Speaker: Zur Luria, ETH
Title: New bounds for the n-queen's problem
Abstract:
The famous n-queens problem asks: In how many ways can n nonattacking queens be placed on an n by n chessboard? This question also makes sense on the toroidal chessboard, in which opposite sides of the board are identified. In this setting, the n-queens problem counts the number of perfect matchings in a certain regular hypergraph. We give an extremely general bound for such counting problems, which include Sudoku squares and designs.

The miracle of entropy - that the entropy of a measure preserving transformation calculated forward in time (for T) and backwards in time (for T^{-1}) are equal - is, depending on point of view and the definition used, either a triviality or highly surprising. Entropy theory (of Z-actions) plays a key role in analyzing the rigidity of algebraic (diagonalizable) Z^k actions; I show how a strong version of this symmetry property of entropy is useful in studying the measure classification question for such actions.
Joint work with Manfred Einsiedler.

I will explain the notion of a homotopy quotient of an operad providing different examples of operads of compactified moduli spaces of genus zero curves with marked points: including the space of complex curves (math.arXiv:1206.3749), the real loci of the complex one (arXiv:math/0507514) and the noncommutative …

Salmon and Cayley proved the celebrated 19th century result that a smooth cubic surface over the complex numbers contains exactly 27 lines.  By contrast, the count over the real numbers depends on the surface, and these possible counts were classified by Segre.  A number of researchers have recently made the striking observation that Segre’s work shows a certain signed count is always 3.  In my talk, I will explain how to extend this result to an arbitrary field.