Mathematics

Beatles Unknown "A Hard Day's Night" Chord Mystery Solved Using Fourier Transform

It’s the most famous chord in rock 'n' roll, an instantly recognizable twang rolling through the open strings on George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker. It evokes a Pavlovian response from music fans as they sing along to the refrain that follo ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 28 2008 - 9:20pm

UPS Drivers, The Icosian Game And How Right Hand Turns Can Save The Earth

Last year, the New York Times reported that UPS managed to save 3 million gallons of gas in 2006 by altering the routes of delivery trucks to avoid left turns. According to the article, the company uses software called “package flow” to map out daily route ...

Article - Dan Gillick - Nov 2 2008 - 8:45pm

Researchers Crack McEliece 'Encryption Of The Future' Before It Even Starts

Don't start feeling too secure about the so-called McEliece encryption system- a candidate for the security of Internet traffic in the age of the quantum computer, the predicted superpowerful computer of the future. Researchers at Eindhoven University ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 31 2008 - 7:28pm

A Beautiful Model for Economy and Climate Change

Change happens. People can sense change but science can measure it and might be able to predict its future. A scientific model would be a beautiful help for us to understand the behavior of both the global economy and the Earth's climate. The Interna ...

Blog Post - Hatice Cullingford - Nov 2 2008 - 10:05pm

Multinomial Logit Models And Why We Ignore Speed Limits

If you've ever seen one of those "55 saves lives" signs you might wonder why we don't just lower the speed limit to 5MPH.   After all, it seems silly to think that lives lost from 56 miles and up are important but those below it are not ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 7 2008 - 4:33pm

Voice Identification In And Out Of The Gulag

In Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel, The First Circle, originally written in the 1950s, Soviet diplomat Innokenty Volodin makes an ill-advised phone call outside a Metro station. ...

Article - Dan Gillick - Nov 19 2008 - 9:17pm

Equilibrium Theory Economic Models Are Clearly Flawed, Says Study, But Agent-Based Models Might Be The Answer

While the stock market has been on a roller coaster ride, economists and business columnists have spilled a lot of ink assigning responsibility for the ongoing financial calamity. As always, hindsight is 20/20 vision but researchers at Argonne National Lab ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 29 2008 - 1:30am

Mathematics, Cells And Organelles

Cells are filled with membrane-bound organelles like the nucleus, mitochondria and endoplasmic reticula. Over the years, scientists have made much progress in understanding the biomolecular details of how these organelles function within cells, but underst ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 8 2008 - 5:45pm

Math Under Stress- The Working Memory Key

We've all had it happen; you're sitting in class, hopelessly unprepared because you've been writing a D&D campaign or plotting ways to take over the world when, out of nowhere, the teacher calls upon you to come to the front the room and ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 9 2008 - 1:50pm

The Statistics Are Not Enough: Causal Inference From Koch To Freedman

Not 10 years ago, most doctors agreed that estrogen supplements for post-menopausal women reduced the risk of heart attacks. Millions were paying extravagantly for “hormone replacement therapy”, and drug companies were making a killing. However, a comprehe ...

Article - Dan Gillick - Jan 17 2009 - 2:19am