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A beautiful landscape painting, a beautiful piano sonata - art and music are almost exclusively described in terms of aesthetics, but what about math? Beyond useful or brilliant, can an abstract idea be considered beautiful? Yes, actually - and not just by mathematicians, reports a new study in Cognition.

Many animals have to move around in their environment to find resources to live and reproduce. Scientists have studied particular examples of this for many years but there are not many unifying frameworks to understand the general organising principles of animal movement. This is especially true for animal collectives like ant colonies, whose individual routes as they search for food can look rather like a 'random walk'.

UNIGE researchers have shown that our general knowledge about the world interferes with our ability to solve basic mathematical problems, even among experts in the field. Mathematical thought is seen as the pinnacle of abstract thinking.

A new computational method, based on neural networks, can simulate open quantum systems with unprecedented versatility. The method was independently developed by physicists at EPFL, France, the UK, and the US, and is published in Physical Review Letters. Even on the scale of everyday life, nature is governed by the laws of quantum physics.

A new way of analysing sperm that tracks the movement of the sperm tail could enable substantial improvements to male fertility testing. The technique measures the speed and action of the sperm flagellum, or tail, which provides vital information for understanding whether sperm in an ejaculate have the potential to reach and fertilise the egg.

Researchers from EPFL have found the mechanism that lies behind a mysterious physics phenomenon in fluid mechanics: the fact that turbulence in fluids spontaneously self-organizes into parallel patterns of oblique turbulent bands - an example of order emerging spontaneously from chaos. In so doing, they solved a problem that had stumped generations of physicists.

Nowadays, Digital Humanities is a booming subject, but it has a long history. "Quantitative Literary Studies" at the University of Stuttgart investigates how computational methods have been used for the analysis and interpretation of language and literature since the early 19th century. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has now approved the continuation of the project.

Statistical analysis of fossil data shows that it is unlikely that Australopithecus sediba , a nearly two-million-year-old, apelike fossil from South Africa, is the direct ancestor of Homo , the genus to which modern-day humans belong. The research by paleontologists from the University of Chicago , published this week in Science Advances , concludes by suggesting that Australopithecus afarensis , of the famous "Lucy" skeleton, is still the most likely ancestor to the genus Homo .

Cancer cells may rely on opportunism, as well as chemical signalling, to spread through the body, according to new findings by mathematicians at the University of Birmingham. Cancer spreads by sending cells out from the primary tumour to travel through the vascular or lymphatic system to colonise other organs in a process called metastasis.

Support for Conservative Party rises with UK house prices, new research reveals The big increase in housing wealth inequality in the UK over the period from 1995 to 2007 increased homeowners' probability of supporting the Conservative party. However, it did not make homeowners more averse to the state's ownership of public services.

A mathematician from the University of Bristol has found a solution to part of a 64-year old mathematical problem - expressing the number 33 as the sum of three cubes. Since the 1950s, mathematicians have wondered if all whole numbers could be expressed as the sum of three cubes; whether the equation k = x³+ y³+ z³ always has a solution.

Researchers from EPFL explain how the shapes of neurons can be classified using mathematical methods from the field of algebraic topology. Neuroscientists can now start building a formal catalogue for all the types of cells in the brain. Onto this catalogue of cells, they can systematically map the function and role in disease of each type of neuron in the brain.

As different as the term "dynamic" is used and understood in science, so diverse are the research areas of the University of Münster, in which dynamic even plays a central role in the title. Prof. Christopher Deninger and Prof. Mario Ohlberger from the Cluster of Excellence "Mathematics Münster", the lawyer Prof. Nils Jansen from the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics" and the biochemist Prof. Lydia Sorokin from Cells-in-Motion Cluster of Excellence explain what they understand by the term in their research.

For News Media FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE × A sheet of tiny swimming organisms that "push" themselves through fluid with, say, flagella, create forces in the liquid that bend the sheet in asymmetric, shrinking folds. Image courtesy of Saverio Spagnolie Freeing thousands of microorganisms to swim in random directions in an infinite pool of liquid may not sound like a recipe for order, but eventually the swarm will go with its own flow.

Efficient chip enables low-power devices to run today's toughest quantum encryption schemes. MIT researchers have developed a novel cryptography circuit that can be used to protect low-power "internet of things" (IoT) devices in the coming age of quantum computing. Quantum computers can in principle execute calculations that today are practically impossible for classical computers.

Trained fish at The University of Queensland are helping researchers understand animal vision and factors behind the huge variation in colours between and among species. Ms Naomi Green and Dr Karen Cheney from the Queensland Brain Institute and the School of Biological Sciences have devised what they believe to be the most thorough test of vertebrate colour perception ever developed.

Tool for nonstatisticians automatically generates models that glean insights from complex datasets. MIT researchers are hoping to advance the democratization of data science with a new tool for nonstatisticians that automatically generates models for analyzing raw data. Democratizing data science is the notion that anyone, with little to no expertise, can do data science if provided ample data and user-friendly analytics tools.

A new analysis of the 2011 census has revealed that social differences among city populations significantly influence how neighbourhoods take shape. Researchers hope that their insights could help councils to make better planning decisions. Dr Thilo Gross and Dr Edmund Barter in the Department of Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol, used a new algorithm to gain insight into city neighbourhood characteristics, starting with Bristol.

System breaks down complex designs into easily modifiable shapes for custom manufacturing and 3-D printing. MIT researchers have devised a technique that "reverse engineers" complex 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) models, making them far easier for users to customize for manufacturing and 3-D printing applications.

Method could illuminate features of biological tissues in low-exposure images. Small imperfections in a wine glass or tiny creases in a contact lens can be tricky to make out, even in good light. In almost total darkness, images of such transparent features or objects are nearly impossible to decipher.