Two Quantitative Life Sciences Seminars - 19 and 20 December - REMINDER

[Nadia van Buuren - ICTP]

_*2 Quantitative Life Sciences  Seminars:*_

*Monday 19 December at 11:00*
ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, old SISSA building

"Rapid adaptation and the predictability of evolution"

Richard Neher, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tuebingen, Germany

Abstract:
Evolution is simple if adaptive mutations appear one at a time. However, in 
large microbial populations many mutations arise simultaneously resulting in a 
complex dynamics of competing variants. I will discuss recent insight into 
universal properties of such rapidly adapting populations and compare model 
predictions to whole genome deep sequencing data of HIV-1 populations at many 
consecutive time points. Genetic diversity data can further be used to infer 
fitness of individuals in a population sample and predict successful genotypes. 
We validate these prediction using historical influenza virus sequence data. 
Successful predictions of the composition of future influenza virus population 
could guide strain selection for seasonal influenza vaccines.

Web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8089/

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Tuesday 20 December at 11:00*
ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, old SISSA building

"Collective behavior in systems of self-propelled particles and the 
computational approach"

Mihir Durve - University of Trieste - Department of Physics

Abstract:
Many natural and artificial systems consist of agents that have ability to show 
persistent motion. Flock of birds, school of fish, human crowd, bacterial 
colonies are few of the examples. Agents in such system are called 
`Self-propelled Particles' (SPPs). Another remarkable property of the agents in 
such systems is the ability to exhibit collective behavior. The beautiful 
pattern formation in flock of Starling birds or school of fish is just one of 
the many outcomes of the collective behavior[1].

There are numerous computational models to understand the collective behavior in 
such systems. These models aim to understand the formation of such patterns, the 
mechanism behind the collective behavior. One of the notable model is given by 
Vicsek et al. now commonly known as the `Vicsek model'. This minimal model 
assumes that the agent in the system try to behave as it's neighbors do[2]. With 
this simple but yet effective assumption this model showed some of the prominent 
features of the collective behavior.

In this session we shall discuss about the systems with SPPs, the Vicsek model 
and one of the modification to the Vicsek model motivated by the fact that 
biological agents such as humans, birds, fish etc. have restricted view-angle 
and hence such agents interact anisotropically with its neighbors if the 
interaction is via visual clues. We shall discuss the effects on the collective 
behavior of SPPs due to this modification within the scope of the Vicsek model.

Ref.:
[1] T. Vicsek and A. Zafeiris, Phys. Rep. 517, 71 (2012).

[2] T. Vicsek, A. Czir ok, E. Ben-Jacob, I. Cohen, and O. Shochet, Phys. Rev. 
Lett. 75, 1226 (1995).

Web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8108/



-- 
Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-2240623
e-mail:qls at ictp.it