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# 2014 News Archive

 December 18, 2014 Czabarka and Szekely give talks in South Africa In December 2014, Eva Czabarka and Laszlo Szekely visited the University of Johannesburg and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Eva Czabarka gave a colloquium talk titled "Beyond degree sequences of graphs", and Laszlo Szekely gave a colloquium talk titled "Markov Chains in Abelian groups give you constructions for the Diamond Problem" at the Stellenbosch University. December 10, 2014 Paula Vasquez's students are awarded a Magellan Scholar Program grant Undergraduate students John Caughman and Dillon Rutland (mentored by Paula Vasquez (IMI)) are awarded a one year Magellan Scholar Program grant totaling $5,620 for research on: Fractional Models for Lung Mucus: Formulation, Experimentation, and Benchmarking. "Can models built to simulate viscoelastic materials be expanded to accurately model lung mucus on healthy patients as well as in patients with cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)?" The objectives of this project are two-fold: "(1) To create a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) in MATLAB that allows users to input data and have the program output fractional model(s) that correctly captures the viscoelastic properties of the material; and (2) To understand the extent in which human lung mucus’ viscoelastic properties can diagnose and use to design treatments for Cystic Fibrosis and COPD." November 05, 2014 Binev, Cohen, Dahmen and DeVore publish paper in Annals of Statistics Peter Binev, Albert Cohen, Wolfgang Dahmen, and Ronald DeVore published a paper entitled "Classification algorithms using adaptive partitioning" in the Annals of Statistics 2014, Vol. 42, No. 6, 2141-2163. To access this paper, please visit: http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aos/1413810724 October 20, 2014 Zhao and Wang publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Jia Zhao and Qi Wang publish their article "A 3D Hydrodynamic Model for Cytokinesis of Eukaryotic Cells" in the IMI Preprint Series (2014:08). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP October 19, 2014 Zhao and Wang publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Original Article Jia Zhao and Qi Wang publish their article "A 3D Hydrodynamic Model for Heterogeneous Biofilms with Antimicrobial Persistence" in the IMI Preprint Series (2014:07). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP October 18, 2014 Zhao and Wang publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Preprint Jia Zhao and Qi Wang publish their article "3-D Numerical Simulations of Biofilm Dynamics with Quorum Sensing in a Flow Cell" in the IMI Preprint Series (2014:06). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP October 01, 2014 Czabarka and Szekely give talks at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver In October 2014, Eva Czabarka and Laszlo Szekely visited the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, to collaborate with Professor Jozsef Solymosi and present the following talks: Oct. 21, 2014: "Mixed Orthogonal Arrays and More-Part Sperner Families" by Eva Czabarka; Oct. 24, 2014: "Using the Lovasz Local Lemma as a Tool for Asymptotic Enumeration" by Laszlo Szekely. BACK TO TOP September 19, 2014 Temlyakov publishes article in IMI Preprint Series Download Preprint Vladimir Temlyakov published his article "Incremental Greedy Algorithm and its Applications in Numerical Integration" in the IMI Preprint Series (2014:05). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP September 18, 2014 IMI Members co-organize a 5-day workshop: Imaging and Modeling in Electron Microscopy - Recent Advances Peter Binev (USC Math / IMI) together with Nigel Browning (Pacific Northwest National Lab), Wolfgang Dahmen (RWTH Aachen / IMI), Ronald DeVore (Texas A & M University / IMI), Thomas Vogt (USC NanoCenter / IMI), and Paul Voyles (University of Wisconsin, Madison) organized a 5-days workshop Imaging and Modeling in Electron Microscopy - Recent Advances at the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS 14w5048). The aim of the workshop is to connect mathematicians together with specialists in imaging, material science, and electron microscopy to advance modeling, simulation and analysis by incorporating state-of-the-art mathematical and computational tools and methods in electron microscopy. Forty researchers from all over the world attended the workshop. More information at: https://www.birs.ca/events/2014/5-day-workshops/14w5048 BACK TO TOP September 18, 2014 Binev coauthors paper in Nature Communications Peter Binev is one of the authors of the paper Picometre-precision analysis of scanning transmission electron microscopy images of platinum nanocatalysts published in Nature Communications 5, # 4155. The authors apply new mathematical model for data assimilation involving non-rigit registration of a series of micrographs to demonstrate sub-picometre precision of atom positions in aberration-corrected Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microscopy images. The results achieve five to seven times better precision than previous methods. Here is a link to the paper: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140611/ncomms5155/full/ncomms5155.html BACK TO TOP September 16, 2014 Dekel, Kerkyacharian, Kyriazis and Petrushev publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Preprint Shai Dekel, Gerard Kerkyacharian, George Kyriazis and Pencho Petruvhsev published their article "A New Proof of the Atomic Decomposition of Hardy Spaces" in the IMI Preprint Series (2014:04). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP September 15, 2014 Dekel, Kerkyacharian, Kyriazis and Petrushev publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Preprint Shai Dekel, Gerard Kerkyacharian, George Kyriazis and Pencho Petruvhsev published their article "Hardy Spaces Associated with Non-Negative Self-Adjoint Operators" in the IMI Preprint Series (2014:03). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP September 08, 2014 Paula Vasquez is awarded a National Science Foundation grant Paula Vasquez (IMI) is awarded a three year National Science Foundation grant totaling$210,000 for her collaborative research on: A Molecular-to-Continuum, Data-Driven Strategy for Mucus Transport Modeling. "A data-driven strategy for the modeling of lung mucus transport is proposed, linking stochastic molecular kinetic processes, evolution equations for microstructure-based stresses, and momentum equations for flow. The experimental data consists of stochastic (entropic fluctuations) and deterministic (controlled forcing) probes of mucus microstructure, together with high-resolution microscopy of mucus transport in cell cultures derived from human lung tissue. These rich data sets provide unprecedented probes of the broad mucus relaxation spectrum arising from single mucin molecules, their entanglement network in mucus gels, transient mucin crosslinking, and chain scission kinetics. Cell cultures afford insights into cilia-driven flow transport of mucus, and provide a laboratory setting to explore molecular-to-macroscopic consequences of imposed physical stresses and chemical dosing. To translate this remarkable data into a predictive understanding of mucus transport, a modeling platform is proposed that resolves molecular-to-continuum processes of mucus, both near and far from equilibrium. Our strategy begins with stochastic time series of passive microbead probes in mucus gels of various concentrations, to solve the inverse and direct problems for linear (near equilibrium) viscoelastic characterization. Next, active microbead data for the same set of concentrations is used over a range of controlled magnetic forces to determine nonlinear thresholds and the signatures of non-equilibrium behavior at the microscale. These data directly feed into the main objective of this proposal, which is the formulation of a new microscopic-macroscopic constitutive law for mucus. This formulation is proposed to interpret the linear and nonlinear data, and to integrate molecular-to-continuum processes into a new mucus transport model. A numerical strategy is proposed for direct numerical simulations and comparison with data from each type of experiment." BACK TO TOP September 04, 2014 Bazarkhanov and Temlyakov publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Preprint Daurenbek Barzarkhanov and Vladimir Temlyakov published their article "Nonlinear Tensor Product Approximation of Functions" in the IMI Preprint Series (2014:02). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP August 28, 2014 Xiaofeng Yang is awarded a National Science Foundation grant Xiaofeng Yang (IMI) is awarded a three year National Science Foundation grant totaling $100,000 for his collaborative research on: Phase-field Models, Algorithms and Simulations for Multiphase Complex Fluids. "Mixtures of two or more immiscible viscous or complex fluid components are widely used in many science and engineering fields. Flows of multiphase complex fluid mixtures usually involve the coupling of microstructural configuration, interfacial morphology and macroscopic hydrodynamics. The complexity of those nonlinear couplings presents many numerical challenges for algorithm development, implementations and analysis. The proposed research has a two-fold focus: (1) to design easily implemented, energy stable numerical schemes with discrete energy dissipation laws to accurately capture the dynamics of interface singularities for the multiphase complex fluid systems that are built on the energetic, variational phase field approach for the free interfaces, and the Leslie-Ericksen theory for liquid crystals; and (2) to perform numerical simulations of experimental benchmarks and further applications on specific physically and biologically motivated problems using the developed numerical schemes, parallel spectral codes and adaptive moving mesh spectral method." BACK TO TOP April 28, 2014 Vasquez and Stratmann are awarded an ASPIRE-I grant from the Office of VPR Paula Vasquez (IMI) and Johannes Stratmann (Biology) are awarded a 16-month ASPIRE-I grant funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research, USC, totaling$15,000 for their research on: Mathematical modeling of plant responses to multiple stress signals . "The objective of this proposal is to investigate the interactions of different stress signals using mathematical modeling based on experimental data. This proposal aims to obtain data from simple and feasible experiments involving two stress signals applied simultaneously and at two different concentrations. Mathematically, the objective is to use the experimental data to guide the formulation of a dynamic model able to predict network behavior resulting from two competing input signals. The model will be used to predict responses for different experimental conditions, which in turn will be tested experimentally to validate the model. The experimental data and the model will serve as preliminary data for a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The long-term goal of this project will be to increase the complexity of the model by including more dynamic interactions to simulate natural conditions. The last stage will add another level of complexity by predicting and testing plant responses to a complex biotic and abiotic environment in the field. The refined mathematical model will enable us to predict output stress responses to multiple input signals based on easily measurable signaling processes." BACK TO TOP April 14, 2014 Peter Binev's student is awarded a Magellan Scholar Program grant Undergraduate student Marybeth Lundquist (mentored by Peter Binev (IMI)) is awarded a one year Magellan Scholar Program grant totaling $2,500 for research on: hp-Adaptive Approximation for Binary Tree Structures. "The main goal of this project is to design a new strategy for hp-adaptive finite element methods which should be added to the existing strategies. We will create a working baseline algorithm with Matlab software so that the code can then be used in different hp-FEM packages. The key aspect that makes this algorithm different from the existing ones is that this strategy can be theoretically proven to have an optimal rate of convergence. From there, the next goal would be to evaluate its performance in different setups and estimate its complexity. The complexity refers to the number of steps the code must go through in order to have a solution with a desired accuracy. This algorithm will then be adapted to perform in high dimensional approximation and data analysis." BACK TO TOP April 10, 2014 2014 International Conference on Modeling of Complex Biological Systems The Chern Institute of Mathematics at Nankai University, Tianjin, China, is hosting the 2014 International Conference on Modeling of Complex Biological Systems, May 26-29, 2014. The conference will focus on the study of complex biological systems using theoretical, computational, and experimental methods, and will highlight cutting-edge research in biological sciences, biophysical modeling and simulation. The Organizing Commitee, Chaired by Qi Wang (IMI) have invited researchers from theoretical, computational, and experimental research areas to participate with a focus on: (i) mechano-chemical modeling of cellular systems, including single cell behavior, collective cellular behavior, and the behavior of cell ensembles, (ii) ion transport phenomena across the membrane, (iii) protein and biopolymer dynamics as well as signaling network, (iv) new experimental findings involving complex biological systems, and (v) various novel computational methods for studying complex biological systems. For more information, please visit: http://202.113.29.3/~icmcbs/ BACK TO TOP April 04, 2014 Michael Filaseta is awarded a National Security Agency grant Michael Filseta (IMI) is awarded a one year National Security Agency grant totaling$22,537 for his research on: Number Theoretic Problems on Polynomials. "The role of polynomials has been essential throughout the various branches of mathematics. This proposal discusses a variety of polynomial problems, intended for research investigations with and for students. These problems largely are associated with the factorization of polynomials and have connections to the areas of analytic number theory and Diophantine analysis." BACK TO TOP March 04, 2014 Nickelodeon's "Science on Screen" Series The Nickelodeon Theater on Main St. downtown will be showing a science-related film each Monday in March as part of their "Science on Screen" series, a national event sponsored by the Coolidge Corner Theater, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the College of Arts and Sciences. Each one will be introduced by a speaker who will briefly discuss some scientific theme in the movie. Joshua Cooper is the speaker for the finale, a nationally coordinated event on March 31; the film is a really interesting and funny Sloan Foundation film, "Computer Chess". There are various promotional materials scattered about LeConte and a schedule page at the Nick's website: http://www.nickelodeon.org/programs/index.php?programID=131 Show support for Columbia's premier independent theater -- and public scientific literacy! BACK TO TOP February 05, 2014 Temlyakov and DeVore on Organizing Committee for ICERM Semester Workshop IMI members Ronald DeVore and Vladimir Temlyakov are on the Organizing Committee for the ICERM Semester Workshop: Approximation, Integration, and Optimization. This workshop will take place at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), Brown University, in Providence, RI, from September 29 - October 3, 2014. For more information and to register for this event, please visit: http://icerm.brown.edu/sp-f14-w2 BACK TO TOP January 09, 2014 DeVore and Temlyakov publish article in IMI Preprint Series Download Preprint Ronald DeVore and Vladimir Temlyakov published their article "Convex optimization on Banach Spaces" in the IMI Preprint Series (2014:01). Please see the link above to the full article and visit Preprints to see other articles in this series. BACK TO TOP January 06, 2014 Czabarka and Szekely give talks in China In December 2013, Eva Czabarka and Laszlo Szekely visited Togji University (Shanghai), Nanjing Normal University (Nanjing) and Zhejiang University (Hangzhou) and gave talks there. BACK TO TOP
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