Integrated Calendar

The talk will describe the use of advanced nucleic acid
mass spectrometry and next-generation DNA sequencing for non-invasive
prenatal diagnostics. This will encompass the analysis
of maternal plasma for genome-wide genetic and mutational profile of
the fetus. Also to be described is the use of similar methodologies for
identifying somatic mutations in cancer. Both mass spectrometry and
sequencing are powerful and in many ways are complementary. Sequencing
is best when huge genetic marker sets are needed for problems of
relatively flat dynamic range. Mass spectrometry is best when extreme
sensitivity or quantitative precision are required for moderate-sized
sets of biomarkers.

BIO: Charles Cantor, member of the US National Academy of Sciences, is
one of the early pioneers of the world genome project, and a founder of
SEQUENOM inc. and several other biotech companies. He is professor
emeritus at Boston University, adjunct professor at UCSD, Scripps and UC
Irvine, and was director of the Human Genome Center at Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory. Cantor has 450 peer-reviewed articles and 60 patents,
co-author of a renown textbook on Biophysical Chemistry and of the first
textbook on Genomics.

The talk will explain various measurements of X-ray absorption of astrophysical sources and the immense challenge to physically characterize the intervening matter.
Only 10% of the baryons of the local Universe reside in galaxies, while 90% are conjectured to occupy the intergalactic medium in a form that makes it impossible to detect their electromagnetic emission.
It will be shown how recent measurements of photo-electric absorption of the farthest known X-ray point sources, namely gamma-ray bursts and quasars, can account for the long sought baryons.
Since X-ray absorption requires heavy elements (Z > 5), massive galactic winds are invoked to explain how these elements reached intergalactic space.
The utilization of high-resolution atomic spectroscopy for estimating the mass flow in galactic winds emanating from around supermassive black holes will be demonstrated.

The non-hermitian formalism of quantum mechanics enables one to solve problems which are extremely hard to solve and often even impossible to solve within the framework of the standard formalism of quantum mechanics.
It this talk I will focus on a situation where in non-hermitian quantum
mechanics two eigenvalues and their corresponding eigenfunctions are
degenerated eigenvalues and states, respectively. We will discuss the effect of
this "accidental" situation (which cannot happen in the standard formalism of
quantum mechanics) on different type of observable phenomena.

We will show how there are observable phenomena that can be predicted by the
non-hermiitian formalism of quantum mechanics in light matter interactions.
Either in propagation of light in waveguides or when atoms or molecules or
nanostructures interact with laser fields.

References to the CROSSING RULE in non-hermitian QM
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NM and S. Friedland, "The Association of Resonance States with the Incomplete
Spectrum of Finite Complex-Scaled Hamiltonian Matrices." Phys. Rev. A, 22,
618-623 (1980).

E. Narevicius and NM, "Fingerprints of broad overlapping resonances in the e+H2
cross section." Phys. Rev. Lett., 81, No. 11 (1998);

E. Narevicius and NM, "Trapping of an electron due to molecular vibrations."
Phys. Rev. Lett., 84, 1681 (2000).

E. Narevicius, P. Serra and NM, "Critical phenomena associated with
self-orthogonality in non_Hermitian quantum mechanics." Europhys. Lett., 62,
789-794 (2003).

S. Klaiman, U. Gunther, and NM, "Visualization of Branch Points in PT-Symmetric
Waveguides, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 080402 (2008)

O. Peleg, M. Segev, G. Bartal, D. N. Christodoulides, and NM, "NonlinearWaves
in SubwavelengthWaveguide Arrays: Evanescent Bands and the "Phoenix Soliton
Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 163902 (2009).

O. Peleg, Y. Plotnik, NM, O. Cohen, and M. Segev, "Self-trapped leaky waves and
their interactions",
Phys. Rev A80, 041801(R) 2009.

R. Lefebvre, O. Atabek, M. Sindelka, and NM, "Resonance Coalescence in
Molecular Photodissociation", Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 123003, (2009).

B. Alfassi, O. Peleg, NM, and M. Segev
"Diverging Rabi Oscillations in Subwavelength Photonic Lattices"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 073901 (2011)

NM, "Non-Hermitian Quantum Mechanics", Cambridge University Press, 2011.