Sep 13, 2011 - John Yin, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Sep 20, 2011 - Hannah Gaines, Entomology
Sep 27, 2011 - Phil Pellitteri, Entomology
Oct 4, 2011 - Jean-Luc Thiffeault, Mathematics
Oct 11, 2011 - Mutlu Ozdogan, Forest and Wildlife Ecology
Oct 18, 2011 - Dave Smith, Space Science and Engineering
Center
Oct 25, 2011 - Michael Hammer, Surgery/Otolaryngology
Nov 1, 2011 - Robin Chapman, Communicative Disorders
Nov 8, 2011 - Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, Psychology & Psychiatry
Nov 15, 2011 - Jude Shavlik, Computer Science
Nov 22, 2011 - Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, Psychiatry
Nov 29, 2011 - Brian Baldo, Psychiatry
Dec 6, 2011 - Dan
Vimont, Atmospheric and Oceanic Scicnces
Dec 13, 2011 - Jim Blair, Milton and Edgewood College
Abstracts
September 6, 2011
Bat deaths near wind turbines: Barotrauma, or blunt trauma?
Melissa Behr* and Byron Dieterle** *Clinical Diagnostic Professor of
Pathology, Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and School of
Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison **Professor
Emeritus of Physics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
The dark side of wind turbines, a popular source of green energy, is
that they kill many bats and some birds. A publication by Baerwald
et al (1) postulated that bats die of barotrauma near wind turbines,
based on their finding of pulmonary hemorrhage and lack of broken
bones. The press picked up the paper, and people began to talk about
"exploding bats". A study by Grodsky et al at UW-Madison's Wildlife
Ecology was undertaken of dead bats at a field of wind turbines in
Dodge County. We were invited to participate, to contribute
pathology (MB) and physics (BD) expertise. As in other studies, tree
bats were found in largest numbers; a few hibernating bats were also
killed by the turbines. X-rays showed that 75% of bats had one or
more broken bones, and at least half of those weren't detected by
physical examination. In addition, many bats had pulmonary
hemorrhages as well as middle ear damage: those lesions could be the
result of barotrauma or blunt trauma. Calculations show that bats
can't echolocate a moving wind turbine blade, since typical tip
speeds can equal 175 MPH, which results in lethal pressure
differences of 6,000-10,000 Pa.
1. Erin F. Baerwald, Genevieve H. D'Amours, Brandon J. Klug and
Robert M. R. Barclay. Barotrauma is a significant cause of bat
fatalities at wind turbines. Current Biology, 2008; Vol 18,
R695-R696
September 13, 2011
Systems Virology: Models and measures of virus growth and infection
spread
John Yin, UW Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering
Systems Biology Theme, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery
Viruses infect humans and cause diseases such as AIDS, hepatitis,
cancer, and influenza, annually impacting the health of a major
fraction of the world's population. Basic science has revealed the
molecular functions encoded by many viruses of biomedical
importance, but relatively little progress has been made toward
understanding how the individual functions of a virus contribute to
the integrated processes of virus growth and infection spread.
September 20, 2011
Bees: What is all the buzz about?
Hannah R. Gaines, UW Department of Entomology
One in every three bites we eat is dependent on pollinators. Bees,
the most important pollinators, however, are in decline around the
world. Historically, farmers have relied upon one species, the
non-native honey bee (Apis mellifera) for their pollination
requirements. In recent years, however, honey bees have declined
drastically as a result of mites, disease, and the recent emergence
of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). As CCD continues to spread and
devastate honey bee colonies, farmers will need to seek alternative
ways of pollinating their crops. Native bees also provide valuable
pollination services but have largely been overlooked and are at
risk of decline due to habitat fragmentation, intensified
agriculture, and agri-chemical exposure. In this seminar I will talk
about the current status of pollinators, their importance to world
agriculture, and our research addressing the importance of native
pollinators and their response to landscape structure.
September 27, 2011 Bed bugs - They will rule the world
Phil Pellitteri, UW Department of Entomology
Human bed bugs were a common problem until DDT was used in the early
1940's. The seemed to disappear until about 10 years ago and now
have become a major issue worldwide that shows no signs of going
away. There are a number of factors involved in the resurgence, and
we expect the problem to continue to increase. I will be discussing
the biological and social aspects to the problem. It is not just a
poem anymore.
October 4, 2011
Topological chaos
Jean-Luc Thiffeault, UW Department of Mathematics
Topological chaos is a type of chaotic behavior that is `forced' by
the motion of obstacles in some domain. I will review two
topological approaches, with applications in particular to stirring
and mixing in fluid dynamics. The first involves constructing
systems such that the fluid motion is topologically complex, usually
by imposing a specific motion of rods. I will discuss optimization
strategies that can be implemented. The second is diagnostic, where
flow characteristics are deduced from observations of periodic or
random orbits and their topological properties.
Recent changes in Wisconsin's forests as seen by satellites Mutlu Ozdogan, UW Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology
Wisconsin's forests are changing rapidly as a result of commercial
harvest, disease and climate. However, these changes are captured
only at the county or at the national forest scales and thus are not
suitable for local scale hydrological, biological, and climate
studies. Using satellite observations spanning three decades, we are
developing stand-level forest change maps at five-year intervals for
northern Wisconsin. Our maps show that commercial forest harvesting
is a major form of disturbance in northern forests and as a result,
the size of contiguous intact forest blocks that are important for
habitat and hydrological connectivity are diminishing. The seminar
will walk the audience through some historical perspective on forest
harvesting in Wisconsin, show the impact of satellite technology in
mapping harvested blocks, and discuss the implications of forest
change.
Algorithmic music composition - Philosophy, methods, implications,
and possible applications
Dave Smith, UW Space Science and Engineering Center
Most modern music composition methods are based on the music of
previous successful artists, like Mozart, the sonification of
complex data sets and mathematical processes, or by combining a
large number of manipulation methods and searching for interesting
sounds....
My approach is drawn more from cognitive science - determining what
types of coherence we can recognize, and presenting these as
structure, content and boundaries. One advantage of this approach is
that the resultant music can be well defined in both cognitive and
aesthetic domains....
In the larger (non-musical) view, by looking at these methods as
mechanisms for coping with chaotic and complex phenomena, we end up
with a rough map of consciousness which brings surprising questions
about our knowledge and educational systems.... For example: How do
"what we like" and "what we know" interact?... How do classification
systems compete with non-discrete phenomena?
Airway sensory deficits in Parkinson’s Disease – Evidence of a
complex system gone awry? Now what?
Michael J. Hammer, UW School of Medicine and Public Health
Historically, Parkinson’s Disease (PD) has simply been classified as
a “movement disorder”. Recent evidence, including data from our
laboratory, strongly suggests a more complex model of
sensory-movement interaction whereby airway movements are guided by
sensory (e.g., touch) inputs to the central nervous system.
Sensory-movement interactions, and the related deficits that
accompany PD, substantially impact a constellation of important
airway functions such as breathing, cough, speech, swallow, and
voice. This seminar will focus on (a) how airway sensory-movement
functions are negatively impacted by PD, (b) the clinical
consequences of this impact, and (c) strategies that may improve
these airway sensory-movement functions in PD.
November 1, 2011
The Eelgrass Meadow and One Hundred White Pelicans
Robin Chapman, UW Department of Communicative Disorders
Robin Chapman will read poems of nonlinear change in species and
climate from her new book The Eelgrass Meadow (Tebot Bach,
Huntington Beach CA) and a manuscript-in-progress, One Hundred White
Pelicans.
(The previously announced speaker had to cancel due to illness.)
November 8, 2011
The early development of empathy
Carolyn Zahn-Wexler, UW Departments of Psychology & Psychiatry
Compassion, cooperation and concern for others are essential for
individuals in all societies to survive and thrive. Yet many
competing factors can inhibit their expression. It is essential then
to understand processes that contribute to empathy, both those that
enhance and hinder its development. Empathy makes it possible for
people to connect with others’ experiences; moreover, it motivates
individuals to help and comfort others, share resources, and provide
protection when needed. Empathy has both cognitive and affective
components, i.e. the ability to understand the perspective of the
other and to resonate emotionally to another’s distress. It has
neural and physiological correlates; neuroimaging studies support
the notion that we are biologically wired to respond to the
suffering of others. Emotional contagion is present in the first
days of life, seen in infants’ reflexive cries when they hear the
cries of other infants. This shared emotional response is commonly
viewed as a precursor to empathic concern for someone in distress.
It quickly becomes more regulated and transformed; between the ages
of one and two years children show both cognitive and affective
empathy and prosocial efforts to help others in distress. I will
focus on longitudinal studies of the early developmental course (0-5
years) of young children’s concern for others, providing examples of
empathic concern and caring behaviors. These findings, when first
reported, ran counter to prevailing theories of early
social-emotional development. Early empathy shows moderate
consistency over time which means some children change whereas
others do not; moreover, change can manifest itself in different
ways. While the potential for empathy may be innate and universal,
there are clear individual differences. Other biological (e.g.
genes, temperament) and environmental (e.g. parenting practices,
parental psychopathology, culture) processes can alter its
expression and developmental trajectory. I will review some of these
factors and consider future directions which include the study of
gene-environment interactions.
Teaching computers to extract complex information from news articles
Jude Shavlik, UW Department of Computer Science
Several of us in Computer Sciences are part of a DARPA program
called Machine Reading, whose goal is to read ordinary English text
and create "knowledge bases" in a formal knowledge representation.
The knowledge representation we use is first-order predicate
calculus (e.g., "forall x human(x) implies mortal(x)"), extended to
handle probability. I will describe the probabilistic logic we use,
discuss how we represent the output of natural-language processing
programs (syntactic parsers, part-of-speech taggers, time-phrase
recognizers, etc.), and describe one of the machine-learning
algorithms we use. A central challenge in machine learning is
getting training examples, and I will also describe how we use the
on-line knowledge base called FreeBase to automatically create
"distantly labeled" training examples.
November 22, 2011
Sleep: A global or a local process?
Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, UW Department of Psychiatry
Sleep is usually thought of as a global behavior and a global brain
state. However, recent evidence indicates that sleep intensity,
measured as electroencephalogram (EEG) slow-wave activity, is not
uniformly distributed across cortical areas. Some brain regions
appear to need more sleep (or more "intense" sleep) than others, and
such local sleep regulation occurs in a use-dependent manner. When
the brain is awake, neurons in the cerebral cortex fire irregularly
and the EEG displays low-amplitude, high-frequency oscillations.
After falling asleep, neurons start oscillating between ON periods,
when they fire as during wake, and OFF periods, when they stop
firing altogether, and the EEG displays high amplitude slow waves.
However, after sleep deprivation, cortical neurons can go briefly
“OFF line” as they do in sleep, accompanied by slower waves in the
local EEG. Strikingly, neurons often go OFF line in one cortical
area and not in another. During these periods of “local sleep”,
whose incidence increases with wake duration, rats appear awake,
active, and display a wake EEG. Thus, in sleep-deprived rats, though
both the EEG and behavior indicate wakefulness, local populations of
neurons in the cortex may be falling asleep.
November 29, 2011
Feeding behavior elicited from the
prefrontal cortex: a case of lower-level brain centers for
homeostatic energy-balance control “taking orders from above?”
Brian A. Baldo, UW Department of Psychiatry
Feeding is a simple behavior that is required for the survival of
the individual. Fundamentally, feeding replenishes chemical energy
and maintains an energy reserve for adaptive behavior and
physiological housekeeping functions. Nevertheless, the neural
controls over this simple behavior are exceedingly complex. There
appear to be specialized brain circuits for distinguishable aspects
of feeding, for example, feeding elicited by negative energy balance
(hunger/starvation), by the anticipated experience of pleasurable
taste (the “dessert stomach”), or by stress (“emotional eating”). My
lab explores how these diverse circuits interact, by chemically
stimulating discrete brain sites in rats and observing the effects
upon the organization of feeding behavior.
Recently, we found that stimulating a specific neurochemical system
within the prefrontal cortex, usually viewed as a seat of higher
cognition, decision-making, and impulse control, produces a
remarkable set of behaviors characterized by intense hyperactivity
and abrupt, disorganized feeding responses. The neurochemical system
under study was the mu-opioid peptide system (the “brain’s own
heroin”), known to mediate drug reward and to play a role in drug
craving and relapse. Our studies were the first to show that feeding
behavior can be driven by stimulating specific opioid-sensitive “hot
spots” within the prefrontal cortex. Moreover, we showed that
stimulating opioid systems in these cortical hot spots activates
simpler downstream brain systems that regulate the homeostatic
control of energy balance and body weight. Finally, we have obtained
preliminary evidence that opioid stimulation of these same hot spots
degrades cognitive function, as measured in a task of working
memory.
Taken together, our results indicate that mu-opioid-mediated
activation of the prefrontal cortex simultaneously degrades higher
cognitive function and elicits dysregulated feeding responses by
“usurping” control of lower brain systems that regulate energy
balance. Our findings may have implications for understanding eating
disorders and addiction, which are characterized by the loss of
control over food- or drug-seeking behaviors.
December 6, 2011
A history of El
Niño / the Southern Oscillation
Dan Vimont, UW
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Scicnces
This talk will
provide a brief history of our understanding of the El Niño
/ Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena from the late 1800's
through the present. The talk will highlight how advances in
our observational networks and theoretical understanding of the
tropical atmosphere and ocean - advances that were not necessarily
motivated by a desire to understand ENSO - have shaped the
development of ENSO theory. Finally, I will discuss an
emerging shift in our current understanding of ENSO variability
from the perception of ENSO as a linearly unstable mode of
variability to thinking of ENSO as a linearly stable phenomenon
that experiences transient growth through non-normal processes.
December 13, 2011
Dimensional Analysis: Can a trick to help physics students pass
exams provide insight into the Nature of the Universe?
Jim Blair, Milton and Edgewood College
1- Equations, Units and Dimensions
2- The Fundamentals: Mass, Length and Time. (and the Derived: all
the others.)
3- Some Anomalies: Fractional Exponents? Different things with the
Same Dimensions? The same things with Different Dimensions?
4- Add Charge, Temperature and Angle to the Fundamentals to resolve
the anomalies (But the units are arbitrary and not explainable to
Aliens.)
5- Change the Fundamentals to Angle, Charge, Mass, Velocity, Action,
and Entropy, and make a unit system that Everyone can understand.
(even Bug Eyed Monsters and Little
Green Men all over the Universe)
6- Another way to look at the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.