Mathematics

Reading Robert Walker's article on what extraterrestrial mathematics might look like has the wheels in my head a'turning.  We live in a digital civilization, one that specifically evolved toward…

The Jacobi iterative method, a 169-year-old math strategy, may soon get a new lease on life. Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, a prominent German mathematician, unveiled it in 1845 as a way to solve systems…

When I was five years old I used to be sort of an attraction to relatives. One of my mother's brothers is an engineer, and he was amazed by my ability to do complex calculations by heart. But to me…

Cell migration, which is involved in wound healing, cancer and tumor growth, and embryonic growth and development, has been a topic of interest to mathematicians and biologists for decades.  In…

It's often said that if we do make contact with Extra Terrestrials (ETs), e.g. detect a radio transmission from a distant galaxy through SETI, that maths would be one of the few things we would have…

What do you get when you mix theorists in computer science with evolutionary biologists? You get an algorithm to explain sex. A fascinating mystery of evolution is how sexual recombination and…

What did USC biomedical engineering assistant professor Megan McCain think when she first saw a real human heart, with all of those thin valves that have to open and close every second of our lives…

I'd like to share some of the amazing range of rhythms you can find, linking music and maths, some discovered only in the last few years. These include: fibonacci gamelan patterns - highly structured…

The modern world of Big Data increasingly requires knowledge of statistics and biologists are scrambling to master that along with all of the expertise needed to solve mysteries of nature. A new…

What ties together Lissajous knots, the harmonic polyrhythms of Theremin's rhythmicon, and a way of adding sounds to Pendulum waves? And do they have healing properties? And what is the musical…