var sms = '<div id="sms_bulletin">  <div id="sms_header">  <div class="do_not_print" id="arrow_left"><a href="?next=-24"><img src="//www2.math.ethz.ch/smsjs/images/arrow_left.png"/></a></div><div class="do_not_print" id="arrow_right"><a href="?next=-22"><img src="//www2.math.ethz.ch/smsjs/images/arrow_right.png"/></a></div>    <div class="sms_title">      <span style="float: left;">SMS</span>      <span>SWISS MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY</span>      <span style="float: right;">SMG</span>    </div>    <div class="sms_info">      <span style="float: left; width: 250px;">Bulletin no. 7</span>      <span style="float: right; text-align:right; width: 250px;">5.2 - 9.2.2024</span>      <span style="text-align: center; display: block; width: 250px; margin: auto; position: relative;">Winter Break 2023/24</span>    </div>  </div>  <div></div>  <div id="sms_content">    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Monday, February 5      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_la"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch">EPF Lausanne</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?mode=AGENDA&height=600&wkst=2&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&src=t36it03v52cus2detrvinlgk18%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%235F6B02&ctz=Europe%2FZurich">Groups, Arithmetic and Algebraic Geometry Seminar </a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Eduardo Alves da Silva (Paris-Saclay)</div><div class="event_title">Log Calabi-Yau geometry and Cremona maps <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />In the context of algebraic geometry, decomposition and inertia groups are special subgroups of the Cremona group which preserve a certain subvariety of $\\mathbb{P}^n$ as a set and pointwise, respectively. These groups were and still are classic objects of study in the area, with explicit descriptions in several instances. In the particular case where this fixed subvariety is a hypersurface of degree $n+1$, we have the notion of Calabi-Yau pair which allows us to use new tools to deal with the study of these groups and one of them is the so-called volume preserving Sarkisov Program. Using this approach we prove that an appropriate algorithm of the Sarkisov Program in dimension 2 applied to an element of the decomposition group of a nonsingular plane cubic is automatically volume preserving. From this, we deduce some properties of the (volume preserving) Sarkisov factorization of its elements. Regarding now a 3-dimensional context, we give a description of which toric weighted blowups of a point are volume preserving and among them, which ones will initiate a volume preserving Sarkisov link from a Calabi-Yau pair $(\\mathbb{P}^3,D)$ of coregularity 2. In this case, $D$ is necessarily an irreducible normal quartic surface having canonical singularities. This last result enhances and extends the recent works of Guerreiro and Araujo, Corti and Massarenti in a log Calabi-Yau geometrical perspective, and it is a possible starting point to study the decomposition group of such quartics.</div><div class="event_time">14:00 &bull; EPF Lausanne, MA A1 10</div>        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Tuesday, February 6      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_ge"><a class="external" href="https://unige.ch">Université de Genève</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://sites.google.com/view/pm-seminar/home">Physical Mathematics Seminar</a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Edward Mazenc (ETH Zürich)</div><div class="event_title">Title T.B.A. <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />I will give an overview of my work with Rajesh Gopakumar on deriving the closed string dual to the simplest possible gauge theory, aHermitian matrix integral. These matrix theories are studied in the conventional‘t Hooft limit i.e. they do not require any further double-scaling. I’ll present andverify an explicit operator  ictionary between matrix traces and vertexoperators in the closed A- and B-model topological string worldsheetdescriptions. I will discuss the more general idea of open-closed open triality which allows us to establish this dictionary. Roughly, it shows how closed strings can be reconstructed in two different way from gauge-theory Feynman diagrams. We will then sketch how the tools of Strebel differentials and topological recursion reveal the underlying mechanics of this open/closed string correspondence. I’ll close by embedding our results in the broader context of AdS/CFT.</div><div class="event_time">14:00 &bull; Université de Genève, Conseil Général 7-9, Room 1-05</div>        </div>        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_la"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch">EPF Lausanne</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?mode=AGENDA&height=600&wkst=2&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&src=t36it03v52cus2detrvinlgk18%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%235F6B02&ctz=Europe%2FZurich">Groups, Arithmetic and Algebraic Geometry Seminar </a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Franco Rota (EPFL)</div><div class="event_title">Hodge theory and categorical Torelli for double covers <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />The work of Kuznetsov and Perry describes the derived category of a cyclic cover X of weighted projective space. The description is in terms of the categories of the base and of the branch locus Z and works under the assumption that both Z and X are Fano. We relax this assumption on Z and obtain an analogous result for canonically polarized branch loci. This extended framework unlocks information about two deformation families of low degree Fano threefolds, which arise as double covers. We then use categorical K-theory to show that a specific component of the derived category of the threefolds determines them up to isomorphism (solving a so-called categorical Torelli problem). This is joint work with A. Jacovskis and H. Dell.</div><div class="event_time">14:00 &bull; EPF Lausanne, MA A1 10</div>        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Wednesday, February 7      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_la"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch">EPF Lausanne</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch/schools/sb/research/math/statistics-seminars/">Statistics Seminar </a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Francis Bach    </div><div class="event_title">Information theory with kernel methods <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />Estimating and computing entropies of probability distributions are key computational tasks throughout data science. In many situations the underlying distributions are only known through the expectation of some feature vectors which has led to a series of works within kernel methods with applications to generative modeling and probabilistic inference. In this talk I will explore the particular situation where the feature vector is a rank-one positive definite matrix and show how the associated expectations (a covariance matrix) can be used with information divergences from quantum information theory to draw direct links with the classical notions of Shannon entropies.</div><div class="event_time">13:15 &bull; EPF Lausanne, CM 1 4</div>        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Thursday, February 8      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_la"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch">EPF Lausanne</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch/schools/sb/research/math/statistics-seminars/">Statistics Seminar </a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Daniel Temko (University of Cambridge        )</div><div class="event_title">A Bayesian functional principal component analysis framework for longitudinal genome-wide association studies <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />Introduction: When interrogated along with genetic data, large clinical longitudinal datasets have potential to yield new scientific insights on the genetic contribution to temporal patterns of disease progression and response to treatments. However, existing approaches for longitudinal genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are not suited to unlock the full power of large datasets, as they typically rely on strong distributional assumptions on the longitudinal outcome. Methods: We propose to reframe the longitudinal GWAS problem as a joint latent variable estimation and regression problem in which genetic variants influence longitudinal trajectories via effects on functional latent variables. We leverage existing Bayesian inference frameworks for functional principal component analysis (FPCA) and sparse spike-and-slab regression to develop a two-stage variational inference scheme for this model that conveys uncertainty from the principal component estimation into the second-stage regression. Results: Using simulations, we show that our approach is both scalable and accurate, and that our modelling approach can recover SNPs that influence latent dynamics underlying longitudinal trajectories. We further demonstrate the usefulness and applicability of our framework in a study of genetic effects on longitudinal outcomes in the UK biobank. Conclusion: We present a modelling scheme that has the computational scalability and flexibility to take advantage of large datasets for longitudinal modelling, while rigorously handling estimation uncertainty.Daniel Temko, Tui Nolan, Sylvia Richardson, Hélène Ruffieux</div><div class="event_time">15:15 &bull; EPF Lausanne, MA A1 10</div>        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Friday, February 9      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_la"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch">EPF Lausanne</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch/labs/anmath/seminars/">Seminar of Analysis </a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Marios Apetroaie (University of Münster)</div><div class="event_title">Title T.B.A.</div><div class="event_time">14:15 &bull; EPF Lausanne</div>        </div>      </div>    </div>  </div>  <div id="sms_footer">    address: Alessandra Naldi Windler, Departement Mathematik, HG G 51.4, ETH Zurich, Raemistrasse 101, CH-8092 Zurich<br />    email: <a href="mailto:bulletin@math.ch">bulletin@math.ch</a> | phone: +41 44 632 3684 | url: <a href="https://math.ch">https://math.ch</a>    <br /><br /><img src="//www2.math.ethz.ch/smsjs/sms_logo.gif" width="150" alt="SMS/SMG Logo" title="SMS/SMG Logo" />  </div></div>';