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Time-periodic shear layers occur naturally in a wide range of applications from engineering to physiology. Transition to turbulence in such flows is of practical interest and there have been several papers dealing with the stability of flows composed of a steady component plus an oscillatory part with zero mean. In such flows a possible instability mechanism is associated with the mean component so that the stability of the flow can be examined using some sort of perturbation-type analysis. This strategy fails when the mean part of the flow is small compared with the oscillatory component which, of course, includes the case when the mean part is precisely zero.

This difficulty with analytical studies has meant that the stability of purely oscillatory flows has relied on various numerical methods. Until very recently such techniques have only ever predicted that the flow is stable, even though experiments suggest that they do become unstable at high enough speeds. In this talk I shall expand on this discrepancy with emphasis on the particular case of the so-called flat Stokes layer. This flow, which is generated in a deep layer of incompressible fluid lying above a flat plate which is oscillated in its own plane, represents one of the few exact solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. We show theoretically that the flow does become unstable to waves which propagate relative to the basic motion although the theory predicts that this occurs much later than has been found in experiments. Reasons for this discrepancy are examined by reference to calculations for oscillatory flows in pipes and channels. Finally, we propose some new experiments that might reduce this disagreement between the theoretical predictions of instability and practical realisations of breakdown in oscillatory flows.

Recent studies (1) have indicated problems with our ability to use the genetic distances between species to estimate the time since their divergence (so called molecular clocks). An exponential decay curve has been detected in comparisons of closely related taxa in mammal and bird groups, and rough approximations suggest that molecular clock calculations may be problematic for the recent past (eg <1 million years). Unfortunately, this period encompasses a number of key evolutionary events where estimates of timing are critical such as modern human evolutionary history, the domestication of animals and plants, and most issues involved in conservation biology. A solution (formulated at UA) will be briefly outlined. A second area of active interest is the recent suggestion (2) that mitochondrial DNA diversity does not track population size in several groups, in contrast to standard thinking. This finding has been interpreted as showing that mtDNA may not be evolving neutrally, as has long been assumed.
Large ancient DNA datasets provide a means to examine these issues, by revealing evolutionary processes in real time (3). The data also provide a rich area for mathematical investigation as temporal information provides information about several parameters that are unknown in serial coalescent calculations (4).
References:

1. Ho SYW et al. Time dependency of molecular rate estimates and systematic overestimation of recent divergence times. Mol. Biol. Evol. 22, 1561-1568 (2005);
   Penny D, Nature 436, 183-184 (2005).
2. Bazin E., et al. Population size does not influence mitochondrial genetic diversity in animals. Science 312, 570 (2006);
   Eyre-Walker A. Size does not matter for mitochondrial DNA, Science 312, 537 (2006).
3. Shapiro B, et al. Rise and fall of the Beringian steppe bison. Science 306: 1561-1565 (2004);
   Chan et al. Bayesian estimation of the timing and severity of a population bottleneck from ancient DNA. PLoS Genetics, 2 e59 (2006).
4. Drummond et al. Measurably evolving populations, Trends in Ecol. Evol. 18, 481-488 (2003);
   Drummond et al. Bayesian coalescent inference of past population dynamics from molecular sequences. Molecular Biology Evolution 22, 1185-92 (2005).

Data in the form of paired (pre-treatment, post-treatment) counts arise in the study of the effects of several treatments after accounting for possible covariate effects. An example of such a data set comes from a dental epidemiological study in Belo Horizonte (the Belo Horizonte caries prevention study) which evaluated various programmes for reducing caries. Also, these data may show extra pairs of zeros than can be accounted for by a simpler model, such as, a bivariate Poisson regression model. In such situations we propose to use a zero-inflated bivariate Poisson regression (ZIBPR) model for the paired (pre-treatment, posttreatment) count data. We develop EM algorithm to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the ZIBPR model. Further, we obtain exact Fisher information matrix of the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the ZIBPR model and develop a procedure for testing treatment effects. The procedure to detect treatment effects based on the ZIBPR model is compared, in terms of size, by simulations, with an earlier procedure using a zero-inflated Poisson regression (ZIPR) model of the post-treatment count with the pre-treatment count treated as a covariate. The procedure based on the ZIBPR model holds level most effectively. A further simulation study indicates good power property of the procedure based on the ZIBPR model. We then compare our analysis, of the decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) index data from the caries prevention study, based on the ZIBPR model with the analysis using a zero-inflated Poisson regression model in which the pre-treatment DMFT index is taken to be a covariate

The concept of statistical convergence was introduced by Henry Fast and Hugo Steinhaus in 1951. But in fact, it was Antoni Zygmund who first proved theorems on the statistical convergence of Fourier series, using the term \"almost convergence\". A sequence $\\{x_k : k=1,2\\ldots\\}$ of complex numbers is said to be statistically convergent to $\\xi$ if for every $\\varepsilon >0$ we have $$\\lim_{n\\to \\infty} n^{-1} |\\{1\\le k\\le n: |x_k-\\xi| > \\varepsilon\\}| = 0.$$ We present the basic properties of statistical convergence, and extend it to multiple sequences. We also discuss the convergence behavior of Fourier series.

Honey dripping from an upturned spoon is an everyday example of a flow that extends and breaks up into drops. Such flows have been of interest for over 300 years, attracting the attention of Plateau and Rayleigh among others. Theoretical understanding has, however, lagged behind experimental investigation, with major progress being made only in the last two decades, driven by industrial applications including ink-jet printing, spinning of polymer and glass fibres, blow-moulding of containers, light bulbs and glass tubing, and rheological measurement by fibre extension. Albeit, the exact details of the final stages of breakup are yet to be fully resolved. An aspect that is relatively unexplored is the evolution of drop and filament from some initial configuration, and the influence of initial conditions on the final breakup. We will consider a drop of very viscous fluid hanging beneath a solid boundary, similar to honey dripping from an upturned spoon, using methods that allow examination of development and behaviour from early time, when a drop and filament begin to form, out to large times when the bulk of the fluid forms a drop at the bottom of a long thin filament which connects it with the upper boundary. The roles of gravity, inertia and surface tension will be examined.

The Sunderbans is a region of deltaic isles formed in the mouth of the Ganges River on the border between India and Bangladesh. As the largest mangrove forest in the world it is a world heritage site, however it is also home to several remote communities who have long inhabited some regions. Many of the inhabited islands are low-lying and are particularly vulnerable to flooding, a major hazard of living in the region. Determining suitable levels of protection to be provided to these communities relies upon accurate assessment of the flood risk facing these communities. Only recently the Indian Government commissioned a study into flood risk in the Sunderbans with a view to determine where flood protection needed to be upgraded.

Flooding due to rainfall is limited due to the relatively small catchment sizes, so the primary causes of flooding in the Sunderbans are unnaturally high tides, tropical cyclones (which regularly sweep through the bay of Bengal) or some combination of the two. Due to the link between tidal anomaly and drops in local barometric pressure, the two causes of flooding may be highly correlated. I propose stochastic methods for analysing the flood risk and present the early work of a case study which shows the direction of investigation. The strategy involves linking several components; a stochastic approximation to a hydraulic flood routing model, FARIMA and GARCH models for storm surge and a stochastic model for cyclone occurrence and tracking. The methods suggested are general and should have applications in other cyclone affected regions.

The breakup of a mass of fluid into drops is a ubiquitous phenomenon in daily life, the natural environment and technology, with common examples including a dripping tap, ocean spray and ink-jet printing. It is a feature of many generic industrial processes such as spraying, emulsification, aeration, mixing and atomisation, and is an undesirable feature in coating and fibre spinning. Surface-tension driven pinch-off and the subsequent recoil are examples of finite-time singularities in which the interfacial curvature becomes infinite at the point of disconnection. As a result, the flow near the point of disconnection becomes self-similar and independent of initial and far-field conditions. Similarity solutions will be presented for the cases of inviscid and very viscous flow, along with comparison to experiments. In each case, a boundary-integral representation can be used both to examine the time-dependent behaviour and as the basis of a modified Newton scheme for direct solution of the similarity equations.

How often have you asked yourself: "I wonder how many fish are in that lake?" Probably never, but if you ever did, then this is the lecture for you. The solution is easy (Seuss, 1960), but raises the question of how good the answer is. I will answer this by looking at confidence intervals. In the lecture, I will discuss what a confidence interval is and how to calculate it using techniques for calculating probabilities in poker. I will also look at how these ideas have been used in epidemiology, the study of disease, to estimate the number of people with diabetes. [1] Seuss, Dr. (1960). "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish". Random House Books.

One of the central challenges in phylogenetics is to be able to reliably resolve as much of the topology of the evolutionary tree from short taxon-sequences. In the past decade much attention has been focused on studying fast converging reconstruction algorithms, which guarantee (w.h.p) correct reconstruction of the entire tree from sequences of near-minimal length (assuming some accepted model of sequence evolution along the tree). The major drawback of these methods is that when the sequences are too short to correctly reconstruct the tree in its entirety, they do not provide any reconstruction guarantee for sufficiently long edges. Specifically, the presence of some very short edges in the model tree may prevent these algorithms from reconstructing even edges of moderate length.

In this talk we present a stronger reconstruction guarantee called "adaptive fast convergence", which provides guarantees for the correct reconstruction of all sufficiently long edges of the original tree. We then present a general technique, which (unlike previous reconstruction techniques) employs dynamic edge-contraction during the reconstruction of the tree. We conclude by demonstrating how this technique is used to achieve adaptive fast convergence.

Circadian clocks govern daily behaviors of organisms in all kingdoms of life. In mammals, the master clock resides in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus. It is composed of thousands of neurons, each of which contains a sloppy oscillator - a molecular clock governed by a transcriptional feedback network. Via intercellular signaling, the cell population synchronizes spontaneously, forming a coherent oscillation. This multi-oscillator is then entrained to its environment by the daily light/dark cycle.

Both at the cellular and tissular levels, the most important feature of the clock is its ability not simply to keep time, but to adjust its time, or phase, to signals. We present the parametric impulse phase response curve (pIPRC), an analytical analog to the phase response curve (PRC) used experimentally. We use the pIPRC to understand both the consequences of intercellular signaling and the light entrainment process. Further, we determine which model components determine the phase response behavior of a single oscillator by using a novel model reduction technique. We reduce the number of model components while preserving the pIPRC and then incorporate the resultant model into a couple SCN tissue model. Emergent properties, including the ability of the population to synchronize spontaneously are preserved in the reduction. Finally, we present some mathematical tools for the study of synchronization in a network of coupled, noisy oscillators.

Enrico Betti (1823-1892) is recognized in the mathematics community for his pioneering contributions to topology. An equally important contribution is his formulation of the reciprocity theorem applicable to elastic bodies that satisfy the classical equations of linear elasticity. Although James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) proposed a law of reciprocal displacements and rotations in 1864, the contribution of Betti is acknowledged for its underlying formal mathematical basis and generality. The purpose of this lecture is to illustrate how Betti's reciprocal theorem can be used to full advantage to develop compact analytical results for certain contact and inclusion problems in the classical theory of elasticity. Inclusion problems are encountered in number of areas in applied mechanics ranging from composite materials to geomechanics. In composite materials, the inclusion represents an inhomogeneity that is introduced to increase either the strength or the deformability characteristics of resulting material. In geomechanics, the inclusion represents a constructed material region, such as a ground anchor, that is introduced to provide load transfer from structural systems. Similarly, contact problems have applications to the modelling of the behaviour of indentors used in materials testing to the study of foundations used to distribute loads transmitted from structures. In the study of conventional problems the inclusions and the contact regions are directly loaded and this makes their analysis quite straightforward. When the interaction is induced by loads that are placed exterior to the indentor or inclusion, the direct analysis of the problem becomes inordinately complicated both in terns of formulation of the integral equations and their numerical solution. It is shown by a set of selected examples that the application of Betti's reciprocal theorem leads to the development of exact closed form solutions to what would otherwise be approximate solutions achievable only through the numerical solution of a set of coupled integral equations.

The standard diffusion equation is obtained by Einstein's method and its generalisation, Fokker-Plank-Kolmogorov-Feller theory. The time between jumps in Einstein derivation is constant.

We discuss random walks with residence time distribution, which occurs for flows of solutes and suspensions/colloids in porous media, CO2 sequestration in coal mines, several processes in chemical, petroleum and environmental engineering. The rigorous application of the Einstein's method results in new equation, containing the time and the mixed dispersion terms expressing the dispersion of the particle time steps.

Usually, adding the second time derivative results in additional initial data. For the equation derived, the condition of limited solution when time tends to infinity provides with uniqueness of the Caushy problem solution.

The solution of the pulse injection problem describing a common tracer injection experiment is studied in greater detail. The new theory predicts delay of the maximum of the tracer, compared to the velocity of the flow, while its forward "tail" contains much more particles than in the solution of the classical parabolic (advection-dispersion) equation. This is in agreement with the experimental observations and predictions of the direct simulation.

I will report on experiments of chaotic mixing in closed and open vessels, in which a highly viscous fluid is stirred by a moving rod. In these experiments we analyze quantitatively how the concentration field of a low-diffusivity dye relaxes towards homogeneity, and observe a slow algebraic decay, at odds with the exponential decay predicted by most previous studies. Visual observations reveal the dominant role of the vessel wall, which strongly influences the concentration field in the entire domain and causes the anomalous scaling. A simplified 1-D model supports our experimental results. Quantitative analysis of the concentration pattern leads to scalings for the distributions and the variance of the concentration field consistent with experimental and numerical results. I also discuss possible ways of avoiding the limiting role of walls.

This is joint work with Emmanuelle Gouillart, Olivier Dauchot, and Stephane Roux.

In this talk, we will survey a number of different free boundary problems involving slow viscous (Stokes) flows in which surface tension is active on the free boundary. Both steady and unsteady flows will be considered. Motivating applications range from industrial processes such as viscous sintering (where end-products are formed as a result of the surface-tension-driven densification of a compact of smaller particles that are heated in order that they coalesce) to biological phenomena such as understanding how organisms swim (i.e. propel themselves) at low Reynolds numbers. Common to our approach to all these problems will be an analytical/theoretical treatment of model problems via complex variable methods -- techniques well-known at infinite Reynolds numbers but used much less often in the Stokes regime. These model problems can give helpful insights into the behaviour of the true physical systems.

Atherosclerosis, characterised by plaques, is the most common arterial disease. Plaques tend to develop in regions of low mean wall shear stress, and regions where the wall shear stress changes direction during the course of the cardiac cycle. To investigate the effect of the arterial geometry and driving pressure gradient on the wall shear stress distribution we consider an idealised model of a curved artery with uniform curvature. We assume that the flow is fully-developed and seek solutions of the governing equations, finding the effect of the parameters on the flow and wall shear stress distribution. Most previous work assumes the curvature ratio is asymptotically small; however, many arteries have significant curvature (e.g. the aortic arch has curvature ratio approx 0.25), and in this work we consider in particular the effect of finite curvature.

We present an extensive analysis of curved-pipe flow driven by a steady and unsteady pressure gradients. Increasing the curvature causes the shear stress on the inside of the bend to rise, indicating that the risk of plaque development would be overestimated by considering only the weak curvature limit.

Increasing threats to S.A.'s fisheries and marine environment have underlined the increasing need for soundly based research into the ocean circulation and ecosystems (phyto/zooplankton) of the shelf and gulfs. With support of Marine Innovation SA, the Oceanography Program has within 2 years, grown to include 6 FTEs and a budget of over $4.8M. The program currently leads two major research projects, both of which involve numerical and applied mathematical modelling of oceanic flow and ecosystems as well as statistical techniques for the analysis of data. The first is the implementation of the Southern Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (SAIMOS) that is providing data to understand the dynamics of shelf boundary currents, monitor for climate change and understand the phyto/zooplankton ecosystems that under-pin SA's wild fisheries and aquaculture. SAIMOS involves the use of ship-based sampling, the deployment of underwater marine moorings, underwater gliders, HF Ocean RADAR, acoustic tracking of tagged fish and Autonomous Underwater vehicles.

The second major project involves measuring and modelling the ocean circulation and biological systems within Spencer Gulf and the impact on prawn larval dispersal and on the sustainability of existing and proposed aquaculture sites. The discussion will focus on opportunities for collaborative research with both faculty and students in this exciting growth area of S.A. science.

Bursting oscillations in nerve cells have been the focus of a great deal of attention by mathematicians. These are typically studied by taking advantage of multiple time-scales in the system under study to perform a singular perturbation analysis. Bursting also occurs in hormone-secreting pituitary cells, but is characterized by fast bursts with small electrical impulses. Although the separation of time-scales is not as clear, singular perturbation analysis is still the key to understand the bursting mechanism. In particular, we will show that canards are responsible for the observed oscillatory behaviour.

Suspension/colloid transport in porous media is a basic phenomenon in environmental, petroleum and chemical engineering. Suspension of particles moves through porous media and particles are captured by straining or attraction. We revise the classical equations for particle mass balance and particle capture kinetics and show its non-realistic behaviour in cases of large dispersion and of flow-free filtration. In order to resolve the paradoxes, the pore-scale model is derived. The model can be transformed to Boltzmann equation with particle distribution over pores. Introduction of sink-source terms into Boltzmann equation results in much more simple calculations if compared with the traditional Chapman-Enskog averaging procedure. Technique of projecting operators in Hilbert space of Fourier images is used. The projection subspace is constructed in a way to avoid dependency of averaged equations on sink-source terms. The averaging results in explicit expressions for particle flux and capture rate. The particle flux expression describes the effect of advective particle velocity decrease if compared with the carrier water velocity due to preferential capture of "slow" particles in small pores. The capture rate kinetics describes capture from either advective or diffusive fluxes. The equations derived exhibit positive advection velocity for any dispersion and particle capture in immobile fluid that resolves the above-mentioned paradox. Finally, we discuss validation of the model for propagation of contaminants in aquifers, for filtration, for potable water production by artesian wells, for formation damage in oilfields.

Noncommutative geometry (in the sense of Alain Connes) involves replacing a conventional space by a "space" in which the algebra of functions is noncommutative. The simplest truly non-trivial noncommutative manifold is the noncommutative 2-torus, whose algebra of functions is also called the irrational rotation algebra. I will discuss a number of recent results on geometric analysis on the noncommutative torus, including the study of nonlinear noncommutative elliptic PDEs (such as the noncommutative harmonic map equation) and noncommutative complex analysis (with noncommutative elliptic functions).

The study of wall-bounded turbulent flows has received great attention over the past few years as a result of high Reynolds number experiments conducted in new high Reynolds number facilities such as the Princeton "superpipe", the NDF facility in Chicago and the HRNBLWT at the University of Melbourne. These experiments have brought into question the fundamental scaling laws of the turbulence and mean flow quantities as well as revealed high Reynolds number phenomena, which make extrapolation of low Reynolds number results highly questionable. In this talk these issues will be reviewed and new results from the HRNBLWT and atmospheric surface layer on the salt-flats of Utah will be presented documenting unique high Reynolds number phenomena. The implications for skin-friction drag reduction technologies and improved near-wall models for large-eddy simulation will be discussed.

The classical Hele-Shaw flow problem is related to Laplacian growth and null-quadrature domains. A generalisation is constructed for power-law fluids, governed by the p-Laplace equation, and a number of results are established that are analogous to the classical case. Both fluid clearance and bubble extinction is considered, and by considering two extremes of extinction behaviour, a rather complete asymptotic description of possible behaviours is found.

In 1970, two independent studies (by Wunsch and Phillips) of the behaviour of a linear density-stratified viscous fluid in a closed container demonstrated a slow flow can be generated simply due to the container having a sloping boundary surface This remarkable motion is generated as a result of the curvature of the lines of constant density near any sloping surface, which in turn enables a zero normal-flux condition on the density to be satisfied along that boundary. When the Rayleigh number is large (or equivalently Wunsch's parameter $R$ is small) this motion is concentrated in the near vicinity of the sloping surface, in a thin `buoyancy layer' that has many similarities to an Ekman layer in a rotating fluid.

A number of studies have since considered the consequences of this type of `diffusively-driven' flow in a semi-infinite domain, including in the deep ocean and with turbulent effects included. More recently, Page & Johnson (2008) described a steady linear theory for the broader-scale mass recirculation in a closed container and demonstrated that, unlike in previous studies, it is possible for the buoyancy layer to entrain fluid from that recirculation. That work has since been extended (Page & Johnson, 2009) to the nonlinear regime of the problem and some of the similarities to and differences from the linear case will be described in this talk. Simple and elegant analytical solutions in the limit as $R \to 0$ still exist in some situations, and they will be compared with numerical simulations in a tilted square container at small values of $R$. Further work on both the unsteady flow properties and the flow for other geometrical configurations will also be described.

The Stein-Tomas restriction theorem says that the Fourier transform of a function in L^p(R^n) restricts to an L^2 function on the unit sphere, for p in some range [1, 2(n+1)/(n+3)]. I will discuss geometric generalizations of this result, by interpreting it as a property of the spectral measure of the Laplace operator on R^n, and then generalizing to the Laplace-Beltrami operator on certain complete Riemannian manifolds. It turns out that dynamical properties of the geodesic flow play a crucial role in determining whether a restriction-type theorem holds for these manifolds.

By a "billiard" I mean a bounded plane domain D, with smooth (enough) boundary. Quantum billiards is the study of properties of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on D, i.e. solutions of $\Delta u = Eu$, where $u$ is a function on D vanishing at the boundary, $\Delta$ is the Laplacian on D and $E$ is a real number, in the limit as $E \to \infty$. This large-E limit is the "classical limit" in which eigenfunctions exhibit behaviour related to the classical billiard system (a billiard ball moving around inside D, bouncing elastically off the boundary). I will talk about Quantum Ergodicity, which is the property that "most of" the eigenfunctions become uniformly distributed in D, asymptotically as $E \to \infty$, i.e. they are the same size, on average, in all parts of the domain D; and the stronger property of Quantum Unique Ergodicity, which is the same property with the words "most of" deleted.

The flows generated in many modern micro-devices possess very little convective inertia, however, they can be highly unsteady and exert substantial hydrodynamic forces on the device components. Typically these components exhibit some degree of compliance, which traditionally has been treated using simple one-dimensional elastic beam models. However, recent findings have suggested that three-dimensional effects can be important and, accordingly, we consider the elastohydrodynamic response of a rapidly oscillating three-dimensional elastic plate that is immersed in a viscous fluid. In addition, a preliminary model will be presented which incorporates the presence of a nearby elastic wall.

The unsteady flow of a viscous fluid through a curved pipe is a widely occuring and well studied problem. The stability of such flows, however, has largely been overlooked; this is in marked contrast to flow through a straight-pipe, examination of which forms a cornerstone of hydrodynamic stability theory. Importantly, however, flow through a curved pipe exhibits an array of flow structures that are simply not present in the zero curvature limit, and it is natural to expect these to substantially impact upon the flow's stability. By considering two very different kinds of flows through a curved pipe, we illustrate that this can indeed be the case.

Given a polynomial in two or more variables, one may study the zero locus from the point of view of different mathematical subjects (number theory, algebraic geometry, ...). I will explain how tropical geometry allows to encode all topological aspects by elementary combinatorial objects called "tropical varieties." Mohammed Abouzaid received a B.S. in 2002 from the University of Richmond, and a Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Chicago under the supervision of Paul Seidel. He is interested in symplectic topology and its interactions with algebraic geometry and differential topology, in particular the homological mirror symmetry conjecture. Since 2007 he has been a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, and a Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow.

In a series of three papers from 2002-2003, Grigori Perelman gave a spectacular proof of the Poincare Conjecture (every smooth compact simply connected three-dimensional manifold is topologically isomorphic to a sphere), one of the most famous open problems in mathematics (and one of the seven Clay Millennium Prize Problems worth a million dollars each), by developing several new groundbreaking advances in Hamilton's theory of Ricci flow on manifolds. In this talk I describe in broad detail how the proof proceeds, and briefly discuss some of the key turning points in the argument. About the speaker: Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1975. He has been a professor of mathematics at UCLA since 1999, having completed his PhD under Elias Stein at Princeton in 1996. Tao's areas of research include harmonic analysis, PDE, combinatorics, and number theory. He has received a number of awards, including the Salem Prize in 2000, the Bochner Prize in 2002, the Fields Medal and SASTRA Ramanujan Prize in 2006, and the MacArthur Fellowship and Ostrowski Prize in 2007. Terence Tao also currently holds the James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at UCLA, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences (Corresponding Member).

This presentation concerns the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) that occurs between a fluid flow and an arbitrarily deforming flexible boundary considered to be a flexible panel or a compliant coating that comprises the wetted surface of a marine vehicle. We develop and deploy an approach that is a hybrid of computational and theoretical techniques. The system studied is two-dimensional and linearised disturbances are assumed. Of particular novelty in the present work is the ability of our methods to extract a full set of fluid-structure eigenmodes for systems that have strong spatial inhomogeneity in the structure of the flexible wall.

We first present the approach and some results of the system in which an ideal, zero-pressure gradient, flow interacts with a flexible plate held at both its ends. We use a combination of boundary-element and finite-difference methods to express the FSI system as a single matrix equation in the interfacial variable. This is then couched in state-space form and standard methods used to extract the system eigenvalues. It is then shown how the incorporation of spatial inhomogeneity in the stiffness of the plate can be either stabilising or destabilising. We also show that adding a further restraint within the streamwise extent of a homogeneous panel can trigger an additional type of hydroelastic instability at low flow speeds. The mechanism for the fluid-to-structure energy transfer that underpins this instability can be explained in terms of the pressure-signal phase relative to that of the wall motion and the effect on this relationship of the added wall restraint.

We then show how the ideal-flow approach can be conceptually extended to include boundary-layer effects. The flow field is now modelled by the continuity equation and the linearised perturbation momentum equation written in velocity-velocity form. The near-wall flow field is spatially discretised into rectangular elements on an Eulerian grid and a variant of the discrete-vortex method is applied. The entire fluid-structure system can again be assembled as a linear system for a single set of unknowns - the flow-field vorticity and the wall displacements - that admits the extraction of eigenvalues. We then show how stability diagrams for the fully-coupled finite flow-structure system can be assembled, in doing so identifying classes of wall-based or fluid-based and spatio-temporal wave behaviour.

After a general introduction to integrable systems, we will explain an approach to their solution theory, which is based on Banach space theory. The main point is first to shift attention to noncommutative integrable systems and then to extract information about the original setting via projection techniques. The resulting solution formulas turn out to be particularly well-suited to the qualitative study of certain solution classes. We will show how one can obtain a complete asymptotic description of the so called multiple pole solutions, a problem that was only treated for special cases before.

Ever since Sophus Lie around 1880, continuous groups of invariance transformations have been used to reduce variables and to construct special solutions of PDEs. I will outline the general ideas, then show some variations on the usual reduction algorithm that I have used to solve some practical nonlinear boundary value problems. Applications include soil-water flow, metal surface evolution and population genetics.

Jeffery–Hamel flows describe the steady two-dimensional flow of an incompressible viscous fluid between plane walls separated by an angle $\alpha$. They are often used to approximate the flow in domains of finite radial extent. However, whilst the base Jeffery–Hamel solution is characterised by a subcritical pitchfork bifurcation, studies in expanding channels of finite length typically find symmetry breaking via a supercritical bifurcation.

We use the finite element method to calculate solutions for flow in a two-dimensional wedge of finite length bounded by arcs of constant radii, $R_1$ and $R_2$. We present a comprehensive picture of the bifurcation structure and nonlinear states for a net radial outflow of fluid. We find a series of nested neutral curves in the Reynolds number-$\alpha$ plane corresponding to pitchfork bifurcations that break the midplane symmetry of the flow. We show that these finite domain bifurcations remain distinct from the similarity solution bifurcation even in the limit $R_2/R_1 \rightarrow \infty$.

We also discuss a class of stable steady solutions apparently related to a steady, spatially periodic, wave first observed by Tutty (1996). These solutions remain disconnected in our domain in the sense that they do not arise via a local bifurcation of the Stokes flow solution as the Reynolds number is increased.

Tissue engineering could be called 'the science of spare parts'. Although currently in its infancy, its long-term aim is to grow functional tissues and organs in vitro to replace those which have become defective through age, trauma or disease. Recent experiments have shown that mechanical interactions between cells and the materials in which they are grown have an important influence on tissue architecture, but in order to understand these effects, we first need to understand the mechanics of the gels themselves.

Many biological gels (e.g. collagen) used in tissue engineering have a fibrous microstructure which affects the way forces are transmitted through the material, and which in turn affects cell migration and other behaviours. I will present a simple continuum model of gel mechanics, based on treating the gel as a transversely isotropic viscous material. Two canonical problems are considered involving thin two-dimensional films: extensional flow, and squeezing flow of the fluid between two rigid plates. Neglecting inertia, gravity and surface tension, in each regime we can exploit the thin geometry to obtain a leading-order problem which is sufficiently tractable to allow the use of analytical methods. I discuss how these results could be exploited practically to determine the mechanical properties of real gels. If time permits, I will also talk about work currently in progress which explores the interaction between gel mechanics and cell behaviour.

Following Pearson in 1905, we study the expected distance of a two-dimensional walk in the plane with unit steps in random directions---what Pearson called a "ramble". A series evaluation and recursions are obtained making it possible to explicitly determine this distance for small number of steps. Closed form expressions for all the moments of a 2-step and a 3-step walk are given, and a formula is conjectured for the 4-step walk. Heavy use is made of the analytic continuation of the underlying integral.

I will discuss two problems in porous media flow.

On a tropical island, fresh water may sit in the soil beneath the ground, floating on the ocean's salt water. This water is a valuable resource for the inhabitants, but requires sufficient rainfall to recharge the lens. In this paper, Green's functions are used to derive an integral equation to satisfy all of the conditions except those on the interfaces, which are then solved for numerically. Conditions under which the lens can be maintained will be described. This is work I did with an Honours student, Sue Chen, who is now at U. Melbourne.

In the second problem, I will discuss an "exact" solution to a problem in withdrawal from an unconfined aquifer. The problem formulation gives rise to a singular integral equation that can be solved using a nice orthogonality result I first met in airfoil theory. This is work with Hong Zhang from Griffith University.

Meshless methods such as vortex methods (VMs) and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) schemes offer many advantages in fluid flow computations. Particle-based computations naturally adapt to complex flow geometries and so provide a high degree of computational efficiency. Also, particle based methods avoid CFL conditions because flow quantities are integrated along characteristics. There are many approaches to improving numerical methods, but one of the most effective routes is quantifying the error through the direct estimate of residual quantities. Understanding the residual for particle schemes requires a different approach than for meshless schemes but the rewards are significant. In this seminar, I will outline a general approach to understanding convergence that has been effective in creating high spatial accuracy vortex methods, and then I will discuss some recent investigations in the accuracy of diffusion operators used in SPH computations. Finally, I will provide some sample Navier-Stokes computations of high Reynolds number flows using BlobFlow, an open source implementation of the high precision vortex method.

The aim of psychology in general, and of cognitive psychology in particular, is to construct theoretical accounts of mental processes based on observed changes in performance on one or more cognitive tasks. The fundamental problem faced by the researcher is that these mental processes are not directly observable but must be inferred from changes in performance between different experimental conditions. This inference is further complicated by the fact that performance measures may only be monotonically related to the underlying psychological constructs. State-trace analysis provides an approach to this problem which has gained increasing interest in recent years. In this talk, I explain state-trace analysis and discuss the set of mathematical issues that flow from it. Principal among these are the challenges of statistical inference and an unexpected connection to the mathematics of oriented matroids.

Simplicial sets became popular in the 1950s as a combinatorial way to study the homotopy theory of topological spaces. They are more robust than the older notion of simplicial complexes, which were introduced for the same purpose. In this talk, which will be as introductory as possible, we will review some classical functors arising in the theory of simplicial sets, some well-known, some not-so-well-known. We will re-examine the proof of an old theorem of Kan in light of these functors. We will try to keep all jargon to a minimum.

For each automorphism, $\alpha$, of the locally compact group $G$ there is a corresponding {\sl contraction subgroup\/}, $\hbox{con}(\alpha)$, which is the set of $x\in G$ such that $\alpha^n(x)$ converges to the identity as $n\to \infty$. Contractions subgroups are important in representation theory, through the Mautner phenomenon, and in the study of convolution semigroups. If $G$ is a Lie group, then $\hbox{con}(\alpha)$ is automatically closed, can be described in terms of eigenvalues of $\hbox{ad}(\alpha)$, and is nilpotent. Since any connected group may be approximated by Lie groups, contraction subgroups of connected groups are thus well understood. Following a general introduction, the talk will focus on contraction subgroups of totally disconnected groups. A criterion for non-triviality of $\hbox{con}(\alpha)$ will be described (joint work with U.~Baumgartner) and a structure theorem for $\hbox{con}(\alpha)$ when it is closed will be presented (joint with H.~Gl\"oeckner).

Locally compact groups occur in many branches of mathematics. Their study falls into two cases: connected groups, which occur as automorphisms of smooth structures such as spheres for example; and totally disconnected groups, which occur as automorphisms of discrete structures such as trees. The talk will give an overview of the currently developing structure theory of totally disconnected locally compact groups. Techniques for analysing totally disconnected groups will be described that correspond to the familiar Lie group methods used to treat connected groups. These techniques played an essential role in the recent solution of a problem raised by R. Zimmer and G. Margulis concerning commensurated subgroups of arithmetic groups.

Simulations in which the system of interest is essentially mimicked are termed explicit numerical simulations (ENS). Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulence is a well known and long-standing example of ENS. Such simulations provide a basis for elucidating fundamentals in a way that is impossible experimentally and formulating and parameterizing engineering models with reduced experimentation. In this presentation, I will first outline the concept of ENS. I will then report a number of ENS-based studies of various multiphase fluid systems and flows in porous media. In the first of these studies, which is concerned with flow of suspensions in porous media accompanied by deposition, ENS is used to demonstrate the significant inadequacies of the classical trajectory models typically used for the study of such problems. In the second study, which is concerned with elucidating the change in binary droplet collision behaviour with Capillary number (Ca) and Reynolds number (Re), a range of collision scenarios are revealed as a function of Ca and Re and it appears that the boundaries between these scenarios in the Ca-Re space are not distinct but, rather, smeared. In the final study, it is shown that ENS an be used to predict ab initio the hydrodynamic properties of single phase flow through porous media from the Darcy to the turbulent regimes.

Classical gauge theories study sections of vector bundles and associated connections and curvature. The corresponding quantum gauge theories are normally written algebraically but can be understood as noncommutative geometries. This talk will describe one approach to the quantum gauge theories which uses braided categories.

Lecture Series by Dan Freed (University of Texas, Austin). Dirac introduced his eponymous operator to describe electrons in quantum theory. It was rediscovered by Atiyah and Singer in their study of the index problem on manifolds. In these lectures we explore new theorems and applications. Several of these also involve K-theory in its recent twisted and differential variations. These lectures will be supplemented by additional talks by invited speakers. For more details, please see the conference webpage: http://www.iga.adelaide.edu.au/workshops/WorkshopOct2010/

The no-slip boundary condition was considered to have been experimentally established for the flow of simple liquids over solid surfaces in the early 20th century. Nonetheless the refinement of a number of measurement techniques has recently led to the observation of nano- and microscale violations of the no-slip boundary condition by simple fluids flowing over non-wetting surfaces. However it is important to distinguish between intrinsic slip, which arises solely from the chemical interaction between the liquid and a homogeneous, atomically flat surface and effective slip, typically measured in macroscopic experiments, which emerges from the interaction of microscopic chemical heterogeneity, roughness and contaminants. Here we consider the role of both intrinsic and effective slip boundary conditions in nanoscale and microscale fluid flows using a theoretical approach, complemented by molecular dynamics simulations, and experimental evidence where available. Firstly, we consider nanoscale flows in small capillaries, including carbon nanotubes, where we have developed and solved a generalised Lucas-Washburn equation that incorporates slip to describe the uptake of droplets. We then consider the general problem of relating effective slip to microscopic intrinsic slip and roughness, and discuss several cases where we have been able to solve this problem analytically. Finally, we look at applications of these results to carbon nanotube growth, self-cleaning surfaces, catalysis, and putting insulation in your roof.

Horizontal convecton refers to flows driven by uneven heating on a horizontal forcing boundary. Flows exhibiting these characteristics are prevalent in nature, and include the North-South Hadley circulation within the atmosphere between warmer and more temperate latitudes, as well as ocean currents driven by non-uniform heating via solar radiation.

Here a model for these generic convection flows is established featuring a rectangular enclosure, insulated on the side and top walls, and driven by a linear temperature gradient applied along the bottom wall. Rayleigh number dependence of heat transfer through the forcing boundary is computed and compared with theory. Attention is given to transitions in the flow, including the development of unsteady flow and three-dimensional flow: the effect of these transitions on the Nusselt-Rayleigh number scaling exponents is described.

A parallel lightlike vector field on a Lorentzian manifold X naturally defines a foliation of codimension 1 on X and a 1-dimensional subfoliation. In the first part we introduce Lorentzian metrics on the total space of certain circle bundles in order to construct weakly irreducible Lorentzian manifolds admitting a parallel lightlike vector field such that all leaves of the foliations are compact. Then we study which holonomy representations can be realized in this way. Finally, we consider the structure of arbitrary Lorentzian manifolds for which the leaves of the foliations are compact.

Woronowicz initiated the study of quantum groups using C*-algebras. His framework enabled him to deal with compact (linear) quantum groups. In this talk we shall introduce a notion of quantum groups that can handle infinite dimensional examples like SU(\infty). We shall also study some quantum homogeneous spaces associated to this group and compute their K-theory groups. This is joint work with V. Mathai.

We consider smooth real hypersurfaces in a complex vector space. Specifically, we are interested in tube hypersurfaces, i.e., hypersurfaces represented as the direct product of the imaginary part of the space and hypersurfaces lying in its real part. Tube hypersurfaces arise, for instance, as the boundaries of tube domains. The study of tube domains is a classical subject in several complex variables and complex geometry, which goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. Indeed, already Siegel found it convenient to realise certain symmetric domains as tubes. One can endow a tube hypersurface with a so-called CR-structure, which is the remnant of the complex structure on the ambient vector space. We impose on the CR-structure the condition of sphericity. One way to state this condition is to require a certain curvature (called the CR-curvature of the hypersurface) to vanish identically. Spherical tube hypersurfaces possess remarkable properties and are of interest from both the complex-geometric and affine-geometric points of view. I my talk I will give an overview of the theory of such hypersurfaces. In particular, I will mention an algebraic construction arising from this theory that has applications in abstract commutative algebra and singularity theory. I will speak about these applications in detail in my colloquium talk later today.

Bioinformatics is a new field of research which encompasses mathematics, computer science, biology, medicine and the physical sciences. It has arisen from the need to handle and analyse the vast amounts of data being generated by the new genomics technologies. The interface of these disciplines used to be information-poor, but is now information-mega-rich, and statistics plays a central role in processing this information and making it intelligible. In this talk, I will describe a published bioinformatics study which claimed to have developed a simple test for the early detection of ovarian cancer from a blood sample. The US Food and Drug Administration was on the verge of approving the test kits for market in 2004 when demonstrated flaws in the study design and analysis led to its withdrawal. We are still waiting for an effective early biomarker test for ovarian cancer.

Standard analytical solutions to elliptic boundary value problems on asymmetric domains are rarely, if ever, obtainable. Several years ago I proposed a solution technique to cope with such complicated domains. It involves the embedding of the original domain into one with simple boundaries where the classical eigenfunction solution approach can be used. The solution in the larger domain, when restricted to the original domain is then the solution of the original boundary value problem. In this talk I will present supporting theory for this idea, some numerical results for the particular case of the Laplace equation and the Stokes flow equations in two-dimensions and discuss advantages and limitations of the proposal.

There have been numerous reports that the rainfall in south Western Australia, particularly around Perth has observed a step change decrease, which is typically attributed to climate change. Four statistical tests are used to assess the empirical evidence for this claim on time series from five meteorological stations, all of which exceed 50 years. The tests used in this study are: the CUSUM; Bayesian Change Point analysis; consecutive t-test and the Hotelling’s T²-statistic. Results from multivariate Hotelling’s T² analysis are compared with those from the three univariate analyses. The issue of multiple comparisons is discussed. A summary of the empirical evidence for the claimed step change in Perth area is given.

Permeability is a key parameter important to a variety of applications in geological engineering and in the environmental geosciences. The conventional definition of Darcy flow enables the estimation of permeability at different levels of detail. This lecture will focus on the measurement of surface permeability characteristics of a large cuboidal block of Indiana Limestone, using a surface permeameter. The paper discusses the theoretical developments, the solution of the resulting triple integral equations and associated computational treatments that enable the mapping of the near surface permeability of the cuboidal region. This data combined with a kriging procedure is used to develop results for the permeability distribution at the interior of the cuboidal region. Upon verification of the absence of dominant pathways for fluid flow through the cuboidal region, estimates are obtained for the "Effective Permeability" of the cuboid using estimates proposed by Wiener, Landau and Lifschitz, King, Matheron, Journel et al., Dagan and others. The results of these estimates are compared with the geometric mean, derived form the computational estimates.

The problem of optimal arrangement of nodes of a random weighted graph is discussed in this workshop. The nodes of graphs under study are fixed, but their edges are random and established according to the so called edge-probability function. This function is assumed to depend on the weights attributed to the pairs of graph nodes (or distances between them) and a statistical parameter. It is the purpose of experimentation to make inference on the statistical parameter and thus to extract as much information about it as possible. We also distinguish between two different experimentation scenarios: progressive and instructive designs.

We adopt a utility-based Bayesian framework to tackle the optimal design problem for random graphs of this kind. Simulation based optimisation methods, mainly Monte Carlo and Markov Chain Monte Carlo, are used to obtain the solution. We study optimal design problem for the inference based on partial observations of random graphs by employing data augmentation technique. We prove that the infinitely growing or diminishing node configurations asymptotically represent the worst node arrangements. We also obtain the exact solution to the optimal design problem for proximity (geometric) graphs and numerical solution for graphs with threshold edge-probability functions.

We consider inference and optimal design problems for finite clusters from bond percolation on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$ and derive a range of both numerical and analytical results for these graphs. We introduce inner-outer plots by deleting some of the lattice nodes and show that the ëmostly populatedí designs are not necessarily optimal in the case of incomplete observations under both progressive and instructive design scenarios. Some of the obtained results may generalise to other lattices.

The problem of optimal arrangement of nodes of a random weighted graph is discussed in this workshop. The nodes of graphs under study are fixed, but their edges are random and established according to the so called edge-probability function. This function is assumed to depend on the weights attributed to the pairs of graph nodes (or distances between them) and a statistical parameter. It is the purpose of experimentation to make inference on the statistical parameter and thus to extract as much information about it as possible. We also distinguish between two different experimentation scenarios: progressive and instructive designs.

We adopt a utility-based Bayesian framework to tackle the optimal design problem for random graphs of this kind. Simulation based optimisation methods, mainly Monte Carlo and Markov Chain Monte Carlo, are used to obtain the solution. We study optimal design problem for the inference based on partial observations of random graphs by employing data augmentation technique. We prove that the infinitely growing or diminishing node configurations asymptotically represent the worst node arrangements. We also obtain the exact solution to the optimal design problem for proximity (geometric) graphs and numerical solution for graphs with threshold edge-probability functions.

We consider inference and optimal design problems for finite clusters from bond percolation on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$ and derive a range of both numerical and analytical results for these graphs. We introduce inner-outer plots by deleting some of the lattice nodes and show that the ëmostly populatedí designs are not necessarily optimal in the case of incomplete observations under both progressive and instructive design scenarios. Some of the obtained results may generalise to other lattices.

One of the beautiful aspects of Mathematics is that seemingly disparate areas can often have deep connections. This talk is about the fundamental connection between probability density estimation, diffusion processes, and partial differential equations. Specifically, we show how to obtain efficient probability density estimators by solving partial differential equations related to diffusion processes. This new perspective leads, in combination with Fast Fourier techniques, to very fast and accurate algorithms for density estimation. Moreover, the diffusion formulation unifies most of the existing adaptive smoothing algorithms and provides a natural solution to the boundary bias of classical kernel density estimators. This talk covers topics in Statistics, Probability, Applied Mathematics, and Numerical Mathematics, with a surprise appearance of the theta function. This is joint work with Zdravko Botev and Joe Grotowski.

The core of the Internet is made up of many different computers (called routers) in many different interconnected networks, owned and operated by many different organisations. A popular and important field of study in the past has been "network topology": for instance, understanding which routers are connected to which other routers, or which networks are connected to which other networks; that is, studying and modelling the connection structure of the Internet. Previous study in this area has been plagued by unreliable or flawed experimental data and debate over appropriate models to use. The Internet Topology Zoo is a new source of network data created from the information that network operators make public. In order to better understand this body of network information we would like the ability to randomly generate network topologies resembling those in the zoo. Leveraging previous wisdom on networks produced as a result of optimisation processes, we propose a simple objective function based on possible economic constraints. By changing the relative costs in the objective function we can change the form of the resulting networks, and we compare these optimised networks to a variety of networks found in the Internet Topology Zoo.

The distribution of individual orbits of unipotent flows in homogeneous spaces are well understood thanks to the work work of Marina Ratner. It is conjectured that this property is preserved on restricting the times from the integers to primes, this being important in the study of prime numbers as well as in such dynamics. We review progress in understanding this conjecture, starting with Dirichlet (a finite system), Vinogradov (rotation of a circle or torus), Green and Tao (translation on a nilmanifold) and Ubis and Sarnak (horocycle flows in the semisimple case).

The umbilical cord is the connecting cord between the developing embryo or fetus and the placenta. In a normal pregnancy it facilitates the supply of oxygen and nutrients from the placenta, in addition to the return of deoxygenated blood from the fetus. One of the most striking features of the umbilical cord is it's coiled structure, which allows the vasculature to withstand tensile and compressive forces in utero. The level of coiling also has a significant effect on the blood flow and cords exhibiting abnormally high or low levels are known to correlate well with adverse outcomes in pregancy, including fetal demise. In this talk I will discuss the complexities associated with numerically modeling blood flow within the umbilical cord, and provide an outline of the key features which will be investigated throughout my research.

Within many populations there are frequent communications between pairs of individuals. Such communications might be emails sent within a company, radio communications in a disaster zone or diplomatic communications between states. Often it is of interest to understand the factors that drive the observed patterns of such communications, or to study how these factors are changing over over time. Communications can be thought of as events occuring on the edges of a network which connects individuals in the population. In this talk I'll present a model for such communications which uses ideas from social network theory to account for the complex correlation structure between events. Applications to the Enron email corpus and the dynamics of hospital ward transfer patterns will be discussed.

The study of molecular motion, interaction and space at the nanoscale has become a powerful tool in the area of gas separation, storage and conversion for efficient energy solutions. Modeling in this field has typically involved highly iterative computational algorithms such as molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo and quantum mechanics. Mathematical formulae in the form of analytical solutions to this field offer a range of useful and insightful advantages including optimization, bifurcation analysis and standardization. Here we present a few case scenarios where mathematics has provided insight and opportunities for further investigation.

The problem of variables separation in the linear stability equations, which govern the disturbance behavior in viscous incompressible fluid flows, is discussed. Stability of some unsteady nonparallel three-dimensional flows (exact solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations) is studied via separation of variables using a semi-analytical, semi-numerical approach. In this approach, a solution with separated variables is defined in a new coordinate system which is sought together with the solution form. As the result, the linear stability problems are reduced to eigenvalue problems for ordinary differential equations which can be solved numerically. In some specific cases, the eigenvalue problems can be solved analytically. Those unique examples of exact (explicit) solution of the nonparallel unsteady flow stability problems provide a very useful test for methods used in the hydrodynamic stability theory. Exact solutions of the stability problems for some stagnation-type flows are presented.

The Weil-Petersson metric is an exciting metric on a space of simple plane curves. In this talk the speaker will introduce the shape space and demonstrate the connection with the Euler-Poincare equations on the group of diffeomorphisms (EPDiff). A numerical method for finding geodesics between two shapes will be demonstrated and applied to the surface of the hippocampus to study the effects of Alzheimer's disease. As another application the speaker will discuss how to do statistics on the shape space and what should be done to improve it.

Optical fibres are used extensively in modern telecommunications as they allow the transmission of information at high speeds. Microstructured optical fibres are a relatively new fibre design in which a waveguide for light is created by a series of air channels running along the length of the material. The flexibility of this design allows optical fibres to be created with adaptable (and previously unrealised) optical properties. However, the fluid flows that arise during fabrication can greatly distort the geometry, which can reduce the effectiveness of a fibre or render it useless. I will present an overview of the manufacturing process and highlight the difficulties. I will then focus on surface-tension driven deformation of the macroscopic version of the fibre extruded from a reservoir of molten glass, occurring during fabrication, which will be treated as a two-dimensional Stokes flow problem. I will outline two different complex-variable numerical techniques for solving this problem along with comparisons of the results, both to other models and to experimental data.

The simple experiment discussed in this talk, first conceived by Madden and Mullin (JFM, 1994) as part of their investigations into the non-uniqueness of decaying turbulent flow, consists of a fluid-filled torus which is rotated in an horizontal plane. Turbulence within the contained flow is triggered through a rapid change in its rotation rate. The flow instabilities which transition the flow to this turbulent state, however, are truly fascinating in their own right, and form the subject of this presentation. Flow features observed in both UK- and Auckland-based experiments will be highlighted, and explained through both boundary-layer analysis and full DNS. In concluding we argue that this flow regime, with its compact geometry and lack of cumbersome flow entry effects, presents an ideal regime in which to study many prototype flow behaviours, very much in the same spirit as Taylor-Couette flow.

We've all heard about the grand challenges in mathematics. There was the Poincare Conjecture, which has now been resolved. There is the Riemann Hypothesis which many are seeking to prove. But one of the most intriguing is the so called "Navier-Stokes Equations" problem, intriguing because it not only involves some wickedly difficult mathematics but also involves questions about our deep understanding of nature as encountered in the flow of fluids. This talk will introduce the problem (without the wickedly difficult mathematics) and discuss some of the consequences of its resolution.

The Faddeev-Mickelsson-Shatashvili anomaly arises in the quantisation of fermions interacting with external gauge potentials. Mathematically, it can be described as a certain lifting problem for an extension of groups. The theory of bundle gerbes is very useful for studying lifting problems, however it only applies in the case of a central extension whereas in the study of the FMS anomaly the relevant extension is non-central. In this talk I will explain how to describe this anomaly indirectly using bundle gerbes and how to use a generalisation of bundle gerbes to describe the (non-central) lifting problem directly. This is joint work with Pedram Hekmati, Michael Murray and Danny Stevenson.

Growing plant cells undergo rapid axial elongation with negligible radial expansion: high internal turgor pressure causes viscous stretching of the cell wall. We represent the cell wall as a thin fibre-reinforced viscous sheet, providing insight into the geometric and biomechanical parameters underlying bulk quantities such as wall extensibility and showing how either dynamical changes in material properties, achieved through changes in the cell-wall microstructure, or passive fibre reorientation may suppress cell elongation. We then investigate how the action of enzymes on the cell wall microstructure can lead to the required dynamic changes in macroscale wall material properties, and thus demonstrate a mechanism by which hormones may regulate plant growth.

Motivated by certain tea room discussions, I am going to (attempt to) model the flow of a viscous fluid under gravity over conical topography. The method used is 'Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics' (SPH), which is an easy-to-use but perhaps limited-accuracy computational method. The model could be extended to include solidification and thermodynamic effects that can also be implemented within the framework of SPH, and this has the obvious practical application to the modelling of the coverage of ice cream with ice magic, I mean, lava flows. If I fail to achieve this within the next 4 weeks, I will have to go through a talk on SPH that I gave during honours instead.

Atiyah-Patodi-Singer proved an index theorem for non-local boundary conditions in the 1970's that has been widely used in mathematics and mathematical physics. A key application of their theory gives the index theorem for signature operators on oriented manifolds with boundary. As a consequence, they defined certain secondary invariants that were metric independent. I will discuss some recent work with Benameur where we extend the APS theory to signature operators twisted by an odd degree closed differential form, and study the corresponding secondary invariants.

There have been numerous reports that the rainfall in south Western Australia, particularly around Perth has observed a step change decrease, which is typically attributed to climate change. Four statistical tests are used to assess the empirical evidence for this claim on time series from five meteorological stations, all of which exceed 50 years. The tests used in this study are: the CUSUM; Bayesian Change Point analysis; consecutive t-test and the Hotelling's T^2-statistic. Results from multivariate Hotelling's T^2 analysis are compared with those from the three univariate analyses. The issue of multiple comparisons is discussed. A summary of the empirical evidence for the claimed step change in Perth area is given.

There are many interesting and difficult algorithmic problems in low-dimensional topology. Here we study the problem of finding a taut structure on a 3-manifold triangulation, whose existence has implications for both the geometry and combinatorics of the triangulation. We prove that detecting taut structures is "hard", in the sense that it is NP-complete. We also prove that detecting taut structures is "not too hard", by showing it to be fixed-parameter tractable. This is joint work with Jonathan Spreer.

Rivers, floods and tsunamis are often very turbulent. Conventional models of such environmental fluids are typically based on depth-averaged inviscid irrotational flow equations. We explore changing such a base to the turbulent Smagorinski large eddy closure. The aim is to more appropriately model the fluid dynamics of such complex environmental fluids by using such a turbulent closure. Large changes in fluid depth are allowed. Computer algebra constructs the slow manifold of the flow in terms of the fluid depth h and the mean turbulent lateral velocities u and v. The major challenge is to deal with the nonlinear stress tensor in the Smagorinski closure. The model integrates the effects of inertia, self-advection, bed drag, gravitational forcing and turbulent dissipation with minimal assumptions. Although the resultant model is close to established models, the real outcome is creating a sound basis for the modelling so others, in their modelling of more complex situations, can systematically include more complex physical processes.

In many modelling problems in mathematics and physics, a standard challenge is dealing with several repeated instances of a system under study. If linear transformations are involved, then the machinery of tensor products steps in, and it is the job of group theory to control how the relevant symmetries lift from a single system, to having many copies. At the level of group characters, the construction which does this is called PLETHYSM. In this talk all this will be contextualised via two case studies: entanglement invariants for multipartite quantum systems, and Markov invariants for tree reconstruction in molecular phylogenetics. By the end of the talk, listeners will have understood why Alice, Bob and Charlie love Cayley's hyperdeterminant, and they will know why the three squangles -- polynomial beasts of degree 5 in 256 variables, with a modest 50,000 terms or so -- can tell us a lot about quartet trees!

A series of four 2-hour lectures by Dr. Ittay Weiss. The theory of dendroidal sets was introduced by Moerdijk and Weiss in 2007 in the study of homotopy operads in algebraic topology. In the five years that have past since then several fundamental and highly non-trivial results were established. For instance, it was established that dendroidal sets provide models for homotopy operads in a way that extends the Joyal-Lurie approach to homotopy categories. It can be shown that dendroidal sets provide new models in the study of n-fold loop spaces. And it is very recently shown that dendroidal sets model all connective spectra in a way that extends the modeling of certain spectra by Picard groupoids. The aim of the lecture series will be to introduce the concepts mentioned above, present the elementary theory, and understand the scope of the results mentioned as well as discuss the potential for further applications. Sources for the course will include the article "From Operads to Dendroidal Sets" (in the AMS volume on mathematical foundations of quantum field theory (also on the arXiv)) and the lecture notes by Ieke Moerdijk "simplicial methods for operads and algebraic geometry" which resulted from an advanced course given in Barcelona 3 years ago. No prior knowledge of operads will be assumed nor any knowledge of homotopy theory that is more advanced then what is required for the definition of the fundamental group. The basics of the language of presheaf categories will be recalled quickly and used freely.

There are several ways of viewing elements of K^1(X). One of these is via families of unbounded self-adjoint Fredholm operators on X. Each operator will have discrete spectrum, with infinitely many positive and negative eigenvalues of finite multiplicity. One can associate to such a family a geometric object, its graph, and the Chern character and other invariants of the family can be studied from this perspective. By restricting the dimension of the eigenspaces one may sometimes use algebraic topology to completely determine the family up to equivalence. This talk will describe the general framework and some applications to families on low-dimensional manifolds where the methods work well. Various notions related to spectral flow, the index gerbe and Berry phase play roles which will be discussed. This is joint work with Ron Douglas.

In the study of bounded operators on Hilbert spaces of holomorphic functions, concepts and techniques from complex geometry are important. An anti-holomorphic bundle exists on which one can define the Chern connection. Its curvature turns out to be a complete invariant and various operator notions can't be reframed in terms of geometrical ones which leads to the solution of some problems. We will discuss this approach with an emphasis on natural examples in the one and multivariable case.

The drawing of viscous threads is important in a wide range of industrial applications and is a primary manufacturing process in the optical fiber and textile industries. Most of the materials used in these processes have viscosities that vary extremely strongly with temperature. We investigate the role played by viscous heating in the drawing of viscous threads. Usually, the effects of viscous heating and inertia are neglected because the parameters that characterize them are typically very small. However, by performing a detailed theoretical analysis we surprisingly show that even very small amounts of viscous heating can lead to a runaway phenomena. On the other hand, inertia prevents runaway, and the interplay between viscous heating and inertia results in very complicated dynamics for the system. Even more surprisingly, in the absence of viscous heating, we find that a new type of instability can occur when a thread is heated by a radiative heat source. By analyzing an asymptotic limit of the Navier-Stokes equation we provide a theory that describes the nature of this instability and explains the seemingly counterintuitive behavior.

The classical diffusion (thermal conductivity) equation was derived from the Master random walk equation and is parabolic. The main assumption was a probabilistic distribution of the jump length while the jump time is constant. Distribution of the jump time along with the jump length adds the second time derivative into the averaged equations, but the equation becomes ... elliptic! Where from to take an extra initial condition? We discuss how to pose the well-posed flow problem, exact 1d solution and numerous engineering applications. This is joint work with A. Shapiro and H. Yuan.

The mathematical study of human-to-human transmissible pathogens has established itself as a complementary methodology to the traditional epidemiological approach. The classic susceptible--infectious--recovered model paradigm has been used to great effect to gain insight into the epidemiology of endemic diseases such as influenza and pertussis, and the emergence of novel pathogens such as SARS and pandemic influenza. The modelling paradigm has also been taken within the host and used to explain the within-host dynamics of viral (or bacterial or parasite) infections, with implications for our understanding of infection, emergence of drug resistance and optimal drug-interventions. In this presentation I will provide an overview of the mathematical paradigm used to investigate both biological and epidemiological infectious diseases systems, drawing on case studies from influenza, malaria and pertussis research. I will conclude with a summary of how infectious diseases modelling has assisted the Australian government in developing its pandemic preparedness and response strategies.

Many problems within applied mathematics require the solution of a linear system of equations. For instance, models of arterial umbilical blood flow are obtained through a finite element approximation, resulting in a linear, n x n system. For small systems the solution is (almost) trivial, but what happens when n is large? Say, n ~ 10^6? In this case matrix inversion is expensive (read: completely impractical) and we seek approximate solutions in a reasonable time. In this talk I will discuss the basic theory underlying Krylov subspace methods; a class of non-stationary iterative methods which are currently the methods-of-choice for large, sparse, linear systems. In particular I will focus on the method of Generalised Minimum RESiduals (GMRes), which is of the most popular for nonsymmetric systems. It is hoped that through this presentation I will convince you that a) solving linear systems is not necessarily trivial, and that b) my lack of any tangible results is not (entirely) a result of my own incompetence.

We aim to solve the advection-diffusion-reaction equation on the surface of a sphere. In order to do this we will be required to utilise spherical harmonics, a set of solutions to Laplace's equation in spherical coordinates. Upon solving the equations, we aim to find a set of parameters that cause a localised concentration to be maintained in the flow, referred to as a hotspot. In this talk I will discuss the techniques that are required to numerically solve this problem and the issues that occur/how to deal with these issues when searching for hotspot solutions.

Multiple simultaneous interactions show unique collective properties that are qualitatively different from properties displayed by their monovalent constituents. Multivalent interactions play an important role for the self-organization of matter, recognition processes and signal transduction. A broad understanding of these interactions is therefore crucial in order to answer central questions and make new developments in the field of biotechnology and material science. In the framework of a joint experimental and theoretical project we study the electronic effects in monovalent and multivalent interactions by doing quantum chemical calculations. The particular interest of our investigations is in organic molecules interacting with gold nanoparticles or graphene. The main purpose is to analyze the nature of multivalent bonding in comparison to monovalent interaction.

The analysis of turbulence in transient flows has applications across a broad range of fields. We use the flow of fluid in a toroidal container as a paradigm for studying the complex dynamics due to this turbulence. To explore the dynamics of our system, we exploit the numerical capabilities of semtex; a quadrilateral spectral element DNS code. Rainbows result.

It is a well-known fact that the methods of complex analysis provide great advantage in studying physical problems involving a harmonic field satisfying Laplace's equation. One example is in ideal fluid mechanics (infinite Reynolds number) where the absence of viscosity, and the assumption of zero vorticity, mean that it is possible to introduce a so-called complex potential -- an analytic function from which all physical quantities of interest can be inferred. In the opposite limit of zero Reynolds number flows which are slow and viscous and the governing fields are not harmonic it is much less common to employ the methods of complex analysis even though they continue to be relevant in certain circumstances. This talk will give an overview of a variety of problems involving slow viscous Stokes flows where complex analysis can be usefully employed to gain theoretical insights. A number of example problems will be considered including the locomotion of low-Reynolds-number micro-organisms and micro-robots, the friction properties of superhydrophobic surfaces in microfluidics and problems of viscous sintering and the manufacture of microstructured optic fibres (MOFs).

I will give a quick introduction to the notion of instanton, stressing its role in physics and in mathematics. I will also show how algebraic geometry provides powerful tools to study the geometry of the moduli spaces of instantons.

The study of flow in open helically-wound channels has application to many natural and industrial flows. We will consider laminar flow down helically-wound channels of rectangular cross section and with small torsion, in which the fluid depth is small. Assuming a steady-state flow that is independent of position along the axis of the channel, the flow solution may be determined in the two-dimensional cross section of the channel. A thin-film approximation yields explicit expressions for the fluid velocity in terms of the free-surface shape. The latter satisfies an interesting non-linear ordinary differential equation that, for a channel of rectangular cross section, has an analytical solution. The predictions of the thin-film model are shown to be in good agreement with much more computationally intensive solutions of the small-helix-torsion Navier-Stokes equations. This work has particular relevance to spiral particle separators used in the minerals processing industry. Early work on modelling of particle-laden thin-film flow in spiral channels will also be discussed.

Groups of gauge transformations in quantum field theory are typically extended by a 2-cocycle with values in a certain abelian group due to chiral symmetry breaking. For these extensions there exist a global explicit construction since the 1980's. I shall study the higher group cocycles following a recent paper by F. Wagemann and C. Wockel, but extending to the transformation groupoid setting (motivated by QFT) and discussing potential obstructions in the construction due to a nonvanishing of low dimensional homology groups of the gauge group. The resolution of the obstruction is obtained by an application of the Cheeger-Simons differential characters.

A discrete isometry group acting properly discontinuously on the n-dimensional Euclidean space with compact quotient is called a crystallographic group. This name reflects the fact that in dimension n=3 their compact fundamental domains resemble a space-filling crystal pattern. For higher dimensions, Hilbert posed his famous 18th problem: "Is there in n-dimensional Euclidean space only a finite number of essentially different kinds of groups of motions with a [compact] fundamental region?" This problem was solved by Bieberbach when he proved that in every dimension n there exists only a finite number of isomorphic crystallographic groups and also gave a description of these groups. From the perspective of differential geometry these results are of major importance, as crystallographic groups are precisely the fundamental groups of compact flat Riemannian orbifolds. The quotient is even a manifold if the fundamental group is required to be torsion-free, in which case it is called a Bieberbach group. Moreover, for a flat manifold the fundamental group completely determines the holonomy group. In this talk I will discuss the properties of crystallographic groups, study examples in dimension n=2 and n=3, and present the three Bieberbach theorems on the structure of crystallographic groups.

Blood flow within the human arterial system is inherently unsteady as a consequence of the pulsations of the heart. The unsteady nature of the flow gives rise to a number of important flow features which may be critical in understanding pathologies of the cardiovascular system. For example, it is believed that large oscillations in wall shear stress may enhance the effects of artherosclerosis, among other pathologies. In this talk I will present some of the basic concepts of pulsatile flow and follow the analysis first performed by J.R. Womersley in his seminal 1955 paper.

The theory of crystallographic groups acting cocompactly on Euclidean space can be extended and generalised in many different ways. For example, instead of studying discrete groups of Euclidean isometries, one can consider groups of isometries for indefinite inner products. These are the fundamental groups of compact flat pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. Still more generally, one might study group of affine transformation on n-space that are not required to preserve any bilinear form. Also, the condition of cocompactness can be dropped. In this talk, I will present some of the results obtained for these generalisations, and also discuss some of my own work on flat homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian spaces.