News from the world of Maths
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May 5, 2012
Why are we so clever? In evolutionary terms this isn't obvious:
evolution tends to favour cheap solutions and the human brain is
expensive. It consumes about 20% of our body's energy budget yet it only makes up 2% of our body
mass. So why did it make evolutionary sense for us
humans to develop powerful brains? Game theory provides a possible answer.
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April 27, 2012
This month 70 teenage girls from nineteen countries including Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia and Finland came to the University of Cambridge to participate in the inaugural European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO). |
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March 26, 2012
This year's Abel Prize goes to Endre Szemerédi for his
"fundamental contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical
computer science."
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March 7, 2012
Data, data, data — 21st century life provides tons of it. It's paradise for researchers, or at least it would be if we knew how to make sense of it all. This year's AAAS annual meeting in Vancouver
devoted plenty of time to the question of how to understand large amounts of data. And there's one method we
particularly liked. It's based on the kind of idea that gave us the London tube map.
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February 27, 2012
Struggling with that new year's resolution to lose a few pounds? Weight not dropping off as fast as you'd expected? A new mathematical model has some good news and some bad news for you. Which would you like to hear first? |
February 23, 2012
How many people died? It's one of the first questions asked in a war or violent conflict, but it's one of the hardest to answer. In the chaos of war many deaths go unrecorded and all sides have an interest in distorting the figures. The best we can do is come up with estimates, but the trouble is that different statistical methods for doing this can produce vastly different results . So how do we know how different methods compare? |
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February 18, 2012
Plants are amazingly good at something that is still flummoxing
us humans in our quest for sustainable energy sources: turning sunlight
into energy in an efficient way. Around 100 bilions tons of biomass
are produced annually through photosynthesis. The question is, how
exacty do plants do it?
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February 8, 2012
Yesterday's refusal by the UK government to posthumously pardon Alan Turing makes sad news for maths, computer science and the fight against discrimination. But even if symbolic gestures are, symbolically, being rebuffed, at least Turing's most important legacy — the scientific one — is going stronger than ever. An example is this week's announcement that scientists have devised a biological computer, based on an idea first described by Turing in the 1930s. |
