News by Subject Mathematics

Researcher makes 'little data' act big through, the application of mathematical techniques normally used for time-series, to spatial processes. The study, 'An information-theoretic approach to study spatial dependencies in small datasets,' featured on the cover of Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Study by Brazilian and South African researchers is the first to prove, using a graph analysis tool, that REM dream narratives tend to be more complex and connected than reports of non-REM dreams.

Computer modeling of the COVID-19 virus on supercomputers showed that the spike protein visits an intermediate state before it can dock to the receptor protein on the host cell membrane. This intermediate state can be useful for drug targeting to prevent the spike protein to initiate viral infection. The initial findings, which showed the existence of an intermediate semi-open state of the spike protein, was published in the Journal of Chemical Physics.

Converting heat into electricity is a property thought to be reserved only for stiff materials like crystals. However, researchers--inspired by the infrared (IR) vision of snakes--developed a mathematical model for converting soft, organic structures into so-called 'pyroelectric' materials. The study, appearing October 21, 2020 in the journal Matter, proves that soft matter can be transformed into a pyroelectric material and potentially solves a long-held mystery surrounding the mechanism of IR vision in snakes.

Wood is considered an attractive construction material for both aesthetic and environmental purposes. Construction of useful wood objects requires complicated structures and ways to connect components together. Researchers created a novel 3D design application to hugely simplify the design process and also provide milling machine instructions to efficiently produce the designed components. The designs do not require nails or glue, meaning items made with this system can be easily assembled, disassembled, reused, repaired or recycled.

There are far more trees in the West African Sahara and Sahel than most would expect. A combination of artificial intelligence and detailed satellite imagery allowed a team from the University of Copenhagen and international collaborators to count all trees across a 1.3 million km2 area of West Africa.

Contagion processes, such as opinion formation or disease spread, can reach a tipping point, where the contagion either rapidly spreads or dies out. When modeling these processes, it is difficult to capture this complex transition. In the journal Chaos, researchers studied the parameters of these transitions by including three-person group interactions in a contagion model called the susceptible-infected-susceptible model. In this model, an infected person who recovers from an infection can be reinfected.