The New Math of Wrinkling
A few minutes into a 2018 talk at the University of Michigan, Ian Tobasco picked up a large piece of paper and…
Category: Features
Will Transformers Take Over Artificial Intelligence?
Imagine going to your local hardware store and seeing a new kind of hammer on the shelf. You’ve heard about…
Some ecologists value parasites — and now want a plan to save them
Chelsea Wood always wanted to be a marine biologist. As a child growing up on New York’s Long Island, she…
Researchers turn to deep learning to decode protein structures
Twenty-eight years ago, computational biologists led by John Moult then at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, launched an ambitious, large-scale…
Bringing Out the Dead
One bright morning in November 2018, state biologists in Louisiana loaded three dead and toothy alligators, each more than 5…
Cold plasma and the farms of the future
Physicist Stephan Reuter of Polytechnique Montréal spends most days using his expertise in energy and matter to improve medical technologies.…
How Big Data Carried Graph Theory Into New Dimensions
Graph theory isn’t enough. The mathematical language for talking about connections, which usually depends on networks — vertices (dots) and…
A New Theory for Systems That Defy Newton’s Third Law
Newton’s third law tells us that for every action, there’s an equal reaction going the opposite way. It’s been reassuring…
How to poison a feral pig
EARLY ONE WINTER MORNING in 2020, Kurt VerCauteren discovered a cluster of dead birds in a barren field in northwest Texas.…
Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem
Success is rare in math. Just ask Benson Farb. “The hard part about math is that you’re failing 90% of the…