Events at Physics |
Events on Tuesday, October 21st, 2014
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- Complex multi-systems redesign: regional food for regional markets
- Time: 12:05 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin (refreshments will be served)
- Speaker: Michelle Miller, UW Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems
- Abstract: As much as we enjoy our farmers markets and CSAs, most of our food makes its way to us via freight truck. As fuel prices continue a decades-long rise, shippers and carriers shoulder the cost. They are controlling costs in ways that increase transportation efficiencies for them as individual actors, not for the entire supply chain. These shifts, such as placement of distribution centers and big box stores, have unintended consequences for other parts of the food supply chain. Highway congestion and related fuel waste, poor labor conditions for truck drivers, creation of ”food deserts” in urban and rural areas, and limited market access for midsize farmers are some of the negative feedback that result. Hidden costs, such as the vehicle costs necessary to drive to supermarkets or warehouse stores, are borne by consumers rather than shippers. At the same time, consumers are separated from the source of their food, fueling concentration in agriculture, another positive feedback loop. Separating food production from the population creates a brittle food system with environmental, economic and social consequences. This project takes a systems look at the current wholesale food supply chain, from farmer to consumer, and begins to model logistical innovations that reconfigure agricultural and transportation systems to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. We expect to see reduced GHG emissions, reduced highway congestion, increased redundancy in food production, and a move from food supply chains to a more web-like structure, better use of public investment in transportation and food provisioning, and improved labor conditions throughout. Using a complex adapative systems approach, early work brought representatives from regional food supply chains together to discuss various perspectives. Current work, advised by food freight stakeholders, is modeling logistical interventions based on actual movement data that we think may improve the movement of food and catalyze this cascade of other benefits across the supply chain.
- Host: Clint Sprott
- Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology)
- Hunting SUSY Particles in Compressed Spectra
- Time: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Zhenyu Han
- Abstract: Light supersymmetric particles may be hidden in the LHC data when the mass spectra are compressed. In this talk, I will discuss strategies for searching SUSY particles with quasi-degenerate masses, focusing on Higgsino pair production and slepton pair production.
- Host: Ran