Our first online seminar
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.010281
Updated 13 October 2014: The recording of the Hangout can be viewed, in full, on YouTube .
In partnership with the University of Central Arkansas and the Society of Physics Students (SPS), Physics Today will be holding an online seminar through Google Hangout. Biophysicist Jané Kondev of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, will be the speaker.
The seminar will take place on Tuesday, 23 September at 6 PM EST and will be hosted by Will Slaton of the University of Central Arkansas and by the university’s SPS chapter.
Jané wrote the article “Bacterial decision making ,” which was published in Physics Today‘s February 2014 issue. In the seminar, he’ll talk briefly about the article and then answer questions about it and other topics to do with the physics of bacteria. For a foretaste, here’s the article’s opening paragraph:
Bacteria are single-celled organisms that make decisions all the time about where to swim, what to eat, and when to divide. They are also micron-sized containers filled with a million proteins and a few million base pairs of DNA, as well as RNA molecules, lipids, sugars, inorganic salts, and water. The question of how that bag of chemicals makes seemingly complex decisions has been the focus of biology for more than 50 years. Recently, experiments have begun to yield quantitative data that have led to models of the molecular-scale processes involved.
Google Hangout is an Internet messaging and video chat service. To participate in the seminar, log into your Google account and visit the event page just before or during the seminar. If you have an account with Gmail, Google+, YouTube, or other Google product, you can use the same username and password to log in. If you don’t have a Google account, you can create one here .
You might also need to install the Google Hangout browser plugin . And if your computer has a 32-bit processor (likely if the machine is more than 10 years old), then Google Hangout will not work at all. If you encounter difficulties, please consult the Google Hangout FAQ .
Alternatively, you can watch the seminar on YouTube.
To submit questions before or during the seminar, you can either include them in a tweet with the hashtag #PThangout or submit them directly within Google Hangout.
Jané’s article was featured on the cover of the February issue. The original caption read: “Escherichia coli bacteria have served for decades as the ‘hydrogen atoms’ of cellular decision making. In that branch of biology, researchers strive to understand the origin of cellular individuality and how a cell decides whether or not to express a particular gene in its DNA. For some of the physics involved, turn to the article by Jané Kondev on page 31. (Image by Sebastian Kaulitzki.)”
We at Physics Today, the University of Central Arkansas, and SPS hope you’ll join the seminar. To get the most out of it, we recommend that you read Jané’s article first and make a note of anything you don’t understand or would like to know more about.
Jané’s seminar is the first of a series based on articles in Physics Today. To suggest speakers for future seminars, please leave a comment below.