QLS guest seminar - Friday, 29 June at 11h00

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

QUANTITATIVE LIFE SCIENCES GUEST SEMINAR

Friday, 29 June 2018 at 11:00,
ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, old SISSA building, via Beirut 2


Speaker: Giulio Facchini, IRPHE Marseille

Title:  Stability and organisation in macroscopic systems

Abstract:
Macroscopic systems are often endowed with a large number of different 
scales and features. While controlling one single system often demands 
to properly describe all its complexity, different systems can express 
similar behaviours which are scale-invariant and depend on a minimal set 
of parameters.
The last two features allow to reproduce these phenomena at the 
laboratory scale and describe them with a minimal analytical model, thus 
characterising the observed phenomena in a very general way.

Following this approach I focus on the stability of different 
macroscopic systems, from the human scale (suitcases and bikes), to the 
geophysical (vortices and currents in the ocean) and astrophysical 
scales (accretion disks).
I show that in all these systems the macroscopic behaviour relies on
the balance or inbalance between few parameters.
Also, depending on the relative importance of these parameters, these 
systems can show the appearing of longevous and well organised patterns.

Finally I introduce a new project which focuses on the complex structure 
of the arboreal nests built by Nasute termites. I aim to characterise 
these objects using the same minimal approach than before while facing 
the additional biological aspects. I will try to answer three connected 
questions: what are the biological functions of the macroscopic 
structure, how it is built by many simply interacting agents, and at 
which extent these two elements are related to the form of the nest.

Indico web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8615/

Everyone interested is most welcome to attend!

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