INTERDISCIPLINARY STOCHASTIC PROCESSES COLLOQUIUM

Tuesday April 18, room 60 Evans, 4.10 - 5.00pm

Speaker: Steven N. Evans
         Departments of Statistics and Mathematics
         and Graduate Group in Computational and Genomic Biology
         University of California at Berkeley

Title: Death, aging and other fun stuff:
       what does contemporary probability
       have to say about patterns of mortality and senescence?

Abstract: It has been known since the mid-1800s that
mortality rates in humans and many other species
increase exponentially over much of the life span.
Recent data have shown, however, that mortality rates
flatten in extreme old age.  I'll discuss how some simple ideas from
probability theory such as the notion of quasi-stationarity and the
Feynman-Kac theorem shed light on these phenomena, and how the same
tools also help to understand recent experiments on replication in
bacteria, yeast, and mammalian chromosomes.  This is joint work
with David Steinsaltz and Ken Wachter.