Speaker
David A. Weitz

Description This talk will provide an introduction to soft matter science, the science of the world around us. I will describe scientific studies of soft materials such as foams and emulsions, materials which behave as solids yet can flow as liquids. The talk will discuss how all of these materials have certain characteristic features in common, which is what makes them soft. I will also describe new ways of making these materials to provide interesting and useful new products. In addition, I will describe a collaboration between Harvard Science professors and Catalonian Chefs to offer a course on Science and Cooking, which explores both the art and the science of soft matter, and using cooking to teach an introduction to soft matter science.

Speaker
Angel Calsina

Speaker
Markus Muller

Description The lectures introduce various aspects of Anderson localization, with its rich phenomenology observed in transport. We then discuss the properties of Anderson insulators and the salient effects of unscreened Coulomb interactions, which lead to strong correlations and glassy behavior. Finally, we address the intensely debated question as to the possibility of many-particle localization in Fock space and the ensuing quantum glassiness. This is of relevance in dense disordered electronic systems as well as in the context of cold atoms. In particular we will discuss the questions about ergodicity breaking, non-equilibration and the relation of quantum localization with classical glassy behavior.

Speaker
Antonio Turiel

Description Análisis del estado actual de la producción de petróleo y la extracción futura prevista, su impacto en la economía, la falta de alternativas; todo ello desde una perspectiva científica.

Speaker
Timothy Myers

Description This talk will be in two parts. The first part will provide a brief overview of current research topics within the industrial mathematics group at the CRM, including monitoring blood pressure, choosing a football that will provide an advantage for your team and liquid solidification with flow. The second part will go into more depth on two recent projects concerning flow and solidification. The first project is a standard scenario concerning flow and solidification in a small channel (in fact, by small we simply mean gravity is negligible and the flow is laminar). It is shown that, in the limit of large Stefan number, the problem reduces to solving an integro-differential equation for the position of the freezing front. Results are then discussed in the context of a micro-fluidic phase change valve, where it is important to understand the freezing mechanism (and consequently the most efficient way to freeze the liquid) and also conditions under which complete freezing never occurs. For those who fear the harsh flow conditions of the micro-channel, the second problem deals with the nano-scale. It is well known that the fluid flux through carbon nano tubes (CNTs) is significantly higher than predicted by standard flow theory. To overcome this problem theoretical models typically include a Navier slip condition and so introduce a slip length. The slip length may be thought of as the height-scale over which the fluid layer slips above the solid substrate. However, to adequately capture the flow enhancement in CNTs the slip length must be set much greater than the tube diameter. This has led to scepticism from many researchers. This part of the talk will describe a simple alternative model to account for flow enhancement. Along the way it also provides a physical interpretation for the slip length on surfaces that are smooth on the nano-scale, and so demonstrates that in this context the term slip length is misleading.