark Devlin (UPenn)
Franklin Institute
222 N 20th St, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Prof. Mark Devlin will be presenting a public talk as part of the Museum’s popular Night Skies program. 

The evening also includes Planetarium shows and an opportunity to look through the rooftop…



Condensed Matter seminar: "Putting Patterns on Spheres: Pollen Grains and Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Shells"

Max Lavrentovich, University of Pennsylvania
- David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A4

Insect egg shells, mite carapaces,  pollen grain surfaces, and many other biological materials exhibit intricate surface patterns including stripes, spikes, pores, and ridges.



Math-Bio seminar: "Changes in local chromatin structure during homology search: effects of local contacts on search time"

Assaf Amitai, M.I.T.
- 318 Carolyn Lynch Laboratory

Double-strand break (DSB) repair by homologous recombination (HR) requires an efficient and timely search for a homologous template. We developed a statistical method of analysis based on single-particle…