The 7th Taiwan International Symposium on Statistical Physics

22-26 June 2004, at Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei

Preface of the Proceedings    [ Physica A 350 (2005) ]

      The Seventh Taiwan International Symposium on Statistical Physics: Biologically Motivated Statistical Physics and Related Problems (StatPhys-Taiwan-2004) was held at the Institute of Physics of Academia Sinica (Taipei) from 22 June–26 June 2004. StatPhys-Taiwan-2004 continues the tradition of previous meetings in 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2002. The proceedings of 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2002 meetings were published in AIP Conference Proceedings 248, Physica A Vol. 205 (1994), Physica A Vol. 221 (1995), Physica A Vol. 254 (1998), Physica A Vol. 281 (2000), and Physica A Vol. 321 (2003), respectively. StatPhys-Taiwan-2004 was the first satellite meeting of the 22nd IUPAP International Conference on Statistical Physics held at Bangalore, India, from 4 July to 9 July 2004.

In the opening section of StatPhys-Taiwan-2004 at Institute of Physics of Academia Sinica (Taipei) on 23 June, Professor Michael M. C. Lai, Vice President of Academia Sinica, and Dr. Sai-Ping Li, Acting Director of Institute of Physics of Academia Sinica delivered speeches to welcome the participants who came from Armenia, Australia, China, Hungary, India, Japan, Korea, Poland, The Netherlands, USA, and Taiwan.

This volume contains most of the invited papers and some contributed papers presented at StatPhys-Taiwan-2004. Those talks that were presented but for various reasons do not have a corresponding proceedings paper include the followings:

1. Willian S.-Y. Wang (City University of Hong Kong, China): Evolution of linguistic complexity;

2. Herbert Levine (Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, USA): Darwinian evolution as front propagation on the fitness landscape;

3. Sunny I. Chan (Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Taiwan): The free energy landscape of a protein;

4. Jorge V. Jose (Department of Physics, Northeastern University, USA): Synchronous neuronal spikings: The problem of paying attention;

5. Jung-Hsin Lin (National Taiwan University, Taiwan): AFM Simulations of protein membrane interactions;

6. R. Dean Astumian (University of Maine, USA): Controlling motion at the nanoscale: How to swim in molasses and walk in a hurricane?;

7. Wen-Hsiung Li (University of Chicago, USA): Some topics in computational genomics;

8. Chung-Kang Peng (Harvard University, USA): Statistical physics approach to information categorization of symbolic sequences;

9. Marcelo Magnasco (The Rockefeller University, USA): The dynamical basis of hearing acuity;

10. David B. Saakian (Yerevan Physics Institute, Armenia): Exact error threshold for quasi-species model with general fitness functions and degradation rates;

11. Carmay Lim (Institute of Biomedical Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan): Ligand Selectivity and Function in Proteins.

Besides expressing our sincere thanks to the sponsors, speakers, section chairmen, referees of contributed papers and participants of StatPhys-Taiwan-2004, we are also grateful to the members of the International Advisory Committee, and Organizing Committee, for their suggestions, encouragement and contributions. Finally, we should give special thanks to Miss Yiying Lin for secretarial work, and many others for helping various matters during the conference.
　

Chin-Kun Hu, K.-t. Leung, Ming-Chya Wu

Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan

E-mail address: huck@phys.sinica.edu.tw (C.-K. Hu)