news 2014

Computer text analysis of a huge database of scientific papers shows a large amount of "text overlap," where authors use text from previous papers of their own and others, not always with attribution. This is not necessarily good or bad, Cornell researchers say. "Our first goal was to characterize the accepted practice, not to be judgmental," said Paul Ginsparg, professor of physics and information science and founder of the online arXiv collection of scientific papers, now maintained by Cornell University Library.

Scientists from Imperial College London have developed a way to make the conclusions drawn from mathematical models more reliable. The work has implications for fields as diverse as medical research and ecology. Models are, by necessity, gross simplifications and, as such, there is always the risk that the model - and so the conclusions we draw - are wrong Most scientists choose to work with one mathematical model and change the input parameters to see what different outcomes result.

An Imperial mathematician has found a new way of formulating a 50 year old algorithm, used when describing the world using mathematical models. It is anticipated that the proposed technique, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will pave the way for greatly accelerating the calculations involved when making predictions about the behaviour of complex systems in many different areas of science and engineering.

Two UCL professors led a key part of the new analysis of 'Skeleton 1'; which was discovered in a Leicester car park in 2012 on the site of the Grey Friars friary, the last known resting place of King Richard III. They used probability calculations to combine several different lines of evidence, producing an overall weight-of-evidence for the skeleton being that of King Richard III.

What motivates people to cooperate in collaborative endeavors? "First carrot, then stick". Tatsuya Sasaki, mathematician from the University of Vienna, has put forth for the first time ever a mathematical proof of this process. The study is recently published online in the "Journal of the Royal Society Interface".

The team examined the current growth rate of the epidemic in West Africa alongside airline travel patterns Researchers at the University of Liverpool have found that screening for Ebola at airports could be an effective method for preventing the spread of the disease into the UK and US, but due to the long incubation period of the virus, screening won't detect all cases Published in the Lancet medical journal, the study used a mathematical model to test the probability of infected travellers from West Africa entering the UK and US.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has announced the University of Chicago's Matthew Stephens as the recipient of a Moore Investigator in Data-Driven Discovery award. Stephens, a professor in statistics and human genetics, is among 14 scientists from academic institutions nationwide who will receive a total of $21 million over five years to catalyze new data-driven scientific discoveries.

Press Release: Carnegie Mellon Launches Global Brain Research Initiative, Leveraging Strengths in Computation and the Brain Sciences-Carnegie Mellon News - Carnegie Mellon University CMU BrainHub(SM) Will Take New Approach To Create Tools To Better Understand the Link Between Brain and Behavior : Ken Walters / 412-268-1151 / walters1 [a] andrew.cmu (p) edu PITTSBURGH—Coalescing its strengths in computer science, neuroscience, psychol

University of Washington Most people know children learn many skills simply by watching people around them. Without explicit instructions youngsters know to do things like press a button to operate the television and twist a knob to open a door. Now researchers have taken this further, finding that children as young as age 2 intuitively use mathematical concepts such as probability to help make sense of the world around them.

Stanford scholar Noah Goodman found that people understand nonliteral language – metaphor, hyperbole and exaggerated statements – when they focus on the intent behind the communication. L.A. Cicero Noah Goodman, director of Stanford's Computation and Cognition Lab, explores the ways people communicate meaning through figurative language.

The happiness of over 18,000 people worldwide has been predicted by a mathematical equation developed by researchers at UCL, with results showing that moment-to-moment happiness reflects not just how well things are going, but whether things are going better than expected. The new equation accurately predicts exactly how happy people will say they are from moment to moment based on recent events, such as the rewards they receive and the expectations they have during a decision-making task.

The magnets cluttering the face of your refrigerator may one day be used as cooling agents, according to a new theory formulated by MIT researchers. The theory describes the motion of magnons - quasi-particles in magnets that are collective rotations of magnetic moments, or "spins." In addition to the magnetic moments, magnons also conduct heat; from their equations, the MIT researchers found that when exposed to a magnetic field gradient, magnons may be driven to move from one end of a magnet to another, carrying heat with them and producing a cooling effect.

Stanford Earth scientists have created tools to analyze branched networks of Earth-bound channels formed by water and erosion. The work could provide insights into processes that form branched networks like those on the surface of Mars (left) and Titan (center) and in the human circulatory system. (Images courtesy of NASA/JPL and Wikimedia Commons) Stanford Earth scientists use newly developed mathematical tools to analyze landscapes formed by water and other processes, and in doing so challenge 50 years of research on landscape evolution.

Researchers have developed a mathematical model to examine online social networks, in particular the trade-off between copying what friends download and relying on 'best-seller' lists. The researchers from the University of Oxford, the University of Limerick, and the Harvard School of Public Health looked at how we are influenced in the choice of apps we download on our Facebook pages by creating a mathematical model to capture the dynamics at play.

Modern logic unleashed new areas of mathematics. Even when language and intuition fail, conclusive theories can be constructed with the help of logic. When little children share chocolates, they already have to deal with numbers. Even complicated mathematical objects can often be grasped intuitively.

University of Washington Car and truck exhaust fumes that foul the air for humans also cause problems for pollinators. In new research on how pollinators find flowers when background odors are strong, University of Washington and University of Arizona researchers have found that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.

The great Viennese logician Kurt Gödel studied statements which refer to themselves - and his results shook the foundations of mathematics. "All Cretans are liars", said Epimenides, a Cretan. But this means that his statement must be a lie too. But then it is false that Cretans are liars and the statement must be true.

Physicists are using equations to reveal the hidden complexities of the human body. From the beating of our hearts to the proper functioning of our brains, many systems in nature depend on collections of 'oscillators'; perfectly-coordinated, rhythmic systems working together in flux, like the cardiac muscle cells in the heart.

At the Vienna University of Technology a system of coupled lasers has been created which exhibits truly paradoxical behaviour: An increase in energy supply switches the lasers off, reducing the energy can switch them on. Sound waves fade, water waves ebb, light waves are dissipated by a wall. The absorption of waves is a very common phenomenon.

Using a state-of-the-art microscope and new methods in image processing, a multi-institutional team of researchers has devised an inventive way to measure the positions of single atomic sites in materials more precisely than ever before. In a paper published June 11, 2014 , the team demonstrated the ability to locate atoms in high-resolution images of materials to better than one picometer, or one-hundredth of a nanometer.