First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh

  605 Morewood Avenue
  Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2999
  412-621-8008

SUNDAY FORUM

Forum is the Sunday Service weekly lecture/discussion forum in the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh in Shadyside.

Forum considers the broad weft and warp of topics that engage our heads and our hearts. Our speakers are often from local universities, organizations, church members, or government institutions. The format is a short presentation (20 to 40 minutes) followed by a vigorous discussion for another half hour. We usually have an audience of about 20 to 40 people. There is a digital projector and screen for PowerPoint and video presentations. Forum is open to all and is coordinated by Michael Lotze [lotzemt@upmc.edu] and a committee of interested individuals including Ernesto Aravena, Barry Farkas, Roy Frye, Joan Harvey, Ali Masalehdan, Audrey Geer Masalehdan, Kathleen Parker, Suzanne Powell, Jane Steranko and Vikram Iyengar. Ralph Gurley serves as our Treasurer and Cinematographer.

Past Forums are available on loan in the 1st Church Library for viewing at other times. We have instituted a Program to allow our speakers to present their material uninterrupted except for clarification until the question and answer period.

June 6. That’s a Lot of Data: Research Informatics Needs for the 21st Century. M. Michael Barmada, PhD. Hosted by Roy Frye.

The amount of data produced by biomedical research activities is rapidly outpacing our ability to manage and make sense of it. Automated high-throughput methods provide researchers with ever more complicated snapshots of cellular and molecular processes, enabling an understanding of human biology and disease at an unprecedented level of detail. To make efficient use of these data, specialized data management services (informatics) are required.

Dr. M. Michael Barmada is part of a multi-member statistical genetics team at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. He compares the genomes of people who have diseases with the genomes of healthy people, looking for any differences that may influence a particular illness. He works closely with laboratory scientists that squeeze raw data out of gene sequences for processing. “We’re all interested in understanding genetic variation and human genetic disorders,” says Barmada.

Initially, Barmada reviewed limited genetic information (5-500 markers) from local populations, usually between 50 and 300 people. The sample sizes eventually grew. “The populations we’re using are getting larger, or we’re doing collaborations with multiple groups,” he says. “Instead of getting 400 patients from one collaborator, we’ll get four or five or six thousand patients from a set of collaborators around the country or 20,000 or 30,000 individuals from collaborators around the world. For each of those individuals we’ll analyze a million or more markers.”

The process may yield more than 20 billion points of data per study, but the work doesn’t stop there. Dr. Barmada charts external influences like diet, lifestyle and environmental contaminates, collecting even more data. Based on the computing and storage requirements necessary for analysis of data on this scale, Dr. Barmada pioneered the development of a Center for Computational Genetics to serve the computational needs of the genetics community at the University of Pittsburgh. The focal point of this center is a 64 core computational cluster, with a storage array capacity exceeding 20Tb of disk space. In addition, together with members of the Center for Computational Genetics and a local database company (Maya Design Inc.), Dr. Barmada is currently involved in a project to develop a next-generation informatics resource which will serve as a database and information commons, allowing all data within it to be reused and integrated, while maintaining security and confidentiality needs.

Dr. Barmada is an Associate Professor of Human Genetics and Biostatistics at the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), University of Pittsburgh, Adjunct Professor of Developmental Biology at Children’s Hospital of UPMC, and Director of the Center for Computational Genetics at GSPH.Through his involvement with multiple research projects, including large multi-center epidemiologic and genetic studies, Dr. Barmada has extensive experience with the data management and data analysis issues involved in complex multi-disciplinary studies. His particular research interests lie in the analysis of multivariate genetic data and the pleiotropic effects of individual genes or gene networks. More recently, he has worked on the application of systems biology to the analysis of genetic and genomic data, and the integration and analysis of data from multiple experimental platforms. He is an active member of the graduate faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, and teaches in several classes covering statistical genetics and computational methods for genetic epidemiology, as well as risk analysis for the genetic counseling program, and the genetics module for the University's medical school.

June 13. Father’s Day. FLOWER COMMUNION PICNIC. No Forum.

9am June 20. By Fire, By Water: Queen Isabella and Columbus. Mitch James Kaplan, PhD. Hosted by Jane Steranko.

The historical novel By Fire, By Water tells the heartbreaking story of Luis de Santangel, the courtier who convinced Queen Isabella to sponsor Christopher Columbus’s voyage of discovery in 1492. Combining a passionate love story with a religious mystery, By Fire, By Water closely follows historical events during a troubled time, when the medieval social order was collapsing. Suspected of heresy by the Spanish Inquisition, accused of complicity in the murder of the chief inquisitor of Aragon, Luis de Santangel must choose between his identity and the woman he loves. This novel not only tells the gripping and poignant tale of one man’s travails in a time of cultural upheaval, but also to shed light on some of the most important issues of our present age. "[Mitchell Kaplan is] an enormously gifted writer. The language and narrative movement are graceful, impeccable, authentic, and a pleasure to read. The subject is a powerfully important one, one that has not been tackled well in past works. By Fire, By Water captures the reader immediately and... will have many readers."

In Spain, at the end of the fifteenth century, four simultaneous events heralded the collapse of the medieval economic, governmental, and religious systems and the birth of the modern nation-state:

– The monarchs of Castille and Aragon (modern Spain), reconquered Granada, putting an end to 800 years of Islamic sovereignty on the European continent;

– The New Inquisition vigorously and brutally rooted out the “Judaizing” heresy in the upper echelons of Spanish society;

– In the first ethnic cleansing of modern European history, all openly religious Jews were expelled from Spain;

– Cristobal Colón “discovered” the Western Hemisphere.

At the center of these events stood one man, Luis de Santangel, the Royal Chancellor of Aragon. Caught between competing faiths, social classes, and loyalties, Santangel was a prototype of modern man. Mitchell Kaplan’s historical novel, By Fire, By Water, tells Santangel’s story, bringing 15th century Spain to dazzling, engrossing life. Within this novel of love, God, faith, and torture lies a subtle, insightful examination of the crisis of faith that led to the fall of the medieval social order and the discovery of the New World.

Poet Myra Sklarew has said of the book, "The language and narrative movement are graceful, impeccable, authentic and a pleasure to read. The subject is a powerfully important one, one that has not been tackled well in past works. By Fire, By Water captures the reader immediately and moves the reader through the complexities of the various roles of those involved with and during the Inquisition. It is a subject greatly in need of exploration and… a subject that will have many readers."

Mitchell James Kaplan has lived and worked primarily in Paris and Los Angeles as a translator, screenwriter, and script consultant. Currently, he resides in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two children. This is his first novel. For more information, please visit www.mitchelljameskaplan.com

9am June 27. Quantum Computing. What Is Quantum Computing? A Primer. Edward Gerjuoy, PhD. Hosted by Jane Steranko.

Before proceeding any further, despite its title and the description below of its contents, this talk is intended for, and should be quite comprehensible to, the non-technically-trained members of my audience. Certainly it requires no special knowledge of either physics or mathematics.

Ever since about 1950 computers increasingly have permeated our lives, so much so that getting through the day without interacting with computers—e.g., to withdraw money from the bank, to pay bills, to record medical information, to seek a human being with whom to discuss our telephoned complaint—now seems unthinkable. These computers with which we presently interact are termed classical computers, in that their construction and operation are based on so-called classical physics, meaning the physics subject matter--pertinent to the macroscopic objects we encounter in our everyday lives--typically taught in elementary physics courses. Starting about 1990, however, there has been growing interest in the possibility of computers whose construction and operation are based on quantum physics principles, meaning the physical laws which govern the motions and properties of submicroscopic entities, such as electrons and individual atoms, entities for which classical physics breaks down.

He will describe the basic differences between classical and quantum physics, as well as some of the puzzling counterintuitive features of quantum theory. He then will discuss the expected construction and operation of a quantum computer, and will explain why—under some circumstances at least—quantum computers, if they ever can be constructed, should be more powerful than their best possible classical counterparts. He will next present an illustration of such potential more powerful quantum computing power, namely Peter Shor’s 1994 algorithm for factoring very large numbers. He will conclude by explaining how a quantum computer employing Shor’s algorithm would very adversely affect the security of the so-called RSA system, an important modern scheme for transmitting encrypted information we want only the intended recipient to decipher, e.g., the bank which issued the credit card whose number each of us types into his/her classical computer when paying bills on line.

Dr. Gerjuoy received his Ph.D. in 1942 from the University Of California at Berkeley. His current research is in quantum computing. In the past Professor Gerjuoy published predominantly, though not entirely, in atomic physics collision theory. More recently, however, he has been devoting his research time solely to various theoretical problems related to quantum computing. During much of his career as a physicist he has worked on various American Physical Society (APS) and other professional society committees. In particular, he has been a member (and in some years Chair) of the following APS Committees: Panel on Public Affairs (1976-79, 1981 and 1994-96); Audit Committee (2002-4); Constitution and Bylaws Committee (1999-2002). In addition he has been a member (2000-03) of the APS Council, the APS governing body, as well as an officer (including Chair) of the APS Forum on Physics and Society (1994-7); membership (2005-07) on the APS Sakharov Prize Committee was his most recent APS committee service. In past years he also has been a member of: the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Health Physics Division Advisory Committee (1967-70, Chair 1971-74); the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, a joint Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Bar Association (1986-92); and the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board (1981-86). These last two appointments reflect the fact that Professor Gerjuoy earned a law degree in 1977; indeed he has published numerous papers on issues arising at the interface of law and science.

Forum On Leave during July and August.