Let's launch our Biology Study Group activities for the new year (Part 2 of 2). This meeting will be used to (1) say welcome to new member (SPDR Kenji Okubo, and Postdoc Lucas Sort); (2) discuss Biology seminar management in light of the new iTHEMS Centre; and (3) catch up on each other's current research. Since this will probably take us 2h, this will be Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 was on 4/3).

On 4/10 (Part 2) we will get a 15 min introduction talk by Postdoc Lucas Sort.

This meeting is open to all RIKEN and guests. You do not need to be a member of the iTHEMS Biology Study Group.

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence have led to various discoveries in the field of neuroscience. For example, it has been demonstrated that the information on orientation columns in the visual cortex and the basic taste information in the gustatory cortex can be extracted by applying machine learning to relatively low-resolution functional MRI data. Additionally, intriguing findings have emerged, such as the information processing structures of artificial neural circuits—designed independently of the brain—showing similarities to those of biological neural networks.
In this talk, I will discuss the applications of artificial intelligence in neuroscience and explore future directions in this field.

14:45-15:00 Teatime discussion
15:00-16:00 Talk by Prof. Shizuo Kaji (Professor, Institute of Mathematics for Industry, Kyushu University / Professor, Center for Science Adventure and Collaborative Research Advancement (SACRA), Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
16:15-17:20 2024 Study Group introduction session
17:30-18:30 Discussion

A critical open question in microbiome research is identifying key host-microbial interactions that influence host fitness. While the disruption of coevolved host-microbial interactions is known to affect host fitness in simpler systems (e.g., insects and their symbionts), understanding the extent and consequences of host-microbial coevolution in more complex systems (e.g., mammals and their gut microbiota) remains a major challenge. My research has identified multiple species of gut microbes in adults and children that share a parallel evolutionary history with humans by analyzing paired human genotypes and bacterial strain genotypes. In another line of work, I applied a selection experiment demonstrating that selection and transmission of the microbiome and its metabolites can alter mouse locomotion behavior within four rounds of microbiome transfer, without any changes to the mouse genome. Finally, I will briefly outline my future plans to study the effects of disrupting evolutionary stable host-microbial associations on the phenotypes of deer mice (Peromyscus spp.) in the Madrean Sky Islands and genetically diverse human populations in Arizona.

Biosketch:
Assistant Professor at Arizona State University since 2023. MS at University of Arizona, PhD at University of California Berkeley, and Postdoc at Max Planck Institute for Biology. My group integrates evolutionary genomics, microbial ecology, and biomedical research to study host-microbial interactions using wild rodents and humans.

Cosmic rays interact with astrophysical systems over a broad range of scales. They go hand-in-hand with violent, energetic astrophysical environments, and are an active agent able to regulate the evolution and physical conditions of galactic and circum-galactic ecosystems. Depending on their energy, cosmic rays can also escape from their galactic environments of origin, and propagate into larger-scale cosmological structures. In this talk, I will discuss the impacts of cosmic rays retained in galaxies. I will show they can deposit energy and momentum to alter the initial conditions of star-formation, modify the circulation of baryons around galaxies, and have the potential to regulate long-term galaxy evolution. I will highlight some of the astrophysical consequences of contained hadronic and leptonic cosmic rays in and around galaxies, and how their influence can be probed using signatures including X-rays, gamma-rays and neutrinos. I will also discuss what happens to the cosmic rays that escape from galaxies, including their interactions with the magnetized large-scale structures of our Universe, and the fate of distant high-energy cosmic rays that do not reach us on Earth.

This workshop aims to strengthen collaboration between researchers at RIKEN iTHEMS and the National Center for Theoretical Sciences in Taiwan. It will be a four-day event, with the first two days dedicated to interdisciplinary topics. The last two days will focus on specialized areas, with one day devoted to condensed matter physics and the other to high-energy physics, including quantum gravity.