What's On at UWA

The first super computer was built 60 years by UNIVAC and kick started the tussle between IO, memory, cpu, parallelism and the ever shrinking transistor. According to Wikipedia "In 1960 UNIVAC built the Livermore Atomic Research Computer (LARC), today considered among the first supercomputers, for the US Navy Research and Development Centre". Today’s central processing units (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPU) continue in the tradition of doubling the system performance roughly every 18 months (see Moore's observation). BUT it is a little like Back to the Future. The modern vector architectures are a scaled back version of those of the 80's and 90's. The massive parallelism harps back to the late 70's and early 80's. Modern networks linking these systems follow suit, oscillating between parallel and serial transport. This talk will cover some of the modern takes on these old principles and relate them back to computational methods and techniques. You might discover that your best scientific programmer is a physicist from a previous generation.

Followed by Cheese and wine in Maths Common Room

Abstract: We all have our doubts off and on if life is really so wonderful. But that is not what I want to address here. Watching the Jimmy Stewart movie with this title, there was one scene which captured my imagination: the Guardian Angel shows George Bailey how the world would have been without him. Personally, I never had much need to know how the world would have looked without me. However, all other things equal, how would life have been if I had lived in a different time and place, would be something of interest to me! This is the stuff of movies and fairy tales. But at least it is possible to play this as an intellectual game. I was born and raised in Germany before WW II. After getting my Ph.D. in 1962, I married a fellow mathematician and we immigrated to the US one year later, where we taught at a university until our retirements, first at Ohio State and then at Binghamton University. What would life have been if I stayed in Germany, did not get married, were born fifty or one hundred years earlier, or were born in another country? Looking at actual and potential role models over the centuries helped me answer some of these questions. In essence, it got me back to the roots of what shaped my life.

Finite geometry involves the study of finitely many objects -- points, lines, planes, etc -- in analogy with classical geometric language and concepts. The exciting aspect of finite geometry is that it often shares properties of the usual Euclidean geometry, yet the finite-ness of the geometry enables us to exchange information with cognate disciplines such as coding theory, design theory, and finite group theory. This talk is an introduction to the world of finite geometry.

We propose a model-free approach to analyse the movement of pedestrians in experiments and simulations. Using concepts from control and analysis of complex dynamical systems we set up a scheme which allows us to identify dynamical unstable signatures in pedestrian flows. These signatures are the building blocks for crowd control and soft management of people. Our approach is entirely data driven and we provide a proof of concept by field and laboratory experiments. In addition, our approach provides, based on experimental observations, quantitative benchmarks to judge the quality of mathematical models for pedestrian motion.

Abstract: Children who experience poor academic performance at school have been d escribed as having learning difficulties (LD). These children are thought to show reduced performances in reading, written language and numeracy, and/or to be inactive and inefficient learners. Hearing is one of several factors thought to influence a child’s learning at school with students spending at least 45% of their classroom activities that require listening and 45 - 75% of their time in the classroom comprehending their teachers’ and classmates’ speech. Hearing impairment can include loss of hearing sensitivity and/or impaired auditory processing. While rates of peripheral hearing loss in the Australian primary school-aged population is estimated to be between 3.4% - 12.8%, rates of impaired auditory processing in this population are not available in Australia. Children with peripheral hearing loss and/or impaired auditory processing often show behaviours similar to those reported in children with LD, suggesting that LD and hearing impairment could be related in primary school child populations. This seminar will present the research that investigated LD and hearing impairment in a school-aged child population in the greater Brisbane region of Queensland, Australia.

Bio: Robyn is a lecturer in Audiology in School of Human Sciences. Robyn’s current area of research is auditory processing disorder and middle ear assessment in the paediatric population. In particular, Robyn is passionate about improving educational outcomes in children with learning difficulties who may have a hearing impairment. Robyn’s other research interests also include using simulated learning in clinical education and tele-audiology. Clinically, Robyn specialises in middle ear and Central Auditory Processing assessment and management in the paediatric population.

Bio: Shane did his PhD at the University of New South Wales on thermal biology of the emu, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in the Brain Function Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he focussed on brain temperature regulation in mammals. Since 1999 he has been at the University of Western Australia where his research centres on environmental physiology in man and other animals, with a focus on heat balance, energy use, and the mechanisms of thermoregulation. A special interest is adaptation to extremes, including life in the desert and arid zones, and what climate change will mean for thermoregulation in mammals, including man. His current research investigates animals, with a focus on heat balance, energy use, and the mechanisms of thermoregulation. A special interest is adaptation to extremes, including life in the desert and arid zones, and what climate change will mean for thermoregulation in mammals, including man. His current research investigates adaptations to heat and cold, and the impacts of circadian and ultradian changes in body temperature on health and performance. For three years he was the Head of the School of Anatomy, Physiology, and Human Biology, and then the inaugural Head of The School of Human Sciences for two years. He is very much enjoying more time now for research.

Abstract: The body clock, or circadian clock, keeps our body processes running according to a schedule. The molecular clock is well-known to entrain to light signals in the eye (but not from the photoreceptors in the retina), and emerging evidence suggests that it also interacts with our body temperature. Shane will discuss the factors that affect body temperature, such as heat and cold, malnutrition, and pregnancy, and what he has learned about temperature as a ‘zeitgeber’ (or time-giver) for our internal clock. He and his team have experimented with manipulating body temperature in mammals, and he will describe the challenges of this work, and why they ended up working on fruit flies. The team is now working to understand the daily ‘noise’ around the circadian rhythm and the new world of ultradian rhythms (two to three hourly changes).

Bio: Alan Harvey is an Emeritus Professor at The University of Western Australia and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science. He is a neuroscientist, having published almost 250 reviewed articles and book chapters, in recent years focusing on the development and testing of new therapies to promote plasticity and regeneration after neurotrauma in the brain and spinal cord. He has also had a life-long interest and passion for music, and since his retirement has focused much more on writing and talking about the neurobiology of human musicality and has proposed new ideas about music’s evolutionary significance. Alan Harvey’s book Music, Evolution, and the Harmony of Souls was published by Oxford University Press in 2017, and reprinted in paperback in 2018. Alan is currently a member of Perth Symphonic Chorus and their chamber choir, and is a member of the recently reformed mandolin quartet Stringybach. Abstract: Alan will briefly review what is known about the brain circuits and neurochemistry involved in processing music, including basic components such as rhythm and melody, as well as more emotional aspects such as happiness and sadness. Why have humans evolved two interrelated yet distinct communication systems – language and music? Possible answers to this fundamental question will be considered, primarily focussing on the evolutionary power of music to promote trust and cooperative behaviour within human groups, music’s links to the neurobiology of the hormone oxytocin, and emphasising the continued importance of music in promoting the cognitive and social development of children, benefits that last a lifetime. How these insights aid in understanding the potential power of music as a therapeutic tool will also be briefly discussed.

Groups are mathematical objects that abstractly capture the concept of symmetry. Two groups are isomorphic if they essentially describe the same data, but they might be given with respect to different frames of reference. More specifically, two groups are isomorphic if there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between their elements that preserves the group operations. The group isomorphism problem is a decision problem that asks whether two given groups are isomorphic. This problem is of interest in theoretical computer science (with focus on the complexity of the problem) and in computational group theory (with focus on practical algorithms). My talk will survey some known results and comment on some recent new results, covering both complexity theory and practical applications to computer algebra systems.

Colloquium followed by refreshments in Monadelphous Integrated Learning Centre

Applied mathematics involves building models of the real world. When those models consist of differential equations (as they very often do) one can seek to do one of two things: (1) make approximations that allow those models to be solved on a restricted, but still useful, domain; or (2) study those equations and offer a descriptive understanding of the dynamics of the underlying system. Increasingly, our ability to collect data is exceeding our skill at constructing viable and interesting systems of equations. I will describe the situation where we have a stream of observed time series data but insufficient expertise to write down an appropriate generating set of equations. From that stream of data, I will describe methods that we have been working on that offers a descriptive understanding of the dynamics that is equivalent to what might have been obtained from the equations. That is, for chaotic systems, we seek to estimate quantities such as Lyapunov exponents, (unstable) periodic orbits, symbolic dynamics, correlation dimension, and attractor topology directly from the data. This allows us to describe the behaviour of the underlying system from observed data, and importantly for practical applications quantify change in that behaviour.

Abstract: Laplace's interpretation of the gravitational potential produced a huge impact on science at large, and we will try to review some of the important byproducts obtained in several disciplines through the mathematical analysis of the Laplacian operator.

Warning: if you like statistics, biology, finance, algebra, discrete mathematics, machine learning, astronomy, chemistry, photography, social sciences, medicine, music, or virtually anything else, you are probably already in love with the Laplacian!

This is an informal and self-contained presentation, no specific mathematical background will be assumed, questions and interruptions will be welcome.

About the speaker: Enrico is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Western Australia, and an Australian Laureate Fellow. He is a highly cited researcher, editor of a number of top-quality international journals, and editor-in-chief of "Mathematics in Engineering", "Nonlinear Analysis", and "Ars Inveniendi Analytica". His research focuses on mathematical analysis and partial differential equations, with applications to biology and physics.

Three graduates of the School of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, Professors Peter Veitch, David McClelland and David Blair were recipients of the 2020 Prime Minister’s Science Prize for the Discovery of Gravitational Waves. It is a great pleasure to have them all together on campus along together with the fourth award recipient Prof. Susan Scott. They will give a Special Seminar describing their work, and the future of gravitational wave astronomy. This is the first time that the award recipients have met in person since the disruption of the pandemic.

This special seminar will consists of four brief talks and a Q&A session, which will include two further distinguished guests who will be giving public lectures in the Octagon Theatre on Thursday 22 September: Regents’ Prof Paul Davies, Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University, and Prof Tamara Davis, astrophysicist at University of Queensland. We invite members of the School and University community to attend the Special Seminar.

New ideas and new discoveries have changed our view of space and time, the very fabric of the universe. The changes began a century ago when the Wallal Eclipse in Western Australia proved that space is elastic and flexible.

Join WA artist Mark Grey-Smith, cosmologist Regents' Professor Paul Davies AM, Professor Tamara Davis AM, astrophysicist and UWA Emeritus Professor David Blair for an informal floor talk and panel discussion. Bring your questions!

Symmetry appears to be a guiding principle underlying most laws in science. For example, nature uses symmetry for compact encoding of genetic information, and postulating such "genetic economy" led Crick and Watson to discover the particular icosahedral symmetry of viruses. Within mathematics, we encode the symmetries of any structure as a group, and the groups I study are those acting on huge and complex (but still finite) structures, such as the enormous mathematical graphs underpinning large computer networks. The classification of the finite simple groups (CFSG), said to be one of the greatest achievements of twentieth century mathematics, had a profound impact on research in symmetry. The finite simple groups are the building blocks for finite groups, and many problems involving finite symmetric structures are reduced to questions which can be solved using the simple group classification. How does this work? What information about simple groups is needed? What if it's not available? It will be challenging to describe in one hour -- but let me try.

The National Quantum & Dark Matter Road Trip as part of National Science Week presents:

Dr Jeremy Bourhill - "Australia's Search for Dark Matter: Using quantum technology to try and see the unseeable."

Dark matter is the biggest missing puzzle piece in our understanding of the universe. Understanding it would help answer some of the biggest and scariest questions we like to ask such as "why does the universe even exist?". In this public lecture Dr Jeremy Bourhill will discuss the overwhelming evidence for the existence of dark matter.

The lecture will be understandable by the general public from school age up and will feature physical demonstrations and a 30-minute Q&A.

Date: 17 August; Time: 5.45pm arrival, 6.00-7.30pm public lecture; Venue: Murdoch Lecture Theatre, UWA.

Free event - registration essential at Eventbrite https://tinyurl.com/SearchDM