May 9 – 13, 2016

Monday, May 9

MSCS Seminar: Searching and Sorting Algorithms
Vinayak Elangovan, Vistiting Assistant Professor at The College of New Jersey.
Storing and retrieving information is an important and a common application for general purpose-computers. Let us take for example, St. Olaf College administration department stores information of students such as their names, student ID, address, phone number, etc. All of the students’ information is stored in a database which is organized as a collection of records. To access a student’s grade information, the advisor needs to look up particular field of information from among all of data that has been stored. The processes of looking up a particular data record in the database is called Searching. In order to do an efficient search in a database, the records must be maintained in some order. The process of ordering the records in a database is called Sorting. In this talk, we would explore two different search algorithms: Sequential Search which is very easy to implement, but inefficient and Binary Search which is much more efficient. We will also discuss four sorting algorithms which includes Selection sort, Insertion sort, Bubble sort and Merge sort and their implementation in C++ as well.
2:10pm – RMS 410

MSCS Colloquium: Crossing the Threshold: The role of Demographic Stochasticity in the Evolution of Cooperation
Thomas LoFaro, Gustavus Adolphus College
The development of cooperative behavior has long been of interest to social scientists and ecologists.  In this talk we will look at a mathematical model of the evolution of cooperation that combines mathematical ideas from game theory and population dynamics.  In the spirit of interdisciplinary, we will analyze this model using ideas from calculus, linear algebra, and probability theory.  However, the most significant result, determining what increases the probability of the evolution of cooperation, boils down to nothing more than finding the slope of line.
3:30pm talk, 3:15pm cookies and conversation, RNS 301

Psychology Talk: Frontal Lobe Function and Dysfunction: Relevance to Life, Career Choice, and Disease. 
Dr. Bradley Boeve, Neurologist, Mayo Clinic
Psych Club is hosting Dr. Bradley Boeve, a neurologist who currently works at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Boeve specializes in Alzheimer’s disease, other neurodegenerative diseases, and sleep medicine.
7:00 p.m., Buntrock Commons 143

Biology Seminar:

Monday May 9th 4pm RNS 410

Petra Kranzfelder – Department of Entomology, University of Minnesota

From river to sea: Impacts of land use on water quality of estuaries in Costa Rica

How does the tropical produce that we eat in Minnesota, like pineapples and bananas, impact the water quality of estuaries in Costa Rica? To answer this question, I will share part of my Ph.D. research that investigates the impacts of coastal watershed land use on aquatic insect communities of estuaries in Costa Rica. I will teach you about how we use diverse and abundant groups of aquatic insects, like chironomids, as bioindicators of water quality to answer these types of important ecological questions.

Tuesday, May 10

No seminars.

Wednesday, May 11

No seminars.

Thursday, May 12

No seminars.

Friday, May 13

No seminars.