Thursday, November 17, 2011

Bulgarian Solitaire & Garden of Eden Partitions

You are invited to the following talk, sponsored by the Math Club.

Title: Bulgarian Solitaire & Garden of Eden Partitions
Speaker: Dr. James Sellers
Date/Time: Thursday, December 1, 6-7 pm
Location: TL 128, Science and Technology Building, Penn State Harrisburg

We consider a game closely related to partitions known as Bulgarian Solitaire which was popularized in the early 1980s in Scientific American by Martin Gardner. We will briefly discuss a few results proven about this game around the time of the appearance of Gardner's article. We will then quickly turn to a question recently posed by Brian Hopkins and Michael Jones about finding an exact formula for the number of Garden of Eden partitions (which are closely associated with Bulgarian solitaire and which I will define in the talk). I will prove such an exact formula which was developed a few years ago when I first met Brian Hopkins and learned of this problem. The talk will be completely self-contained and the proof of the main result will follow in an elementary fashion from Dyson's generating function for the number of partitions of n with fixed rank r.

Accessible to a wide ranging audience, from undergraduate students to faculty members.

Friday, November 11, 2011

The Dirichlet Problem for Various Types of Boundaries and Boundary Data

Presented by: Dr. Ronald Walker, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

Date/Time: Thursday, November 17, 2011, 12:00 to 1:00 PM
Location: W212 Olmsted

All faculty and students are invited!
We look forward to see you…
Light sandwiches & refreshments will be served.

Abstract: The Dirichlet problem is a classic boundary value problem in partial differential equations. Given continuous boundary data, Dirichlet solutions are guaranteed to exist and to be unique for a broad class of domains. Also it is known that if the domain is the unit disk (or more generally an ellipse), then polynomial boundary data will yield polynomial Dirichlet solutions. In this talk, we will explore several generalizations and variations of this latter result, such as cases where the boundary data is rational or entire, or over other domains.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Faculty Seminar Series: Computer Security Threats to Critical Infrastructure

You are invited to attend the following seminar.

Title: Computer Security Threats to Critical Infrastructure
Speaker: Dr. Jeremy Blum
Date/Time: Wednesday, Nov. 16, 12:00-1:30
Location: Gallery Lounge, Olmsted Building, Penn State Harrisburg

Synopsis:

Computer security attacks against critical infrastructure present a significant and growing global threat. This talk will focus in particular on the threats to the nation's power grid. Using anecdotal evidence and recent survey data, this talk will begin by providing an overview of the current threat landscape. Then, the talk will present current research at Penn State Harrisburg on the development of honeypot systems to mitigate the threat of computer security attacks on substation automation equipment.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Penn State Harrisburg Team Places Third in Site at ACM Regional Programming Contest

Penn State Harrisburg students Christopher Jackson, Jason Jones, and John Seaman placed third in site at the Shippensburg University site of the ACM Regional Programming Contest. Their team, Super Mega Death Worm, competed against more than 20 teams, including from as far away as Washington and Lee in Virginia. Congratulations!

If you are interested in participating in future programming contests, please let Dr. Blum know. Penn State Harrisburg will be holding an individual programming contest and will be sending teams to the Dickinson College contest in the Spring.