Mathematics

Was Hippasus Pushed? (and Other Mysteries Of Mathematics)

Was Hippasus pushed? If you are even mildly interested in the history of mathematics, it is likely that you will have heard something like the following story. The Pythagoreans (who were also into music in a big way) worshipped numbers, and believed them t ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Aug 26 2008 - 4:28pm

Put Thinking on Your To-Do List

This piece is a little old, and is ostensibly about Presidential candidates, but the advice applies to anyone with a 'wired' job who needs to think, including scientists and science writers: In London, Obama and [British Conservative Leader] Cam ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Oct 22 2008 - 11:04pm

What Nutrients Are Best Where? Applied Mathematics Takes On Biodiversity

It sounds like common sense to say the level of nutrients in soil determines how many different kinds of plants and trees can thrive in an ecosystem, but it's only now that mathematicians have modelled all the different possible relationships between ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 10 2008 - 3:55pm

TLM- Old Techniques Provide A New Approach To Invisibility

Invisibility once belonged squarely in the realm of science fiction but in the last few years advancements in metamaterials have made it an exciting possibility, though not yet in the range of normal human vision or on a cost-effective basis. Scientists in ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 14 2008 - 10:14am

Inflation Celebration!

Alan Guth’s Inflation Theory is a pioneering work. Hitherto, cosmologists had only defined what the big bang actually was without addressing the reasons for the event. Before, the inflation theory, there were several loopholes in the big bang model. In fac ...

Blog Post - Usman Anwer - Oct 22 2008 - 10:37pm

Risk Understanding: NASA gets it!

Today, Sept. 19, 2008 is the major sign that NASA finally gets it! Risk understanding has arrived at NASA with the move of the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the launch pad. This is the first time that NASA has had a space shuttle in a rescue mode. NASA gets i ...

Blog Post - Hatice Cullingford - Oct 22 2008 - 10:29pm

Quantum Chaos Gets Cracked- Quantum Unique Ergodicity (QUE) Conjecture Proven

In a seminar co-organized by Stanford University and the American Institute of Mathematics, Kannam Soundararajan, Professor of Mathematics, announced that he and Roman Holowinsky have proven a significant version of the quantum unique ergodicity (QUE) con ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 10 2008 - 12:43am

Math- 59 Percent Chance The Tampa Bay Devil Rays Will Win The World Series

New Jersey Institute of Technology professor Bruce Bukiet, a mathematician who has applied mathematical modeling techniques to the dynamics of scoring in baseball, has computed the probability of the Rays and Phillies winning the World Series now that the ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 20 2008 - 12:27pm

Economics Professors Predict Barack Obama Will Win Presidential Election With 52 Percent Of The Vote

Based on past elections and economic factors, two professors at the University of Oregon predict that Senator Barack Obama will win the presidential election by a 52 to 48 margin. In the paper "A Disaggregate Approach to Economic Models of Voting in U ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 25 2008 - 4:48pm

Cracked: 30 Year-Old Cryptography System

Dublin City University (DCU) researchers, Neill Costigan, PhD student at DCU and funded by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and Prof Michael Scott member of the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)-funded Shannon Inst ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 28 2008 - 1:50pm