100-year-old deathbed dreams of mathematician proved true | Fox News

100-year-old deathbed dreams of mathematician proved true | Fox News: "While on his death bed, the brilliant Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan cryptically wrote down functions he said came to him in dreams, with a hunch about how they behaved. Now 100 years later, researchers say they've proved he was right.

'We've solved the problems from his last mysterious letters. For people who work in this area of math, the problem has been open for 90 years,' Emory University mathematician Ken Ono said."

Mathematical proof reveals magic of Ramanujan's genius - physics-math - 08 November 2012 - New Scientist

Mathematical proof reveals magic of Ramanujan's genius - physics-math - 08 November 2012 - New Scientist: "PROOFS are the currency of mathematics, but Srinivasa Ramanujan, one of the all-time great mathematicians, often managed to skip them. Now a proof has been found for a connection that he seemed to mysteriously intuit between two types of mathematical function.

The proof deepens the intrigue surrounding the workings of Ramanujan's enigmatic mind. It may also help physicists learn more about black holes - even though these objects were virtually unknown during the Indian mathematician's lifetime.

Born in 1887 in Erode, Tamil Nadu, Ramanujan was self-taught and worked in almost complete isolation from the mathematical community of his time. Described as a raw genius, he independently rediscovered many existing results, as well as making his own unique contributions, believing his inspiration came from the Hindu goddess Namagiri. But he is also known for his unusual style, often leaping from insight to insight without formally proving the logical steps in between. 'His ideas as to what constituted a mathematical proof were of the most shadowy description,' said G. H.Hardy (pictured, far right), Ramanujan's mentor and one of his few collaborators."

Supercomputing to solve a superproblem in mathematics | News | R&D Magazine

Supercomputing to solve a superproblem in mathematics | News | R&D Magazine: "A world-famous mathematician responsible for solving one of the subject's most challenging problems has published his latest work as a University of Leicester research report.     This follows the visit that famed mathematician Yuri Matiyasevich made to the Department of Mathematics where he talked about his pioneering work. He visited UK by invitation of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.     In 1900, twenty-three unsolved mathematical problems, known as Hilbert's Problems, were compiled as a definitive list by mathematician David Hilbert.     A century later, the seven most important unsolved mathematical problems to date, known as the 'Millennium Problems', were listed by the Clay Mathematics Institute. Solving one of these Millennium Problems has a reward of US $1,000,000, and so far only one has been resolved, namely the famous Poincare Conjecture, which only recently was verified by G. Perelman.     Yuri Matiyasevich found a negative solution to one of Hilbert's problems. Now, he's working on the more challenging of maths problems—and the only one that appears on both lists—Riemann's zeta function hypothesis.     In his presentation at the University, Matiyasevich discussed Riemann's hypothesis, a conjecture so important and so difficult to prove that even Hilbert himself commented: 'If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?'"

Numberplay: The 13-Link Chain Puzzle

Numberplay: The 13-Link Chain Puzzle - NYTimes.com: "Mr. Jones has two children. The older child is a girl. What is the probability that both children are girls? Mr. Smith has two children. At least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys?"

Three Ways I've Simplified My Life Using Pen and Paper Instead of Technology

Three Ways I've Simplified My Life Using Pen and Paper Instead of Technology: "Technology is awesome. With a smartphone in your pocket and a laptop on your desk, you only need to remember which programs you're using as your external brain. While the bulk of those processes work great for me—I'm still a die-hard pen and paper addict. Here's why."

Flexagon but Not Forgotten: Celebrating Martin Gardner’s Birthday | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network

Flexagon but Not Forgotten: Celebrating Martin Gardner’s Birthday | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network: "October 21 is the anniversary of Martin Gardner’s birth. Gardner (1914-2010) is a legend in recreational (and professional) mathematics circles. Although he had little mathematical training, his 1956-1981 Scientific American column ‘Mathematical Games’ has had a huge impact on the way people view math. In a Science Talk podcast shortly after Gardner’s death, Douglas Hofstadter, author of the popular math book Gödel, Escher, Bach, said that for himself and many others, ‘Scientific American was just the wrapping for Martin Gardner’s column.’"

Mathgen paper accepted! | That's Mathematics!

Mathgen paper accepted! | That's Mathematics!: "Mathgen paper accepted! Posted on September 14, 2012 I’m pleased to announce that Mathgen has had its first randomly-generated paper accepted by a reputable journal!"

Mathgen: Randomly generated math papers

Mathgen: Randomly generated math papers: "Produce your own math paper, full of research-level, professionally formatted nonsense! Just enter your name and those of up to 3 'co-authors'."

Government Releases More Declassified Flying Saucer Docs - Popular Mechanics

Government Releases More Declassified Flying Saucer Docs - Popular Mechanics: "The staff at the National Declassification Center in College Park, Md., knew they found something interesting when they cracked open a cardboard box and saw cutaway schematics of flying saucers printed on the pages. The pages describe an Air Force flying saucer program that started in the mid-1950s and ended in 1961. In the upper right hand of each page was the icon of a flying disc stamped over a red arrow, the insignia of Project 1794. "

Is lightspeed really a limit?

Is lightspeed really a limit? • The Register: "We don’t (yet) have any way to test this, but University of Adelaide applied mathematicians are suggesting that an extended version of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity also holds true for velocities beyond lightspeed.

One of the main predictions of Special Relativity is that the speed of light is treated as an absolute cosmic speed limit, the line which can never be crossed; and even the notorious ‘faster-than-light neutrino’ incident in 2011 has left the theory intact as one of the most robust in physics.

However, during the speculation that surrounded the neutrino discussion last year1, the University of Adelaide’s Professor Jim Hill and Dr Barry Cox considered the question of how the mathematical contradictions posed by a faster-than-light particle could be aligned with Special Relativity.

Their solution, which Professor Hill discussed with The Register,2 rested on ignoring the speed of light’s status as an absolute limit, and instead, using the information where the relative velocity of two observers is infinite."

Understanding Shakespeare

Understanding Shakespeare / Approaches: "The goal of this approach was to provide an overview of the entire play by showing its text through a collection of the most frequently used words for each character. A scene is represented by a block of text and scaled relatively according to its number of words. Characters are ordered by appearance from left to right throughout the play. The major character’s speeches are highlighted to illustrate their amounts of spoken words as compared to the rest of the play."

Hubble astronomers capture deepest view yet of night sky

Hubble astronomers capture deepest view yet of night sky | Science | guardian.co.uk: "Piecing together 10 years of Hubble space telescope images, astronomers on Tuesday unveiled the deepest view yet of a small sliver of the night sky, revealing a kaleidoscope of galaxies and other celestial objects.

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, adds another 5,500 galaxies to Hubble's 2003 and 2004 view into a tiny patch of the farthest universe.

Hubble returned to the same target more than 50 times over the past decade, racking up an additional 2m seconds of exposure time. The most distant objects found date back to about 500m years after the universe's formation some 13.7bn years ago.

The early universe was a violent place, filled with colliding and merging galaxies that radiate in bright blue light, a telltale sign of new star formation.

The Hubble portrait also shows brilliantly shining spiral galaxies and older red fuzzy galaxies whose star-formation days are over.

More than 2,000 images of the same field, taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and its near-infrared Wide Field Camera 3, were combined to form the XDF.

'XDF is the deepest image of the sky ever obtained,' astronomer Garth Illingworth, with the University of California at Santa Cruz, said in a statement. 'It allows us to explore further back in time than ever before.'"

Michael Perkins: Visualizing Hamlet

Michael Perkins: Visualizing Hamlet: "A TextArc is a visual representation of a text. In a TextArc analysis, the full text of a work is drawn in a tiny, one pixel tall line in two concentric spirals. Each distinct word is also drawn in a readable font at a location that is the average of all the actual word locations. Each of the readable words is then attached to the tiny words that occur in the text by lines.  This provides a graphical representation of the word's distribution in the text. "

'Warp drive' may be more feasible than thought

'Warp drive' may be more feasible than thought, scientists say | Fox News: "A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.

A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.

Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially brining the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.

'There is hope,' Harold 'Sonny' White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight."

Planes write out pi over the skies of San Francisco Bay Area

Planes write out pi over the skies of San Francisco Bay Area | Crave - CNET: "Many denizens of the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley noticed a long series of cloudy numbers in the skies around noon on Wednesday, September 12. No, their coffee wasn't spiked with hallucinogens. The ephemeral event, known as Pi in the Sky, utilized five aircraft with dot-matrix skywriting technology to write out a thousand numbers of the beloved mathematical constant pi (3.14159..) at a 10,000-foot altitude. If that wasn't impressive enough, the numerals of pi written in the sky each stood nearly a quarter-mile tall, stretched for a 100-mile loop, and undoubtedly caused mass inspiration and confusion all at once."

ABC Proof Could Be Mathematical Jackpot - ScienceNOW

ABC Proof Could Be Mathematical Jackpot - ScienceNOW: "You can't always solve a mathematical problem by reducing it to something you've already solved. Sometimes, you need to invent an entirely new field of mathematics. Last month, Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University in Japan announced that a new field he's been developing for several years—which he calls Inter-universal Teichmüller theory—has proved a famous conjecture in number theory known as the 'abc conjecture.' But the abc conjecture is only the beginning: If Mochizuki's theory proves correct, it will settle a raft of open problems in number theory and other branches of math."

Ivars Peterson's MathTrek - The Amazing ABC Conjecture

Ivars Peterson's MathTrek - The Amazing ABC Conjecture: "In number theory, straightforward, reasonable questions are remarkably easy to ask, yet many of these questions are surprisingly difficult or even impossible to answer.

Fermat's last theorem, for instance, involves an equation of the form x^n + y^n = z^n. More than 300 years ago, Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) conjectured that the equation has no solution if x, y, and z are all positive integers and n is a whole number greater than 2. Andrew J. Wiles of Princeton University finally proved Fermat's conjecture in 1994.

In order to prove the theorem, Wiles had to draw on and extend several ideas at the core of modern mathematics. In particular, he tackled the Shimura-Taniyama-Weil conjecture, which provides links between the branches of mathematics known as algebraic geometry and complex analysis.

That conjecture dates back to 1955, when it was published in Japanese as a research problem by the late Yutaka Taniyama. Goro Shimura of Princeton and Andre Weil of the Institute for Advanced Study provided key insights in formulating the conjecture, which proposes a special kind of equivalence between the mathematics of objects called elliptic curves and the mathematics of certain motions in space.

The equation of Fermat's last theorem is one example of a type known as a Diophantine equation -- an algebraic expression of several variables whose solutions are required to be rational numbers (either whole numbers or fractions, which are ratios of whole numbers). These equations are named for the mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria, who discussed such problems in his book Arithmetica.

In fact, it was in the margin of a page of a Latin translation of Arithmetica that Fermat first set down the proposition that came to be known as Fermat's last theorem. He had studied the book closely, making marginal notes in his copy. After Fermat's death, his son published a new edition of Arithmetica that included the notes in an appendix.

Interestingly, the Wiles proof of Fermat's last theorem was a by-product of his deep inroads into proving the Shimura-Taniyama-Weil conjecture. Now, the Wiles effort could help point the way to a general theory of three-variable Diophantine equations. Historically, mathematicians have always had to state and solve such problems on a case-by-case basis. An overarching theory would represent a tremendous advance."

Mathematician Claims Proof of Connection between Prime Numbers

Mathematician Claims Proof of Connection between Prime Numbers | LiveScience: "A Japanese mathematician claims to have the proof for the ABC conjecture, a statement about the relationship between prime numbers that has been called the most important unsolved problem in number theory.

If Shinichi Mochizuki's 500-page proof stands up to scrutiny, mathematicians say it will represent one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of the twenty-first century. The proof will also have ramifications all over mathematics, and even in the real-world field of data encryption."

Make It So!

The History of the Floppy Disk - Input Output

The History of the Floppy Disk - Input Output: "In the fall of 1977, I experimented with a newfangled PC, a Radio Shack TRS-80. For data storage it used—I kid you not—a cassette tape player. Tape had a long history with computing; I had used the IBM 2420 9-track tape system on IBM 360/370 mainframes to load software and to back-up data. Magnetic tape was common for storage in pre-personal computing days, but it had two main annoyances: it held tiny amounts of data, and it was slower than a slug on a cold spring morning. There had to be something better, for those of us excited about technology. And there was: the floppy disk."

Scientists bend light the ‘wrong’ way

Scientists bend light the ‘wrong’ way | Fox News: "Materials that bend light in unnatural ways are often touted as the path to futuristic technologies such as cloaking devices and super-powered lenses. But such materials are hard to make, but scientists have now discovered a simpler way using electrons.

At Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, a team of researchers led by Hosang Yoon and Donhee Ham showed that using ordinary semiconductors and confining electrons to a two-dimensional plane they could make a material with a so-called negative refractive index that bends radio waves the ‘wrong’ way, and does so a hundred times better than other methods.

A refractive index is a measure of how much a material bends light. An index of 1 means no bending at all. Diamonds have that nice prism effect because they have an index of about 2.42, whereas air bends light hardly at all. Light – and that includes radio waves – bends because as it travels through anything other than a vacuum it slows down. Most materials always have a positive refractive index. That means that if light is approaching a denser, higher-index material from a lower-index one it gets bent to the right if the denser stuff is on that same side.

This all changes if the material has a negative index – as metamaterials do. In that case, the bend would be to the left. An object surrounded by a metamaterial would scatter the light away from it, making it invisible."

Hans Camenzind, 555 timer inventor, dies

Hans Camenzind, 555 timer inventor, dies: "Hans Camenzind, the Swiss emigre analog guru who invented one of the most successful circuits in electronics history and introduced the concept of phase-locked loop to IC design, passed away in his sleep at the age of 78. The news was reported today (Aug. 15) by Sergio Franco, an emeritus professor of electrical engineering at San Francisco State University in an email.

Camenzind came to the United States in 1960 and worked for several years at some of the storied names of the newly developing semiconductor industry: Transitron, Tyco Semiconductor, and Signetics.

In 1971 he joined the ranks of entrepreneurs by founding InterDesign, a company specializing in semi-custom integrated circuit design. It was there, working under a contract with Signetics, that he invented the 555 timer.  Signetics commercialized the device in 1972, and it went on to become one of the most successful in the industry's history. The device, used in oscillator, pulse-generation and other applications, is still widely used today. Versions of the device have been or are still made by dozens of major semiconductor vendors, including Texas Instruments, Intersil, Maxim, Avago, Exar, Fairchild, NXP and STMicroelectronics. "

U.S. Has Life of Pi as Population Hits Math Milestone

U.S. Has Life of Pi as Population Hits Math Milestone - NYTimes.com: "Figuring out the number of American residents got as easy as pi on Tuesday as the United States touched a rare mathematical and demographic milestone.

The Census Bureau said that the United States reached 314,159,265 residents, or the mathematical ratio pi times 100 million, shortly after 2:29 p.m. EDT (1829 GMT)."

NASA upgrades Mars Curiosity software ... from 350M miles away

NASA upgrades Mars Curiosity software ... from 350M miles away - Computerworld: "Picture doing a remote software upgrade. Now picture doing it when the machine you're upgrading is a robotic rover sitting 350 million miles away, on the surface of Mars.

That's what a team of programmers and engineers at NASA are dealing with as they get ready to download a new version of the flight software on the Mars rover Curiosity, which landed safely on the Red Planet earlier this week.

This photo is part of the first full-color 360-degree image taken by Curiosity at the Gale Crater landing site. 'We need to take a whole series of steps to make that software active,' said Steve Scandore, a senior flight software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 'You have to imagine that if something goes wrong with this, it could be the last time you hear from the rover.'

'It has to work,' he told Computerworld. 'You don't' want to be known as the guy doing the last activity on the rover before you lose contact.'"

23 Mathematical Challenges And YOU | Armed with Science

23 Mathematical Challenges And YOU | Armed with Science: "It’s the ninth prime number. An Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part and real part of the form 3n − 1.  The first prime P for which unique factorization of cyclotomic integers based on the Pth root of unity breaks down.

It’s also the number of mathematical challenges listed here that could land you a spot in the history books (if you solve one – or more – of them).

Discovering novel mathematics will enable the development of new tools to change the way the DoD approaches analysis, modeling and prediction, new materials and physical and biological sciences.  The 23 Mathematical Challenges program involves individual researchers and small teams who are addressing one or more of the following 23 mathematical challenges."

The Chaos Within Sudoku - A Richter Scale

The Chaos Within Sudoku - A Richter Scale: "Sudoku is a fun problem, but how hard is any particular puzzle? Now we have the answer based on measuring the chaos inherent in a grid. This gives a Richter scale for Sudoku. A pair of computer scientists from the  Babes-Bolyai University (Romania) and the University of Notre Dame (USA) have made some remarkable connections between Sudoku, the classic k-SAT problem, and the even more classic non-linear continuous dynamics.  But before we go into the detail let's look at what this means for Sudoku enthusiasts. Maria Ercsey-Ravasz and Zoltan Toroczkai have devised a scale that provides an accurate determination of a Sudoku puzzle's hardness. So when you encounter a puzzle labelled hard and you find it easy all you need to do is to compute its n, a co-efficient that measures the hardness of the problem."

Please Don’t Call It Trash-80

Please Don’t Call It Trash-80: A 35th Anniversary Salute to Radio Shack’s TRS-80 | Techland | TIME.com: "Quick — name the most important personal computer of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Those of you who mentioned the legendary Apple II–that’s fine. I respect your decision. Forced to think objectively in 2012, I may even agree. But if you just named Radio Shack’s TRS-80, you made me smile.

Your choice is entirely defensible. And back in the TRS-80′s heyday, I not only would have agreed with it but would have vehemently opposed any other candidate.

Gadget-retailing giant Radio Shack unveiled the TRS-80 Model I at a press conference at New York’s Warwick Hotel 35 years ago today, on August 3, 1977. (The company didn’t call it the Model I at the time: Like Apple’s Apple I, it only became the I after a II was introduced.)

It wasn’t the city’s biggest news story that day. That would be the bombings of two office buildings by Puerto Rican terrorist group FALN, which killed one man and prompted the evacuation of 100,000 people from other buildings, including the Empire State Building and both towers of the World Trade Center. But it was a big moment in the burgeoning microcomputer industry: The TRS-80, which began shipping in September, was one of 1977′s trinity of early consumer PCs, along with the Apple II and Commodore’s PET 2001."

Historian: Mass violence to erupt in 2020, mathematical pattern suggests

Open Source Community: Historian: Mass violence to erupt in 2020, mathematical pattern suggests: "Historian Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut, has assumed the role of the world's biggest bummer with his recent prediction that widespread violence will erupt worldwide sometime around the year 2020, as profiled in this recent feature in Nature. What has many people worried is that he's backing up this premonition with a mathematical formula, known as cliodynamics.

Turchin is credited with coining the term cliodynamics, which is the study of historical mathematical data like population figures and global economic performance to identify patterns of similar behavior. Turchin's studies point to a cycle in which society at large becomes engulfed in widespread violence every 50 years.

The current pattern dates back at least to 1870, when economic disparity in the U.S. led to urban violence, and follows the 50-year cycle to the anti-Communist fervor and race riots around 1920, followed by the political assassinations, terrorist attacks and domestic violence in 1970, Turchin told Nature. By that logic, Turchin believes we should circle the year 2020 on our calendars as the year when we start locking our doors.

‘I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,’ he told Nature."

A Mathematical View of Track and Field World Records

A Mathematical View of Track and Field World Records | Inside Science: "A mathematician has developed a new model that can estimate which track and field world records are the most likely to be broken.

Brian Godsey, a graduate student in mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, recently published a paper including computations of the likelihood of record-setting performances in 48 different men's and women's track and field events during this calendar year.

Godsey's paper did not directly address the likelihood of an athlete setting a track and field world record at the 2012 London Olympics, but his analysis suggests that viewers should keep a close watch on the men's 110-meter hurdles and three women's events, the 5,000-meter and 3000-meter steeplechase races, as wells as the  hammer throw. There is a 95 percent chance that the women's steeplechase record will be broken this year, Godsey wrote in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.

Godsey gives competitors a better-than-10 percent chance of besting the world record in 22 events during this calendar year, 18 of which will be contested at the Olympics. Numerous records, however, seem far out of reach.

This year, no woman has come within 5 seconds of the 3:50.46 record for the 1500-meter run, set in 1993 by Qu Yunxia of China. Godsey predicted a less than one one-hundredth of a percent chance of the record falling in 2012. Most of the event's top historical times are from the 1980s and 1990s. That's also true for numerous other events. Performances from the 1980s currently hold the record in 13 of the events Godsey reviewed."

Flags from Apollo moon landing still standing

Flags from Apollo moon landing still standing, photos reveal | Fox News: "An enduring question ever since the manned moon landings of the 1960s has been: Are the flags planted by the astronauts still standing?

Now, lunar scientists say the verdict is in from the latest photos of the moon taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC): Most do, in fact, still stand.

'From the LROC images it is now certain that the American flags are still standing and casting shadows at all of the sites, except Apollo 11,' LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson wrote in a blog post today (July 27). 'Astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported that the flag was blown over by the exhaust from the ascent engine during liftoff of Apollo 11, and it looks like he was correct!'"

Mathematicians Encrypt Images Using Mathematics of Sudoku - Technology Review

Mathematicians Encrypt Images Using Mathematics of Sudoku - Technology Review: "The number-placement puzzle, Sudoku, consists of a 9 x 9 grid which must be filled using the digits 1 to 9. 

However, there are several additional constraints. Each digit can only appear once in each column, once in each row and once in each of the nine 3 x 3 blocks that make up the grid. A Soduko solution grid is shown below. Players are given a number of digits from the solution to get the game started. 

Sudoku has thrown up a number of interesting challenges for mathematicians. Earlier this year, for example, we looked at how mathematicians had solved the 'minimum Sudoku problem' to find the smallest number of clues that leads to a unique solution (answer, 17).  

Today, Yue Wu at Tufts University in Medford and a couple of buddies use Sudoku to tackle a different problem--how to encrypt images before sending them. 

These guys say that the special properties of Sudoku grids lead to an entirely new type of matrix mathematics that they've exploited to scramble images. "

Wolfram|Alpha Blog : “Helm, Warp One, Engage!” Calculating Warp Speed Factors

Wolfram|Alpha Blog : “Helm, Warp One, Engage!” Calculating Warp Speed Factors: "Wolfram|Alpha’s goal is to cover all things computational, from mathematics and the sciences to movies and sports. But the set of all things computable encompasses areas outside of the real world as well. With the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation coming up, we can now compute the relationship between warp factors and the speed of light. Warp factors describe the speed for a spaceship, such as the Starship Enterprise, traveling faster than the speed of light within the Star Trek universe. In the real world, even approaching the speed of light is outside of our current capabilities. To get the sense of energies involved, we can start with the mass of the space shuttle. This comparatively small spaceship turns out to weigh about 81,000 kilograms. The kinetic energy of 81,000 kilograms at 0.99999c is 1.621*10^24 joules. This in turn is about 42 times the world’s estimated fossil fuel reserves as of 2003. So, for now, even fast subluminal velocities are outside of our reach. But in Star Trek, faster than light travel is a well developed technology. However, exact conversion of warp factor into multiples of the speed of light is somewhat complicated by the fact that the writers often neglected the established formulas in their scripts and that there are two versions of the formula used over the course of the various Star Trek series. The first formula was introduced in the original series’ writer’s guide by Gene Roddenberry, and was used for the original series. This the default formula used by Wolfram|Alpha when asked about warp factors such as warp factor 3."

iphone 4 4s case Spock Ear Design STAR TREK by Graphicpals

iphone 4 4s case Spock Ear Design STAR TREK by Graphicpals: "The prefect gift for the Star Trek fan turn you iphone 4/4s into a Vulcan inspired ear to make people look twice. Please let us know if you would like us to customize this case for you.

This image is printed to order in our shop using special heat activated inks that print to a high gloss permanent finish on special plates that are made in the U.S.A. that wont fade or peel off.

The case is made of a silicone rubber that conforms to the iphone for a nice snug fit which will not easily come off. We prefer the silicone style over the plastic style because the plastic cases tend to crack very easy, plus the rubber styles offer better protection from impact."

A wrinkle in space-time

A wrinkle in space-time: "Mathematicians at UC Davis have come up with a new way to crinkle up the fabric of space-time - at least in theory. 'We show that space-time cannot be locally flat at a point where two shock waves collide,' said Blake Temple, professor of mathematics at UC Davis. 'This is a new kind of singularity in general relativity.'"

Dolphins appear to do nonlinear mathematics - Technology & science - Science - DiscoveryNews.com - NBCNews.com

Dolphins appear to do nonlinear mathematics - Technology & science - Science - DiscoveryNews.com - NBCNews.com: "Dolphins may use complex nonlinear mathematics when hunting, according to a new study that suggests these brainy marine mammals could be far more skilled at math than was ever thought possible before. Inspiration for the new study, published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society A, came after lead author Tim Leighton watched an episode of the Discovery Channel's 'Blue Planet' series and saw dolphins blowing multiple tiny bubbles around prey as they hunted. 'I immediately got hooked, because I knew that no man-made sonar would be able to operate in such bubble water,' explained Leighton, a professor of ultrasonics and underwater acoustics at the University of Southampton, where he is also an associate dean.

'These dolphins were either 'blinding' their most spectacular sensory apparatus when hunting — which would be odd, though they still have sight to reply on — or they have a sonar that can do what human sonar cannot. ... Perhaps they have something amazing,' he added. Leighton and colleagues Paul White and student Gim Hwa Chua set out to determine what the amazing ability might be. They started by modeling the types of echolocation pulses that dolphins emit. The researchers processed them using nonlinear mathematics instead of the standard way of processing sonar returns. The technique worked, and could explain how dolphins achieve hunting success with bubbles. The math involved is complex. Essentially it relies upon sending out pulses that vary in amplitude. The first may have a value of 1, while the second is one-third that amplitude. 'So, provided the dolphin remembers what the ratios of the two pulses were, and can multiply the second echo by that and add the echoes together, it can make the fish 'visible' to its sonar,' Leighton told Discovery News. 'This is detection enhancement.'"

“Game of Thrones” For Mathgeeks

“Game of Thrones” For Math Geeks - SF Signal – A Speculative Fiction Blog: "I loves me some charts…especially when they applied to genre shows.

Here are some interesting stats on Game of Thrones, both book and film, that give one an interesting perspective…"

Harmony 'driven by mathematical ratios'

Harmony 'driven by mathematical ratios' - The Irish Times - Mon, Jul 16, 2012: "It was apparent to mathematicians going back to Ancient Greece that musical harmony was fundamentally driven by mathematical ratios.

The public are generally unaware that the ‘three chords trick’ which is the basis of all popular music is an idea going back to the father of geometry Pythagoras.

The Greeks established that the first note in the scale and the fourth and fifth are the most harmonious together and they are governed by ratios.

For instance a standard A has a pitch of 440hz, the fourth note a D has a pitch which is three-quarters of that at 330hz and the E note or fifth is two-thirds of the pitch of the A at 293.33hz. The higher A at the end of the octave is at 220hz half that of the lower A.

The ratios remain as important today as they were in Greek times."

Huge old-school video game collection sells for $1.2m

Huge old-school video game collection sells for $1.2m | Hot Topics | a Chron.com blog: "A collector of old school video games has sold a collection of thousands of games for $1.2 million.

The French video game collector named Andre had amassed a collection that included all games for most of Nintendo’s consoles, all of Sega’s and NEC’s games, which included some 7,000 individual games."

Space Images: 'Greeley Panorama' from Opportunity's Fifth Martian Winter

Space Images: 'Greeley Panorama' from Opportunity's Fifth Martian Winter (False Color) - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "This full-circle scene combines 817 images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter.

Opportunity's Pancam took the component images between the 2,811th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's Mars surface mission (Dec. 21, 2011) and Sol 2,947 (May 8, 2012). Opportunity spent those months on a northward sloped outcrop, 'Greeley Haven,' which angled the rover's solar panels toward the sun low in the northern sky during southern hemisphere winter. The outcrop's informal name is a tribute to Ronald Greeley (1939-2011), who was a member of the mission team and who taught generations of planetary scientists at Arizona State University, Tempe. The site is near the northern tip of the 'Cape York' segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater.

North is at the center of the image. South is at both ends. On the far left at the horizon is 'Rich Morris Hill.' That outcrop on Cape York was informally named in memory of John R. 'Rich' Morris (1973-2011), an aerospace engineer and musician who was a Mars rover team member and mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena.

Bright wind-blown deposits on the left are banked up against the Greeley Haven outcrop. Opportunity's tracks can be seen extending from the south, with a turn-in-place and other maneuvers evident from activities to position the rover at Greeley Haven. The tracks in some locations have exposed darker underlying soils by disturbing a thin, bright dust cover."

Texas college hacks government drone

Texas college hacks government drone — RT: "There are a lot of cool things you can do with $1,000, but scientists at an Austin, Texas college have come across one that is often overlooked: for less than a grand, how’d you like to hijack a US government drone? A group of researchers led by Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Laboratory recently succeeded in raising the eyebrows of the US government. With just around $1,000 in parts, Humphreys’ team took control of an unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the US Department of Homeland Security. After being challenged by his lab, the DHS dared Humphreys’ crew to hack into their drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did exactly that."

JetPens Blog: What Type of Pen Aficionado Are You?

JetPens Blog: What Type of Pen Aficionado Are You?: "Office supply fanatics are a diverse group. From the engineer in San Jose to the illustrator in Sao Paolo, they are united by a common language of brands, point sizes, and ink formulas. Similarly to how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator divides personalities into 16 types, I’ve divided pen lovers into 8 essential categories. Which one describes you most accurately?"

Google scientists find evidence of machine learning

Google scientists find evidence of machine learning | Cutting Edge - CNET News: "Google scientists working in the company's secretive X Labs have made great strides in using computers to simulate the human brain. Best known for inventing self-driving cars and augmented-reality eyewear, the lab created a neural network for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors and then unleashed it on the Internet. Along the way, the network taught itself to recognize cats. While the act of finding cats on the Internet doesn't sound all that challenging, the network's performance exceeded researchers' expectations, doubling its accuracy rate in identifying objects from a list of 20,000 items, according to a New York Times report. To find the cats, the team fed the network thumbnail images chosen at random from more than 10 billion YouTube videos. The results appeared to support biologists' theories that suggest that neurons in the brain are trained to identify specific objects. 'We never told it during the training, 'This is a cat,'' Google fellow Jeff Dean told the newspaper. 'It basically invented the concept of a cat.'"

Scientists struggle with mathematical details

Scientists struggle with mathematical details: "Dr Tim Fawcett and Dr Andrew Higginson, researchers in Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, found that scientific articles presenting many equations on each page are seldom referred to by other scientists. The most maths-heavy articles are referenced 50 per cent less often than those with little or no maths. Many scientists, including the celebrated theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, have worried about how mathematics will affect the impact of their work, but the Bristol study is the first to measure the extent of the problem. Dr Fawcett said: 'This is an important issue because nearly all areas of science rely on close links between mathematical theory and experimental work. If new theories are presented in a way that is off-putting to other scientists, then no one will perform the crucial experiments needed to test those theories. This presents a barrier to scientific progress.'"

How to repeat commands in OS X Terminal | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

How to repeat commands in OS X Terminal | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews: "The OS X Terminal is a commonly used utility for troubleshooting OS X, because it allows you to run custom commands and scripts for looking up information and adjusting system settings. While useful, the Terminal is intended primarily for power users who have an understanding of the UNIX underpinnings in OS X. Often when running commands in the Terminal, various iterations of the command will be executed to try different settings or perform slightly different tasks, which in the Terminal can be frustrating as it can require you type out sometimes extensively long commands over and over again."

Have lasers located lost city of gold sought by conquistadors in 1500s? | Fox News

Have lasers located lost city of gold sought by conquistadors in 1500s? | Fox News: "Underneath the thick, virgin rainforest cover in the Mosquitia region of Honduras, archaeologists have discovered ruins they think may be the lost city of Ciudad Blanca. 

Legends say the 'White City' is full of gold, which is why conquistador Hernando Cortes was among the first Ciudad Blanca seekers in the 1500s. But the method the modern researchers used was a little different from previous explorers' techniques. The modern-day researchers flew over the area in a small plane and shot billions of laser pulses at the ground, creating a 3D digital map of the topology underneath the trees."

Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot' receives US patent

Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot' receives US patent: "A side-by-side comparison of a standard flat driver's side mirror with the mirror designed by Dr. R. Andrew Hicks, mathematics professor at Drexel University. With minimal distortion, Hicks's mirror shows a much wider field of view (the wide area to the left of the silver car seen in the distance, behind the tree, in this image). Hicks's mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat mirror. Hicks's mirror received a US patent in May 2012. Credit: R. Andrew Hicks, Drexel University A side mirror that eliminates the dangerous 'blind spot' for drivers has now received a U.S. patent. The subtly curved mirror, invented by Drexel University mathematics professor Dr. R. Andrew Hicks, dramatically increases the field of view with minimal distortion."

Mysterious radiation burst recorded in tree rings

Mysterious radiation burst recorded in tree rings : Nature News & Comment: "Just over 1,200 years ago, the planet was hit by an extremely intense burst of high-energy radiation of unknown cause, scientists studying tree-ring data have found.

The radiation burst, which seems to have hit between ad 774 and ad 775, was detected by looking at the amounts of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 in tree rings that formed during the ad 775 growing season in the Northern Hemisphere. The increase in 14C levels is so clear that the scientists, led by Fusa Miyake, a cosmic-ray physicist from Nagoya University in Japan, conclude that the atmospheric level of 14C must have jumped by 1.2% over the course of no longer than a year, about 20 times more than the normal rate of variation. Their study is published online in Nature today.

'The work looks pretty solid,' says Daniel Baker, a space physicist at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado. 'Some very energetic event occurred in about ad 775.'

Related stories 'Superflares' erupt on some Sun-like stars Cosmic blasts powered by a hot glow Solar physics: Spots from rings Exactly what that event was, however, is more difficult to determine."

Mathematicians Pull An Invisible Matter Rabbit Out Of Schrödinger's Hat

Mathematicians Pull An Invisible Matter Rabbit Out Of Schrödinger's Hat: "You've read a lot about 'invisibility' over the last few years.  Mathematicians and scientists have been working on various devices that enable invisibility cloaks which shield small objects from detection by microwaves or sound waves.

An international team has devised an amplifier that can boost light, sound or other waves while hiding them inside an invisible container. As a first application, the researchers propose manipulating matter waves, which are the mathematical description of particles in quantum mechanics. The researchers envision building a quantum microscope that could capture quantum waves, the waves of the nano-world. A quantum microscope could, for example, be used to monitor electronic processes on computer chips. 

The authors dubbed their system 'Schrödinger's hat,' referring to the famed Schrödinger's cat in quantum mechanics. The name is also a nod to the ability to create something from what appears to be nothing.    A magic rabbit by a stage magician, for example.

'You can isolate and magnify what you want to see, and make the rest invisible,' said corresponding author Gunther Uhlmann, a University of Washington mathematics professor. 'You can amplify the waves tremendously. And although the wave has been magnified a lot, you still cannot see what is happening inside the container. In some sense you are doing something magical, because it looks like a particle is being created. It's like pulling something out of your hat.'"

German teen solves 300-year-old mathematical riddle

German teen solves 300-year-old mathematical riddle posed by Sir - DC Breaking Local News Weather Sports FOX 5 WTTG: "A German 16-year-old has become the first person to solve a mathematical problem posed by Sir Isaac Newton more than 300 years ago.

Shouryya Ray worked out how to calculate exactly the path of a projectile under gravity and subject to air resistance, The (London) Sunday Times reported.

The Indian-born teen said he solved the problem that had stumped mathematicians for centuries while working on a school project.

Ray won a research award for his efforts and has been labeled a genius by the German media, but he put it down to 'curiosity and schoolboy naivety.'

'When it was explained to us that the problems had no solutions, I thought to myself, 'well, there's no harm in trying,'' he said.

Ray's family moved to Germany when he was 12 after his engineer father got a job at a technical college. He said his father instilled in him a 'hunger for mathematics' and taught him calculus at the age of six.

Ray's father, Subhashis, said his son's mathematical prowess quickly outstripped his own considerable knowledge.

'He never discussed his project with me before it was finished and the mathematics he used are far beyond my reach,' he said.

Despite not speaking a word of German when he arrived, Ray will this week sit Germany's high school leaving exams, two years ahead of his peers.

Newton posed the problem, relating to the movement of projectiles through the air, in the 17th century. Mathematicians had only been able to offer partial solutions until now.

If that wasn't enough of an achievement, Ray has also solved a second problem, dealing with the collision of a body with a wall, that was posed in the 19th century.

Both problems Ray resolved are from the field of dynamics and his solutions are expected to contribute to greater precision in areas such as ballistics."

Star Trek’s Enterprise ship could be built in 20 years at a cost of $1 trillion

Engineer: Star Trek’s Enterprise ship could be built in 20 years at a cost of $1 trillion | Technology News Blog - Yahoo! News: "Whether you're a Trekkie or not, you have to admit that there's some sense of wonder toexploring the stars and trying to find life on distant planets. Of course, the U.S.S. Enterprise is a fictional ship, but have you ever put in the thought as to what it would take to actually build it, and when we could get it done if we really put in the effort? The man behind the well-researched site buildtheenterprise.org has, and he's determined that a fully functional Enterprise is only 20 years away if we put in the effort. Created by a systems and electrical engineer with 30 years' experience, the BuildTheEnterprise site sets out a very specific timeline for the research and construction of such a massive space-related undertaking. The first nine years are dedicated to research, component testing, and drawing up a number of possible blueprints. The following 11 years are dedicated to development, where components will be manufactured and launched into space for assembly. On year 20, the ship would be ready for a 'moon fly by' with full crew and supplies. The plan may seem overly ambitious, but consider that we're already using a number of gadgets that were all but predicted by the Star Trek television series. The estimated cost of building the Enterprise: about $50 billion a year for the next 20 years — $1 trillion in total. That sounds like a lot of money (because it is), but considering that the United States spent nearly that much on the controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to bail out banks in 2008, putting a trillion towards making Star Trek a reality suddenly doesn't seem as ludicrous. Yeah, it's still pretty ludicrous, but in a really cool way."

Computing experts unveil superefficient ‘inexact’ chip

Computing experts unveil superefficient ‘inexact’ chip: "Researchers have unveiled an ‘inexact’ computer chip that challenges the industry’s 50-year pursuit of accuracy. The design improves power and resource efficiency by allowing for occasional errors. Prototypes unveiled this week at the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers in Cagliari, Italy, are at least 15 times more efficient than today’s technology.

The research, which earned best-paper honors at the conference, was conducted by experts from Rice University in Houston, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Switzerland’s Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) and the University of California, Berkeley.

In terms of speed, energy consumption and size, inexact computer chips like this prototype, are about 15 times more efficient than today's microchips. ‘It is exciting to see this technology in a working chip that we can measure and validate for the first time,’ said project leader Krishna Palem, who also serves as director of the Rice-NTU Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID). ‘Our work since 2003 showed that significant gains were possible, and I am delighted that these working chips have met and even exceeded our expectations.’

ISAID is working in partnership with CSEM to create new technology that will allow next-generation inexact microchips to use a fraction of the electricity of today’s microprocessors.

‘The paper received the highest peer-review evaluation of all the Computing Frontiers submissions this year,’ said Paolo Faraboschi, the program co-chair of the ACM Computing Frontiers conference and a distinguished technologist at Hewlett Packard Laboratories. ‘Research on approximate computation matches the forward-looking charter of Computing Frontiers well, and this work opens the door to interesting energy-efficiency opportunities of using inexact hardware together with traditional processing elements.’

The concept is deceptively simple: Slash power use by allowing processing components — like hardware for adding and multiplying numbers — to make a few mistakes. By cleverly managing the probability of errors and limiting which calculations produce errors, the designers have found they can simultaneously cut energy demands and dramatically boost performance."

Edsger Dijkstra

“The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: If it is clumsy, it is not mathematics.”

Inside a mathematical proof lies literature

Inside a mathematical proof lies literature, says Stanford's Reviel Netz: "Like novelists, mathematicians are creative authors. With diagrams, symbolism, metaphor, double entendre and elements of surprise, a good proof reads like a good story.

Reviel Netz, a professor of classics and, by courtesy, of philosophy, is especially interested in exploring the literary dimensions of the textual artifacts left by the likes of Archimedes and Euclid. Netz, one of the world's preeminent experts on the works of Archimedes, sees proofs as narratives that lead the reader turn by turn through an unfolding story that ends with a mathematical solution.

In his book Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic, Netz reveals the stunning stylistic similarities between Hellenistic poetry and mathematical texts from the same era."

Leonard Nimoy set to beam up for Star Trek sequel

Leonard Nimoy set to beam up for Star Trek sequel | Celebrity Buzz | a Chron.com blog: "Leonard Nimoy is set to come out of retirement to reprise his Spock role in the new Star Trek blockbuster.

The 2009 sci-fi reboot cast younger actors as the series’ famed characters, with Zachary Quinto stepping into the role of Spock. Nimoy still featured in the hit movie as an older version of the character, but he announced in 2010 he was retiring from acting and was happy to let Quinto take the reins of his iconic hero.

But new U.S. reports have indicated that he will star in the sequel to the reboot."

A Giant Leap for Richard Nixon - WSJ.com

A Giant Leap for Richard Nixon - WSJ.com: "Imagine if President Nixon had decided to base his 1972 re-election campaign on the boast that he landed on the moon. His predecessors tried and failed for eight years. It wasn't an easy decision--what if something went wrong? But that's why you hire a president, to make those gutsy calls. Which path would George McGovern have taken?

That's analogous to President Obama's effort to campaign on the killing of Osama bin Laden. His absurd braggadocio is turning one of the few successes to occur under his leadership into a political liability."

Moore’s Law ends in 10 years, physicist claims

Moore’s Law ends in 10 years, physicist claims | Fox News: "Transistors inside new Intel CPUs unveiled last week are hundreds of times thinner than a human hair, thanks to a 22-nanometer manufacturing process that the company says ‘fuels Moore’s Law for years to come.’

Not everyone agrees.

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku believes instead that an end to Moore’s famous theory is -- at last -- in sight.

'In about 10 years or so, we will see the collapse of Moore’s Law,' said Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York (CUNY)."

First-ever image of a flat torus in 3D

Mathematics: First-ever image of a flat torus in 3D: "Just as a terrestrial globe cannot be flattened without distorting the distances, it seemed impossible to visualize abstract mathematical objects called flat tori in ordinary three-dimensional space. However, a French team of mathematicians and computer scientists has succeeded in constructing and visually representing an image of a flat torus in three-dimensional space. This is a smooth fractal, halfway between fractals and ordinary surfaces. The results are published in PNAS."

Mathematicians say magnetic fields can send particles to infinity

Mathematicians say magnetic fields can send particles to infinity | R&D Mag: "Researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) have mathematically shown that particles charged in a magnetic field can escape into infinity without ever stopping. One of the conditions is that the field is generated by current loops situated on the same plane.     At the moment this is a theoretical mathematical study, but two researchers from UCM have recently proved that, in certain conditions, magnetic fields can send particles to infinity, according to the study published in the journal Quarterly of Applied Mathematics.     "If a particle 'escapes' to infinity it means two things: that it will never stop, and "something else", Antonio Diaz-Cano, one of the authors, explained to SINC. Regarding the first, the particle can never stop, but it can be trapped, doing circles forever around a point, never leaving an enclosed space.     However, the "something else" goes beyond the established limits. "If we imagine a spherical surface with a large radius, the particle will cross the surface going away from it, however big the radius may be" the researcher declares."

Man Uses Physics to Fight $400 Traffic Ticket

Man Uses Physics to Fight $400 Traffic Ticket | NBC San Diego: "A UCSD physicist used his knowledge and a little creativity to get himself out of a $400 traffic ticket.

Dmirti Krioukov was issued a traffic ticket for failing to completely stop at a stop sign. Instead of paying the ticket or going to traffic school, the physicist fought the citation by writing a four-page paper explaining how the ticket he was given defies physics.

Using his knowledge of angular and linear motion, Krioukov prepared a paper for the judge in his case and was able to argue – and prove – his innocence.

The paper explained how what the officer “thought” he saw, he didn’t really see, according to the laws of physics.

“Therefore my argument in the court went as follows: that what he saw would be easily confused by the angle of speed of this hypothetical object that failed to stop at the stop sign. And therefore, what he saw did not properly reflect reality, which was completely different," said Krioukov.

Before others try the “physics defense” in before a judge, Krioukov warned that it took a perfect combination of events for his argument to legitimately hold up.

By the way, when asked if he really did stop at the stop sign, the physicist stuck to his argument.

“Of course I did,” he said with a smile."

 

New IBM App Presents Nearly 1,000 Years of Math History

New IBM App Presents Nearly 1,000 Years of Math History | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: "Math nerds and historians, it’s time to get excited. Minds of Modern Mathematics, a new iPad app released Thursday by IBM, presents an interactive timeline of the history of mathematics and its impact on society from 1000 to 1960.

The app is based on an original, 50-foot-long “Men of Modern Mathematics” installation created in 1964 by Charles and Ray Eames. Minds of Modern Mathematics users can view a digitized version of the original infographic as well as browse through an interactive timeline with more than 500 biographies, math milestones, and images of relevant artifacts.

IBM hopes that classes and students will use the app, provoking more people to pursue math, science, or technology-related educations and jobs.

“Careers of the future will rely heavily on creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration — all themes that were core to the ‘Minds of Modern Mathematics’ movement and remain equally relevant today,” Chid Apte, IBM Director of analytics Research and Mathematical Sciences said in a press release. “What better way than a mobile app to reintroduce this timeless classic to inspire a new generation of learners?”

Starting from the first French pope to celebrated mathematician John von Neumann, users can see every major math-related event or person in a visually impressive layout. You can tap on an entry to read more about it, and view how math events and math superstars relate in time to other historical events, such as the First Crusade that seizes Jerusalem and the signing of The Declaration of Independence."

 

Counting on mathematics, now more than ever

Counting on mathematics, now more than ever — Opinion — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine: "Recently, someone asked me how many of the following four names I recognized: Jeremy Linn, Andrei Markov, Meryl Streep and Isaac Schoenberg, and I’d like to pose the same question to you.

My guess is you will recognize two of the four. Actually, the quiz is a fraud. It’s just my awkward way of announcing that April is National Mathematics Awareness Month and to make a basic point that although mathematics never makes headlines like an NBA star or winning an Oscar, it might play a more important role in our daily lives, and that’s where the two unrecognizable names on the list come in.

Andrei Markov was a Russian mathematician who in 1906 worked out a mathematical theory, called Markov Chains, for describing how many physical systems evolve over time. Such a system might be anything from a baseball game, a frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad, the evolution of a biological population of bacteria or even a person surfing the Internet, clicking from one Web page to another."

 

Does "Touch" Get the Math Right?

Dr. Keith Devlin: Does Touch Get the Math Right?: "The new Fox TV series Touch, starring Kiefer Sutherland, has as one of its central characters a mathematically gifted, autistic, 11-year-old child Jake, played by David Mazouz. How accurate is the portrayal of mathematics in the show? Based on the first episode, the answer is, "Not very." (The caveat is, it doesn't really matter.)

The first number we encounter, by way of Jake's disembodied voice (he does not speak, so we only hear him as a thought-track) is the golden ratio, approximately 1.618. Thematically, that's good, since that number does occur a lot in nature, often by way of its closely associated Fibonacci sequence. Which makes it all the more perplexing that, midway through the first episode, we have Danny Glover's character repeating a series of oft-recycled falsehoods about the Fibonacci sequence.

He begins by saying that it was discovered by the twelfth-century mathematician Fibonacci, which is not true. Fibonacci (who was in fact a thirteenth-century mathematician, and who was not given that nickname until the 19th century) simply included in a book he wrote, an ancient arithmetic problem that yields those numbers when you solve it. There is no evidence that he ever investigated the sequence. Besides, most of the sequence's interesting mathematical properties and its connections to the natural world were not discovered until many centuries later.

Though there are many fascinating examples of the occurrence of the Fibonacci sequence in the natural world, the three that Glover cites are all wrong: that the sequence can be found in the curve of a wave, in the spiral of a shell, and in the segments of a pineapple."

 

The Mathematics of Jury Size

 

The Mathematics of Jury Size | News Service - ISNS: "Could different jury sizes improve the quality of justice? The answers are not clear, but mathematicians are analyzing juries to identify potential improvements.

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say that juries in criminal cases must include 12 people, or that their decisions must be unanimous. In fact, some states use juries of different sizes.

One primary reason why today's juries tend to have 12 people is that the Welsh king Morgan of Gla-Morgan, who established jury trials in 725 A.D., decided upon the number, linking the judge and jury to Jesus and his Twelve Apostles."

 

On the hunt for mathematical beauty

On the hunt for mathematical beauty - MIT News Office: "“Imagine an airplane in which each row has one seat, and there are 100 seats,” Borodin says. “People line up in random order to fill the plane, and each person has a carry-on suitcase in their hand, which it takes them one minute to put into the overhead compartment.”

If the passengers all board the plane in an orderly fashion, starting from the rear seats and working their way forwards, it would be a very quick process, Borodin says. But in reality, people queue up in a random order, significantly slowing things down.

So how long would it take to board the aircraft? “It’s not an easy problem to solve, but it is possible,” Borodin says. “It turns out that it is approximately equal to twice the square root of the number of people in the queue.” So with a 100-seat airplane, boarding would take 20 minutes, he says."

 

Hazudra Fodder: Why use MATLAB? Don't be a fool.

Hazudra Fodder: Why use MATLAB? Don't be a fool.: "Why use MATLAB? Don't be a fool. I'll get right to the point, it's beyond me as to why anyone (businesses, educational institutions, individuals) would want to use MATLAB except for very specialized purposes. GNU Octave has almost identical syntax and is FREE. Let's compare them:"

Why Mathematica is Better Than Matlab

Wolfram General Mathematica Training Course: A Speed Date: "This course provides a whirlwind tour of Mathematica showing how decades of research in computation, language, and development together with well-thought-out design principles and solid software engineering have guided us in creating a modern computing platform. Key features, including dynamic interactivity, natural language input, and numerical/symbolic computation, as well as applications in image processing, control systems, GPU computation, and more, will be explored."

Comparing Matlab and Mathematica

Comparing Matlab and Mathematica - by walkiria - Helium: "The comparison between Matlab and Mathematica is NOT numeric versus symbolic as some claim. It is 'high level complete system' versus 'low level core with specialist toolboxes'. Mathematica can do all the numeric math and matrix work that Matlab can do, as fast and as accurately. Matlab is almost strictly a subset of the functionality of Mathematica."

RutherfordGate: Historian Responds to President Obama’s Hayes Slur

RutherfordGate: Historian Responds to President Obama’s Hayes Slur -- Daily Intel: "It's not unusual for President Obama to criticize his Republican predecessors from time to time, but this morning, he targeted his scorn not at George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, but ... Rutherford B. Hayes. As Politico reported: Speaking about the need to develop new sources of American energy in Largo, Md., Obama used our 19th president as a failure of forward-thinking leadership. "One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: 'It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'" Obama said. "That's why he's not on Mt. Rushmore." "He's looking backwards, he's not looking forward. He's explaining why we can't do something instead of why we can do something," Obama said.  Burn.  We thought it was a bit unsporting of Obama to attack President Hayes, who is quite unable to respond. So we called up the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, where Nan Card, the curator of manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama's ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.  "I've heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from," Card said of Hayes's alleged phone remark, "but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it's out there."  Wait, so Hayes didn't even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? "No, no," Card confirmed. She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes's delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, "a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, "looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, 'That is wonderful.'" In fact, Card noted, Hayes was not only the first president to have a telephone in the White House, but he was also the first to use the typewriter, and he had Thomas Edison come to the White House to demonstrate the phonograph. "So I think he was pretty much cutting edge," Card insisted, "maybe just the opposite of what President Obama had to say there.""

Abandon MATLAB

Why write this? « Abandon MATLAB: "Well, MATLAB was obviously an improvement over FORTRAN for working scientists and engineers, in much the same way that Perl was an improvement over Sed, Awk and shell. So MATLAB was pretty good, in the ’90s, I suppose. Today, it’s an ancient language..."

Here's what's wrong with Windows 8 | ZDNet

Here's what's wrong with Windows 8 | ZDNet: "Summary: Windows 8 is a massive gamble for Microsoft, and right now I can see the potential for it to fail harder than Windows Vista did.

I’ve been using the Windows 8 Consumer Preview since its release back at the end of February, and having used it extensively on a number of several physical and virtual systems, I can now put my finger on what I think is wrong with Microsoft’s latest incarnation of Windows."

 

The Tau Manifesto by Michael Hartl | Tau Day, 2010

No, really, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto by Michael Hartl | Tau Day, 2010: "The Tau Manifesto is dedicated to one of the most important numbers in mathematics, perhaps the most important: the circle constant relating the circumference of a circle to its linear dimension. For millennia, the circle has been considered the most perfect of shapes, and the circle constant captures the geometry of the circle in a single number. Of course, the traditional choice for the circle constant is π—but, as mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article “π Is Wrong!”1, π is wrong. It’s time to set things right."

Classic Nintendo Games Are NP Hard

Classic Nintendo Games Are NP Hard: "You may have have thought that games like Mario, Donkey Kong and so on were hard at the time you were playing them, but you probably didn't guess that they were NP-hard. NP-hard problems are in a sense the ones that are most difficult to solve by computational means because the time it takes to find a solution tends to increase so quickly with the size of the problem that it just isn't practical to perform the computation. Now we have some results from computer scientists at Universite Libre de Bruxelles and MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) that many classic games contain within them an NP-hard problem. It is a bit like the discovery of a black hole at the center of every galaxy. Should either fact be surprising?"

Pi Goes to Washington

TeachPi.org: "Only 112 years after its last appearance on a legislative floor—the doomed bill in the Indiana statehouse that offered nine different values for the number—Pi made a surprise appearance in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009.

March 14 fell on a Saturday in 2009, but that didn‘t stop things from heating up in the week leading up to it. On Monday, March 8th, Representative Bart Gordon of Tennessee introduced House Resolution 224, officially called “Supporting the designation of Pi Day, and for other purposes.” As the chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, Gordon’s intent was clear: to use the holiday as a platform for making a statement about the importance of math and science education in America."

 

Why we have leap days | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Why we have leap days | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine: "We have two basic units of time: the day and the year. Of all the everyday measurements we use, these are the only two based on concrete physical events: the time it takes for the Earth to spin once on its axis, and the time it takes to go around the Sun. Every other unit of time we use (second, hour, week, month) is rather arbitrary. They’re convenient, but not based on independent, non-arbitrary events."

Wait... what is a leap year? | Geek.com

Wait... what is a leap year? | Geek.com: "There are all sorts of geeks — electronics geeks, mobile geeks, math geeks, so I guess it makes sense that there are calendar geeks as well. Of course to be a calendar expert you have to be a history and math geek too, but there is nothing wrong with some multidisciplinary geekiness.

So, back to February 29th. The biggest question most people will have concerns its mere existence. Any child could tell you that the calendar year is composed of 365 days, each of which are 24 hours long, so the most basic of logic would tell you that the time it takes the Earth to go around the Sun isn’t exactly 8760 hours. What does this mean in real life? After one year our calendar is off by a few minutes, after a few years it’s off by a few days, and after enough time we’d be skiing in July and going to the beach in January."

 

Leap year: 10 things about 29 February

BBC News - Leap year: 10 things about 29 February: "1. The leap year's extra day is necessary because of the "messiness" of our Solar System. One Earth year (a complete orbit around the Sun) does not take an exact number of whole days (one complete spin of the Earth on its axis). In fact, it takes 365.2422 days, give or take."

Math can save Tylenol overdose patients | Science Codex

Math can save Tylenol overdose patients | Science Codex: "University of Utah mathematicians developed a set of calculus equations to make it easier for doctors to save Tylenol overdose patients by quickly estimating how much painkiller they took, when they consumed it and whether they will require a liver transplant to survive.

"It's an opportunity to use mathematical methods to improve medical practice and save lives," says Fred Adler, a professor of mathematics and biology and coauthor of a study that developed and tested the new method."

 

Animal Cognition, Online First - SpringerLink

Animal Cognition, Online First™ - SpringerLink: "A Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus), able to quantify sets of eight or fewer items (including heterogeneous subsets), to sum two sequentially presented sets of 0–6 items (up to 6), and to identify and serially order Arabic numerals (1–8), all by using English labels (Pepperberg in J Comp Psychol 108:36–44, 1994; J Comp Psychol 120:1–11, 2006a; J Comp Psychol 120:205–216, 2006b; Pepperberg and Carey submitted), was tested on addition of two Arabic numerals or three sequentially presented collections (e.g., of variously sized jelly beans or nuts). He was, without explicit training and in the absence of the previously viewed addends, asked, “How many total?” and required to answer with a vocal English number label. In a few trials on the Arabic numeral addition, he was also shown variously colored Arabic numerals while the addends were hidden and asked “What color number (is the) total?” Although his death precluded testing on all possible arrays, his accuracy was statistically significant and suggested addition abilities comparable with those of nonhuman primates."

Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a Single Atom

Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a Single Atom - NYTimes.com: "Australian and American physicists have built a working transistor from a single phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon crystal.  The group of physicists, based at the University of New South Wales and Purdue University, said they had laid the groundwork for a futuristic quantum computer that might one day function in a nanoscale world and would be orders of magnitude smaller and quicker than today’s silicon-based machines."

 

The End of the Mainframe Era at NASA

The End of the Mainframe Era at NASA: "This month marks the end of an era in NASA computing. Marshall Space Flight Center powered down NASA’s last mainframe, the IBM Z9 Mainframe.  For my millennial readers, I suppose that I should define what a mainframe is.  Well, that’s easier said than done, but here goes -- It’s a big computer that is known for being reliable, highly available, secure, and powerful.  They are best suited for applications that are more transaction oriented and require a lot of input/output – that is, writing or reading from data storage devices. "

Why Adele's 'Someone Like You' Makes Everyone Cry - WSJ.com

Why Adele's 'Someone Like You' Makes Everyone Cry - WSJ.com: "Twenty years ago, the British psychologist John Sloboda conducted a simple experiment. He asked music lovers to identify passages of songs that reliably set off a physical reaction, such as tears or goose bumps. Participants identified 20 tear-triggering passages, and when Dr. Sloboda analyzed their properties, a trend emerged: 18 contained a musical device called an "appoggiatura."

An appoggiatura is a type of ornamental note that clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. "This generates tension in the listener," said Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote a 2007 study on the subject. "When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good."

Chills often descend on listeners at these moments of resolution. When several appoggiaturas occur next to each other in a melody, it generates a cycle of tension and release. This provokes an even stronger reaction, and that is when the tears start to flow."

 

The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash

The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash | Science | The Observer: "It was the holy grail of investors. The Black-Scholes equation, brainchild of economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, provided a rational way to price a financial contract when it still had time to run. It was like buying or selling a bet on a horse, halfway through the race. It opened up a new world of ever more complex investments, blossoming into a gigantic global industry. But when the sub-prime mortgage market turned sour, the darling of the financial markets became the Black Hole equation, sucking money out of the universe in an unending stream."

Spatial Reasoning and the Mathematical Mind

Expert Available to Talk About Spatial Reasoning and the Mathematical Mind: "Most people believe that mathematics is numbers, symbols and notations. Dr. Jonathan Brendefur, professor of mathematics education at Boise State University, explains that mathematics is also about spatial reasoning – the ability to visually manipulate stimuli, to break apart and put together 2-D and 3-D shapes, to take these ideas and twist and turn them or to not be confused when an object’s orientation changes. This ability is one of the best predictors of later success in mathematics, and can be learned through a variety of different methods and practices. It also helps people develop fluency with operations in arithmetic and strengthens measurement concepts."

The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians

The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians: "It has been difficult to open up the black box of knowledge production. We use unique international data on the publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians to examine the impact of a large post-1992 influx of Soviet mathematicians on the productivity of their American counterparts. We find a negative productivity effect on those mathematicians whose research overlapped with that of the Soviets. We also document an increased mobility rate (to lower-quality institutions and out of active publishing) and a reduced likelihood of producing “home run” papers. Although the total product of the pre-existing American mathematicians shrank, the Soviet contribution to American mathematics filled in the gap. However, there is no evidence that the Soviets greatly increased the size of the “mathematics pie.” Finally, we find that there are significant international differences in the productivity effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that these international differences can be explained by both differences in the size of the émigré flow into the various countries and in how connected each country is to the global market for mathematical publications."

Rice, UT rank among top 10 schools in Princeton Review

Rice, UT rank among top 10 schools in Princeton Review | khou.com Houston: "Two Texas universities are topping the list when it comes to getting your money’s worth. Rice University and the University of Texas are included in the Princeton Review’s top ten best valued schools in the nation. Rice was fifth on the private school list and UT was 10th on the public schools list."

Indian claims finding new cube root formula

Indian claims finding new cube root formula: "Agra: It has eluded experts for centuries, but now an Indian, following in the footsteps of Aryabhatt, one of the earliest Indian mathematicians, claims to have worked out a simple formula to find any number's cube root.

Nirbhay Singh Nahar, a retired chemical engineer and an amateur mathematician, claims he has found a formula that will help students and applied engineers to work out the cube roots of any number in a short time.

"Give me any number - even, odd, decimals, a fraction...and I will give you the cube root using a simple calculator to just add and subtract within a minute and a half. We do have methods and patterns, but no formula at the moment. Even the tables give cube roots of 1 to 1,000, not of fractions or of numbers beyond 1,000, for which people have to use scientific calculators," Nahar, who retired as an engineer from Hindustan Salts Ltd at Sambhar (Rajasthan), said."

 

Who Owns Your Personal History? | Fast Company

Who Owns Your Personal History? | Fast Company: "One day in December 1955, former President Harry Truman, who had been living in Independence, Missouri since leaving the White House in 1953, arrived home and found his wife Bess at the fireplace, burning a pile of his letters to her.   “Think of history,” he said. "I have," she replied. And she let the letters continue to burn. Today, we no longer have the option of burning our letters. Our digital tracks are everywhere--in email messages, tweets, text messages, social networking postings, and the visit histories of Internet sites. They are in the hands of family members, friends, acquaintances, current and former coworkers, people we barely remember, and people we prefer to forget. Our movements are logged through mobile devices, and our images are stored in the surveillance archives of retail stores, office buildings, taxis, and transit systems."

Wolfram Blog : Happy 10*9*8+7+6-5+4*321 !

Wolfram Blog : Happy 10*9*8+7+6-5+4*321 !: "A quick check with Mathematica verified that, yes indeed, 10*9*8+7+6-5+4*321 = 2012. Wow! How in the world did anyone discover that rare factoid? And how long will it be until another year arrives that can be similarly expressed?"

Computing: Improving security in the cloud

Computing: Improving security in the cloud: "Less and less of today's computing is done on desktop computers; cloud computing, in which operations are carried out on a network of shared, remote servers, is expected to rise as the demand for computing power increases. This raises some crucial questions about security: Can we, for instance, perform computations on data stored in "the cloud" without letting anyone else see our information? Research carried out at the Weizmann Institute and MIT is moving us closer to the ability to work on data while it is still encrypted, giving an encrypted result that can later be securely deciphered."

This just in from Roy G. Biv

Computer simulations shed light on the physics of rainbows: "Computer scientists at UC San Diego, who set out to simulate all rainbows found in nature, wound up answering questions about the physics of rainbows as well. The scientists recreated a wide variety of rainbows -- primary rainbows, secondary rainbows, redbows that form at sunset and cloudbows that form on foggy days -- by using an improved method for simulating how light interacts with water drops of various shapes and sizes. Their new approach even yielded realistic simulations of difficult-to-replicate "twinned" rainbows that split their primary bow in two."

‘Game of Thrones’ Season 2 Trailer - SF Signal

‘Game of Thrones’ Season 2 Trailer - SF Signal – A Speculative Fiction Blog: "Game of Thrones Season 2 is based on A Clash of Kings, the 2nd book in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire series."

Star Trek Bridge | eBay

Star Trek Bridge | eBay: "This is the ultimate buy for the ultimate Trekkie! A full sized, fully operational Star Trek bridge themed party room! The room comes with a working main screen, computer consoles, automatic sliding doors, and a hidden fridge. This one-of-a-kind buy even features surround sound and a "depressurization" chamber! The set was originally constructed for a well know celebrity for 1.5 million dollars but can now be yours for only a fraction of that at $200,000. The room can be shipped to you upon purchase so that you can be the proud owner of a federation star ship that your neighbors will drool over! For more information and a better look at this amazing piece of fan construction please look at this video of Fox's interview with the builder. Enjoy your new lift and "live long and prosper!"

Hublot painstakingly recreates a mysterious, 2,100-year-old clockwork relic - but why?

Hublot painstakingly recreates a mysterious, 2,100-year-old clockwork relic - but why?: "Why on Earth would you want to strap one of these to your wrist? It barely tells the time, and it can't take pictures, tweet or connect to your Facebook. In fact, very few people would have the faintest idea what it is, or why you'd want one at all. But for those that do recognize its intricate gears and dials, this tiny, complex piece of machinery tells a vivid and incredible tale. It's a story of gigantic scientific upheaval, of adventure and shipwreck on the high seas, of war and death. A story of amazing intellect, lost riches and impossible chance - a sunken treasure that Jaques Cousteau once described as "more valuable than the Mona Lisa" - and it's connected with an ancient celebrity whose star shone so brightly that he's still a household name more than 2200 years after his death... Read on!"

Studying random structures with confetti

Studying random structures with confetti: " Chance and probability play a natural role in statistical physics. Inspired by confetti, researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, are gaining better understanding of random phenomena and refine the tools that can be used to study them.  "The result of small disturbances to random systems can be illustrated by throwing confetti. If simple rules are constructed at a small scale, it is possible to study the characteristics at a broad level. Small changes at local level can result in widely differing phenomena at global level," says Daniel Ahlberg at the Department of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Gothenburg."

'Space Hurricane': Huge Solar Storm Is Pounding Earth Now | Solar Storm, Solar Flare & Coronal Mass Ejection | Space Weather, Sun Cycle & Sun Storm | Space.com

'Space Hurricane': Huge Solar Storm Is Pounding Earth Now | Solar Storm, Solar Flare & Coronal Mass Ejection | Space Weather, Sun Cycle & Sun Storm | Space.com: "A wave of charged particles from an intense solar storm is pummeling the Earth right now, which may trigger stunning aurora displays and cause minor disruptions to satellites over the next two days, NASA scientists say.

The storm began when a powerful solar flare erupted on the sun yesterday (Jan. 23), blasting a stream of charged particles toward Earth. This electromagnetic burst, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), hit Earth at about 9:31 a.m. EST (1430 GMT), according to scientists at the Space Weather Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md."

International Slide Rule Museum

International Slide Rule Museum: "The ISRM is dedicated to the Students, Educators, Scientists and Engineers of the Past and Those Still Present, and to promote the lost art of Numeracy by providing resources and slide rules for education and other historic institutions. ISRM is a member of the American Association of Museums and the Association of Northern Front Range Museums."

A New Faster Fourier Transform Can Speed One of IT's Fundamental Algorithms | Popular Science

A New Faster Fourier Transform Can Speed One of IT's Fundamental Algorithms | Popular Science: "An algorithm called the fast Fourier transform is one of the most important aspects of your digital life that you never think about. It’s a core concept in information technology, making possible the signal processing, image and audio compression, and other complex mathematics necessary for you to cram every episode of Breaking Bad onto your mobile device alongside every track Jay-Z ever made, and then play it all back without a hitch. Basically, the Fourier transform turns irregular signals into pure frequencies, so the fluctuating voltage signal traveling through a wire from your MP3 player to a set of speakers can be translated on the fly into the sounds you want to hear. The algorithm does this so quickly it earned the name “fast” (as in “fast Fourier transform,” or FFT). And it’s about to get faster."