Kavli Institute Research Articles

In conversation with Carol Robinson.

Dame Carol Robinson is a professor of chemistry and Director of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at the University of Oxford. Carol's career in science began at the age of 16 as a lab technician at Pfizer (based in Kent), during which time she studied part-time and took evening classes to obtain a degree in chemistry. This was followed by a master's degree at the University of Swansea and a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Carol's postdoctoral training was undertaken in Peter Bennett's lab at the Department of Pathology and Microbiology, University of Bristol. Subsequently, she took a career break of 8 years to spend time with her family but made a strong comeback, taking up a position at the University of Oxford, where she began to explore protein folding. It was here that she first demonstrated, using the GroEL chaperonin-substrate complex as a prototype, that protein secondary structure can be analysed in the gas phase. Carol later made history as the first female professor of chemistry at the University of Cambridge (2001) and again as the first female professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford (2009). In her research, she has also continuously pushed boundaries, pioneering the application of mass spectrometry for the elucidation of the 3D architecture of macromolecular complexes, including membrane-bound assemblies. She has received many awards and honours in recognition of her significant contributions to the field of gas-phase structural biology, including the Royal Society Fellowship, the Davy Medal, the Rosalind Franklin Award and the FEBS/EMBO Women in Science Award. In this interview, she discusses some of her career highlights and ongoing research aspirations and draws on her unique experiences to offer advice to early career scientists.

Gender Disparity in Publishing Six Months after the KITP Workshop Probes of Transport in Stars

Conferences and workshops shape scientific discourse. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) hosts long-term workshops to stimulate scientific collaboration that would not otherwise have taken place. One goal of KITP programs is to increase diversity in the next generation of scientists. In this analysis, we examine gender trends in the authorship of papers that have been generated as a result of the KITP program Probes of Transport in Stars, which ran from 2021 October 11th to 2021 December 17th. While 38% of workshop participants were women, only 19% of publications produced between 2021 December 1st and 2022 June 3rd had female first-authors. Furthermore, of these early publications, 61% had all-male author lists. Among publications resulting from the KITP program, the proportions of both male first-author papers and papers with all-male author lists are higher than predicted by models that take into account the gender distribution of the KITP participants. These results motivate more thorough investigations of collaboration networks at scientific conferences and workshops. Importantly, they also suggest that programs, conferences, and workshops of any kind need to take steps beyond those implemented in this KITP program to enable more diverse collaborations and address gender disparities in science.

A unique gravitational wave signal from phase transition during inflation* *HA is supported by NSFC (11975134), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFA0402204) and the Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program. KFL was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF PHY-1748958) and by the Heising-Simons Foundation and acknowledges the hospitality of Kavli Institute for Theoretical

We study the properties of gravitational wave (GW) signals produced by first-order phase transitions during the inflation era. We show that the power spectrum of a GW oscillates with its wave number. This signal can be observed directly by future terrestrial and spatial GW detectors and through the B-mode spectrum in the CMB. This oscillatory feature of the GW is generic for any approximately instantaneous sources occurring during inflation and is distinct from the GW from phase transitions after inflation. The details of the GW spectrum contain information about the scale of the phase transition and the later evolution of the universe.

Exoplanets, extraterrestrial life and beyond: an interview with Douglas Lin.

In a survey released by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in November 2021, the search for Earth-like planets outside our solar system was identified as a major goal for astronomy over the next 10 years. National Science Review invites Douglas N.C. Lin (林潮), emeritus professor of astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has studied planet formation, evolution and solar system dynamics for almost five decades, to look back on exoplanet research, a field that has expanded exponentially in the past 30 years, and to envision the opportunities and challenges in our search for habitable worlds. As the founding director of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, Lin offers his insights on how China's astronomical community can benefit more from collaboration, and what young scientists could do to seize the opportunities offered by what he calls ‘a golden era of exoplanet research’.

Quantum effects enter the macroworld

New experiments are revealing the power of large-scale quantum devices . Entanglement is the counterintuitive idea that particles can have an intrinsic connection—a connection that endures no matter the distance between them. The phenomenon remains one of the most bizarre and least understood consequences of quantum mechanics. Measure the quantum properties of one of a pair of entangled particles, and the other changes instantaneously. Researchers have pioneered ways to demonstrate quantum entanglement in mechanical systems. This artist’s conception of one experiment depicts an interferometer’s light field, which “carries” the entangled state. Image credit: Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology/Moritz Forsch. Such strange phenomena typically have been relegated to the subatomic. But recently, physicists have taken entanglement and other quantum effects to new extremes by observing them in large systems including clouds of atoms, quantum drums, wires, and etched silicon chips. Device by device, they are bringing the quantum world into new territory—the macroscopic world. This work is driving new applications. Some experimental quantum computers use loops of superconducting wire as qubits, storing quantum information. Large quantum objects have already been used to help detect gravitational waves; they could appear in next-generation devices such as ultrasensitive sensors and encryption systems. These innovations, though, reach beyond cutting-edge tech. Building bigger and bigger quantum objects even raises the possibility of exploring some of the most pervasive unsolved mysteries at the intersection between quantum and classical worlds—and between quantum mechanics and gravity. Ever since Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger first described wave–particle duality 90 years ago (1), physicists have been probing the boundary between the observable, predictable macroscopic world and the one where probabilistic quantum rules dominate. In the quantum world, a particle exists as a wave representing the probabilities of its location. Once measured, however, the particle is found at a point …

In the beginning

In September, scientists gathered at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the institute, an event marked by a symposium discussing future prospects in cosmology, large-scale structure and galaxy formation.

Tensions between the early and late Universe

The standard cosmological model successfully describes many observations from widely different epochs of the Universe, from primordial nucleosynthesis to the accelerating expansion of the present day. However, as the basic cosmological parameters of the model are being determined with increasing and unprecedented precision, it is not guaranteed that the same model will fit more precise observations from widely different cosmic epochs. Discrepancies developing between observations at early and late cosmological time may require an expansion of the standard model, and may lead to the discovery of new physics. The workshop "Tensions between the Early and the Late Universe" was held at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics on July 15-17 2019 (More details of the workshop (including on-line presentations) are given at the website: https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/enervac-c19) to evaluate increasing evidence for these discrepancies, primarily in the value of the Hubble constant as well as ideas recently proposed to explain this tension. Multiple new observational results for the Hubble constant were presented in the time frame of the workshop using different probes: Cepheids, strong lensing time delays, tip of the red giant branch (TRGB), megamasers, Oxygen-rich Miras and surface brightness fluctuations (SBF) resulting in a set of six new ones in the last several months. Here we present the summary plot of the meeting that shows combining any three independent approaches to measure H$_0$ in the late universe yields tension with the early Universe values between 4.0$\sigma$ and 5.8$\sigma$. This shows that the discrepancy does not appear to be dependent on the use of any one method, team, or source. Theoretical ideas to explain the discrepancy focused on new physics in the decade of expansion preceding recombination as the most plausible. This is a brief summary of the workshop.

Computing a landing spot on Mars

The purpose of the Mars rover is in its name---to rove, explore, study Martian geology, look for signs of water, look for signs of life (past or present), etc. However, achieving these and other objectives requires putting the rover down on a suitable landing site, i.e. a site suitable for searching for the desired information and safe to land and function without hindrance or breaking down. The data for making these decisions comes from prior Mars missions. Selecting a suitable landing site is a complex process typically taking several years. Researchers at MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research prototyped a new software that can help NASA mission planners to more rapidly and reliably find landing sites, potentially reducing the total time required to weeks. In this interview, Victor Pankratius, leader of the research team, shares some insight into the project.

How fast is the universe expanding? Clashing measurements may point to new physics

The siren sounded on August 17, 2017. Astronomers picked up a burst of gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars (1), an event that Daniel Holz had been dreaming about for more than a decade. “You write these papers, and it sounds like fantasy. The equations say this might happen, but it’s completely different when nature cooperates and lets you make the measurement,” says Holz, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP). “It’s just too good. It’s ridiculous. It’s embarrassing. But there it is.” One way of measuring the Hubble constant (H0) uses the CMB, shown here as observed by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which launched in 2009 and measured the CMB for about 4.5 years. But this technique yields a different value for the constant than does an approach that calculates H0 by measuring the distances to and the speeds of galaxies. Image © ESA and the Planck Collaboration. The neutron star merger, named GW170817, gave Holz and his colleagues an entirely new way to measure how fast the universe is expanding. This method could settle a simmering dispute between the two established ways of measuring expansion, and it could mean rethinking the makeup of our universe—perhaps requiring new types of a subatomic particle or unexpected forms of dark matter or dark energy. Astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered in the 1920s that our universe is expanding. The expansion is causing all galaxies to speed away from us, and the rate at which a galaxy is receding is equal to its distance times a number called the Hubble constant. The distance to the galaxy is calculated in megaparsecs, where 1 megaparsec is about 3.26 million light years, and the constant has units of kilometers per second per megaparsec. Multiply the two …

We have confidence to lead gravitational-wave science: an interview with Yueliang Wu

Abstract Yueliang Wu, chief scientist of Taiji Program, is a well-known theoretical physicist and the Vice-President of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS). Taiji Program, initially proposed in 2008, is one of China's ambitious plans to observe gravitational waves. Obtaining his Ph.D. at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1987, Wu had been working at Dortmund University and Mainz University in Germany and Carnegie-Mellon University and the Ohio-State University in the USA. In 1996, he joined the ITP and became its director in 2007. He has also served as the Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China at the CAS since 2006. In 2007, he was elected as a CAS member. Wu's research is focused on elementary particle physics, quantum field theory, symmetry principle and cosmophysics. In recent years, he has been proposing a gravitational quantum field theory as a new approach to reconciling the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. The most fundamental unanswered question of the general theory of relativity is how general relativity can be reconciled with the laws of quantum physics to produce a complete and self-consistent theory of quantum gravity. To extend the general relativity to realize the reconciliation, Wu suggested a basic gravitational field be needed in the future model. Since 2012, he, together with Wenrui Hu, has been working as Taiji Program's chief scientist and promoting nationwide gravitational-wave research. National Science Review (NSR) spoke with Wu about the future of gravitational-wave research, the development of China's nationwide gravitational-wave studies and particularly the progress of Taiji Program.

Walter Kohn (1923–2016)

Walter Kohn (1923–2016)

Effect of hydroxyapatite materials properties on fibronectin-mediated breast cancer cell adhesion and pro-angiogenic secretion

Event Abstract Back to Event Effect of hydroxyapatite materials properties on fibronectin-mediated breast cancer cell adhesion and pro-angiogenic secretion Fei Wu1, Weisi Chen2, Brian Gillis1, Claudia Fischbach2, 3, Lara Estroff1, 3 and Delphine Gourdon1, 2 1 Cornell University, Materials Science and Engineering, United States 2 Cornell University, Biomedical Engineering, United States 3 Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, United States Introduction: Breast cancer preferentially metastasizes to bone and induces pathological remodeling. There has been evidence suggesting that the materials properties of bone mineral may play an important role in breast cancer metastasis[1],[2]. Hydroxyapatite (HAP, Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) is a calcium phosphate mineral with structural and mechanical properties closely related to bone apatite. In this study, we seek to understand: (i) whether HAP materials properties, such as surface chemistry and roughness, alter the mineral/extracellular matrix (ECM) interface in bone, and (ii) how the altered ECM impacts breast cancer cell functions. Specifically, we investigated the conformation of fibronectin (Fn, a major ECM protein), breast cancer cell adhesion and pro-angiogenic secretion as a function of underlying HAP materials properties and associated Fn conformation. Materials and Methods: Geologic HAP crystals were bought from Etsy. Fibronectin (Fn) was obtained from Life Technologies, NY, and labeled for intramolecular Fӧrster resonance energy transfer (FRET) as previously described[3]. Smooth HAP facets (100)S and (001)S and rough HAP facets (100)R and (001)R were obtained by polishing HAP slabs to roughnesses either below 1 nm, i.e., smaller than Fn radius of gyration, or around 200 nm. Then, we incubated Fn (10% FRET-labeled) on HAP facets and analyzed Fn conformation via FRET. Finally, MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells (ATCC, VA) were seeded onto Fn coated HAP facets to investigate cell adhesion and secretion of vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF). Student’s t-tests were used to determine statistical significance between conditions in GraphPad Prism (GraphPad Software Inc., CA). Results and Discussion: We first quantified Fn conformation adsorbed onto HAP via FRET (Figure 1). FRET ratios of Fn adsorbed onto (100) were higher than those onto (001) for both smooth and rough HAP, indicating that Fn adsorbed in more compact conformations onto (100) facets. Interestingly, Fn FRET ratios were not significantly different between smooth and rough HAP, suggesting that Fn conformation was independent of roughness within the range of interest. We then assessed MDA-MB-231 cells behavior. Our preliminary results showed (i) higher cell adhesion onto (001) than onto (100) HAP facets, (ii) overall higher cell adhesion onto rough HAP than onto smooth HAP, and (iii) lower VEGF secretion associated with higher adhesion. Conclusions: Our FRET analysis indicated that Fn conformation (% of unfolded Fn) depends exclusively on HAP surface chemistry. In contrast, our cells study revealed enhanced adhesion and decreased pro-angiogenic secretion of cancer cells linked with both (001) HAP facets (coated with more unfolded Fn) and rougher HAP. These findings deconvolute the roles of mineral surface chemistry and roughness in interfacial ECM deposition and have important implications for our understanding of breast cancer bone metastasis. Karin Wang; Jin Ho Chang; Young Hye Song; Siyoung Choi; Maura Weathers

Report on the Program “Fluid-mediated particle transport in geophysical flows” at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara, September 23 to December 12, 2013

The Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (KITP) program held at UC Santa Barbara in the fall of 2013 addressed the dynamics of dispersed particulate flows in the environment. By focusing on the prototypes of aeolian transport and turbidity currents, it aimed to establish the current state of our understanding of such two-phase flows, to identify key open questions, and to develop collaborative research strategies for addressing these questions. Here, we provide a brief summary of the program outcome.

Interview with Professor Hitoshi Murayama: Supersymmetry

I nterview with P rofessor H itoshi M urayama : S upersymmetry By: Sabrina Berger, Juwon Kim, Yana Petri, Kevin Nuckolls Professor Hitoshi Murayama is the MacAdams Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo. His research interests include the investigation of dark matter, grand unification, neutrino physics, and physics beyond the standard model, including Supersymmetry. How did you get into theoretical particle physics? Professor Murayama: Well, I was born in Japan, lived in Germany for four years during my childhood, went back to Japan, and eventually got a degree from the University of Tokyo. I found my way to Berkeley as a post-doc up here at the lab, and then acquired a faculty position here. I don’t know exactly the story about getting interested in science. But I was a very curious child, for sure. I was the kind of child who kept asking questions to my parents and so on. My dad was a researcher who worked for Hitachi. He was doing research on semiconductors for the company. He didn’t have a PhD, but he had a Masters degree. My memory is, of course, hazy from those days, but I do remember that he answered many of those naive questions I had at that time, so that’s probably how I got interested. That’s also how I learned that many questions have answers, which is actually not an obvious thing for many children, I’m afraid. If they’re not inquisitive enough, or if their parents or teachers aren’t resourceful enough, then many of their questions just go answered. That doesn’t nurture curiosity. I was lucky enough to be in that kind of position, I guess. I was also a very sick child. I had a very bad case of asthma as a child, so I missed many school days. I stayed home quite a bit, so I had to find something to do while I was at home. So, I turned the TV on, the soap operas were not interesting for kids, so I ended up turning my TV to educational channels. Back in those days, in Japan, the educational programs were actually pretty good. Some of them were really sort of story-based. There was one story I particularly remember talking about how infinite series can converge. The story was about a guy in ancient Edo in “I do remember that he answered many of those naive questions I had at that time, so that’s probably how I got interested. That’s also how I learned that many questions have answers, which is actually not an obvious thing for many children, I’m afraid.” the 17th century who was trying to buy tofu. So, he brings his bowl, and gets one piece of tofu, but wanted some extra. So, he gives many compliments to the tofu shop owner to please him. He keeps praising until, eventually, he got another half piece of tofu. So he continues to praise until the tofu owner gives him half of the rest, and half of the rest, and so on. This guy in the story thought, “Eventually, I’ll have a huge amount of tofu, enough tofu for the rest of my life.” But, in the end, he only gets two pieces of tofu. So, that was the story, and it intrigued me. Another program I remember was a physics program about a little booth, where some man is making some food, and there was a nice aroma. Then comes this strange looking guy who comes close to the booth, smells it, and goes home. He does this everyday, so the owner got fed up with this guy, and eventually gives him an invoice saying, “You’ve been smelling my food everyday without paying. You owe me 100 dollars.” The rest of the show is spent checking the legitimacy of this request. They first try to figure out what exactly it is that we are smelling. So B erkeley S cientific J ournal • S ymmetry • F all 2015 • V olume 20 • I ssue 1 • 21 B S J BSJ: Can you start off by describing your background?

FlyDriver: A Connectomic Approach to Find Specific Drivers of Target Neuron in the FlyCircuit

Event Abstract Back to Event FlyDriver: A Connectomic Approach to Find Specific Drivers of Target Neuron in the FlyCircuit Ting-Yuan Wang1, Yen-Jen Lin2, Hsuan-Wen Lin1, Chao-Chun Chuang3, Meng-Hsuan Chiang1 and Ann-Shyn Chiang1, 2, 4, 5* 1 National Tsing Hua University, Institute of Biotechnology, Taiwan 2 National Tsing Hua University, Brain Research Center, Taiwan 3 National Center for High-performance Computing, Taiwan 4 Academia Sinica, Genomics Research Center, Taiwan 5 University of California at San Diego, Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, United States We collected about 4000 driver expression images of Drosophila melanogaster, which included Gal4, LexA, flipase and spilt-Gal4 system for manipulating neuronal circuit function. All confocal microscopy images was archived into a database, named FlyDriver. FlyDriver was followed the same platform of FlyCircuit. Therefore, we can compare single neuron image with driver image. Here, we used image-matching algorithm on both neuron-driver image pairs and driver-driver image pairs between FlyCircuit and FlyDriver, which amount over the 100 million image pairs was been calculated. The overlap information of neuron-driver image pairs could help user to find a specific driver with a target neuron. In addition, user could also find similar driver with overlap information of driver-driver image pairs. We have illustrated the utility of these image-matching data for identifying the putative driver expressed target neuron and finding the specific driver from a set of neuron images. For some expression pattern that did not exist in one single driver, we could use the overlap information to predict expression patterns that comes from the intersection region from two driver images. As a result, FlyDriver provided a web interface that allows users to find the driver with different criterion. This will facilitate finding a specific driver to understanding the function of neuronal circuit. Keywords: neuron image, driver image, image databse, driver database, Image matching algorithm Conference: Neuroinformatics 2015, Cairns, Australia, 20 Aug - 22 Aug, 2015. Presentation Type: Poster, to be considered for oral presentation Topic: Computational neuroscience Citation: Wang T, Lin Y, Lin H, Chuang C, Chiang M and Chiang A (2015). FlyDriver: A Connectomic Approach to Find Specific Drivers of Target Neuron in the FlyCircuit. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Neuroinformatics 2015. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2015.91.00011 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 02 May 2015; Published Online: 05 Aug 2015. * Correspondence: Prof. Ann-Shyn Chiang, National Tsing Hua University, Institute of Biotechnology, Hsinchu city, 300, Taiwan, aschiang@life.nthu.edu.tw Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Ting-Yuan Wang Yen-Jen Lin Hsuan-Wen Lin Chao-Chun Chuang Meng-Hsuan Chiang Ann-Shyn Chiang Google Ting-Yuan Wang Yen-Jen Lin Hsuan-Wen Lin Chao-Chun Chuang Meng-Hsuan Chiang Ann-Shyn Chiang Google Scholar Ting-Yuan Wang Yen-Jen Lin Hsuan-Wen Lin Chao-Chun Chuang Meng-Hsuan Chiang Ann-Shyn Chiang PubMed Ting-Yuan Wang Yen-Jen Lin Hsuan-Wen Lin Chao-Chun Chuang Meng-Hsuan Chiang Ann-Shyn Chiang Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Extraction of dendrite activity in dense neural circuits by independent component analysis

Event Abstract Back to Event Extraction of dendrite activity in dense neural circuits by independent component analysis Luis M. Franco1, 2, Bassem A. Hassan2 and Emre Yaksi1, 3* 1 Neuroelectronics Research Flanders (NERF), Belgium 2 VIB Center for the Biology of Disease, Belgium 3 Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for Neural Computation, Norway The study of dense neural circuits such as the antennal lobe in Drosophila melanogaster pose particular challenges due to its three-dimensional architecture. Unlike layered circuits such as the hippocampus or the cortex in mammals, the antennal lobe contains clusters of dendritic neuropil, called glomeruli, distributed throughout its whole volume. This anatomical organization demands that different depths of the circuit should be observed simultaneously in order to understand circuit level computations. One expensive option is to perform volumetric two photon calcium imaging along with a corresponding time consuming data analysis. As a low cost and time efficient alternative, we propose the use of independent component analysis to separate glomerular calcium activity recorded by wide field microscopy. This approach allows identification of glomeruli located at different depths within the antennal lobe, even if they overlap in the two-dimensional focal plane. Independent component analysis retrieves spatial and temporal information about all recorded glomeruli. This information can then be used to carry out all desirable quantitatively analyses. Figure 1 Keywords: Drosophila melanogaster, antennal lobe, glomeruli, calcium imaging, Independent Component Analysis Conference: Second Belgian Neuroinformatics Congress, Leuven, Belgium, 4 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Brain Imaging Citation: Franco LM, Hassan BA and Yaksi E (2015). Extraction of dendrite activity in dense neural circuits by independent component analysis. Front. Neuroinform. Conference Abstract: Second Belgian Neuroinformatics Congress. doi: 10.3389/conf.fninf.2015.19.00037 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 30 Sep 2015; Published Online: 17 Nov 2015. * Correspondence: Mr. Emre Yaksi, Neuroelectronics Research Flanders (NERF), Leuven, Belgium, emreyaksi.nerf@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Luis M Franco Bassem A Hassan Emre Yaksi Google Luis M Franco Bassem A Hassan Emre Yaksi Google Scholar Luis M Franco Bassem A Hassan Emre Yaksi PubMed Luis M Franco Bassem A Hassan Emre Yaksi Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Bibliography on Small Systems: Nonequilibrium Phenomena and Anomalous Behavior

The workshop and satellite conference held in July 2013 at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China(KITPC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) brought together experts of a variety of different fields, andconstituted a unique opportunity to share ideas and breed new ones in a strongly interdisciplinary fashion. At thesame time, the breadth of the scope of these two meetings was so wide that the need for a collection of reference booksand papers was pointed out, in order to help the interested professionals, as well as graduate students, both to tacklethe technically advanced issues and to bridge the gaps, necessarily present in each other's background. Therefore, weinvited some of the participants to produce a bibliography containing the most relevant works in their own fields, andto complement this bibliography with a short explanation of the content of those books and papers. We are thus verygrateful to Igor Goychuk, David Lacoste, Annick Lesne, Andrea Puglisi, Hong Qian and Hugo Touchette for havingaccepted our invitation and for having produced what we consider a very useful tool for all those who want to learn orto understand more deeply the current theories concerning small and nonequilibrium systems.

Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University: An International Center for Excellence in China

The Kavli Foundation ( http://www.kavlifoundation.org ) is a US-based private philanthropic organization "dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity, promoting public understanding of scientific research, and supporting scientists and their work." It supports four major areas of basic research, astrophysics, nanoscience, neuroscience, and theoretical physics, through a network of 17 institutes worldwide. Every two years, it awards the prestigious Kavli Prize to "recognize scientists for their seminal advances in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience."

What’s Inside a Black Hole’s Horizon?

New York City mayoral candidate Joe Lhota generated a public outcry when he indicated that he would not have shut down subway service for a pair of kittens lost in the tunnels. Even more outrage could have arisen from the discussions that took place at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics during a talk on the recent work of Joseph Polchinski and Donald Marolf, both at the University of Santa Barbara, California. Physicists discussed a thought experiment that involved locking up a cat in a sealed box containing a vial of poisonous gas that could be released at any moment, triggered by a random radioactive decay. What would happen if one threw this whole “Schrodinger’s cat” contraption into a black hole horizon (see Fig. 1)? The cat’s ultimate fate is sealed the moment it passes the horizon: it will be crushed at the singularity at the center of the hole. But if an in-falling observer jumped into the hole together with the box, he or she could open the box to determine whether or not the cat has been killed by the poison at a certain point of its travel between the horizon and the singularity. Marolf and Polchinski presented arguments, now reported in Physical Review Letters[1], suggesting that there is no well-defined quantum mechanical calculation that could predict the outcome of the in-falling observer’s measurement. According to the authors, the solution to this seeming inconsistency is to postulate that box and cat go up in a burst of flames the moment they pass the horizon by hitting a “firewall.”

Juggling dual-country careers

“I spend all of my time contributing to research at every location. On any given day, I work for all of them. It doesn’t matter if I am on a plane, a train, or wherever,” says physicist Séamus Davis, whose home and family are in Ithaca, New York, where he is a professor at Cornell University. He juggles that post with two others: He is also director of the US Department of Energy’s Center for Emergent Superconductivity at Brookhaven National Laboratory and a faculty member at the University of St. Andrews in the UK.“The tools to do investigations are expensive, difficult to use, and sited at different locations,” says Davis. “The vast majority of condensed-matter physicists go to x-ray light sources, high magnetic field labs, and so on. They visit collaborators, go to conferences. Everyone I know spends a large amount of time in airplanes.”Still, holding down appointments in more than one country presents its own challenges—and rewards. Videoconferencing and other innovations that keep people connected make it much easier now than it was even a decade ago. In Davis’s case, having multiple appointments grew from collaborations he had with a colleague at St. Andrews. He accepted an official post there in 2007, but he doesn’t think about how he splits his time among his jobs. “Physical location at a particular time? It’s irrelevant to the functioning of the research programs,” he says. “I don’t work in three different places. I work for three different institutions.”Physics Today conducted interviews with physicists who have built careers that straddle countries. Some arrange their time in big blocks to minimize travel and make it easier to adhere to a teaching schedule. Others go back and forth often: Last year, for example, Hitoshi Murayama (see photo below) logged more than 300 000 flight miles. “That’s beyond the Moon. It’s crazy,” he says. Murayama is a particle physicist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, who also serves as founding director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo. He ends up working multiple shifts to maintain daily contact with people in different time zones. “You work harder and sleep less,” he says.Most of the country hoppers are motivated by scientific opportunity, although personal priorities can also be a factor. They all say they benefit from being part of different research systems, gaining access to a better mix of experimental facilities, and expanding their pool of colleagues and possible funding sources.“It’s a complicated life,” Murayama says. But with projects in particle physics so big and expensive that they tend to be international collaborations, he says, “the community actually needs more people in this sort of liaison role—people who have knowledge of different systems and different parts of the world.”As far as money, the scientists interviewed for this story said they did not benefit financially by working in multiple countries. In some cases, university agreements limit income. And there are tax complications, additional rents and mortgages, travel, and other extra expenses. “It also impacts retirement arrangements,” notes Davis. Overall, says Murayama, “It’s probably a wash.”The drawbacks are largely personal. The travel is physically taxing, and moving around so much puts strain on one’s social and family life. To make it work, Davis says, “You have to have a wonderful spouse.”Interviews with a half-dozen physicists who are pursuing cross-continental careers can be read on Physics Today’s website at http://www.physicstoday.org/daily_edition/singularities. Featured there are Murayama; biophysicist Katherine Brown (shown above skyping with her four-year-old daughter), who commutes between the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Texas at Austin; Reinhard Genzel, an astrophysicist based in Germany who spends a few months each year at UC Berkeley; Morten Hjorth-Jensen, a theoretical nuclear physicist in Norway who recently started spending half the year at Michigan State University; Lidia Smentek, a theorist whose travels between Poland and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee mostly took place before modern technology made it easy to stay in touch with family and colleagues; and Mukhles Sowwan, an experimentalist at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem who jumped at the chance to establish the Nanoparticles by Design unit at the nascent Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan.PPT|High resolutionDENIS THOMPSONPPT|High resolution© 2013 American Institute of Physics.