Math is More:

Dear Colleagues,

The article below suggests practices by science researchers so that they can take advantage of scientific computing tools.

http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a ... bi.1005510

Regards,

Joe

Dear Colleagues,

A clarification concerning the extent to which the genome of humans and other organisms has been sequenced has been given:

https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/20/hum ... sequenced/

Eric Lander who is quoted is trained as a mathematician.

Best,

Joe

Dear Colleagues, Though I don't feel that education should be optimized for the goal of wining contests either in a particular country or on the international stage, for those interested, here is an article about the recent international programming (computers) contest. http://www.salon.com/2017/06/...

Dear Colleagues,

Women still face a variety of challenges when they want to pursue STEM careers.

Attempts by the European Union to promote gender equity are discussed in the reports here:

https://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/ind ... r_equality

Regards,

Joe

Dear Colleagues, Cedric Villani, who is a Fields Medal winner, has been elected to the French Parliament: http://www.ams.org/news?news_id=3574 For an account of Villani's work in mathematics you can consult: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9dric_Villani or his web site: http://cedricvillani.org/...

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, this paper about polygonal tilings and self-similarity appeared:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.02218.pdf

For some thoughts and comments on this paper you can look at:

https://plus.google.com/101584889282878 ... dstbQVhAcq

Regards,

Joe

Dear Colleagues, Gerrymandering is the name given to the practice of drawing election district lines for some politically motivated purposes. Historically, the US Supreme Court has been reluctant to interfere with legislative actions (at the state or federal level) which were viewed merely as "...

Dear Colleagues, Alvin Roth. who is a mathematical economist at Stanford, recently gave a public lecture on marketplaces and market design. The talk is an hour and 1/2 an hour of questions. Here is the audio for his lecture: https://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2017/06/listen-to-my-morishima-lecture_...

Dear Colleagues, MAA (Mathematical Association of America) has various special interest groups, called SIGMAAs, one of which is devoted to mathematics and art. I recently got the second annual newsletter of this SIGMAA. While this item has not been posted to the SIGMAA Arts web site (yet), the first...

Dear Colleagues, In recent years geometers and other mathematicians and computer scientists have taken an interest in rigidity, folding, and unfolding questions. Some of these questions have been inspired by looking at issues arising in paper folding - origami. The paper below is written by some peo...

Dear Colleagues, Mathematics has proved of great use in trying to understand the sub-field of biology dealing with evolution. Here is an intriguing article about issues related to "time scales." https://www.quantamagazine.org/evolution-runs-faster-on-short-timescales-20170314/ Regards, Joe

Dear Colleagues, Here is an interesting account of the way "accounting" tokens were used in Mesopotamia: http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-mesopotamian-accounting-tokens The article shows the value of adopting an historical perspective in looking at mat...

Dear Colleagues,

Could it be that what encouraged the development of writing in "ancient" civilizations was the desire to record numerical information?

Here are some thoughts:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39870485

Regards,

Joe

Dear Colleagues, The movement to replace public schools with for profit charter schools that get public funding (varies schemes exist to do this) is a very bad idea. Recently, Detroit has had to "rescue" charter schools when they "failed." The public winds up paying on both ends ...

Dear Colleagues,

The prestigious award, the Copley Medal, of the Royal Society has been awarded to Andrew Wiles for 2017, mentioning his break-through work on Fermat's Last Theorem.

https://royalsociety.org/news/2017/05/m ... ley-medal/

Regards,

Joe