This week will be a special edition of the seminar featuring previews of 15-minute talks that UNT faculty will be giving at the 96^th Annual Meeting of the Texas Section of the MAA. (I believe that I've included everyone who is scheduled to present at the meeting. However, if someone was inadvertently left out, please let Dr. Quintanilla know so that he can make amends.)

Joseph Iaia

Infinitely Many Solutions to a Semilinear Equation on Exterior Domains

We prove the existence of an infinite number of radial solutions of $\Delta u + K(r) f(u) = 0$ such that $\lim_{r \to \infty} u(r) = 0$ with prescribed number of zeros on the exterior of the ball of radius $R > 0$ centered at the origin in $\mathbb{R}^N$ where $f$ is odd with $f < 0$ on $(0, \beta)$, $f > 0$ on $(\beta,\infty)$ with $f$ superlinear for large $u$, and $K(r) \sim r^{-\alpha}$ with $0 < \alpha < 2$.

John Quintanilla

Teaching Predicate Logic with Popular Culture

Undergraduate math majors are expected to make sense of logical statements such as $\forall x > 0 \exists y > 0(y < x)$. Unfortunately, when learning about predicate logic for the first time, some (or many) students may think that this symbolism is dry, pedantic, and uninteresting. To hopefully engage more of my students with this topic, I mined the depths of popular culture to find interesting illustrations of predicate logic, including famous one-liners from the movies and the lyrics of hit songs, and used these illustrations to develop my students' proficiency with predicate logic. In this talk, I'll present some of my students' favorite illustrations and also reflect on their pedagogical usefulness.