Seminar Schedule
February 28- March 4, 2005

All Seminars are held in Boyd Graduate Studies Bldg. unless otherwise noted.

MONDAY, February 28, 2005

Algebra
2:30 – 3:30p.m., Room 410
No Meeting this week

Algebraic Geometry
2:30pm, Room 410
Speaker: Roya Beheshti-Zavareh, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Title of talk: Lines on projective hypersurfaces
Abstract. In this talk I will discuss the geometry of the Hilbert scheme of lines on an arbitrary smooth hypersurface of low degree over an algebraically closed field.

Probability Theory
2:45 - 4:00p.m., Room 222
Speaker: Lirong Yu, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Markov chains with weak and strong interactions

Faculty and Graduate Social
3:00 p.m., Room 409
Coffee, Cookies, Tea

Lie Theory
3:30-4:30p.m., Room 303
No Meeting this week

Topology
3:30-4:30p.m., Room 326
Speaker: Ken Baker, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Ozsvath-Szabo Invariants, continued

CATS
4:40-5:30p.m., Room 306
Speaker: Yinglei Song, Department of Computer Science, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Tree decomposition based optimization algorithms
Abstract: For nearly two decades, the concepts of tree decomposition and tree width have profoundly affected the fields of both graph theory and algorithm research. In this talk, I will provide a survey on the impact of the tree decomposition and tree width on algorithm design and complexity study.

A widely known fact is that, on graphs with bounded tree width, many NP-hard optimization problems, such as maximum independent set, mininum dominating set etc, have linear time algorithms. Although finding the minimum tree width of a graph is also NP-hard, a parameterized linear time algorithm developed by Bodlaender can determine whether a graph has a tree decomposition with its tree width less than a given parameter k.

TUESDAY, March 1, 2005

VIGRE Graduate Student Seminar
2:00p.m., Room 304
Speaker: Carrie Wright, U. of Georgia
Title of talk: Conway Polynomials and Finite Fields
Abstract: Conway Polynomials are important in different areas of mathematics, especially Number Theory and Algebra. A Conway polynomial is an irreducible polynomial over a finite field with some added conditions. Conway polynomials have given mathematicians a more efficient way of doing arithmetic in finite fields. In fact, GAP and MAGMA use conway polynomials to define their finite fileds and to do the arithmetic in these finite fields. In this talk, I will explore the use and importance of Conway polynomials in Algebra and Cryptography.

Dynamics on Berkovich Space
3:30-5:30p.m., Room 326
No Meeting this week

WEDNESDAY, March 2, 2005

Spline Analysis
1:30-2:30pm, Room 326
Speaker: V. Baramidze, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Markov's Inequality over Spherical Triangles, continued

VIGRE – Cardiac Physiology
2:30p.m., Room 640

Faculty and Graduate Social
3:00 p.m., Room 409
Coffee, Cookies, Tea

VIGRE-Algebra
3:30p.m. , Room 303
Organizers: Brian Boe, Daniel Nakano, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Proving conjectures beyond p^2

Number Theory
3:45-5:15pm, Room 304
No Meeting this week

THURSDAY, March 3, 2005

VIGRE – Algebraic Geometry
2:00p.m., Room 304

Post Tenure Review meeting
3:30p.m., Room 304
We will review Associate Professors first, and then Full Professors. The review committee for each person consists of all faculty members at that person's rank or above, excluding the Department Head and any strikes.

Student Arithmetic/Algebraic Geometry Seminar
3:30p.m., Room 304
No Meeting this week

FRIDAY, March 4, 2005

Geometry
2:30p.m., Room 326
Speaker: Thomas Kephart, Vanderbilt University
Title of talk: Applications of tight knots to physics
Abstract: We argue that systems of tightly knotted, linked, or braided quantized flux tubes will have a universal mass-energy spectrum, since the length of fixed radius flux tubes depend only on the topology of the configuration. We motivate the discussion with plasma physics examples, then concentrate on a particle physics model of glueballs as knotted QCD flux tubes. Other applications will also be discussed.

Special Algebraic Geometry Seminar
2:30, room 410
Speaker: James McKernan, UC Santa Barbara
Title of talk: Rational connectedness of Fano fibrations, and effective birational maps
for varieties of general type.
Abstract: A fundamental problem in algebraic geometry is to determine which pluricanonical forms extend from a subvariety to its ambient variety. Siu and Kawamata proved that one can always lift pluricanonical forms, from a log canonical centre, at least when the canonical divisor is big. As an application of this lifting result they proved some cases of deformation invariance of plurigenera.

In joint work with Christopher Hacon, we show that one can always lift log pluricanonical forms from a log canonical centre. As an application we prove a conjecture of Shokurov which states that the fibres of a Fano fibration are rationally chain connected. We also prove, adapting some ideas of Tsuji, that if one fixes the dimension, some fixed pluricanonical map is birational.

Joint Analysis
3:30p.m., Room 303
Speaker: Akos Magyar, University of Georgia
Title of talk: On a result of Katznelson and Weiss, continued


VIGRE – Clifford Algebras
3:30-4:45p.m. Room 302

Wavelet Analysis
3:30-4:30p.m., Room 322
Speaker: Ming-Jun Lai, University of Georgia
Title of talk: The reversed polynomials (Christoffel-Darboux formula), continued