Systems with disparate timescales are ubiquitous in physics and biology. Efficient modeling dictates to restrict the description to the slower processes and not to fully resolve the faster ones.

The seminar will discuss this general issue in stochastic systems with multiple timescales. In particular, the presentation will address the behavior of thermodynamics upon changing the level of resolution.
Stefano Bo will show how for non-equilibrium systems, under quite general conditions, properties of 
the fast dynamics still affect thermodynamics on the slower scales therefore compromising 
a description of the full system in terms of slow variables only. 

Finally, two relevant examples will be given concerning Brownian motion and a simple
biochemical network.