Presidential Lectures

One of the characteristic features of life — specificity — emerges in metabolism, information transfer from DNA to protein, embryology, immunology and virtually every other process. Its explanation on the molecular level is thermodynamic stability and structural complementarity. Yet one disturbing issue persists: the protein and nucleic acid sequences coding for that specificity are generally too small to distinguish actual partners from competitors. Similarly, protein degradation conveys specificity through very short sequences. The process is so kinetically complex that bulk kinetic experiments and a few molecular structures are insufficient to explain how specificity is achieved. Using single molecule kinetic measurements, we have deconvolved much of that specificity.

In this lecture, Eiichiro Komatsu will describe the ‘cosmic microwave background,’ the light remnants of the Big Bang.

Due to the winter storm, the Wednesday, January 28, 2015 5:00 p.m. Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture "One Brain, Many Genomes: Somatic Mutation and Genomic Variability in the Human Cerebral Cortex” by Christopher A. Walsh is canceled and will be rescheduled.

Since at least the time when it was understood that the circumference of a circle is pi multiplied by its diameter, the applications of mathematics have raced on far ahead of the foundations of the subject itself. By considering a variety of examples, principally from the 19th century, we will explore the tension between mathematics and its applications, and reasons why it remains a valuable and rewarding occupation to develop the necessary framework for existing and “well understood” theories.

Basic motor skills such as looking, reaching and walking do not simply appear as the result of maturation. Rather, infants must learn to move. Learning entails discovering new forms of movements to suit the task at hand and using perceptual information to select and modify movements adaptively.