📢 The 41st Conference on #StochasticProcesses and their Applications 2019 (SPA 2019)
⏰ 8–12 July 2019
📍 Chicago, IL, USA
https://t.co/HGgz2Y8g0c

More related conferences: https://t.co/QsT67x9JQh

🎬 Universal Biology, the Genetic Code and the First Billion Years of Life on Earth

Dr. Nigel Goldenfeld
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdJ4uS2ULQ

This colloquium concerns two ideas. First, that there are universal laws of life, which can be deduced by abstracting what we know about life on Earth. Second, universal dynamical signatures of early life, preceding even the last universal common ancestor of all life on Earth, are present in the structure of the modern day canonical genetic code --- the map between DNA sequence and amino acids that form proteins. The code is not random, as often assumed, but instead is now known to have certain error minimisation properties. How could such a code evolve, when it would seem that mutations to the code itself would cause the wrong proteins to be translated, thus killing the organism? Using digital life simulations, I show how a unique and optimal genetic code can emerge over evolutionary time, but only if early life was dominated by collective effects, very different from the present era where individuals and species are well-defined concepts. I will also discuss a second universal signature of life: the complete breaking of chiral symmetry in biological amino acids and sugars, and explain how such transitions can arise in principle as a result of the non-equilibrium dynamics of early-life autocatalytic replicators.

🎬 Beyond Chaos: The Continuing Enigma of Turbulence - KITP Public Lecture by Nigel Goldenfeld

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW1C-HVJN-o

Turbulence is the last great unsolved problem of classical physics. This seemingly random, unpredictable motion of fluids is pervasive and completely familiar to us all. Turbulence governs the speed at which rivers flow and the air drag as you drive your car; it is the bane of air travelers. Turbulence can kill, by causing arteries and aneurisms to burst. Turbulence makes stars twinkle. Its random but structured patterns have inspired artists and scientists alike. And yet, despite a century of scientific investigation, our understanding is primarily based upon a mere handful of early seminal insights. In this talk, I'll try to explain why this problem is so difficult — much harder than chaos — and what it would mean to solve it. Finally, I'll discuss recent dramatic advances in both experiment and theory that account for the way in which fluids start to become turbulent as their flow speed is increased, making precise mathematical contact with transitional behavior in other fields such as ecology and even neuroscience.

At the precise moment when a random system seems most chaotic, exquisite geometric order can peer through.
https://t.co/qMo090Yyfm

⚔ http://nautil.us/blog/why-our-postwar-long-peace-is-fragile

🤔 Getting started with Python in HPC https://t.co/vAecAaTqsI

Quantum Field Theory and Critical Phenomena

Fourth Edition
Jean Zinn-Justin

A Clarendon Press Publication
International Series of Monographs on Physics

Completely revised fourth edition of a classic text
Fully updated, containing 50% new material, including three new chapters
Emphasis on common aspects of particle physics and critical phenomena
Provides profound understanding of QFT, renormalization group, and their main applications in physics
Website for exercises

Phase Transitions and Renormalization Group
Jean Zinn-Justin
Oxford Graduate Texts

Elementary, authoratative introduction by experienced teacher and author
Central topic in theoretical physics today
Covers mean-field theory, critical phenomena, renormalization group, continuum limit, perturbative methods
Based on many years of teaching experience

From Random Walks to Random Matrices
Jean Zinn-Justin

Introduces major topics in modern theoretical physics
Features short introductions in self-contained chapters
Covers renormalization group, fixed points, universality, continuum limit
Authoritative overviews by an experienced author and teacher

🔸 Critical Phenomena: field theoretical approach

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Critical_Phenomena:_field_theoretical_approach

David Tong: Lectures on Statistical Field Theory

These lecture notes provide a detailed introduction to phase transitions and the renormalisation group, aimed at "Part III" (i.e. masters level) students. The lecture notes come in around 130 pages and can be downloaded below.

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/sft.html

Modeling cities
“short review with a discussion about the possibility of constructing a science of cities”

https://t.co/4M5Sga7q4s

🎞 Is Complexity a Science? Is it a possibly useful new way of engineering?

In this video narrated by Maxi San Miguel it will be argued that Complexity is a new way of thinking, necessary for a scientific renaissance that can transform society.

📺 https://t.co/OR41RZjRCd

geoplot looks like a nice tool for plotting geo data in Python. Seaborn but for spatial data ;) You can try there quick start tutorial here: https://t.co/2JjhfsvFBV
no install needed

🖤 Recollecting Mitchell Feigenbaum— a chaos pioneer

by SFI External Professor Fred Cooper

https://medium.com/@sfiscience/recollecting-mitchell-feigenbaum-a-chaos-pioneer-206a73a91a42

Feigenbaum’s constants are universal ratios … that relate to phenomena with oscillatory (cyclic) behavior, such as swinging pendulums or heart rhythms. The most well-known one, Feigenbaum’s Delta, refers to the spacing between parameter values required to double the cycle’s length, which decreases exponentially by a factor approaching approximately 4.669.

Among all my friends, Mitchell was the most unusual and brilliant. He viewed the world through the lens of a scientist. When he walked through the forest he wondered “at what distance do the trees merge and become inseparable?” When he looked at the moon he wondered “why does the moon appear larger when it is on the horizon?” He then needed to develop a theory to explain these phenomena “from scratch.” This led him to study how vision evolved from fish to humans and why optical illusions occur as a result of “mistakes” made by our sensory cognition. When he was asked by Pete Carruthers, “what is the origin of turbulence?” Mitchell looked at the simplest nonlinear system — the logistic map where bifurcations took place. This led to the famous Feigenbaum numbers, which were an essential part in understanding the onset of chaos.

Mitchell had a great love of music and again wondered how can one improve on digital technology so that the sound of the onset of a bow string could be captured. His interest in photography led him to write computer codes to undo the mistakes made by existing copying machines so that a perfect image could be printed. I found it fascinating that not only did he ask these questions, which were unusual to me, but then he dropped everything to figure out the answer. This also led to the production of maps with minimal distortion and computer codes for figuring out how to label maps in the clearest fashion.

Mitchell was a dear friend and he will be missed.

Spectral properties and the accuracy of mean-field approaches for epidemics on correlated networks
“comparison between stochastic simulations and mean-field theories of the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model on correlated networks”

https://t.co/h6h6o7KPqy

🎞 We are biased but the Internet could help us measure it & possibly fix it. Also, let's save the Internet instead of blaming it for everything!

https://t.co/eN9hRTrrhZ

Calling all quantitative life scientists! Deadline to apply to this postdoc is July 10, 2019!

https://t.co/1utmJVxueR

🎞 Taha Yasseri course on "Research Design in Social Data Science" is finally live!

Here is a sneak preview!

If you like it, enrol to join the next cohort, starting 10 Oct, here:
https://t.co/xkiREH7yk3