Events at Physics |
Events on Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- Exploring the Conformational Search Leading to Protein Folding in Vitro and in the Cell
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Silvia Cavagnero, UW-Madison, Dept. of Chemistry
- Abstract: Proteins are key components of all living cells and their correct in vivo function is intimately connected to the well-being of every living organism. The large conformational freedom of a protein chain and its structural complexity suggests that understanding folding mechanisms and predicting protein structure from amino acid sequence may be dauntingly difficult. What have we learned from the studies carried out on protein folding mechanisms over the last three decades; are there any leading trends; and how do these trends change (or are predicted to change) for proteins folding in the cellular environment, where a lot of the relevant parameters are dramatically tuned by various cellular components? This talk will attempt to address some key aspects of the above topics and highlight research directions in crucial need of further exploration.
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Synergistic Transient Searches in the Ultraviolet and Optical
- Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: 3425 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Suvi Gezari, Hubble Fellow, John Hopkins
- Abstract: Motivated by the successful discovery of UV/optical transients with serendipitous contemporaneous observations between the GALEX Deep Imaging Survey and the optical CFHT Legacy Deep Survey, GALEX has begun a dedicated time domain survey that operates in parallel with the Pan-STARRS Medium Deep Survey. With simultaneous UV and optical coverage of 7 deg2 of sky with a cadence of days, we have the unique ability to detect UV bright phenomena at early times, including shock breakout and hot ejecta in core-collapse SNe, as well as probe the simultaneous UV and optical properties of variable AGNs and flares from dormant supermassive black holes caught in the act of tidally disrupting a star. In this talk, I will present our transient detection and classification methods and the first results of our survey.
- String Theory Seminar
- Non-perturbative effects on seven-brane Yukawa couplings
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Fernando Marchesano, CERN
- Host: Shiu