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."