This Week in Science at St. Olaf

Monday, April 11

Physics Colloquium:  Magnetism and Mu dynamics in Vanadium Dioxide compounds and other current research interests
Speaker: Patrick (Rick) Mengyan, Instructor & Post Doc. Research Associate in Physics at Texas Tech University
3:00 pm, RNS 290

MSCS Research Seminar: Russian Troika Dolls:  A Story of Demazure Module Filtrations
Peri Shereen, a visiting assistant professor from Carleton College
A composition series of vector spaces is a chain of subspaces such that each successive quotient space has no nontrivial subspaces.  A similar definition also exists for groups.  In both cases, knowing the composition series gives us some structural information of the largest space or group.  For example, the composition series of a finite abelian group is directly related to its decomposition.  We will discuss a similar notion for modules of a Lie algebra.  In particular we will study a filtration  (a chain of submodules) where the successive quotients share a common property.  Learning about the explicit filtrations admitted will give us important structural information about the largest module.
3:15 Cookies and Conversation, 3pm Talk, RNS 310

Tuesday, April 12

What: Informal Conversation about Pathways and Possibilities in Science Education
Where: RNS 356B
When: 11:30-12:15. Drop in any time.

Are you planning to major in science? Do you enjoy spending time with youth? You can probably think of a teacher you’ve had who made a difference; have you ever thought you might be interested in teaching others?
If so, it’s a good time to start thinking about opportunities in science education. At St. Olaf, you can become a licensed middle or high school science teacher. Besides being a fulfilling job, science teachers are in demand. While there are many paths to becoming a science teacher, there are some big advantages to the licensure program at St. Olaf. Additionally, many other career paths involve some component of science education.
If you’d like to talk about what it’s like to be a science teacher and about possibilities and pathways to a teaching license, please drop in for an informal conversation with Carolyn Ocampo, visiting master teacher in Chemistry, and Emily Mohl, assistant professor in biology and education.
Questions? Contact Emily Mohl, mohl@stolaf.edu, RNS 432.

Wednesday, April 13

No Seminars

Thursday, April 14

Seminar: Neurologist and Sleep Medicine Specialist
Dr. Erik St. Louis, Associate Professor of Neurology, Mayo Clinic
Dr. Erik St Louis is a neurologist who specializes in sleep medicine. He currently works at Mayo Clinic and wants to share a bit about his research, clinical experience, and career. Please join us if you are interested in medicine, neurology, psychology, sleep medicine, OR if you just love to sleep!
6:00 p.m., Buntrock 142

Friday, April 15

No Seminars

Monday, April 4

MSCS Colloquium: “Comparing Songs without Listening: From MSCS to Music and Back Again”
Katherine Kinnaird, from Macalester College
Music is deeply entrenched in our daily lives, from playing as we work and study to enhancing our favorite television shows. The multidisciplinary field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is motivated by the comparisons that we, as humans, make about music and the various contexts of these comparisons. By defining tasks such as building better song recommendation systems or finding structural information in a given recording, MIR seeks to algorithmically make these musical comparisons in the same way a single human being would, but on a much larger scale. In this talk, we will 1) introduce the field of MIR, including popular tasks and cutting edge techniques, 2) present our method for comparing songs, and 3) discuss further applications of this method beyond MIR tasks.
3:30pm, RNS 310

Seminar: Distinction Poster Session
Come hear and see the candidates for distinction in Biology today at 4:00 PM in the 4th floor atrium.

Tuesday, April 5

No Seminar

Wednesday, April 6

MSCS Recital:
The recital is an annual recognition of the talent, of all types, of the members of the MSCS community.  Faculty and students will perform, together and separately, for a couple of hours in the evening.  Anyone associated with MSCS is welcome to participate, as a performer or an observer.  This is a fun, relaxed gathering of students and faculty on equal footing.  There will be food and drink, but this event features homemade food offerings. .  If you are interested in performing, please contact Steve McKelvey mckelvey@stolaf.edu).
7:00pm, Ytterboe Lounge

Thursday, April 7

No Seminar

Friday, April 8

No Seminar

Monday, March 28

No Seminars

Tuesday, March 29

No Seminars

Wednesday, March 30

Psychology/Neuroscience Cannon Callosum seminar: What tamarins can tell us about the uniqueness of us 
Dr. Julie Neiworth, Professor of Psychology, Carleton College. This event is intended to potentiate the connectivity between the neuroscience communities at Carleton and St. Olaf.
6:30 pm, Black and Gold Ballrooms

Physics Colloquium: Subsurface Waves in the Oceans and Lake Superior
Sam Kelly, Assistant Professor, Large Lakes Observatory and Dept. of Physics, University of Minnesota Duluth
3:30 pm, RNS 210

Thursday, March 31

No Seminars

Friday, April 1

Seminar: Breaking Strong Bonds and Recovering Rare Earths: Adventures in Sustainable Chemistry
Marion H. Emmert, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Departments of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Chemical & Mechanical Engineering

Catalysis is one of the most powerful tools of green chemistry, enabling reactions with lower energy consumption and providing new pathways for bond formations. In particular, catalytically functionalizing C-O bonds (common in biomass) under mild conditions are critical reactions to enable more sustainable chemical methodologies. Our approach towards addressing these challenges focuses on establishing a mechanistic understanding in order to translate this knowledge into broadly useful protocols for organic synthesis and biomass activation.

At the end of the materials lifecycle, inventing new technologies to provide sustainable sources of raw materials through recycling is another critical challenge for the movement towards a circular economy. Our efforts in this area take an approach similar to our developments in the area of catalysis: Based on understanding principles and mechanisms of materials flows, we use the principles of green chemistry to enable the design of novel, sustainable rare earth recovery technologies.

3:00 pm refreshments, 3:15 pm seminar, RNS 310

Monday, March 14

MSCS Colloquium: Estimating temporal associations in electrocorticographic (ECoG) time series
Haley Hedlin, ’06, Ph.D Senior Biostatistician, Stanford Medicine
Granger causality (GC) is a statistical technique used to estimate temporal associations in multivariate time series.  Many applications and extensions have been proposed since its formulation by Granger in 1969.  Here we apply Granger causality in the context of electrocorticography (ECoG), also known as intracranial electroencephalography.  A pruning approach to remove spurious connections and simultaneously reduce the required number of estimations to fit the functional connectivity graph is proposed. This approach overcomes limitations encountered when estimating many parameters in multivariate time series data, an increasingly common predicament in today’s brain mapping studies.
3:30pm, RNS 310 – Individual mini-pies will be served in celebration of  Pi Day with conversation at 3:15pm.

Biology Seminar: Scavenger – how a starving bacterium takes up scarce nutrients.
Professor Lisa Bowers
Caulobacter crescentus is a species of bacteria that lives in water everywhere. It’s well known as a scavenger due to its ability to take up scarce nutrients. It has many
interesting adaptations that allow it to thrive in low nutrient environments, including an unusually large group of surface proteins called TonB-dependent receptors (TBDRs) that
actively bind and transport nutrients into the cell. For a long time, TBDRs were thought to transport only iron complexes and Vitamin B12 but now we know iron and B12
represent just the tip of the iceberg. Recent studies have identified many novel substrates yet most of Caulobacter’s 65 TBDRs are still uncharacterized. What are the
other TBDRs doing? We are investigating a subset of TBDRs and are hot on the trail as we test our hypotheses with RT-qPCR, gene knockouts, and growth assays.
4:00 PM, RNS 410

Tuesday, March 15

No Seminars

Wednesday, March 16

Physics Colloquium: Subsurface Waves in the Oceans and Lake Superior
Sam Kelly, Assistant Professor, Large Lakes Observatory and Dept. of Physics, University of Minnesota Duluth
2:00 pm, RNS 210

MSCS – The Pi Mu Epsilon Spring lecture: Matrix Factorizations and Singularities of Hypersurfaces
Kosmos Diveris, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, St. Olaf College.
Algebraic geometers study geometric objects defined by polynomial equations, like the unit sphere in R3 which is defined by x 2+y 2+z 2 = 1. A lot of interesting geometry is encoded in algebraic properties of these polynomials. In this talk we will discuss what factoring of polynomials can tell us about geometric objects, and explain how one can “factor” irreducible polynomials using matrices. These matrix factorizations, introduced by David Eisenbud in 1980, play a central role in the study of singularities of hypersurfaces and are an active area of research today.
4pm, RNS 208 – Shamrock Shakes will be served at 3:45pm.

Thursday, March 17

No Seminars

Friday, March 18

No Seminars

Monday, March 7

Psychology Allport Award Speaker
Your brain on music: Exploring the relationships between music and diverse cognitive functions.  
Dr. Belfi ’10, Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Iowa, and is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at New York University.
7:00 p.m., Regents Hall 150

MSCS Research Seminar”
Combinatorics of standard Young tableaux
Michael Chmutov, NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota.
Standard Young tableaux are elementary, combinatorial objects which arise naturally in abstract algebra (specifically in representation theory of the permutation groups). We will discuss two interesting results; one is the hook-length formula which allows us to compute the number of standard Young tableaux, and the other is the bijection between permutations and pairs of standard Young tableaux called the Robinson-Schensted correspondence. There are no prerequisites for this talk since the statements are completely elementary, however having had a group theory course may help with the motivation.
3:30pm, RNS 300 (3:15 cookies and conversation)

Tuesday, March 8

No Seminars

Wednesday, March 9

No Seminars

Thursday, March 10

No Seminars

Friday, March 11

Chemistry Seminar: Non-equilibrium processes:  Novel techniques for highly efficient combustion and the role of laser diagnostics in providing physical insight
Dr. James Michael, Assistant Professor, Iowa State University, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Non-equilibrium processes play important roles in processes ranging from chemical processing to plasma-assisted combustion and control.  Common themes among these processes include the importance of the disparate timescales involved, the role of excited-state species, and multiphase interactions.  This talk focuses on several novel approaches of plasma-assisted combustion and the non-equilibrium dynamics involved.  Plasma-assisted combustion offers the potential to expand the operating ranges of internal combustion and propulsion devices with efficient, tailored deposition of energy while improving efficiency.  Several techniques are discussed: (1) the interaction of pulsed microwave radiation with hydrocarbon flame fronts, (2) ignition via strong coupling between low intensity microwaves and ultrafast laser-generated ionization, and (3) enhanced combustion rates in solid propellants through coupling with alkali-metal generated ionization.  Direct plasma generation in these environments allows ultra-lean combustion for increased engine efficiency, as well as improved combustion control for gas and solid-phase combustion applications.  In studying these non-equilibrium environments, linear and non-linear laser diagnostics are powerful tools allowing direct interrogation of the thermodynamic state.  These techniques have led to improved understanding of underlying physical mechanisms common to non-equilibrium and multiscale phenomena, including turbulent combustion and plasma-enhanced processes.  Applications and developments of these laser spectroscopic techniques are discussed in relation to the understanding of energy transfer in non-equilibrium environments.
3:00 p.m. refreshments,  seminar will begin at 3:15 p.m., RNS 310

Monday, February 29

Psychology Student Presentations
Interim in Inda
4:00 pm, RNS 210

MSCS Colloquium – Design considerations and alternatives for clinical trials of medical devices
Ted Lystig ’93 Director, Corporate Biostatistics at Medtronic
A recent high-profile series of hypertension trials provides an intriguing setting for a conversation around trial design issues for medical devices.  I will provide an overview of the therapy area and published trials, and then move to a discussion of various study options that were considered as subsequent candidate trials.  I’ll then discuss the operational properties of the designs, and talk about why they matter.  The presentation as a whole helps to illustrate how quantitative training can better prepare you to contribute in important, sometimes unexpected ways as a working professional.  Coursework in statistics is not necessary to follow the talk, but would allow you to appreciate more of the details.
3:15pm Cookies and Conversation; 3:30-4:30 P.M., RNS 310

Tuesday, March 1

Seminar: RNS 150 7pm

Wednesday, March 2

Physics Colloquium 
Neutron Stars as a Laboratory
Demian Cho, Assistant Professor of Physics, St. Mary’s University-Winona, Minnesota
2:00 pm, RNS 210

Thursday, March 3

Seminar: Title
Speaker name and title
Time, Room

Friday, March 4

Chemistry Seminar: Designing peptides with non-natural residues to inhibit therapeutically-relevant protein-protein interactions
James Checco, ’10 Alumni

Peptides that bind specifically to protein surfaces can be useful as mediators of therapeutically-relevant protein-protein interactions or as diagnostic tools for disease marker detection. However, conventional peptides, comprised exclusively of the 20 proteinogenic α-amino acid residues (“α-peptides”), are rapidly degraded in biological systems by protease enzymes. The low half-life of α-peptides in vivo significantly limits the scope of their therapeutic use. Backbone-modified peptides that contain a mixture of α-residues and non-natural β-residues (which contain two carbon atoms in their backbone) can effectively mimic the structure and function of natural peptides. Such “α/β-peptides” can show high affinity and selectivity for target proteins and are less susceptible to proteolytic degradation than are α-peptides. This research develops a general strategy to design α/β-peptides that selectively target diverse and topologically-complex protein surfaces, such as the receptor-binding surface of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a mediator of angiogenesis that plays a major role in several diseases.

3:00 Refreshments, 3:15 Seminar, RNS390

Monday, February 15

MSCS Colloquium: When less is more: mathematical models explain surprisingly low parasitism rates for a Finnish wasp.
Katie Montovan,assistant professor of mathematics at Bennington College in Vermont.
Imagine you are a wasp that parasitizes butterfly eggs, and that you have found a cluster of 200 host eggs that are ready and not parasitized. Why would you choose (or evolve genetic behavior) to parasitize less than all of the eggs? This is a puzzling question, but add to it that the wasp avoids previously parasitized clusters and the motivation seems downright bizarre. In this talk, I will develop a set of plausible reasons it might be better for the wasp, Hyposoter horticola, to parasitize only a third of each host egg cluster it encounters. I will then explain how we used mathematical models and field and lab studies to test each hypothesis and rule out all but one theory in order to explain this behavior.
3:15 cookies and conversation, 3:30 Colloquium,  RNS 310

Tuesday, February 16

MSCS Research Seminar: Using mathematical modeling to understand animal behavior.
Katie Montovan,assistant professor of mathematics at Bennington College in Vermont.
Mathematical modeling, simulation, and analysis are valuable tools for answering biological questions about evolution, self-organization, and complex ecosystem interactions. For each biological question the appropriate mathematical tools must be carefully employed in order to produce meaningful results. In this talk I will present several of my recent projects to illustrate the process of taking a biological problem and making it into a mathematical one, the mathematics used to answer the question, and the biological meaning of the results. I will discuss self-organization in honeybees, evolved behaviors in parasitic wasps and potato beetles, and complex population dynamics in coral reef ecosystems.
1:30pm, RNS 206

Wednesday, February 17

Physics Seminar: Testing the Standard Model and Searching for the Dark Side Using Atomic Physics
Holger Müller, Assistant Professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley
2:00 pm in RNS 210

MSCS Colloquium:  Stochastic Population Dynamics.
Eric Eager, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.
Environmental and demographic stochasticity impact the dynamics of all biological populations.  Environmental stochasticity, spatiotemporal fluctuations in life history originating from variability in factors such as precipitation, temperature and nutrient availability, generally acts similarly on individuals within similar age and/or stage classes.  Demographic stochasticity, originating from the variability in demographic events such a survival, growth and reproduction, acts on similar individuals in different, unpredictable ways.  While a complete analysis of population dynamics will acknowledge both sources of variability, different mathematical tools are needed to understand the effects of these distinct forms of stochasticity.  In this talk we use various techniques from probability theory to study simple population models incorporating both environmental and demographic stochasticity.    
3:15pm cookies and conversation, 3:30pm Colloquium, RNS 310

Thursday, February 18

MSCS Research Seminar: Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of a Stochastic Population Model for a Disturbance Specialist Plant Population and its Seed Bank.
Eric Eager, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.
Stochastic models are essential to understanding the population dynamics of plant species that use delayed reproduction to combat environmental uncertainty.  One such species is wild sunflower (Helianthus annuus), which is a disturbance specialist plant – its seeds do not germinate in the absence of soil disturbance. These soil disturbances can be modeled as a stochastic process, which gives rise to a nonlinear stochastic integral projection model for the population density of H. annuus and its seed bank. In this talk I derive and analyze this model, and show that it predicts population dynamics that converge to an invariant probability measure either completely concentrated on the extinction state or completely excluding the extinction state. I will then show through simulation studies the sensitivity of this measure to changes to the soil disturbance profile.
11:30am – 12:30pm, RNS 206

Friday, February 19

No Seminars

Monday, February 8

Monday, Dec. 14

MSCS Colloquium: Approximating Pi Using Similar Triangles
Ryota Matsuura, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
I will present a method for approximating pi using similar triangles. The method relies on a repeated/recursive application of a geometric construction that allows us to easily inscribe regular polygons inside a unit circle with arbitrarily large number of sides. As an added bonus, I will also derive some interesting identities, including an infinite product for pi that was first discovered in the late 16th century.
3:30p.m., RNS 310

Game Night: Pi Mu Epsilon hosting this event.
Have fun before finals! Challenge your friends and maybe even a MSCS faculty to one of the many games available. Pizza and snacks will be served at 6:30pm.
6pm – 9pm, RMS 6th Floor Lounge

Tuesday, Dec. 15

No Seminars

Wednesday, Dec. 16

No Seminars

Thursday, Dec. 17

No Seminars:

Friday, Dec. 18

No Seminars