Bell Labs’ Role in Programming Languages and Algorithms
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesIn this lecture, Alfred V. Aho will discuss the role that software plays in the modern world.
Simons Foundation
Advancing Research in Basic Science and Mathematics
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Extra-Solar Planets: Search, Characterization and Population Inferences
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesDavid W. Hogg will explore how planets are discovered in the Kepler dataset, how the data are understood and how researchers can make inferences about the full population of planets in the galaxy.
Solving the 3-D Puzzle of Rotation Assignment in Single Particle Cryo-Electron Microscopy
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesThis lecture will explore algorithms for estimating the unknown pose parameters. The main focus will be on algorithms that are based on semidefinite programming relaxations that can be viewed as extensions to existing approximation algorithms to max-cut and unique games, two fundamental problems in theoretical computer science.
Visualizing Quantum Matter
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesEverything around us — everything each of us has ever experienced and virtually everything underpinning our technological society and economy — is governed by quantum mechanics. Yet this most fundamental physical theory of nature often feels like a set of somewhat eerie and counterintuitive ideas of no direct relevance to our lives. Why is this? One reason is that we cannot perceive the strangeness (and astonishing beauty) of the quantum mechanical phenomena all around us by using our own senses.
Harnessing Hippocampal Stem Cells to Improve Mood and Cognition
Recent studies have implicated adult-born hippocampal neurons in pattern separation, a process by which similar experiences or events are transformed into discrete non-overlapping representations. Impaired pattern separation, Dr. Hen proposes, underlies the overgeneralization often seen in age-related memory impairments and in anxiety disorders. Dr. Hen will present evidence that strategies aimed at stimulating hippocampal neurogenesis result in improved pattern separation.
Timing Mechanisms of Critical Periods in Brain Development
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesThis lecture explores the biological bases of critical periods in brain development. Mechanisms that open and close windows of plasticity (E/I balance and molecular brakes, respectively) are implicated in autism, suggesting mistimed maturational processes that can be strategically rescued at the circuit level.
What Do Animals Really Learn? Adventures of Reinforcement Learning in the Real World
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesIn this lecture, Yael Niv will argue that the key to learning efficiently in real-world scenarios is to use a simplified representation of the task that includes only those dimensions of the environment that are relevant to obtaining reward.
2015 MPS Annual Meeting
Thursday, October 22nd – Friday, October 23rd, 2015 Download the 2015 Annual Meeting booklet (PDF). The Mathematics and Physical Sciences Annual Meeting gathered together Simons Investigators, Simons Fellows, Simons Society of Fellows and Math + X Chairs and Investigators to exchange ideas through lectures and informal discussions in a scientifically stimulating environment. Agenda Thursday, October...
Molecular and Neural Architecture of Circuits Underlying Social Behavior in the Mouse
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesIn this lecture, Catherine Dulac will discuss the cellular and molecular architecture of neural circuits underlying instinctive social behaviors of mice. She will describe her group’s recent advances in uncovering the identity of sensory neurons that detect social cues and the identity of command circuits associated with specific social responses in male and female mice.
Clinical and translational genomics
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesThis Biotech Symposium will focus on clinical and translational genomics and the shift to precision medicine.
Understanding the Relationship Between Genes and Social Behavior: Lessons from the Honey Bee
The study of genes and social behavior is still a young field. In this lecture, Gene E. Robinson will discuss some of the first insights to emerge that describe the relationship between them. These include the surprisingly close relationship between brain gene expression and specific behavioral states; social regulation of brain gene expression; control of social behavior by context-dependent rewiring of brain transcriptional regulatory networks; and evolutionarily conserved genetic toolkits for social behavior that span insects, fish and mammals.
Storming the Ivory Tower: How to Make Autism Interventions Work in Schools
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesIn this lecture, David S. Mandell will talk about why autism interventions rarely are implemented in community practice and why they fail to achieve the same outcomes as those observed in clinical trials.
Patterns in the Primes
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, United StatesPrime numbers have intrigued mathematicians, amateur and professional alike, for thousands of years. Some of the most pertinent questions today probably stem from classical times. In this lecture, Dr. Granville will discuss some well-known patterns in the primes and explain some of the latest progress.
Quarks, Flux Tubes and String Theory Without Calculus
The theory of strings started as an attempt to describe the forces holding quarks together. Important remnants of that idea survive in the form of the flux tubes of quantum chromodynamics and their description as “strings” in the gauge-string duality. Applications to quark-gluon plasmas have yielded some of the most quantitative comparisons of string theory with experimental data. For example,...