Mathematics news

Researcher to track spread of disease, malware and power outages

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Feb 04, 2010 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

An assistant professor with the Virginia Tech College of Engineering has won a $750,000 federal grant to formulate a mathematical framework that can track the spread of pandemics among populations and malware ...

Spherical cows help to dump metabolism law: 3/4-power law is actually 2/3

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Feb 03, 2010 | 4.6 / 5 (14) | 6 |

(PhysOrg.com) -- Apparently, the mysterious "3/4 law of metabolism" -- proposed by Max Kleiber in 1932, printed in biology textbooks for decades, explained theoretically in Science in 1997 and described in a 2000 essay in Nat ...

Nonlinear thinker: Making sense of previously insoluble problems

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Jan 29, 2010 | 4.7 / 5 (21) | 5 |

If an airplane is cruising along and raises the flaps on its wings a degree or two, it will tilt upward. If it raises the flaps twice as much, it will tilt upward about twice as much. But if it tilts upward ...

Predicting insurgent attacks with a mathematical model

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Dec 17, 2009 | 4.1 / 5 (7) | 2

When bombs and bullets left 37 dead during Friday prayers at a mosque in Pakistan, earlier this month, the insurgency was using the element of surprise. Unpredictability is the hallmark of modern insurgent attacks such as ...

Researcher develops formula that can ID music industry payola

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Dec 15, 2009 | 4 / 5 (1) | 0

A University at Buffalo researcher has invented a statistical method that can detect payola-like corruption in the music industry, a system that gives law enforcement an inexpensive statistical guide to identify potential ...

Their infinite wisdom

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Dec 14, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (15) | 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- Hotel guests come and go. But in the first decade of the 1900s, a pair of frequent Russian visitors to the Hotel Parisiana, near the Sorbonne on Paris' Left Bank, stood out vividly. The children ...

Scientist creates formula for perfect parking

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Dec 11, 2009 | 3.4 / 5 (10) | 9

(PhysOrg.com) -- Forget roasting a textbook turkey or perfect present-wrapping this month. The real test of Britons’ mettle will come as we try to park in tight spots on busy roads, with 35 million of us heading ...

Mathematical models key to tracking gossip, terrorists

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Dec 09, 2009 | 3.4 / 5 (5) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Thanks to the Internet and online social networks (OSNs) news and gossip now spread literally like wildfire -- uncontrollably and seemingly without any order. But according to one Ryerson ...

Creativity in mathematics

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Dec 08, 2009 | 4 / 5 (3) | 0

"Mathematics links Art and Science in one great enterprise, the human attempt to make sense of the universe." So writes Abel Prizewinner and Fields Medalist Sir Michael F. Atiyah in the January 2010 Notices of the American Ma ...

Home Field Advantage Often Overestimated In College Football

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Dec 01, 2009 | not rated yet | 0

This year, many of college football's biggest rivalry games take place over Thanksgiving weekend. A win earns bragging rights for the year. Visiting teams are often thought to be at a considerable disadvantage, ...

Explained: The Discrete Fourier Transform

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Nov 25, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (36) | 9

(PhysOrg.com) -- In 1811, Joseph Fourier, the 43-year-old prefect of the French district of Isčre, entered a competition in heat research sponsored by the French Academy of Sciences. The paper he submitted ...

Biology, training and profit sharing make best traders

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Nov 25, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (2) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cambridge researchers have identified a group of traders consistently able to outperform the market, even during the credit crisis.

In College Football, Home Field Advantage Often Overestimated

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Nov 24, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (2) | 0

This year, many of college football's biggest rivalry games take place over Thanksgiving weekend. A win earns bragging rights for the year. Visiting teams are often thought to be at a considerable disadvantage, especially ...

The cause behind the characteristic shape of a long leaf revealed

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Nov 23, 2009 | 5 / 5 (3) | 0

Applied mathematicians dissected the morphology of the plantain lily (Hosta lancifolia), a characteristic long leaf with a saddle-like arc midsection and closely packed ripples along the edges. The simple ...

Active hearing process in mosquitoes

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Nov 20, 2009 | 4 / 5 (1) | 0

A mathematical model has explained some of the remarkable features of mosquito hearing. In particular, the male can hear the faintest beats of the female's wings and yet is not deafened by loud noises.

Mathematics prize goes to University of Chicago's Hannah Alpert

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Nov 18, 2009 | 4 / 5 (5) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Association for Women in Mathematics has named Hannah Alpert, a third-year mathematics major at the University of Chicago, a co-winner of the 2010 Alice T. Schafer Prize for excellence in mathematics ...

Putting math problems in proper order

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Nov 17, 2009 | 5 / 5 (5) | 0

Mathematics is driven by the quest to solve problems and today the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) announces a new tool to help attack those questions. Research problems can take decades or centuries to answer, with ...

Underground lines that bypass monuments

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Nov 11, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

A team of mathematicians from the Engineering and Architecture Schools of the University of Seville has created a method to design underground lines whereby a city's historical buildings are unaffected. The ...