Welcome back to Science Fair, Bwog’s weekly roundup of science events happening around campus. As always, email science@bwog.com if you want your event featured.

Biology Seminar – Mark Rausher: Gene duplication facilitates, but does not trigger, flower color pattern diversification in Clarkia

  • Monday, September 26, 12pm.
  • 601 Fairchild.
  • “Compared to sister genera, the genus Clarkia has undergone an explosion of flower color pattern diversity. To understand why this may have occurred, we have examined the genetic control of pattern elements and how it has evolved. Individual pattern elements are controlled by different paralogs of R2R3Myb transcription factors. Duplication of these genes has facilitated the evolution of novel pattern elements and thus facilitated the evolution of pattern diversity. However, these duplications occurred long before the origin and diversification of Clarkia, indicating that duplication was not the trigger for this diversification.” More information here.

Physics Colloquia: Andrea Young

  • Monday, September 26, 12:30 to 1:30pm.
  • Center for Theoretical Physics, Pupin Hall 8th Floor.
  • A talk from Professor Andrea Young of University of California, Santa Barbara about Magnetism and Superconductivity in crystalline graphene allotropes. His research focuses on Experimental Condensed Matter Physics. More information here.

Allison Bishop – How the US stock market is a cryptography problem that almost no one is working on

  • Wednesday, September 28, 11:40am to 12:40pm.
  • CS Auditorium (CSB 451).
  • “On any given day, billions of shares are traded on the US stock market. Nonetheless, institutions who seek to buy or sell large amounts of stock may stick out in the crowd and fall victim to predatory behavior. They refer to this problem as “information leakage,” which sounds technical, but there is no widely accepted definition of the phenomenon, and little in the way of public-facing research on the topic. In this talk, I’ll describe why cryptographers and computer scientists are well-suited to approach this problem, and why more public research would be good for the health of the financial industry. I will also discuss the related historical and economic trends that have influenced the structure of the US stock market, leading to its current state.”More information here.

Emanuele Coccia – Loving the Planet: How to Turn Ecology into Planetary Erotics

  • Wednesday, September 28, 4 to 6pm.
  • Heyman Center. Registration required.
  • Contemporary ecological discourse and science oscillate between the affirmation of a love that would occur spontaneously among living beings and the prescription of a compulsory love accompanied by a spirit of repentance. By its own confession, the problem of ecology is an erotic problem: we fail to love the planet”…“This talk will ask what it means to think about nature as if the relationships that bind species are (as complicated as) love relationships and if we can understand what love is, in its original and paradigmatic form as that which always binds us to individuals of other species.”  More information here and here.

Unpacking Republican Energy and Environmental Policy – What is It?

  • Thursday, September 29, 12 to 1pm.
  • Online. Registration required.
  • “With President Biden in office and Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, virtually all of the attention around climate and energy policy has focused on what the Democrats want to pursue — and what they can accomplish with thin majorities and no Republican support”…“But with the real possibility of Republicans taking control of one or both houses of Congress in November, and with discussions about the 2024 presidential race already beginning, it is important to ask: what exactly is the Republicans’ energy and environmental policy, and what should it be?” More information here and here.

Mongolian Climate and History: An Experiment in Collaboration

  • Thursday, September 29, 4 to 6pm.
  • Fayerweather 411. Registration required.
  • “In this presentation, three scholars will discuss how a cold call in 2011 initiated a dialogue between a historian (Nicola Di Cosmo) and a group of paleoclimatologists (Amy Hessl, Caroline Leland, Neil Pederson, Oyunsanaa Byambasuren, Baatarbileg Nachin, and Kevin Anchukaitis) that would change our understanding of steppe empires and the role of climate in their evolution. The collaboration led to the development of new ideas that would not have emerged without a mutual understanding of their respective fields.” More information here.

Binary evolution: a multi-messenger, multi-band puzzle

  • Thursday, September 29, 4:05 to 4:35 PM
  • Pupin 1402.
  • “In this talk I will highlight recent work which explores ways to combine binary population simulations with current and future data from gravitational-wave and electromagnetic surveys to constrain the formation and evolution of binary stars and compact object binaries.” More information here.

How black holes shine: multiwavelength emission in the high-energy Universe

  • Thursday, September 29, 4:35 to 5:05 PM
  • Pupin 1402.
  • A talk with postdoctoral prize fellow Bart Ripperda of Princeton University and the  Flatiron Institute. His work focuses on theoretical and computational astrophysics and fundamental plasma physics with applications in black holes and neutron stars. More information here.

Justice and the Developing Brain: Revisiting People Incarcerated as Youth

  • Thursday, September 29, 5 to 6:30pm.
  • Online and Davis Auditorium, Schapiro CEPSR. Registration required.
  • “This seminar will explore how knowledge from neurodevelopmental sciences can drive systemic change in youth justice policy. Law, science, and justice experts will discuss how this body of evidence can support avenues for meaningful youth justice reform, including shifting the youth justice system from harsh punitiveness to education, healing, and rehabilitation.” More information here.

Peter Vuust – Groove on the Brain: Predictive Brain Processes Underlying Musical Rhythm and Interaction

  • Friday, September 30, 3 to 5pm.
  • Online and Fayerweather 513. Registration required.
  • “This event will illustrate how the theory of predictive processing can help us understand how rhythm is processed and why we move to certain kinds of music more than others.”…“The speaker will discuss new studies showing how predictive coding can be applied to understand the dynamics involved in interpersonal synchronization using a minimal tapping paradigm, where two individuals are placed in separate rooms with headphones and EEG equipment and asked to tap together in different conditions.” More information here and here.

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