Astro Seminar: "Probing Dark Energy with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)"
Richard Shaw (University of British Columbia)
CHIME will use the 21cm emission line of neutral hydrogen to map large-scale structure between redshifts of 0.8 and 2.5. By measuring Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) we will place constraints on the dark energy…
Professor Gary Gibbons: "Introduction to Supergravity"
Gary Gibbons, Visiting Distinguished Professor (Cambridge, UK)
Supergravity is a theory of gravity incorporating a super-symmetry", that is a symmetry between Fermions and Bosons. The boson in question is the graviton which carries spin 2 and its fermionic partner is the…
Math-Bio seminar: "Predicting the evolution of influenza"
Michael Lässig, University of Cologne
The human flu virus undergoes rapid evolution, which is driven by interactions with its host immune system. We describe the evolutionary dynamics by a fitness model based on two phenotypes of the virus: protein…
Condensed Matter Seminar: "Imposing Curved Shapes on Solid Sheets: Instabilities, Isometries and Asymptotic Isometries"
Benny Davidovitch (UMass, Amherst)
Imposing a curved shape on a solid sheet, generates in it elastic stress. This familiar motif is a consequence of Gauss’ theorema
Egregium, which posits that there exists no isometric map…
Astro Seminar: "What Sets the Maximum Rotation Rate of Neutron Stars? "
Ira Wasserman (Cornell)
The fastest rotating neutron star spins at a frequency of 716 Hz, or a period of about 1.4 milliseconds. This rapidly rotating neutron star was discovered about 30 years after the previous record holder, at 642 Hz. …
NSF GRFP Fellowship Application Workshops for Graduate Students
Kristen Coakley, Assistant Director Science Outreach Initiative (UPenn)
If you would like to sign up to attend a workshop, please email Kristen Coakley (kcoakley@sas.upenn.edu) with your preferred date. All workshops cover the…
Math-Bio seminar: "Geography and Adaptation
Peter Ralph (University of Southern California)
Most species are distributed across geography, and so can develop regional differences in different parts of the range. These may often be as a result of natural selection, and the geographic scale on which different…
High Energy Theory Seminar: "TBA"
Alberto Nicolis (Columbia University)
Astro Seminar: "The Local Universe as a Cosmological Lens "
Jonathan Hargis (Haverford)
The local universe serves as a lens through which we can understand the formation of galaxies in a dark energy + cold dark matter(LCDM) context. Numerical simulations suggest that galaxies grow hierarchically; that…