Column
- Math
Communities of Communities of …
A new approach to network theory focusing on the subcommunities within networks may shed light on everything from food webs to terrorist cells. It may even act as an oracle, helping scientists identify connections within a network they haven’t yet seen.
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U.S. science policy needs to heed global realities
Comment by Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University
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- Math
The squint method of data analysis
Mathematicians discover a Klein bottle hidden within the data underlying photographs
- Physics
John Wheeler (1911-2008)
SN Editor in Chief Tom Siegfried remembers the late physicist John Wheeler, who coined the term "black hole" in 1967, with excerpts from conversations the two had engaged in over the past two decades.
- Math
Sensitivity to the harmony of things
The work of Alexandre Grothendieck has transformed math the way the Internet has transformed communication: Once you’re used to it, you can’t imagine what life was like before it.
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- Math
Still debating with Plato
Mathematicians debate whether mathematical truths are discovered or invented.
- Science & Society
Science Education and the Future of Humankind
Nobel Prize–winning physicist Leon Lederman warns that science education is crucial for humankind’s future. Lederman is director emeritus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
- Math
The Noisy Game of Baseball
Predicting a baseball player's future batting average (and many other things) is not as simple as relying on past performance, mathematicians say.
- Math
Creeping Up on Riemann
Theorists find the first example of an elusive complex function that just may help them solve the biggest problem in mathematics.
- Math
Humanitarian Statistics
From Iraq to Sierra Leone to New Orleans, statistical tools help guide responses to human rights crises.
