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Time-periodic shear layers occur naturally in a wide range of applications from engineering to physiology. Transition to turbulence in such flows is of practical interest and there have been several papers dealing with the stability of flows composed of a steady component plus an oscillatory part with zero mean. In such flows a possible instability mechanism is associated with the mean component so that the stability of the flow can be examined using some sort of perturbation-type analysis. This strategy fails when the mean part of the flow is small compared with the oscillatory component which, of course, includes the case when the mean part is precisely zero.

This difficulty with analytical studies has meant that the stability of purely oscillatory flows has relied on various numerical methods. Until very recently such techniques have only ever predicted that the flow is stable, even though experiments suggest that they do become unstable at high enough speeds. In this talk I shall expand on this discrepancy with emphasis on the particular case of the so-called flat Stokes layer. This flow, which is generated in a deep layer of incompressible fluid lying above a flat plate which is oscillated in its own plane, represents one of the few exact solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. We show theoretically that the flow does become unstable to waves which propagate relative to the basic motion although the theory predicts that this occurs much later than has been found in experiments. Reasons for this discrepancy are examined by reference to calculations for oscillatory flows in pipes and channels. Finally, we propose some new experiments that might reduce this disagreement between the theoretical predictions of instability and practical realisations of breakdown in oscillatory flows.

The Theory of Inconsistency arose historically from a number of sources, such as the semantic paradoxes including The Liar and the set-theoretic paradoxes including Russell's. But these sources are rather too closely connected with Foundationalism: the view that mathematics has a foundation such as logic or set theory or category theory etc. It soon became apparent that inconsistent mathematical structures are of interest in their own right and do not depend on the existence of foundations. This paper will survey some of the results in inconsistent mathematics and discuss the bearing on various philosophical positions including Platonism, Logicism, Hilbert's Formalism, and Brouwer's Intuitionism.

Recent studies (1) have indicated problems with our ability to use the genetic distances between species to estimate the time since their divergence (so called molecular clocks). An exponential decay curve has been detected in comparisons of closely related taxa in mammal and bird groups, and rough approximations suggest that molecular clock calculations may be problematic for the recent past (eg <1 million years). Unfortunately, this period encompasses a number of key evolutionary events where estimates of timing are critical such as modern human evolutionary history, the domestication of animals and plants, and most issues involved in conservation biology. A solution (formulated at UA) will be briefly outlined. A second area of active interest is the recent suggestion (2) that mitochondrial DNA diversity does not track population size in several groups, in contrast to standard thinking. This finding has been interpreted as showing that mtDNA may not be evolving neutrally, as has long been assumed.
Large ancient DNA datasets provide a means to examine these issues, by revealing evolutionary processes in real time (3). The data also provide a rich area for mathematical investigation as temporal information provides information about several parameters that are unknown in serial coalescent calculations (4).
References:

1. Ho SYW et al. Time dependency of molecular rate estimates and systematic overestimation of recent divergence times. Mol. Biol. Evol. 22, 1561-1568 (2005);
   Penny D, Nature 436, 183-184 (2005).
2. Bazin E., et al. Population size does not influence mitochondrial genetic diversity in animals. Science 312, 570 (2006);
   Eyre-Walker A. Size does not matter for mitochondrial DNA, Science 312, 537 (2006).
3. Shapiro B, et al. Rise and fall of the Beringian steppe bison. Science 306: 1561-1565 (2004);
   Chan et al. Bayesian estimation of the timing and severity of a population bottleneck from ancient DNA. PLoS Genetics, 2 e59 (2006).
4. Drummond et al. Measurably evolving populations, Trends in Ecol. Evol. 18, 481-488 (2003);
   Drummond et al. Bayesian coalescent inference of past population dynamics from molecular sequences. Molecular Biology Evolution 22, 1185-92 (2005).

Collapsing bridges and exploding rockets have been associated with vibrations in resonance with natural frequencies. As well, the stability of the solar system and the existence of solutions of Schrödinger\'s equation and the wave equation are problematic in the presence of resonances. Such resonances can be avoided, or at least mitigated, by using ideas from Diophantine approximation, a branch of number theory. Applications of Diophantine approximation to these problems will be given and will include a connection with LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), a space-based gravity wave detector under construction.

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in finite projective spaces, and important applications to practical topics such as coding theory, cryptography and design of experiments have made the field even more attractive. In my talk some classical problems and recent developments will be discussed. First I will mention Segre's celebrated theorem and ovals and a purely combinatorial characterization of Hermitian curves in the projective plane over a finite field here, from the beginning, the considered pointset is contained in the projective plane over a finite field. Next, a recent elegant result on semiovals in PG(2,q), due to Gács, will be given. A second approach is where the object is described as an incidence structure satisfying certain properties; here the geometry is not a priori embedded in a projective space. This will be illustrated by a characterization of the classical inversive plane in the odd case. Another quite recent beautiful result in Galois geometry is the discovery of an infinite class of hemisystems of the Hermitian variety in PG(3,q^2), leading to new interesting classes of incidence structures, graphs and codes; before this result, just one example for GF(9), due to Segre, was known.

Stirring and mixing of fluids occurs everywhere, from adding milk to a cup of coffee, right through to industrial-scale chemical blending. So why stir in the first place? Is it possible to do it badly? And how can you make sure you do it effectively? I will attempt to answer these questions using a few thought experiments, some dynamical systems theory and a little topology.

The breakup of a mass of fluid into drops is a ubiquitous phenomenon in daily life, the natural environment and technology, with common examples including a dripping tap, ocean spray and ink-jet printing. It is a feature of many generic industrial processes such as spraying, emulsification, aeration, mixing and atomisation, and is an undesirable feature in coating and fibre spinning. Surface-tension driven pinch-off and the subsequent recoil are examples of finite-time singularities in which the interfacial curvature becomes infinite at the point of disconnection. As a result, the flow near the point of disconnection becomes self-similar and independent of initial and far-field conditions. Similarity solutions will be presented for the cases of inviscid and very viscous flow, along with comparison to experiments. In each case, a boundary-integral representation can be used both to examine the time-dependent behaviour and as the basis of a modified Newton scheme for direct solution of the similarity equations.

To model real data sets using second order stochastic processes imposes that the data sets verify the second order stationarity condition. This stationarity condition concerns the unconditional moments of the process. It is in that context that most of models developed from the sixties' have been studied; We refer to the ARMA processes (Brockwell and Davis, 1988), the ARCH, GARCH and EGARCH models (Engle, 1982, Bollerslev, 1986, Nelson, 1990), the SETAR process (Lim and Tong, 1980 and Tong, 1990), the bilinear model (Granger and Andersen, 1978, Guégan, 1994), the EXPAR model (Haggan and Ozaki, 1980), the long memory process (Granger and Joyeux, 1980, Hosking, 1981, Gray, Zang and Woodward, 1989, Beran, 1994, Giraitis and Leipus, 1995, Guégan, 2000), the switching process (Hamilton, 1988). For all these models, we get an invertible causal solution under specific conditions on the parameters, then the forecast points and the forecast intervals are available.

Thus, the stationarity assumption is the basis for a general asymptotic theory for identification, estimation and forecasting. It guarantees that the increase of the sample size leads to more and more information of the same kind which is basic for an asymptotic theory to make sense.

Now non-stationarity modelling has also a long tradition in econometrics. This one is based on the conditional moments of the data generating process. It appears mainly in the heteroscedastic and volatility models, like the GARCH and related models, and stochastic volatility processes (Ghysels, Harvey and Renault 1997). This non-stationarity appears also in a different way with structural changes models like the switching models (Hamilton, 1988), the stopbreak model (Diebold and Inoue, 2001, Breidt and Hsu, 2002, Granger and Hyung, 2004) and the SETAR models, for instance. It can also be observed from linear models with time varying coefficients (Nicholls and Quinn, 1982, Tsay, 1987).

Thus, using stationary unconditional moments suggest a global stationarity for the model, but using non-stationary unconditional moments or non-stationary conditional moments or assuming existence of states suggest that this global stationarity fails and that we only observe a local stationary behavior.

The growing evidence of instability in the stochastic behavior of stocks, of exchange rates, of some economic data sets like growth rates for instance, characterized by existence of volatility or existence of jumps in the variance or on the levels of the prices imposes to discuss the assumption of global stationarity and its consequence in modelling, particularly in forecasting. Thus we can address several questions with respect to these remarks.

1. What kinds of non-stationarity affect the major financial and economic data sets? How to detect them?

2. Local and global stationarities: How are they defined?

3. What is the impact of evidence of non-stationarity on the statistics computed from the global non stationary data sets?

4. How can we analyze data sets in the non-stationary global framework? Does the asymptotic theory work in non-stationary framework?

5. What kind of models create local stationarity instead of global stationarity? How can we use them to develop a modelling and a forecasting strategy?

These questions began to be discussed in some papers in the economic literature. For some of these questions, the answers are known, for others, very few works exist. In this talk I will discuss all these problems and will propose 2 new stategies and modelling to solve them. Several interesting topics in empirical finance awaiting future research will also be discussed.

String Theory has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on many areas of mathematics and vice versa. In this talk I want to address some relatively recent developments. In particular I will argue, following Witten and others, that D-brane charges take values in the K-theory of spacetime, rather than in integral cohomology as one might have expected. I will also explore the mathematical consequences of a particular symmetry, called T-duality, in this context. I will give an intuitive introduction into D-branes and K-theory. No prior knowledge about either String Theory, D-branes or K-theory is required.

Enrico Betti (1823-1892) is recognized in the mathematics community for his pioneering contributions to topology. An equally important contribution is his formulation of the reciprocity theorem applicable to elastic bodies that satisfy the classical equations of linear elasticity. Although James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) proposed a law of reciprocal displacements and rotations in 1864, the contribution of Betti is acknowledged for its underlying formal mathematical basis and generality. The purpose of this lecture is to illustrate how Betti's reciprocal theorem can be used to full advantage to develop compact analytical results for certain contact and inclusion problems in the classical theory of elasticity. Inclusion problems are encountered in number of areas in applied mechanics ranging from composite materials to geomechanics. In composite materials, the inclusion represents an inhomogeneity that is introduced to increase either the strength or the deformability characteristics of resulting material. In geomechanics, the inclusion represents a constructed material region, such as a ground anchor, that is introduced to provide load transfer from structural systems. Similarly, contact problems have applications to the modelling of the behaviour of indentors used in materials testing to the study of foundations used to distribute loads transmitted from structures. In the study of conventional problems the inclusions and the contact regions are directly loaded and this makes their analysis quite straightforward. When the interaction is induced by loads that are placed exterior to the indentor or inclusion, the direct analysis of the problem becomes inordinately complicated both in terns of formulation of the integral equations and their numerical solution. It is shown by a set of selected examples that the application of Betti's reciprocal theorem leads to the development of exact closed form solutions to what would otherwise be approximate solutions achievable only through the numerical solution of a set of coupled integral equations.

The standard diffusion equation is obtained by Einstein's method and its generalisation, Fokker-Plank-Kolmogorov-Feller theory. The time between jumps in Einstein derivation is constant.

We discuss random walks with residence time distribution, which occurs for flows of solutes and suspensions/colloids in porous media, CO2 sequestration in coal mines, several processes in chemical, petroleum and environmental engineering. The rigorous application of the Einstein's method results in new equation, containing the time and the mixed dispersion terms expressing the dispersion of the particle time steps.

Usually, adding the second time derivative results in additional initial data. For the equation derived, the condition of limited solution when time tends to infinity provides with uniqueness of the Caushy problem solution.

The solution of the pulse injection problem describing a common tracer injection experiment is studied in greater detail. The new theory predicts delay of the maximum of the tracer, compared to the velocity of the flow, while its forward "tail" contains much more particles than in the solution of the classical parabolic (advection-dispersion) equation. This is in agreement with the experimental observations and predictions of the direct simulation.

Over the last 15 years a fairly substantial psychological literature has developed in which human reasoning and decision-making is viewed as the solution to a variety of statistical problems posed by the environments in which we operate. In this talk, I briefly outline the general approach to cognitive modelling that is adopted in this literature, which relies heavily on Bayesian statistics, and introduce a little of the current research in this field. In particular, I will discuss work by myself and others on the statistical basis of how people make simple inductive leaps and generalisations, and the links between these generalisations and how people acquire word meanings and learn new concepts. If time permits, the extensions of the work in which complex concepts may be characterised with the aid of nonparametric Bayesian tools such as Dirichlet processes will be briefly mentioned.

In this talk, we will survey a number of different free boundary problems involving slow viscous (Stokes) flows in which surface tension is active on the free boundary. Both steady and unsteady flows will be considered. Motivating applications range from industrial processes such as viscous sintering (where end-products are formed as a result of the surface-tension-driven densification of a compact of smaller particles that are heated in order that they coalesce) to biological phenomena such as understanding how organisms swim (i.e. propel themselves) at low Reynolds numbers. Common to our approach to all these problems will be an analytical/theoretical treatment of model problems via complex variable methods -- techniques well-known at infinite Reynolds numbers but used much less often in the Stokes regime. These model problems can give helpful insights into the behaviour of the true physical systems.

Nanomechanical sensors are often used to measure environmental changes with extreme sensitivity. Controlling the effects of surfaces and fluid dissipation presents significant challenges to achieving the ultimate sensitivity in these devices. In this talk, I will give an overview of theoretical/experimental work we are undertaking to explore the underlying physical processes in these systems. The talk will be general and aimed at introducing some recent developments in the field of nanomechanical sensors.

The theory of partial differential equations can say much about generic bifurcations from spatially homogeneous steady states, but relatively little about generic bifurcations from unimodal steady states. In many applications, spatially homogeneous steady states correspond to low-energy physical states that are destabilized as energy is fed into the system, and in these cases standard PDE theory can yield some impressive and elegant results. However, for many macroscopic biological systems such results are less useful because low-energy states do not hold the same priviledged position as they do in physical and chemical systems. For example, speciation -- the evolutionary process by which new species are formed -- can be seen as the destabilization of a unimodal density distribution over phenotype space. Given the diversity of species and environments, generic results are clearly needed, but cannot be gained from PDE theory. Indeed, such questions cannot even be adequately formulated in terms of PDEs. In this talk I will introduce 'Pod Systems' which can provide an answer to the question; 'What happens, generically, when a unimodal steady state loses stability?' In the pod system formalization, the answer involves elements of equivariant bifurcation theory and suggests that new species can arise as the result of broken symmetries.

The talk will be the occasion to take a few minutes to describe the situation of math education in France and in Europe, to motivate the interest of the lecturer in trying to bring back rigorous proofs in integration theory. The remaining 45 minutes will be devoted to explaining the basics of Henstock-Kurzweil integration theory, which, although not a response to education problems, is a modern and elementary approach of a very strong extension of the Riemann integral, providing easy access to several fundamental results of Lebesgue theory (monotone convergence theorem, existence of Lebesgue measure, etc.).

The Chern-Weil homomorphism gives a geometric method for calculating characteristic classes for principal bundles. In infinite dimensions, however, the standard theory fails due to analytical problems. In this talk I shall give a geometric method for calculating characteristic classes for principal bundle with structure group the loop group of a compact group which side-steps these complications. This theory is inspired in some sense by results on the string class (a certain cohomology class on the base of a loop group bundle) which I shall outline.

Partial differential equations are used to model populations (such as cells, animals or molecules) consisting of individuals that undergo two important processes: dispersal and settling. I will describe some general characteristics of these systems, as well as some of our recent projects.

In 1970, two independent studies (by Wunsch and Phillips) of the behaviour of a linear density-stratified viscous fluid in a closed container demonstrated a slow flow can be generated simply due to the container having a sloping boundary surface This remarkable motion is generated as a result of the curvature of the lines of constant density near any sloping surface, which in turn enables a zero normal-flux condition on the density to be satisfied along that boundary. When the Rayleigh number is large (or equivalently Wunsch's parameter $R$ is small) this motion is concentrated in the near vicinity of the sloping surface, in a thin `buoyancy layer' that has many similarities to an Ekman layer in a rotating fluid.

A number of studies have since considered the consequences of this type of `diffusively-driven' flow in a semi-infinite domain, including in the deep ocean and with turbulent effects included. More recently, Page & Johnson (2008) described a steady linear theory for the broader-scale mass recirculation in a closed container and demonstrated that, unlike in previous studies, it is possible for the buoyancy layer to entrain fluid from that recirculation. That work has since been extended (Page & Johnson, 2009) to the nonlinear regime of the problem and some of the similarities to and differences from the linear case will be described in this talk. Simple and elegant analytical solutions in the limit as $R \to 0$ still exist in some situations, and they will be compared with numerical simulations in a tilted square container at small values of $R$. Further work on both the unsteady flow properties and the flow for other geometrical configurations will also be described.

A basic example of a Hopf algebra is a group algebra: it is the vector space having the group as basis and having multiplication linearly extending that of the group. We can start with a category instead of a group, form the free vector space on the set of its morphisms, and define multiplication to be composition when possible and zero when not. The multiplication has an identity if the category has finitely many objects; this is a basic example of a weak bialgebra. It is a weak Hopf algebra when the category is a groupoid. Group algebras are also Frobenius algebras. We shall generalize weak bialgebras and Frobenius algebras to the context of monoidal categories and describe some of their theory using the geometry of string diagrams.

Vector spaces and linear functions form our paradigmatic monoidal category. The concepts underpinning linear algebra admit definitions, operations and constructions with analogues in many other parts of mathematics. We shall see how to generalize much of linear algebra to the context of monoidal categories. Traditional examples of such categories are obtained by replacing vector spaces by linear representations of a given compact group or by sheaves of vector spaces. More recent examples come from low-dimensional topology, in particular, from knot theory where the linear functions are replaced by braids or tangles. These geometric monoidal categories are often free in an appropriate sense, a fact that can be used to obtain algebraic invariants for manifolds.

The ordinary integral on L^1 functions on R^d unfortunately does not extend to a translation invariant linear form on the whole algebra of pseudodifferential symbols on R^d, forcing to work with ordinary linear extensions which fail to be translation invariant. Defect formulae which express the difference between various linear extensions, show that they differ by local terms involving the noncommutative residue. In particular, we shall show how integrals regularised by a "dimensional regularisation" procedure familiar to physicists differ from Hadamard finite part (or "cut-off" regularised) integrals by a residue. When extended to pseudodifferential operators on closed manifolds, these defect formulae express the zeta regularised traces of a differential operator in terms of a residue of its logarithm. In particular, we shall express the index of a Dirac type operator on a closed manifold in terms of a logarithm of a generalized Laplacian, thus giving an a priori local description of the index and shall discuss further applications.

The unsteady flow of a viscous fluid through a curved pipe is a widely occuring and well studied problem. The stability of such flows, however, has largely been overlooked; this is in marked contrast to flow through a straight-pipe, examination of which forms a cornerstone of hydrodynamic stability theory. Importantly, however, flow through a curved pipe exhibits an array of flow structures that are simply not present in the zero curvature limit, and it is natural to expect these to substantially impact upon the flow's stability. By considering two very different kinds of flows through a curved pipe, we illustrate that this can indeed be the case.

The growth processes of human babies have been studied sufficiently in scientific fields, but there have still been many issues about the developments of human fetus which are not clarified. The aim of this research is to investigate the developing process of systemic organs of human fetuses based on the data set of measurements of fetus's bodies and organs. Specifically, this talk is concerned with giving a mathematical understanding for the harmonized developments of the organs of human fetuses. The method to evaluate such harmonies is proposed by the use of the maximal dilatation appeared in the theory of quasi-conformal mapping.

Given a polynomial in two or more variables, one may study the zero locus from the point of view of different mathematical subjects (number theory, algebraic geometry, ...). I will explain how tropical geometry allows to encode all topological aspects by elementary combinatorial objects called "tropical varieties." Mohammed Abouzaid received a B.S. in 2002 from the University of Richmond, and a Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Chicago under the supervision of Paul Seidel. He is interested in symplectic topology and its interactions with algebraic geometry and differential topology, in particular the homological mirror symmetry conjecture. Since 2007 he has been a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, and a Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow.

Stable commutator length answers the question: "what is the simplest surface in a given space with prescribed boundary?" where "simplest" is interpreted in topological terms. This topological definition is complemented by several equivalent definitions - in group theory, as a measure of non-commutativity of a group; and in linear programming, as the solution of a certain linear optimization problem. On the topological side, scl is concerned with questions such as computing the genus of a knot, or finding the simplest 4-manifold that bounds a given 3-manifold. On the linear programming side, scl is measured in terms of certain functions called quasimorphisms, which arise from hyperbolic geometry (negative curvature) and symplectic geometry (causal structures). In these talks we will discuss how scl in free and surface groups is connected to such diverse phenomena as the existence of closed surface subgroups in graphs of groups, rigidity and discreteness of symplectic representations, bounding immersed curves on a surface by immersed subsurfaces, and the theory of multi- dimensional continued fractions and Klein polyhedra. Danny Calegari is the Richard Merkin Professor of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, and is one of the recipients of the 2009 Clay Research Award for his work in geometric topology and geometric group theory. He received a B.A. in 1994 from the University of Melbourne, and a Ph.D. in 2000 from the University of California, Berkeley under the joint supervision of Andrew Casson and William Thurston. From 2000 to 2002 he was Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor at Harvard University, after which he joined the Caltech faculty; he became Richard Merkin Professor in 2007.

In a series of three papers from 2002-2003, Grigori Perelman gave a spectacular proof of the Poincare Conjecture (every smooth compact simply connected three-dimensional manifold is topologically isomorphic to a sphere), one of the most famous open problems in mathematics (and one of the seven Clay Millennium Prize Problems worth a million dollars each), by developing several new groundbreaking advances in Hamilton's theory of Ricci flow on manifolds. In this talk I describe in broad detail how the proof proceeds, and briefly discuss some of the key turning points in the argument. About the speaker: Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1975. He has been a professor of mathematics at UCLA since 1999, having completed his PhD under Elias Stein at Princeton in 1996. Tao's areas of research include harmonic analysis, PDE, combinatorics, and number theory. He has received a number of awards, including the Salem Prize in 2000, the Bochner Prize in 2002, the Fields Medal and SASTRA Ramanujan Prize in 2006, and the MacArthur Fellowship and Ostrowski Prize in 2007. Terence Tao also currently holds the James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at UCLA, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences (Corresponding Member).

Making decisions when outcomes are uncertain is a common problem we all face. In this talk I will outline some recent developments on this question from the mathematics of finance-the theory of risk measures and nonlinear expectations. I will also talk about how decisions are currently made in the finance industry, and how some simple mathematics can show where these systems are open to abuse.