science wire

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. A theory that uses the mathematics of a drunken walk describes ecological invasions better than waves, according to Tim Reluga, associate professor of mathematics and biology, Penn State. The ability to predict the movement of an ecological invasion is important because it determines how resources should be spent to stop an invasion in its tracks.

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a new computational model of a neural circuit in the brain, which could shed light on the biological role of inhibitory neurons - neurons that keep other neurons from firing. The model describes a neural circuit consisting of an array of input neurons and an equivalent number of output neurons.

They bring the magic of realism to animation and apply this new knowledge to solve real-world problems Stuart Wolpert UCLA mathematics professor Joseph Teran, a Walt Disney consultant on animated mov

The subject of Joe Janes' latest Documents that Changed the World podcast is close to the heart of many academic researchers: the threshold for "statistical significance” - and the man who, in

Yale researchers have found a data-driven way to detect distant planets and refine the search for worlds similar to Earth. The new approach, outlined in a study published Dec. 20 in The Astronomical Journal, relies on mathematical methods that have their foundations in physics research. Rather than trying to filter out the signal 'noise' from stars around which exoplanets are orbiting, Yale scientists studied all of the signal information together to understand the intricacies within its structure.

Tiny starfish larvae employ a complex and previously unknown survival mechanism involving whorls of water that either bring food to them or speed them away to better feeding grounds. Peek into a tide pool along the shore and you may see a starfish clinging quietly to a rock. But that secure adulthood comes at the expense of a harrowing larval journey.

When data sets get too big, sometimes the only way to do anything useful with them is to extract much smaller subsets and analyze those instead.

Research by Cardiff University is helping to improve the lives of people living in some of the most vulnerable communities in the world.

One way to handle big data is to shrink it. If you can identify a small subset of your data set that preserves its salient mathematical relationships, you may be able to perform useful analyses on it that would be prohibitively time consuming on the full set. The methods for creating such 'coresets' vary according to application, however.

Internationally Acclaimed Statistician Changed the Field and Brought Statistics to Science and Public Policy By Shilo Rea Stephen E. Fienberg , University Professor of Statistics and Social Science at Carnegie Mellon University, died Wednesday, Dec.

"I've been very lucky for the professors I've met. They taught me many things and encouraged my curiosity.

Nearly three years ago, John M. Guckenheimer , the Abram R. Bullis Professor in Mathematics, was picked to co-chair a National Research Council committee charged with coming up with theoretical solutions to a real-life problem: the future of the electric grid.

After Donald Trump's surprise win of the US Presidential election, financial markets rallied but this may be short-lived.

The 'Einstein of the Statistics Department' was also the first Stanford professor arrested for protesting apartheid.

Three researchers from the University of Bath will be learning how their research can inform legislation when they visit the House of Commons for a week in Westminster.

Prof. Susan Levine speaks Nov. 17 at a conference on math fluency in young children. A number of UChicago scholars who study math learning spoke at the conference, which was hosted by the University's Science of Learning Center.

University of Pennsylvania researchers Nadia Heninger , Ted Chinburg , Brett Hemenway and Zach Scherr are trying to break the internet. But only so they can protect it. The team of computer scientists and mathematicians received a four-year, $1.1 million grant from the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program of the National Science Foundation to use mathematics to better understand modern cryptography systems.

Quantum computers promise huge speedups on some computational problems because they harness a strange physical property called entanglement, in which the physical state of one tiny particle depends on measurements made of another.

The hungrier the mouse, the more risk it will take to grab cheese on the floor of a home with a house cat.

Five selected Artists have each been working together with researchers at the University of Bath to influence each other's work, study each other's methods and contribute to each other's output, in order to present results and engage people in understanding what they do.

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Just weeks earlier, Hillary Clinton seemed headed for a big win. And though the race had tightened in the lead-up to Nov.

Statistician Susan Holmes has been working in data science before it was a field. Now her research visualizing and interpreting data reliably is becoming increasingly important as more fields are producing vast amounts of data. It used to be that scientists collected data, analyzed it and reported on their findings.

Dynamic programming is a technique that can yield relatively efficient solutions to computational problems in economics, genomic analysis, and other fields.

New high-resolution images taken by a NASA orbiter show parts of the ExoMars Schiaparelli module and its landing site in colour on the Red Planet.

Jocelyn Duffy / 412-268-9982 / jhduffy [at] andrew.cmu (p) edu Lisa Kulick / 412-268-5444 / lkulick [at] andrew.cmu (p) edu The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has selected two

Our nervous systems are remarkable translators, channeling information from many sources and initiating appropriate behavioral responses. But though we know how a lot about how neurons work, scientists do not fully understand how the nervous system integrates stimuli from different senses. You may smell smoke and feel heat, but how does the brain combining and interpret these different stimuli, signaling you to phone the fire department? It turns out that insects are attractive models to investigate questions about integrating information from different sensory pathways.

Since the 1960s, conservation experts have used specific labels to indicate how precariously a species is teetering on the brink of extinction.

ANN ARBOR?Advancing 'natural hazards engineering' and disaster science is the goal of a new $2.5 million project at the University of Michigan.

A video of the Canadian prime minister explaining quantum technology's exciting future went viral this year, and now Australian physicists are making that future a present-day reality. The University of Queensland's Professor Timothy Ralph , PhD student Josephine Dias and colleagues at the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC 2 T) have announced a discovery that could allow ultra-secure encryption over fibre optic cables.

Physicists at ANU and University of Queensland (UQ) have produced near-perfect clones of quantum information using a new method to surpass previous cloning limits. A global race is on to use quantum physics for ultra-secure encryption over long distances according to Professor Ping Koy Lam, node director of the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC 2 T) at ANU.

Data analysis - and particularly big-data analysis - is often a matter of fitting data to some sort of mathematical model.

New research shows that it is not only the size, but the shape of a tube that determines whether a liquid will spill out of it when tipped over. Glasses of liquid, when turned horizontally, inevitably spill. This is not necessarily the case however with very thin straws, which, when turned on their sides, can retain liquid in them.

Experts identify 14 themes of creativity The elusive and complex components of creativity have been identified by experts at the University of Sussex and the University of Kent.

When a truck rumbles by a building, vibrations can travel up to the structure's roof and down again, generating transient tremors through the intervening floors and beams.

The mathematical mind does not take weekends off. It is a way of looking at the world - its shapes, its patterns, its tendencies - that finds expression just as readily on a sleepy Sunday as any other day of the week.

By Patrick Ammerman A team of researchers led by University of Pennsylvania mathematical physicists Tony Pantev and Ron Donagi have received a $10 million Simons Collaboration Grant to prove the Homological Mirror Symmetry Conjecture, one of mathematics? outstanding open problems. Solving this has potential applications in fields from particle physics to geometry.

Beavers and sea otters lack the thick layer of blubber that insulates walruses and whales. And yet these small, semiaquatic mammals can keep warm and even dry while diving, by trapping warm pockets of air in dense layers of fur.

Most of Stanford's 2016 Safety, Security & Fire Report is devoted to promoting personal safety and crime prevention.

Two scientists from the University of Bath have been awarded prestigious University Research Fellowships by  The Royal Society.

In certain parts of the ocean, towering, slow-motion rollercoasters called internal tides trundle along for miles, rising and falling for hundreds of feet in the ocean's interior while making barely a ripple at the surface. These giant, hidden swells are responsible for alternately drawing warm surface waters down to the deep ocean and pulling marine nutrients up from the abyss.

Postdoc Johannes Weickenmeier and Professor Ellen Kuhl have developed mathematical tools to simulate how the brain responds to internal pressure buildup.

Data released today (Tuesday 27 September 2016) from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that over 90 per cent of the UK's population lives in areas where levels of air pollution exceed WHO limits.

Statisticians are developing new ways to interpret the unprecedented amounts of data being generated continuously all around us.

The mathematician Claire Voisin is the laureate of the CNRS 2016 gold medal, France's highest scientific distinction.