Thursday, July 16

MS55
Unstable Periodic Orbits in Biology: Identification and Control

10:30 AM-12:30 PM
Room: Sidney Smith 2106

Unstable periodic orbits (UPOs) offer a potential means of studying and exploiting nonlinear dynamics in biological systems and have potential medical applications. For example, dangerously irregular cardiac rhythms might be terminated with small stimuli from a control system that stabilizes a natural UPO. The minisymposium will focus on theoretical and practical aspects of UPO control algorithms. The speakers will discuss when and with what reliability UPOs can be detected and how estimates made of their associated stable and unstable manifolds.

10:30 Unstable Fixed Points in Biological Systems: Tips, Traps and Techniques

William L. Ditto, Georgia Institute of Technology

11:00 Topological Methods for Detecting and Scaling Unstable Periodic Orbits in Biological Systems

Frank Moss, University of Missouri, St. Louis

11:30 Experimental Control of Cardiac Dynamics Using Small Perturbations

Daniel J. Gauthier, Duke University

12:00 Detecting and Reliably Characterizing Unstable Fixed Points

Daniel T. Kaplan and James Collins, Organizers