UC Davis is one of the world’s leading cross-disciplinary research and teaching institutions, located in Davis, California. The most academically comprehensive university on the West Coast, it is renowned for its programs in food and agriculture, the environmental sciences and sustainability, and veterinary medicine. Among its many accomplishments, it has helped develop the wine industry, pioneered new medical treatments and altered the art world. Part of the University of California system, UC Davis has 100+ majors, 10 colleges and professional schools, a health system, and research stations throughout California and beyond.
In an announcement today, NASA poured cold water on rumours that its Curiosity rover had found life on Mars. Curiosity found evidence that it had landed on an ancient riverbed, and it identified some interesting…
Thinking about maths problems can produce alarming reactions.
andres.thor
So we have a problem for you. Take a moment to steady yourself, maybe sharpen your pencil. Don’t unpack your calculator, and leave your phone to one side. This one will be purely mental – a spot of addition…
The general public relies on science journalists to report research accurately.
estevenson/Flickr
Few of us have the time or expertise to sift through all of the scientific papers published every day to determine which research is important and relevant to our lives. In this sense, science journalists…
Do lawn signs like these have any effect on prospective voters?
Flickr/Animantis
As the November elections draw nearer, front yards across America are sprouting campaigns signs broadcasting their chosen political candidates. These lawn signs have been a traditional part of politics…
Smart meters worldwide use conventional cell phone networks to transmit their data.
portland general
Most fairly well educated people recognise pseudoscience as bunkum when they see it — astrology, young-earth creationism, alien abduction, pyramid power … Yet some of these same people are now being sucked…
The percentage of maths teachers who struggle with their subject inspires little confidence.
cmiked
Those that can’t do, teach – or so goes the famous saying. But what of those who want to do teaching. What of those who do maths teaching? Can we be sure the job they are doing is the best one for our…
Bogus certainty in the reporting of numbers can have dire consequences.
rbbaird
Last week, The Guardian informed us the Eurozone Crisis will Cost World’s Poorest Countries US$238bn. Really? Not US$237 billion or US$239 billion? Perhaps it was just a wonky headline, and the article…
Plentiful carbon-based fuel and falling world energy prices are a mixed blessing.
Adrian Bradshaw/AAP
Since the middle of the last decade, well before the worldwide run-up in fuel prices during 2008, it has been widely believed that we are entering a new era of scarcity in carbon-based fuels such as oil…
According to some, computer intelligence is on course to match human intelligence by 2045.
Sybren A. Stüvel
As mentioned already on this site and others, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed British mathematician Alan Turing. The outline of his remarkable life and sad ending has by now…
Finland has much to offer Australia and other nations when it comes to mathematics education.
StreetFly JZ
There’s been plenty of commentary recently on the “numeracy crisis” threatening the economies of many developed nations, including Australia. A 2009 report by the National Academies in the US was not the…
Radiometric dating puts paid to some cherished beliefs … kind of.
DonkeyHotey
In one respect, science and religion have been largely reconciled since the 19th century, when geologists such as Charles Lyell recognised the evidence for a very old Earth. Within a few decades, most…
The level of political discourse is descending to new lows … but why?
Garrettc
Given the importance of science and technology to modern life, particularly in developed nations, why don’t we see more scientists in leading governmental positions? This dearth is particularly stark in…
Uncertainty exists – but that’s no excuse for a lack of action.
@Doug88888
These are painful times for those hoping to see an international consensus and substantive action on global warming. In the US, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney said in June 2011: “The…
Our present achievements will look like child’s play in a few years.
Rinoninha
What do iPhones, Twitter, Netflix, cleaner cities, safer cars, state-of-the-art environmental management and modern medical diagnostics have in common? They are all made possible by Moore’s Law. Moore’s…
Our best efforts to gauge threats may be counter-productive.
bre pettiss
Assessing risk is something everyone must do every day. Yet few are very good at it, and there are significant consequences of the public’s collective inability to accurately assess risk. As a first and…
Statistical sloppiness pervades some fields more than others.
Beni Ishaque Luthor
THE STATE OF SCIENCE: Fraud is the exception not the rule in science, but it happens, as one recent high-profile case showed. How does this occur, and what can mathematics bring to the equation? Jon Borwein…
We know the universe is vast, but how do we measure the distances between things?
Dave Scrimshaw.
Let’s talk numbers for a moment. The moon is approximately 384,000 kilometres away, and the sun is approximately 150 million kilometres away. The mean distance between Earth and the sun is known as the…
Are we getting closer to solving one of life’s greatest mysteries?
jcoterhals
During a lunch in the summer of 1950, physicists Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and Herbert York were chatting about a recent New Yorker cartoon depicting aliens abducting trash cans in flying saucers. Suddenly…
Do we take the sophistication of numbers one to ten for granted?
duncan
While adding up your grocery bill in the supermarket, you’re probably not thinking how important or sophisticated our number system is. But the discovery of the present system, by unknown mathematicians…