Virtual seminar on "Ancestral networks, and the curse of the unfaithful grandparents"

This seminar is a special 'Virtual' seminar that is being simultaneously presented at University of Auckland and University of Canterbury over Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN) using 'portable' AccessGRID technology.

The presenter is Prof Mike Steel from the University of Canterbury. The session will take place at 2pm, Monday, 5 Feb 2007 in Room 222 Maths (University of Auckland) and HitLab (University of Canterbury).

Seminar Synopsis:
Directed graphs provide the basic mathematical framework for representing ancestry in biology.  Applications range across many scales:  from trees and networks that describe how species have evolved from a common ancestor,  to graphs that describe the more detailed relationship between individuals according to their parentage ('pedigrees').  In this talk Prof Steel will provide a brief overview of this topic, and then describe some recent results where mathematics (particularly probability theory and combinatorics) has led to new insights.  He concludes with some of his recent work motivated by the question: how far into the past is it possible to reconstruct the detailed history of a given population?

BeSTGRID-HITLab-NZIMA 'Virtual' Seminar:
The BeSTGRID project (www.bestgrid.org) and HIT-Lab (www.hitlabnz.org) in conjunction with the New Zealand Institute of Mathematics & its Applications (NZIMA www.nzima.org) are pleased to demonstrate a facility where it is possible to present a typical research seminar to a local audience in one location on the KAREN network, and for that to be simultaneously projected to an audience at another. Furthermore, video communication is two-way (to facilitate discussions), with multiple cameras and a shared whiteboard.

It is based on portable AccessGRID technology being demonstrated in New Zealand by BeSTGRID and HITLab (flash video introduction to AccessGRID:  http://www.agsc.ja.net/training/ag-agsc-intropt1.swf)

This seminar will be the first in New Zealand to utilise the 'portable' BeSTGRID and HITLab AccessGRID technology on the KAREN network.

Technical Requirements:
Any Access node can participate in the seminar.

Connect to the venue server:
https://agvenue.karen.canterbury.ac.nz:9000/Venues/default  
using version 2.4 of AccessGRID
OR

https://agvenue.karen.canterbury.ac.nz:8000/Venues/default  
using version 3.02 of AccessGRID

Choose the NZ Institutions lobby
and then the "BeSTGRID" Room
(Video and Audio IP 233.36.216.14 Video Port Multicast 59002 Audio Port
59004)

In order to view the seminar whiteboard, you will be required to install the "Shared Desktop" package in AccessGRID, together with RealVNC

http://www.westgrid.ca/collabvis/research-agshareddesktop.php

For further information, please contact: Paul Bonnington <p.bonnington@auckland.ac.nz> (BeSTGRID) or Nathan Gardiner <nathan.gardiner@canterbury.ac.nz> (HitLab-NZ)