EurekAlert! - Mathematics and Statistics
Sun Jan 24 11:35:56 EST 2010
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Using supercomputers to explore nuclear energy - (DOE/Argonne National Laboratory) A new computer algorithm developed by researchers at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory allows scientists to view nuclear fission in much finer detail than ever before.

RIT captures Haiti disaster with high-tech imaging system - (Rochester Institute of Technology) Rochester Institute of Technology scientists are surveying the damage in Haiti with high-tech sensors integrated into a small aircraft. They are using the data to produce information maps for relief and recovery agencies. The World Bank is funding the five-day flight.

For most outfielders, luck has nothing to do with catching flies - (Brown University) New research from Brown University supports a long-standing theory about how outfielders catch fly balls. The eye continuously tracks the ball as its visual velocity increases or decreases, and the outfielder runs backward or forward to compensate. Details are online at the Journal of Vision.

SIAM Journal on Financial Mathematics launches - (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Continuing to advance its mission to publish journals of high quality, relevance, and originality, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics is pleased to announce the launch of SIAM Journal on Financial Mathematics. SIFIN features continuous electronic publication and serves as an essential resource for finance researchers and practitioners as it brings together theoretical developments in financial mathematics and breakthroughs in the computational challenges they encompass.

Insect wranglers invade the garden at Southwestern science EXPO - (Arizona State University) Raymond Mendez, the "original insect wrangler," headlines the Social Insect Science EXPO on Feb. 20 at the Desert Botanical Garden.

Slime design mimics Tokyo's rail system - (American Association for the Advancement of Science) What could human engineers possibly learn from the lowly slime mold? Reliable, cost-efficient network construction, apparently: a recent experiment suggests that Physarum polycephalum, a gelatinous fungus-like mold, might actually lead the way to improved technological systems, such as more robust computer and mobile communication networks.

Oxford University Press launches new librarian newsletter - (Oxford University Press) Oxford University Press has launched Illuminea, a new quarterly newsletter for academic librarians and information professionals. This publication will keep readers up-to-date with the latest developments at OUP and across the publishing world.

American Mathematical Society to award prizes - (American Mathematical Society) The American Mathematical Society will award severalmajor prizes on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010, at the Joint MathematicsMeetings in San Francisco. The AMS prizes are among the world's mostimportant honors given for outstanding contributions to mathematics.

Queen's University study finds first-generation immigrants struggling in education system - (Queen's University) First-generation immigrant adolescents in Canada performed below average in math and science in recent testing indicating that these students may be struggling to succeed in the educational system. These results from a study by Queen's University Faculty of Education Ph.D. candidate Shaljan Areepattamannil are surprising because they contradict findings of other studies.

Google founding investor gives $2M for Nobel laureate-led education transformations at UBC - (University of British Columbia) A University of British Columbia alumnus widely credited for mentoring Google's founders and helping establish the company is supporting science education transformations with a $2 million gift to the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative.

Researchers trace HIV mutations that lead to drug resistance - (University of California - San Diego) Researchers have developed a novel way to trace mutations in HIV that lead to drug resistance. Their findings, once expanded to the full range of drugs available to treat the infection, would allow doctors to tailor drug cocktails to the particular strains of the virus found in individual patients.

Texas A&M prof working on new ways to see through the human body - (Texas A&M University) Thanks to medical imaging techniques such as X-ray CT, ultrasound imaging and MRI, doctors have long been able to see to varying degrees what's going on inside a patient's body, and now a Texas A&M University mathematician is trying to find new and better ways to do so.

Selected highlights at the Joint Mathematics Meetings - (American Mathematical Society) Approximately 6,000 mathematicians will attend the annual meetings of the American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America at the Moscone West Center in San Francisco, Calif., Jan. 13-16. Researchers will present over 2,000 papers from all specialties of mathematics.

NIH awards $18.3 million in Recovery Act funds to support S.T.E.M. education - (NIH/Office of the Director) The National Institutes of Health is awarding approximately $18.3 million to researchers over two years to strengthen and enhance efforts to attract young people to biomedical and behavioral science careers and to improve science literacy in adults and children. These grants are part of the $5 billion in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Carnegie Mellon announces Katayanagi Prizes in Computer Science - (Carnegie Mellon University) Donald E. Knuth, who has made fundamental contributions in theoretical computer science and is the author of one of the most highly respected references in computer science, and Jon M. Kleinberg, a computer scientist whose work explores the interface between networks and information, have been chosen to receive the Katayanagi Prizes in Computer Science.

Golden ratio discovered in a quantum world - (Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) Researchers from the German Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, in cooperation with colleagues from Oxford and Bristol Universities, as well as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, have for the first time observed a nanoscale symmetry hidden in solid state matter. They have measured the signatures of a symmetry showing the same attributes as the golden ratio famous from art and architecture. The research team is publishing these findings in Science Jan. 8.

Getting a grip on school timetables - (Inderscience Publishers) A new approach to solving the problem of school timetabling, known as a GRASP, has been developing by researchers in Brazil. They report details in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Operational Research.

From crickets to whales, animal calls have something in common - (University of Florida) Animals produce a tremendous diversity of sounds for communication to perform life's basic functions, from courtship and parental care to defense and foraging. Explaining this diversity in sound production is important for understanding the ecology, evolution and behavior of species. Scientists have presented a theory of acoustic communication that shows that much of the diversity in animal vocal signals can be explained based on the energetic constraints of sound production.

New mathematical model aids Big Bang supercomputer research - (Southern Methodist University) Astrophysicists using supercomputers to simulate the Big Bang have a new mathematical tool to model the early universe, says mathematician Daniel Reynolds at Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Reynolds and a team of astrophysicists built a computer model of the "Dark Ages." The model -- successfully tested on two supercomputers -- tightly couples physical processes present during cosmic reionization. Resulting simulations when scientists model various scenarios are highly accurate, numerically stable and computationally scalable to the largest supercomputers.

Virtual clay software developed in UB lab 'jumpstarts' design process - (University at Buffalo) A 3-D virtual clay sculpting software package that came on the market this week was developed out of research conducted by University at Buffalo mechanical engineers who wanted to speed up computational design of complex, organic shapes.

Worldwide study finds few gender differences in math abilities - (American Psychological Association) Girls around the world are not worse at math than boys, even though boys are more confident in their math abilities, and girls from countries where gender equity is more prevalent are more likely to perform better on mathematics assessment tests, according to a new analysis of international research.

New handbook for biologists who need more competence or confidence in statistics - (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) "Statistics at the Bench: A Step-by-Step Handbook for Biologists," just released by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, is a convenient research companion for biologists who need to perform or interpret elementary and intermediate statistical analyses. It describes statistical tests and calculations, as well as commands for performing them in Excel. It is aimed at working biologists with little statistical or quantitative background, those who need a quick refresher, or those seeking a general overview of a statistical procedure.

Do computers understand art? - (FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) A team of researchers from the University of Girona and the Max Planck Institute in Germany has shown that some mathematical algorithms provide clues about the artistic style of a painting. The composition of colors or certain aesthetic measurements can already be quantified by a computer, but machines are still far from being able to interpret art in the way that people do.

Method makes refineries more efficient - (Purdue University) Refineries could trim millions of dollars in energy costs annually by using a new method developed at Purdue University to rearrange the distillation sequence needed to separate crude petroleum into products.

Joint mathematics meetings in San Francisco Jan. 13-16, 2010 - (American Mathematical Society) Approximately 6,000 mathematicians will attend the annual meetings of the American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, Calif., Jan. 13-16. Researchers will present over 2,000 papers from all specialties of mathematics.