Department of

# Mathematics

Seminar Calendar
for events the day of Thursday, December 8, 2005.

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events for the
events containing

More information on this calendar program is available.
Questions regarding events or the calendar should be directed to Tori Corkery.
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Thursday, December 8, 2005

2:00 pm in 243 Altgeld Hall,Thursday, December 8, 2005

#### Analysis area meeting on postdoc hiring

3:00 pm in 241 Altgeld Hall,Thursday, December 8, 2005

#### Knot invariants from contact homology

###### Lenny Ng   [email] (AIM / Stanford)

Abstract: I will describe a technique of constructing invariants of knots and other submanifolds through contact topology and holomorphic curves. The knot invariant can be described purely topologically, with no reference to contact geometry, and is fairly strong. In particular, it encodes the Alexander polynomial and is closely related to the A-polynomial.

3:00 pm in 345 Altgeld Hall,Thursday, December 8, 2005

#### The stochastic porous media equation: a survey of recent results

###### Prof. Michael Roeckner (Purdue)

4:00 pm in 314 Altgeld Hall,Thursday, December 8, 2005

#### Primal Screens

###### Carl Pomerance (Dartmouth College)

Abstract: This is an expository lecture, suitable for a wide audience! Please encourage your students to attend!
Prime numbers, the very building blocks of the integers, remain an enigma. Yet we make progress in our quest to understand these very basic objects. This non-stressful talk will highlight recent progress and some of the many problems that are still unsolved. Refreshments will be served before the talk in the math lounge, third floor Altgeld Hall.