var sms = '<div id="sms_bulletin">  <div id="sms_header">  <div class="do_not_print" id="arrow_left"><a href="?next=-26"><img src="//www2.math.ethz.ch/smsjs/images/arrow_left.png"/></a></div><div class="do_not_print" id="arrow_right"><a href="?next=-24"><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;">2.2 - 6.2.2026</span>      <span style="text-align: center; display: block; width: 250px; margin: auto; position: relative;">Winter Break 2025/26</span>    </div>  </div>  <div></div>  <div id="sms_content">    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Monday, February 2      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item no_event">        No events scheduled today!        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Tuesday, February 3      </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://theory.epfl.ch/seminar/">Theory and Combinatorics Seminar</a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Jason  Hartline (Northwestern University)</div><div class="event_title"> Bayesian Decision Theory for Evaluating AI Systems <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />This talk reviews Bayesian decision theory and shows how it can be used to understand AI systems. Decision problems can be found throughout AI systems.  A decision problem maps actions of an agent and states of nature to payoffs.  Information, aka a signal, about the state can potentially be used to improve decisions.  The rational benchmark performance in a decision problem is defined as the expected payoff of the Bayes-optimal action given the signal.  Without the signal, the rational baseline is defined as the expected payoff of the optimal action given the prior distribution over states.  The value of information is the difference between the benchmark and baseline.  Performance of parts of an AI system can be evaluated in terms how much of the value of information is obtained.  Moreover, scrutinizing the decision theoretic framework enables sources of losses to be identified.  This talk applies this framework to understand reliance in human-AI decision systems.</div><div class="event_time">11:15 &bull; EPF Lausanne, BC 420</div>        </div>        <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://www.unige.ch/math/la-une/maths-partag-2024">Maths à PartaG</a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Michelle  Bucher (UNIGE)</div><div class="event_title">Un monde pavé de surprises <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />Des mosaïques de l’Alhambra aux œuvres d’Escher, les pavages fascinent depuis des siècles. Mais qu’est-ce qu’un pavage, au juste ? D’abord étudiés par les artisan·es et les artistes, ils sont devenus au XXe siècle un objet central des mathématiques modernes. De l’impossibilité de paver le plan avec un pentagone régulier à la découverte des pavages apériodiques de Penrose, cet exposé vous entraînera dans un monde de formes où ordre et désordre se mêlent, révélant des liens inattendus entre géométrie, art et sciences de la matière.</div><div class="event_time">18:30 &bull; Université de Genève, Uni Dufour, U300</div>        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Wednesday, February 4      </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://theory.epfl.ch/seminar/">Theory and Combinatorics Seminar</a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Klaus Jansen</div><div class="event_title">A Tight Double-Exponentially Lower Bound for High-Multiplicity Bin Packing <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />Consider a high-multiplicity Bin Packing instance $I$ with $d$ distinct item types. In 2014, Goemans and Rothvoss gave an algorithm with runtime ${{|I|}^2}^{O(d)}$ for this problem~[SODA\'14], where $|I|$ denotes the encoding length of the instance $I$. Although, Jansen and Klein~[SODA\'17] later developed an algorithm that improves upon this runtime in a special case, it has remained a major open problem by Goemans and Rothvoss~[J.ACM\'20] whether the doubly exponential dependency on $d$ is necessary.We solve this open problem by showing that unless the ETH fails, there is no algorithm solving the high-multiplicity Bin Packing problem in time ${{|I|}^2}^{o(d)}$. To prove this, we introduce a novel reduction from 3-SAT. The core of our construction is efficiently encoding the entire information from a 3-SAT instance with $n$ variables into an ILP with $O(\\log(n))$ variables.This result confirms that the Goemans and Rothvoss algorithm is best-possible for Bin Packing parameterized by the number $d$ of item sizes. This is joint work with Felix Ohnesorge and Lis Pirotton.</div><div class="event_time">11:00 &bull; EPF Lausanne, INJ114</div>        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Thursday, February 5      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item no_event">        No events scheduled today!        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Friday, February 6      </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">EPFL Lausanne</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch/labs/hessbellwald-lab/epfl-topology-seminar-spring-2026/">Séminaire de Topologie </a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Kensuke Arakawa (Kyoto University)</div><div class="event_title"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch/labs/hessbellwald-lab/epfl-topology-seminar-spring-2026/">Manifold calculus beyond space-valued functors</a> <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />Manifold calculus is a homotopy-theoretic technique to study presheaves on manifolds, which decomposes them into successive approximations called polynomial approximations. First invented by Weiss to study embedding spaces, it has become an important toolset for homotopical study of manifolds. Like ordinary calculus, manifold calculus has two "fundamental theorems," one which classifies polynomial presheaves, and the other that classifies homogeneous presheaves. Consistent with his goal to study embedding spaces, Weiss established these theorems for space-valued presheaves. From the perspective of studying manifold invariants, it is extremely natural to develop manifold calculus for presheaves with more general values, such as spectra and chain complexes. However, Weiss\'s proof of the fundamental theorems relies on ad-hoc constructions on spaces, which do not seem to generalize easily. In this talk, I will explain that the two fundamental theorems do not depend on space-level constructions. Consequently, they extend to presheaves valued in essentially any infinity category. This talk is based on my paper "A context for manifold calculus" (arXiv:2403.03321).</div><div class="event_time">10:15 &bull; <a class="external" href="https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==CM%201%20517">EPFL Lausanne</a></div>        </div>        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_sg"><a class="external" href="https://www.unisg.ch">Universit&auml;t St. Gallen</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://www.math.uzh.ch/aa/?events">Neuchatel - St.Gallen - Zurich Seminar in Coding Theory and Cryptography</a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker">Dr. Jutta Rath (Universität Klagenfurt)</div><div class="event_title">On the Asymptotic Structure of Powers of Monomial Ideals <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />&lt;p>After introducing monomial ideals and their connections to combinatorial objects such as graphs and simplicial complexes, we investigate some of their invariants and their asymptotic behaviour. In particular, we use Newton polyhedra to give an explicit description of the minimal generating sets of large powers of bivariate monomial ideals. Moreover, we establish bounds on the power beyond which the sets of associated primes of monomial ideals in three or more variables stabilize.&lt;/p></div><div class="event_time">11:30 &bull; Uni St. Gallen, 64-110</div>        </div>        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_sg"><a class="external" href="https://www.unisg.ch">Universit&auml;t St. Gallen</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://www.math.uzh.ch/aa/?events">Neuchatel - St.Gallen - Zurich Seminar in Coding Theory and Cryptography</a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker">Lukas Klawuhn (Universität Paderborn)</div><div class="event_title">Why I love association schemes - an introduction to Delsarte Theory <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />&lt;p>Interesting combinatorial structures can often be characterised as special subsets of association schemes. In his PhD thesis, Philippe Delsarte developed powerful linear programming techniques to prove non-existence and uniqueness results for such structures. In particular, this applies to error-correcting codes. Ideas of this type were fundamental in the work for which Maryna Viazovska was awarded the Fields medal in 2022. This talk will begin with an overview of Delsarte theory.&lt;/p> &lt;p>We will use this theory to study perfect matchings. We show that 1-factorisations of the complete graph are special subsets in the sense of Delsarte. The same is true for hyperfactorisations and other generalisations of 1-factorisations. The characterisation of these structures as a special subset of an association scheme gives rise to divisibility conditions and non-existence results. We also give a construction of hyperfactorisations using finite geometry.&lt;/p> &lt;p>No particular knowledge of association schemes will be required to appreciate this talk.&lt;/p></div><div class="event_time">14:00 &bull; Uni St. Gallen, 64-110</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>';