Integrated Calendar

Coral Landscapes at the Microscale
Orr Shapiro
Reef building corals rely on a tightly regulated symbiosis between the coral animal, endocellular microalgae, and additional microbial components. The complex network of chemical and metabolic interactions is collectively known as a holobiont. Coral pathogens disrupt these interactions, leading to the breakdown of the symbiosis and death of the coral host. Over the past decades, under warming climate and increased anthropogenic pressure, coral disease outbreaks are becoming both more frequent and more widespread, raising concerns regarding the future of these important ecosystems. Elucidating the microscale processes underlying coral disease is inherently difficult due to the physical and biochemical complexity of the different microenvironments formed around and within the coral colony. In my talk I will present a number of microfluidic-based systems developed specifically to study corals, and coral-pathogen interactions, at the microscale, and the multiple new insights we have thus far gained from bringing this type of live-imaging approach into the study of reef building corals.

Quantum thermodynamics deals with thermodynamic effects and thermodynamic constraints (e.g. the 2nd law) that emerge in out-of-equilibrium microscopic open quantum systems, and in microscopic heat machines. Presently, the technology developed for quantum computing is sufficient for exploring quantum thermodynamic experimentally (new experimental results will be shown). On top of the second law, thermodynamic resource theory predicts additional mathematical constraints on thermal transformation of microscopic systems. Unlike the second law, these constraints cannot be related to thermodynamic observables. Consequently, they are useful for some theoretical purposes, but not for making concrete predictions on realistic scenarios. In this talk I will present a new formalism that yields additional “seconds laws” that follow the logic and structure of the standard 2nd law. While the 2nd law deals with the first moment of the energy (average heat, average work), the observables in the new laws are higher moments of the energy. I will show several scenarios where these laws provide concrete answers to “blind spots” that are not addressed by the standard 2nd law. In other cases tighter bounds are obtained compared to the standard 2nd law. Potentially, this formalism can significantly extend the thermodynamic framework, and put additional practical bounds on thermal transformations and microscopic heat machines. Finally, I will discuss the connection to quantum coherence measures and list several research directions.