Last year will go on record as one of significant natural disasters both in Australia and overseas. Indeed, the flooding of the Brisbane River in January is still making news as the Queensland floods inquiry…
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…
The humble pigeon mightn’t look smart, but it’s no bird-brain.
Seamoor
We humans have long been interested in defining the abilities that set us apart from other species. Along with capabilities such as language, the ability to recognise and manipulate numbers (“numerical…
Momentum is gathering behind calls to pardon the father of computer science.
BinaryApe
You may have read the British Government is being petitioned to grant a posthumous pardon to one of the world’s greatest mathematicians and most successful codebreakers, Alan Turing. You may also have…
Nearly 90% of people have trouble understanding stats.
gbrenne
Does the thought of p-values and regressions make you break out in a cold sweat? Never fear – read on for answers to some of those burning statistical questions that keep you up 87.9% of the night. What…
Mirrors of a magical scientist: Andromeda photographed through a Newtonian telescope. Flickr/JonBaglo.
The notebooks of Sir Isaac Newton, who was famously reported to have suffered a (scientifically) earth-shaking blow to the head from an apple, are being scanned and published online by the University of…
There’s a contradiction between classical and quantum theories.
TonZ
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy—_ a correct solution to any one results in a US$1,000,000…
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…
What will be the next number in this sequence?
crisinplymouth
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy—a correct solution to any one results in a US$1,000,000…
If this doesn’t bake your hippy noodle, nothing will.
stuartpilbrow
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US$1,000,000…
The problem’s been solved … but the sweet treats were declined.
Back to the Cutting Board
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US$1,000,000…
Deciding whether a statement is true is a computational head-scratcher.
rofi
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US$1,000,000…
The Hodge Conjecture has stimulated the development of revolutionary tools and techniques.
sensesmaybenumbed
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US$1,000,000…
How fluids move has fascinated researchers since the birth of science.
tonyhall
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US$1,000,000…
If you want to optimise scramjets you’re going to need the rule of the jungle.
EPA/NSAS
My intention with this article is to give an intuitive and non-technical introduction to the field of evolutionary algorithms, particularly with regards to optimisation. If I get you interested, I think…
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…
Australia ranks poorly for the number of graduates emerging with a science degree.
epSos.de
Suzanne Cory, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
Australia faces many big challenges – in the economy, health, energy, water, climate change, infrastructure, sustainable agriculture and the preservation of our precious biodiversity. To meet these, we…
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…
A universe composed differently could still support complex life.
Susan NYC
Welcome to Peer Review, a series in which we ask leading academics to review books written by people working in the same field. Here Geraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sydney…
The cut-and-choose technique has been preventing tantrums since antiquity.
free form by prudence
I work on the mathematics of sharing resources, which has led me to consider emotions such as envy, behaviour such as risk-taking and the best way to cut a cake. Like, I suspect, many women, my wife enjoys…