Events at Physics |
Events on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- Conjectures on music, artistry and the brain
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin (Refreshments will be served)
- Speaker: Russell Gardner, UW Department of Psychiatry
- Abstract: George Steiner tells that "... we write about books or about music or about art because 'some primary instinct of communion' would have us share with and communicate to others an overwhelming enrichment..." He felt this in 1959 with his first major writing and it remained his conviction. I find it resonates, yet how does it work? What does "instinct" mean in terms of the brain? I am not a musician and though always finding music a pleasure and most interesting challenge, I have felt the reasons mysterious ones. Why do people perform? Why do people listen? Where and how in the brain does art generally and music specifically gain its place in humans? What I will say hinges on various recent readings and on communications for the past two years with fellow members of the Arts Immersion (AIm) group. Plus, present some ideas on the medial temporal lobes that bear on performance issues and on evolutionary biology as these bear on human communication. I hope to address how do "artistic" people - including musicians - compare and contrast with other people? How does the musical communication share features of other communications and how may it stand unique? How does it compare/contrast with other means of artistic expression? How does sound production and appreciation in non-human animals bear on the subject? <br>
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Gardner, Howard: In search of the Ur-song. In Gardner, Howard: Art Mind & Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity. New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1982. <br>
Levitan, Daniel J. This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. NY: Plume Penquin, 2006. <br>
Mithen, Steve: The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. <br>
Sacks O: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain. NY: Knopf, 2007. <br>
Steiner, George: Introduction, A Reader. OUP, 1984, p.7. - Astronomy Colloquium
- Infrared Studies of Young Brown Dwarfs
- Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: 3425 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Katelyn Allers, Bucknell University
- Abstract: Brown dwarfs (objects with masses too low to sustain hydrogen burning) are the bridge between planets and stars. Young brown dwarfs are particularly exciting as objects with masses in the range of extrasolar planets are within in reach of direct observations in the near and mid-infrared. These objects can provide a laboratory for detailed quantitative study in a context where light from a parent star does not mask the source properties of the planetary-mass object. In the past decade, young brown dwarfs have been found with increasing frequency, though planetary-mass brown dwarfs have remained largely elusive. Only a handful of potential planetary-mass brown dwarfs are known, but the intrinsic faintness of these objects and the uncertainty in evolutionary models makes determining their masses and ages very difficult. In this talk, I will describe two new and efficient methods for finding planetary-mass brown dwarfs. I will also discuss ways in which we can test evolutionary models of brown dwarfs using large spectroscopic databases and high resolution imaging.
- Host: Professor Amy Barger