Integrated Calendar

The geologically recent (~1 Gya) Rheasilvia basin on asteroid 4 Vesta is on of the most spectacular impact structures in the solar system, with a diameter nearly equal in size to that of Vesta itself. To date, much of the numerical modeling of this impact has concentrated on the morphology of the Rheasilvia basin. However, the stress wave produced by an impact of this size is capable of causing deformation at considerable distance from the basin itself. We use high resolution hydrocodes modeling coupled with a strain analysis routine in order to understand the modes and magnitudes of deformation expected globally on Vesta following the Rheasilvia impact. These simulations give insight into several interesting observations by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. First, our results suggest that the major system of graben circling Vesta’s equator opened shortly after the passage of the Rheasilvia related impact shock wave. Secondly, we find that the deficiency of small craters at Vesta’s north pole is likely a result of antipodal focusing of Rheasilvia impact related stresses. The details behind both of these findings are dependent on material parameters of Vesta’s interior, including core strength, mantle porosity, and damage to the body from previous major impacts. By matching model output to observation, we can perform a crude sort of seismology and gain insight into both Vesta’s internal rheology as well as its impact history.

The subject of this talk will be conversion of the “information processing” paradigm into the control paradigm, not only in the life sciences but also in growing parts of the humanities and social sciences. The second part will focus on the implications of this subject to the study of the brain and consciousness. Is the brain an information processing system? And if so, does this imply that consciousness is an information processing system? What do we miss when we try to understand the world through the information processing paradigm?

Extraordinary electron systems can be generated at well-defined interfaces between complex oxides [1]. These two-dimensional electron systems are characterized by properties that fundamentally differ from those of two-dimensional electron gases in semiconductor heterostructures, which provide the basis of the Quantum Hall Effect and are exploited in high electron mobility transistors.

In recent years, groundbreaking progress has been achieved in exploring and utilizing novel oxide electron systems. In the presentation I will provide an overview of their surprising properties (see, e.g., [2]) and explore the potential of electron liquids at oxide interfaces for the use in nanoscale electronic devices.

[1] A. Ohtomo et al., Nature 419, 378 (2002)

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and their subsequent progenitors produce blood cells, but the precise nature of this production is dogged by controversy. Cellular barcoding is a powerful experimental technique that simultaneously traces the in vivo differentiation of individual cells. Using cellular barcoding, we traced the progeny of hematopoietic progenitors and reconstituted the lineage relationship with single cell resolution. We show that individual multipotent progenitors are generally not multi-outcome; instead, they produce heterogeneous patterns of limited types of blood cells. Interestingly, we found that some progenitors produce dendritic cells without producing any lymphoid and myeloid cells, redefining dendritic cells as a third lineage of blood cells. We then developed a quantitative framework to infer the nature of the hematopoietic tree. With this approach, we showed that the classical model of hematopoiesis cannot explain our data and we propose an alternative model.

Is evolution predictable at the molecular level? The ambitious goal to answer this question requires an understanding of the mutational effects that govern the complex relationship between genotype and phenotype. In practice, it involves integrating systems-biology modelling, microbial laboratory evolution experiments and large-scale mutational analyses — a feat that is made possible by the recent availability of the necessary computational tools and experimental techniques. Through concentrating largely on the problem antibiotic resistance evolution, I will discuss the degree to which these promises are realistic.

In the last decade we have used different cellular automata approaches to model immune responses in infectious diseases, as for instance, HIV infection, malaria and tuberculosis. In the first part of this talk, I briefly introduce the necessary biological concepts regarding immune responses and them I review two different types of modeling focusing on the details of the question addressed, its experimental validation and its predictive aspects. In the second part of the talk I will present a very recent work in which we use the network ideas and a Boolean approach to understand the dynamics of a chronic disease caused by helminthes, very common in Brazil. This approach allow to understand the particularities of the immune response that lead to the different clinical outcomes as well as the prevalence of these different clinical stages on the population. We discuss the implications of such results from the statistical physics point of view.