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Probability and Combinatorics

Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 4:00pm

Christine Heitsch

Georgia Tech

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4N30

Under a suitable abstraction, complex biological problems can reveal surprising mathematical structure. We illustrate this phenomena with results motivated by the folding of RNA sequences. Transitioning between RNA configurations by an appropriate local move, we obtain an isomorphism with the lattice of noncrossing partitions. With this insight, we then enumerate the orbits of the Kreweras complementation map according to their length.