Advent calendar 2012

There are prizes behind today's door, from maths to physics, economics to art!
Maths, puzzles, post-it notes and the pub are waiting for you behind today's door!

This year we were lucky enough to see the Imaginary exhibition in Barcelona. It's an interactive mathematics exhibition that inspires the imagination with beautiful images. And what is more exciting it allows anyone to step into the world of maths!

We love the Math/Maths podcast! It's a conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. Peter Rowlett in Nottingham calls Samuel Hansen in Las Vegas to chat about the math and maths that has been in the news, that they've noticed and that has happened to them.

Plus is edited entirely by women who are happily disregarding gender stereotypes, so we're always happy to highlight women's achievements in maths. We've got lots of content by or about women mathematicians on Plus and here are some of our favourites.
Mathematics and silliness is the speciality of James Grime, mathematician, juggler and comedy nerd (though not necessarily in that order). From zombie maths to post-it note dodecahedra: it's all on his YouTube channel

Plus jetted across the Atlantic in February to attend the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver. Not only did we feast with (not on) jellyfish at the Vancouver Aquarium, we also found out how to lose weight, how to play Big Brother on the internet, and more...

We love Science in School, the European journal for science teachers, featuring news about the latest scientific discoveries, teaching materials and many other useful resources for science teachers. The journal is freely available online, with articles translated into many European languages. The print version (in English) is free within Europe. Here are some of our favourite recent articles.

Maths is now an integral part in the study of evolution, describing how mutation and natural selection affect a reproducing population. And now maths has shown that it if you want to get ahead in the evolutionary race, it really does pay to be nice. We were lucky enough to visit the other Cambridge earlier this year to interview Professor Martin Nowak about the mathematics of altruism.

As we are having a little cake of our own today, we thought we'd look back on another great birthday celebration... Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday!
Hungry? Why not try one of Vi Hart's brilliant Tex Mex Hexaflexgons – maths has never tasted so good!