Researchers from King’s College London have provided the first experimental evidence confirming a great British mathematician’s theory of how biological patterns such as tiger stripes or leopard spots are formed. The study not only demonstrates a mechanism which is likely to be widely relevant in vertebrate development, but also provides confidence that chemicals called morphogens,…
We are afloat on a hidden ocean of equations. They are at work in transport, the financial system, health and crime prevention and detection, communications, food, water, heating and lighting. Step into the shower and you benefit from equations used to regulate the water supply. Your breakfast cereal comes from crops that were bred with…
The US financial markets have suffered over 18,000 extreme price changes caused by ultrafast trading, according to a new study of market data between 2006 and 2011. This kind of trading appears to generate emergent behavior that has nothing to do with the actual value of a company. Instead, these events are unavoidable properties of…
A suite of artificial intelligence algorithms may become the ultimate chemistry set. Software can now quickly predict a property of molecules from their theoretical structure. Similar advances should allow chemists to design new molecules on computers instead of by lengthy trial-and-error. Our physical understanding of the macroscopic world is so good that everything from bridges…
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 brought an influx of Soviet mathematicians to U.S. institutions, and those scholars’ differing areas of specialization have changed the way math is studied and taught in this country, according to new research by University of Notre Dame Economist Kirk Doran and George Borjas from Harvard University. Results…
Unemployment time series in Spain behave in a chaotic way according to a study at the University of Seville. Such chaos demonstrates the complex and unpredictable nature of the Spanish labour market in the long run. However, short term patterns can be predicted using complex mathematical models.
After a short spell on the rocks, a mathematically elegant view of the universe is back in vogue. Recent hints of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider help explain why we have not seen evidence for the beautiful theory of supersymmetry yet—and point to fresh ways to focus the search.
The empty set may seem a bit feeble, but appearances deceive; it provides a vital building block for the whole of mathematics.