ICERM (Public Lecture)
5-5:30pm: light refreshments 5:30-6:30pm: public lecture |
Abstract:
Computational physics now underlies some of the most amazing and most routine of visual effects work, using numerical models to simulate reality and more on the computer. Natural-looking water, smoke, fire, and clothing effects in film are often handled best by understanding and solving the physics of how they move in nature. Making simulations efficient and artist-friendly remains a huge challenge. Dr. Bridson will discuss both the general context of physics-based animation in graphics, but then focus particularly on the advent of new geometric and numerical algorithms for exploiting surface meshes in simulation -- both the obvious like clothing and the more surprising like smoke.
Registration is required. For more information and to reserve your seat go to:
http://icerm.brown.edu/ssvde
Center for Fluid Mechanics Seminar
Abstract:
Yves Couder and coworkers have recently discovered that droplets walking
on a vibrating fluid bath exhibit several features previously thought to be
peculiar to the microscopic, quantum realm. Theoretical developments
provide rationale for the complex behavior of the bouncing droplets,
and yield a trajectory equation for the walking droplets.
Experimental results reveal the emergence of wave-like statistics from pilot-wave dynamics for
droplets walking in confined geometries, and for droplets walking on a rotating fluid bath. Theoretical results indicate the manner in which wave-like
statistics emerge from pilot-wave dynamics for droplets walking on a
rotating bath, or under the
influence of a central force.
The relation between this fluid system and de Broglie's relativistic
pilot-wave theory of quantum dynamics is discussed.
Host: Kenneth Breuer,
Kenneth_Breuer@brown.edu
CCMB Seminar
Abstract:
A central goal of synthetic biology is to develop a toolkit of building blocks that can be used to engineer whole biomolecular and cellular systems from the bottom up. A key component of this toolkit are biological parts that regulate gene expression in ways that can be used to construct networks that integrate and propagate cellular information according to design. Recently, non-coding RNA-based gene regulatory mechanisms have emerged as powerful and versatile substrates for regulatory parts development. In particular, our work has focused on engineering an RNA-based transcription attenuation mechanism in bacteria, which we have shown can be configured in different ways to independently regulate multiple targets, integrate signals and evaluate genetic logics, and directly propagate signals in RNA genetic networks. In addition, we have shown that we can engineer these RNAs to change their fold and thus function in response to small molecule and protein signals, giving us additional versatility in making any network link tunable. However, the construction of more sophisticated RNA-based circuitry requires larger numbers of attenuators, which are not found in nature. Motivated by modularity observed in natural RNA riboswitch regulators, we have devised a strategy to expand our library of attenuators by creating chimeric fusions between our regulator and RNA binding domains from other families of natural non-coding RNAs. We show that functional attenuators can be constructed through specific chimeric fusions. Furthermore, by applying SHAPE-Seq, our high-throughput RNA structure characterization platform, we are beginning to develop RNA structure/function design rules that will allow the creation of larger numbers of orthogonal RNA transcription regulators. In this talk I will describe the foundations of our RNA regulatory platform, and the technology behind SHAPE-Seq. I will conclude with thoughts about how these efforts will expand our ability to construct larger synthetic RNA networks, as well as contribute to a systems-level understanding of RNA structure/function modularity that will lead to a deeper understanding of RNA’s role in biology.
Hosted by Chip Lawrence