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The U.S. News &World Report rankings of colleges and universities are largely arbitrary, according to a new mathematical analysis.Published: Friday, October 3rd, 2008Found in: Numbers -
The mathematics of dynamical systems reveals ocean dynamics, an understanding that could improve the monitoring of ocean processes.Published: Saturday, September 27th, 2008Found in: Numbers -
Home / Columns / Comment / Comment : ‘National Greatness’ versus real national greatness by Frank WilczekIn 1993, the U.S. Congress cut off funds for the Superconducting Super Collider, or SSC. After years of planning, two years of major construction and $2 billion spent, the most enduring achievement of the stillborn project was a tunnel from nothing to nowhere near Waxahachie, Texas. The SSC would have enabled us to explore nature in more extreme conditions — higher concentrations of energy — than ever before. It would have yielded fundamental new insights into the origin of the universe and the nature of matter, space and time. Thousands of scientists devoted big parts...Published: Friday, September 26th, 2008 -
The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, a cooperative computing project, helps find a prime that has nearly 13 million digits.Published: Saturday, September 20th, 2008Found in: Numbers -
Imagine twisting a beam of light into a knot, as if it were a piece of a string. Now grab another light beam and tie it around the first, forming its own loop. Tie on another and another, until all of space is filled up with loops of light. Sounds preposterous, but a pair of physicists has shown that light can do just this — at least in theory. Visible light, along with all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, is governed by Maxwell’s equations, and the researchers have found a new solution to these equations in which light forms linked knots. The team is now working to...Published: Friday, September 12th, 2008Found in: Numbers -
Home / Columns / Comment / Comment : Corporate campaigns manufacture scientific doubt by David MichaelsIn Doubt Is Their Product, published in April, epidemiologist David Michaels describes the growing corporate practice of “manufacturing” scientific uncertainty to thwart regulation of products that appear to pose risks. Michaels encountered the practice firsthand with beryllium, a metal used at U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, while he was the Energy Department’s Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health. Now head of George Washington University’s Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, or SKAPP, Michaels spoke with senior editor Janet Raloff about t...Published: Friday, September 12th, 2008
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Henri Cartan, one of the leaders of a revolution in mathematics, dies at 104.Published: Friday, August 29th, 2008Found in: Numbers
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Home / Columns / Comment / Comment : Protecting the Internet from the criminal element, by Eugene SpaffordEugene Spafford is executive director of Purdue University’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, one of the world’s leading centers for information security. His research focuses on issues related to securing computers, networks and their data against criminal activities and failures. He has testified before various congressional committees, advised agencies within the executive branch and worked with the U.S. military and the FBI. Here, freelance science writer Susan Gaidos questions Spafford about computer security issues. You’v...Published: Friday, August 29th, 2008 -
Mathematicians create videos that help in visualizing four-dimensional objects.Published: Friday, August 22nd, 2008Found in: Numbers -
Libraries and other archives of physical culture have been struggling for decades to preserve diverse media — from paper to eight-track tape recordings — for future generations. Scientists are falling behind the curve in protecting digital data, threatening the ability to mine new findings from existing data or validate research analyses. Johns Hopkins University cosmologist Alex Szalay and Jim Gray of Microsoft, who was lost at sea in 2007, spent much of the past decade discussing challenges posed by data files that will soon approach the petabyte (1015 — or quadrillion — ...Published: Monday, August 18th, 2008Found in: Astronomy, Computers, Science & Society and Technology
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Math Trek: If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove.Published: Friday, August 15th, 2008Found in: Numbers and Physics -
On July 21, at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, members of the European astronomy community participated in a discussion about why their space program has failed to engage public interest in a manner comparable to programs in the United States. Organized by Dirk Lorenzen, a physicist turned journalist for German public radio, the session was titled “Reaching for the Stars: Research in Heaven, Communication in Hell.” Lorenzen, a longtime reporter on space science and technology, began by pointing out that the public, both in Europe and elsewhere, knows little of the w...Published: Monday, August 4th, 2008
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Quasicrystals are bizarre, rare, mysterious materials blending mathematical order and irregularity. A new, unexpected material halfway between a regular crystal and a quasicrystal may help reveal their secrets.Published: Friday, August 1st, 2008Found in: Numbers -
Math Trek: The National Aquatics Center in Beijing, newly built for the Olympics, is a glowing cube of bubbles. The mathematics behind it are built around Lord Kelvin's tetrakaidecahedra and the physics of foam.Published: Saturday, July 19th, 2008Found in: Numbers and Science & Society -
Excerpted comments from a panel discussion at the World Science Summit that addressed the topic of the role of science in foreign affairs. Among the participants were the esteemed scientists Harold Varmus, David Baltimore and Nina Fedoroff.Published: Friday, July 18th, 2008Found in: Science & Society
