Archive

Latest Articles

‘Functional Fingerprint’ May Identify Brains Over a Lifetime

August 16, 2018

A unique neurological “functional fingerprint” allows scientists to explore the influence of genetics, environment and aging on brain connectivity.

Evolutionary Math and Just-So Stories

August 15, 2018

Evolutionary stories like the grandmother hypothesis are easy to construct from mathematical models, but how well do they reflect reality?

How Insulin Helped Create Ant Societies

August 14, 2018

Evolution may have coopted an ancient metabolic mechanism to set social insects on the path toward one of the most puzzling behaviors found in nature.

Universal Method to Sort Complex Information Found

August 13, 2018

The nearest neighbor problem asks where a new point fits into an existing data set. A few researchers set out to prove that there was no universal way to solve it. Instead, they found such a way.

Dark Energy May Be Incompatible With String Theory

August 9, 2018

A controversial new paper argues that universes with dark energy profiles like ours do not exist in the “landscape” of universes allowed by string theory.

Star-Swallowing Black Holes Reveal Secrets in Exotic Light Shows

August 8, 2018

Black holes occasionally reveal themselves when passing stars get ripped apart by their gravity. These tidal disruption events have created a new way for astronomers to map the hidden cosmos.

A Number Theorist Who Bridges Math and Time

August 1, 2018

Akshay Venkatesh, a former prodigy who struggled with the genius stereotype, has won a Fields Medal for his “profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics.”

A Poet of Computation Who Uncovers Distant Truths

August 1, 2018

The theoretical computer scientist Constantinos Daskalakis has won the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize for explicating core questions in game theory and machine learning.

A Master of Numbers and Shapes Who Is Rewriting Arithmetic

August 1, 2018

The 30-year-old math sensation Peter Scholze is now one of the youngest Fields medalists for “the revolution that he launched in arithmetic geometry.”

Get highlights of the most important news delivered to your email inbox