Voting on Increasing the YUGSA Student Levy Happening RIGHT NOW

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This directly affects both the grad students of the Physics and Astronomy department in two ways: 1. your tutition, and 2, the amount and quality of beneficial programs/workshops/initiatives that are provided by the GSA directly to us. This INCLUDES our ability to run a ‘Monkey conference.’ If you would like to sign/vote on the issue please come to find Jesse in his office, or at the Pygmy Marmoset conference. All signatures needed by 4pm Friday October 25th, 2013.

Quote from the voting sheet:

Fellow Graduate Students,
Over the years, the York University Graduate Students’ Association (YUGSA) has undergone a few structural changes to better serve its membership. As those changes have resulted in increasing costs of running the YUGSA we are proposing the following referendum question to our membership. Some of the developments that have taken place over the past few years include: a) the size of our membership has increased therefore the costs of providing services has also increased (while the levy amount has remained the same over the years); b) annual increases to staff wages and benefits; c) there has been an increasing demand from graduate students to reopen the grad lounge since its closure last summer; d) ongoing deficit at the end of fiscal year resulting in cuts to services and bursaries. Our aim is to strengthen the YUGSA and reverse the weakening financial situation. We plan to restore the conference, international student, and dependent bursaries, donations and community outreach support funds, thesis and publication support funds, and gender, equity, social, and campaigns funds. And finally, we will aim to increase the Operating Grant Fund by at least 10% to departmental GSAs. Be it resolved that YUGSA will put forward the following referendum question to graduate students:

Do you support a one-time increase of $10 for Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) students, prorated for part-time students, to the annual YUGSA levy, indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI)?

Invited speaker Professor Chris Bergevin will talk about the pygmy marmoset!

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Probing Cochlear Tuning in the Marmoset

The biomechanical challenges our ears face are immense, as they must detect very fast (0.01-200 kHz), very small (sub-angstrom) motions in warm, salty water. Nonetheless, their performance is remarkable: A dynamic range spanning over 12 orders of magnitude of energy, the lower end of which providing sensitivity below the thermal noise floor. Furthermore, the ear exhibits a striking manifestation: It not only detects sound but also generates and subsequently emits it as well. These very faint sounds, known as otoacoustic emissions (OAEs), can be detected in the ear canal using a sensitive microphone. Thought to be a by-product of an underlying amplification mechanism, they provide a valuable probe into the biophysics of the cochlea, where study is otherwise extremely difficult (given that the inner ear is completely encased in the hardest bone in the body). It has been demonstrated that a certain type of evoked emission (stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions, SFOAEs) can be used to objectively estimate the frequency selectivity of the cochlea. Comparative data suggests humans may be unique in this regard, with relatively sharp tuning. The goal of this study was to help establish how tuning may be correlated with basilar-membrane (BM) length. Because inter-species comparisons can be complicated by phylogenetic differences, we sought to minimize these confounds by measuring SFOAE delays in the marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), a New World primate with a relatively short BM (~14 mm) and good high frequency hearing. These data suggest a correlation between SFOAE delay and BM length among primates, although the comparison with cat demonstrates that BM length cannot, by itself, explain delay differences across species. If SFOAE delays provide a reliable measure of cochlear tuning as proposed, the data suggest that tuning is sharper in marmoset than in cats below 8 kHz, encompassing a frequency range relevant for the monkey’s vocalizations.

Pygmy Marmoset Conference – List of Speakers

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The Pygmy Marmoset Conference is only ONE week away. Hopefully everyone has marked their calendars, and if you haven’t…mark them now! A reminder, the conference is on October 25th, 2013 from 10am – 4pm in PSE 317. Lunch will be provided. We have also put together a tentative schedule below. Barring any unforeseen changes, this will be the schedule we adhere to for the conference. I’ve attempted to group the different types of physics programs we have in our department, in an effort to create some continuity of topic.

The Judging Panel for the Ralph Nicholls Award will be: Jesse (chair), George, Gabriel, Naif

Schedule

10:00-10:20 – coffee,tea, and introduction by PAGE
10:20-10:40 – talk 1 – Omid Rezania – AMO – Physics of protein mobility within the stimulated cells
10:40-11:00 – talk 2 – Urmela Selventhiran – AMO – Time-dependent calculation of tunneling ionization of the molecular hydrogen ion in a strong DC-field
11:00-11:20 – talk 3 – Tsogbayar Tsednee – AMO – Molecular hydrogen in pseudospectral method
11:20-11:40 – talk 4 – Bin Jian – AMO – Double-loop microtraps array for ultracold atoms
10min break
11:50-12:45 – keynote Chris Bergevin
12:45-13:30 – lunch/poster session
13:30-13:50 – talk 5 – Homa Ebrahimikhonacha – BIO – Sonoluminescence
13:50-14:10 – talk 6 – Mark Wurtz – HEP – Higgs and W bosons on a lattice
14:10-14:30 – talk 7 – Andrea Capra – HEP – ALPHA and the Antihydrogen Physics
10 min break
14:40-15:00 – talk 8 – Alexandra Terrana – SPACE – Massive Gravity and its Spherically Symmetric Solutions
15:00-14:20 – talk 9 – Bahman Karimi – SPACE – Investigation of Image Errors in VLBI Images of SN 1993J
15:20-15:40 – talk 10 – Neda Hejazi – SPACE – New Photometric Calibrations for Determination of Fundamental Properties of M stars, Galactic Chemical Evolution and Structure
10 min deliberation by judges
16:00 – announce winner of Ralph Nicholls award.

Brown Bag Lunches with Colloquium Speaker

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The colloquium organizer this year, Dr. Matt Johnson (research website), is hosting brown bag lunches for colloquium speakers on Mondays at 12:30pm in PSE 258. A small amount of snacks will be provided, but you should bring your own lunch. This is a great opportunity for informal discussion with various researchers and a good chance to get out of the lab/away from your desk for lunch. You can consult the physics website for the colloquium schedule. If you have any questions, email Matt directly.