Hello all, We have a special MaPSS seminar this week at 17:00 on Mon 28th May in Carslaw 535. Two speakers will be presenting their work, and as always it’ll be a great opportunity to see some interesting talks, meet some fellow postgrads, and get some free pizza! ************************************************************************************** Speaker 1: Zeina Libnan Haidar Title: Periodic Trajectories of Pseudo-Integrable Billiard within Circle with a Barrier Abstract: Mathematical billiard in a domain describes the motion of a particle with elastic reflections from the boundary. In this talk, we will focus on billiards within a circular domain with a barrier. Trajectories of such biulliards always have a circular caustic, however the motion is not integrable since the reflection is not defined at the end-point of the barrier. We will discuss periodic trajectories, the effect of the rotation number and the length of the barrier on them, and give a topological description of their phase space leafs. ************************************************************************************** Speaker 2: Adarsh Kumbhari Title: What’s the point in exercising? A cell-biology perspective Abstract: Mitochondria are specialised organelles that produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule used by cells as an energy source. Mitochondria form dynamic networks that constantly undergo fission and fusion in response to increased ATP demand. There is a lack of high-resolution data tracking the reorganisation mitochondrial networks in a beating heart cell. We use an agent-based model to simulate a mitochondrial network reorganising in beating heart cell. Our visualisation highlights how mitochondrial networks respond to stressors such as bouts of sustained vigorous physical activity. ************************************************************************************** See you there! Details can also be found on the school’s new Postgraduate Society website: http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/MaPS/mapss.html Cheers, Eric