Events for 11/23/2009 from all calendars

IAMCS-KAUST Seminar

Time: 09:00AM - 10:00AM

Location: Blocker 628

Speaker: Dr. Sebastian Pauletti, IAMCS, Dept of Mathematics, Texas A&University

Title: A Biomembrane Problem

Abstract: When lipid molecules are immersed in aqueous environment they spontaneously aggregate into a membrane made up up two mono-molecular layers. The membrane forms an encapsulating bag called vesicle. This happens because lipids consist of a hydrophilic head group and a hydrophobic tail, which isolate itself in the interior of the membrane. As a first approach, we have studied a model based on geometry assuming that the equilibrium shapes are the minimizers of the Willmore energy under area and volume constraints. Then, the effect of the inside (bulk) fluid is taken into account leading to a more physical dynamics. A parametric approach is employed, which leads to forth order highly nonlinear PDEs on surfaces and involves large domain deformations. An adaptive finite element method (AFEM), with either piecewise linear or quadratic polynomials, is used for both the geometric and coupled problems. Several computational challenges needed to be addressed and solved. I will also talk about a new paradigm of adaptivity to execute refinement, coarsening, and smoothing of meshes on manifolds with incomplete information about their geometry and yet preserve position and curvature accuracy. Joint with: Andrea Bonito and Ricardo H. Nochetto.

Center for Approximation Theory Seminar

Time: 3:05PM - 4:00PM

Location: 317 Milner Hall

Speaker: John Ward, Texas A&M University

Title: A Bernstein inequality and an inverse theorem for RBF approximation on R^d

Graduate Tea

Time: 3:30PM - 4:00PM

Location: Blocker 627