Events at Physics |
Events on Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- Airway sensory deficits in Parkinson’s Disease – Evidence of a complex system gone awry? Now what?
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Michael J. Hammer, UW School of Medicine and Public Health
- Abstract: Historically, Parkinson's Disease (PD) has simply been classified as a "movement disorder". Recent evidence, including data from our laboratory, strongly suggests a more complex model of sensory-movement interaction whereby airway movements are guided by sensory (e.g., touch) inputs to the central nervous system. Sensory-movement interactions, and the related deficits that accompany PD, substantially impact a constellation of important airway functions such as breathing, cough, speech, swallow, and voice. This seminar will focus on (a) how airway sensory-movement functions are negatively impacted by PD, (b) the clinical consequences of this impact, and (c) strategies that may improve these airway sensory-movement functions in PD.
- Host: Sprott
- Whitford Lecture
- "The Restless Universe (Palomar Transient Factory)
- Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: 4421
- Speaker: Shrinivas Kulkarni, CALTECH
- Abstract: Cosmic explosions were first noted nearly two thousand years ago.However, secure recognition and study began only a hundred years ago. What was once termed as Stella Nova (new stars) are now divided into two major families, novae and supernovae (with real distinct classes in each). Equally the variable stars have a rich phenomenology. Together, supernovae and variable stars have contributed richly to key problems in modern astrophysics: distances to galaxies, cosmography and build up of elements in the Universe.<br>
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The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), an innovative 2-telescope system, was designed to explicitly to chart the transient sky with a particular focus on events which lie in the nova-supernova gap. PTF is now finding an extragalactic transient every 20 minutes and a Galactic (strong) variable every 10 minutes. Extensive spectroscopy and photometry allowed us: to identify an emerging class of ultra-luminous supernovae, discover luminous red novae, undertake UV spectroscopy of Ia supernovae, discover low budget supernovae, clarify sub-classes of core collapse and thermo-nuclear explosions, map the systematics of core collapse supernovae, identify a trove of eclipsing binaries and the curious AM CVns.<br>
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