University of Georgia
Department of Mathematics

Seminar Schedule
January 19 - 23, 2004

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

MONDAY, January 19, 2004

University Holiday

TUESDAY, January 20, 2004

VIGRE Graduate Student Seminar
2:00p.m., Room 304
Speaker:
Jason Cantarella, University of Georgia
Title of talk: What every mathematician should know about mathematical visualization: a quick overview of how to communicate math effectively with pictures.

Special Seminar in Analysis
2:00p.m., Room 410
No Meeting this week

Wavelet Analysis
2:00p.m., Room 326
Speaker: Jie Zhou, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Construction of wavelets using dilation factor > 2, continued

WEDNESDAY, January 21, 2004

Algebra
2:30p.m., Room 410
Speaker:
Graham Matthews, University of Georgia
Title of talk:
Computing Generators and Relations for Matrix Algebras over Finite Fields: Part 1

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

Algebraic Geometry
2:30p.m., Room 303
Speaker:
Valery Alexeev, University of Georgia
Title of talk:
"GIT stability of algebraic varieties and Kahler-Einstein metrics"
Abstract:
Moment map. Duistermaat-Heckman measure. Tian-Donaldson's conjecture.

Numerical Analysis
3:30p.m., Room 303
Speaker: Ming-Jun Lai, University of Georgia
Title of talk: How well can you approximate Franke functions from scattered data?, continued

Number Theory
3:45p.m., Room 304
Speaker: Dino Lorenzini, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Abelian varieties with everywhere good reduction

THURSDAY, January 22, 2004

VIGRE - Cardiac Physiology
2:00p.m., Room 304
Speaker:
Cynthia Fort, University of Georgia
Title of talk:
Diffusion across membranes

VIGRE - Contact Topology
2:00p.m., Room 410
Organizer: Gordana Matic, University of Georgia

Student Number Theory
3:30p.m., Room 303
Speaker: Nausheen Lotia, University of Georgia
Title of talk: RSA encryption: Do we need strong primes?
Abstract: I willl be talking about whether or not 'strong' primes are needed to protect against factoring attacks in the RSA cryptosystem. I will start by quickly going over RSA, and defining what a 'strong' prime is, and then move onto pollard's p-1 method for factoring which was one of the justifications for using strong primes. I will then just talk about a couple of other factoring methods and conclude with whether or not strong primes really are needed or not.

FRIDAY, January 23, 2004

CATS
1:25-2:15pm, Room 306
Speaker: Yinglei Song, Graduate student, UGA Computer Science Dept.
Title of talk:
Memory efficient RNA pseudoknot prediction with stochastic grammar modeling
Abstract: Modeling and predicting RNA secondary structures with pseudoknots remains an important problem in computational biology. The Parallel Communicating Grammar System proposed by Cai et al. allows the development of a full
probabilistic model for sequence prediction and profiling. However, the prediction algorithm based on this model may only be applied to sequences of less than 100 nucleotides due to its exceptionally large space complexity. A new algorithm that requires significantly less memory has been developed. Experiments show that this new algorithm can yield excellent prediction results (with an accuracy of 86%) on sequences intractable for the original optimal algorithm (up to 204 nucleotides) with reasonable computational resource requirements.

Electrodynamics Seminar
2:30p.m., Room 322
Speaker: Cal Burgoyne, University of Georgia
Title of talk:
Various presentations of Maxwell's equations and an introduction to the Clifford algebra on 3-space

Geometry
2:30p.m., Room 323
Speaker: Joe Fu, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Recursions for the unitary kinematic formula, part 2.

Special Seminar Numerical Analysis
3:30p.m., Room 304
Speakers:
Sergey Konyagin (Moscow State University) and Vladimir Temlyakov (University of South Carolina)
Title of talk: Convergence of Greedy Approximations for the trigonometric system.
Abstract: We study the following nonlinear method of approximation by trigonometric polynomials. For a periodic function $f$ we take as an approximant a trigonometric polynomial of the form $G_m(f) := \sum_{k \in \Lambda} \hat f(k) e^{i(k,x)} $, where $\Lambda \subset \Bbb Z$ is a set of cardinality $m$ containing the indices of the $m$ biggest (in absolute value) Fourier coefficients $\hat f(k)$ of function $f$. Note that $G_m(f)$ gives the best $m$-term approximant in the $L_2$-norm and, therefore, for each $f\in L_2$, $\|f-G_m(f)\|_2 \to 0$ as $m\to \infty$. It is known from previous results that in the case of $p\neq 2$ the condition $f\in L_p$ does not guarantee the convergence $\|f-G_m(f)\|_p \to 0$ as $m\to \infty$. We study the following question. What conditions (in addition to $f\in L_p$) provide the convergence $\|f-G_m(f)\|_p \to 0$ as $m\to \infty$? We look for conditions of the form $\|G_m(f)-G_{M(m)}\|_p\to 0$ as $m\to \infty$. Some positive and negative results in this direction will be discussed in the talk.