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DTSTAMP:20260915T064519Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20130226T162940Z
DTSTART:20130305T203000Z
DTEND:20130305T213000Z
UID:event997@bu.edu
URL:http://physics.bu.edu/internal/events/show/997
SUMMARY:Are Biological Systems Poised at Criticality?
DESCRIPTION:Featuring Bill Bialek\, Princeton University\nHosted by: David 
	Bishop\nPoster: http://physics.bu.edu/posters/2013_Spring/07_Bialek.pdf\n\n
	Part of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.\n\nAbstract: Many of life'
	s most fascinating phenomena emerge from interactions among many elements -
	- many amino acids determine the structure of a single protein\, many genes
	 determine the fate of a cell\, many neurons are involved in shaping our th
	oughts and memories.  Physicists have long hoped that these collective beha
	viors could be described using the ideas and methods of statistical mechani
	cs.  In the past few years\, new\, larger scale experiments have made it po
	ssible to construct statistical mechanics models of biological systems dire
	ctly from real data.  I'll describe the surprising successes of this "inver
	se" approach\, using examples form families of proteins\, networks of neuro
	ns\, and flocks of birds.  Remarkably\, in all these cases the models that 
	emerge from the data are poised at a very special point in their parameter 
	space -- a critical point.   This suggests there may be some deeper theoret
	ical principle behind the behavior of these diverse systems.
LOCATION:SCI 109\, 590 Commonwealth Avenue\, 02215
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CLASS:PUBLIC
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