Math
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
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- Math
Twin primes
Mathematicians have conjectured since Euclid’s time that there are infinite pairs of prime numbers.
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- Math
Egypt wasn’t built in a day, but it did rise quickly
New timeline of ancient civilization’s earliest days finds little time between earliest villages and dominant centralized state.
- Math
Flatland and its sequel bring the math of higher dimensions to the silver screen
In 1884, Edwin Abbott wrote a strange and enchanting novella called Flatland, in which a square who lives in a two-dimensional world comes to comprehend the existence of a third dimension but is unable to persuade his compatriots of his discovery. Through the book, Abbott skewered hierarchical Victorian values while simultaneously giving a glimpse of […]
- Math
Systems biology tunes in to cancer networks
If cable TV systems had a channel called The Cancer Network, doctors would be wise to tune in. But there’s no such channel. So for now, they’ll just have to read articles in scientific journals that publish papers on the science of networks. Scientists in the new field of systems biology have made a lot […]
- Math
A field where breakthroughs are hard to come by produces two big advances on a single day
Problems in number theory often have a certain exasperating charm: They are extraordinarily simple to state, but so difficult to prove that centuries of effort haven’t sufficed to crack them. So it’s pretty remarkable that on one day this May, mathematicians announced results on two of these mathematical conundrums. Both proofs address one of the […]
- Math
Math on Trial
How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom by Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez.
- Math
One of the most abstract fields in math finds application in the ‘real’ world
Every pure mathematician has experienced that awkward moment when asked, “So what’s your research good for?” There are standard responses: a proud “Nothing!”; an explanation that mathematical research is an art form like, say, Olympic gymnastics (with a much smaller audience); or a stammered response that so much of pure math has ended up finding […]
- Humans
Greed may breed financial fitness, but evolution allows unselfishness to survive
If greed is good, as Gordon Gekko proclaimed in the 1987 movie Wall Street, then economics ought to be a superlative science. After all, at the core of economic theory sits a greedy idealization of human nature known as Homo economicus. It’s a fictitious species that represents the individual economic agent, motivated by selfishness. H. […]
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