|
|
|
|
Upcoming Events
|
|
Seminar
Dec. 16 (Monday) 13:30~15:00
Main Research Building, room #433
Dr. Kenji Maeda (Colorado School of Mines)
Simulating quantum magnets with symmetric top molecules
iTHES Theoretical Science Colloquium
January 31st, Friday, 2014
Prof. Kei Tokita (Nagoya Univ.)
Details to be announced
|
|
|
Event Report
Interdisciplinary mini-workshop on non-equilibrium physics supported by iTHES was held at Department of Physics, Kyoto University on Dec. 7 – 8, 2013. The purpose of this workshop is to focus on active interaction of the participants working in different research areas. About 30 people gathered from areas such as condensed matter, statistical, particle and nuclear physics. Eight selected talks were presented. We had active discussions, and shared ideas, approaches and techniques. In the photo, Dr. Robert Johansson (RIKEN iTHES cond-mat team) is discussing the superconducting circuits. The slides of the talks can be downloaded from the web-page,
http://ribf.riken.jp/~hidaka/workshop/iwnp.html
|
|
|
Person of the Week
Masashi Tachikawa
Self-introduction
My name is Masashi Tachikawa. I received a Ph.D. in physics from
Nagoya University in 2004. After that, I worked as a post-doc at
Kaneko Laboratory at The University of Tokyo. I joined Theoretical
Biology Laboratory in 2010. My resent research interest is physical
properties of biological materials and their roles in cellular
functions. Biomaterials are sticky. They often show nonlinear
responses to the perturbations, or change responses depending on the
histories of perturbations. These complex responses are necessary for
cellular functions. Cell modifies the amount, localization, and
interaction of components (proteins) of biomaterials to control their
physical properties and control its function. In particular, I am
interested in membrane-bounded cellular subunits, organelles. Their
sizes are in the range of 100nm to 10μm. Mitochondrion, Golgi
apparatus and endoplasmic reticulum are examples of organelles. They
are identified with their unique shapes, which are attractive features
of organelles. Various membrane-integrated proteins locally modify
physical properties of membrane, and deform it. Their interactions
generate the organelle shapes in a self-organized manner. Since these
shapes are considered to be tightly linked to their functions,
studying how they are made is fundamental subject in biology. The
difficulties in the organelle shape study are: first, only snapshots
of their shapes are observed by electron-microscopy and their
dynamical behaviors are not observable, second, we little know about
what kinds of components (proteins) ensure their shapes. To study the
formation of organelle, I constructed coarse-grained membrane
simulator, where membrane shape is expressed with dynamically
triangulated polygons and Monte-Carlo method is employed for membrane
deformation dynamics. Proteins which give curves to the membrane are
also incorporated. With the simulator I am investigating what
properties of membrane and proteins are necessary to generate
particular organelle shapes. So far, I am struggling with shapes of
Golgi apparatus, autophagic body, and caveolae. My study concerns many
fields of science including biology, chemistry, molecular science and
physics. So I hope to learn and to have good corroboration in iTHES.
|
|
|
Visitors
Dr. Kenji Maeda (Colorado School of Mines)
Quantum many-body theory of cold atoms and molecules
Dec13 (Fri.) - Dec.20(Fri.) 2013
room 431, 4th floor, Main Research Building
|
|
|
|
|
|
