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The guidance counselor at my high school discouraged me to study physics but was very excited when I was contemplating to become a teacher. Maybe I should send her this article...

Oh yeah, real new!! And in the 90s it was obvious that girls are smarter but discriminated, today its obvious that the poor boys are neglected; some years ago female teachers were proven to discriminate even stronger against girls than male teachers and today politicians demand more male teachers... because they would pay more attention to the neglected boys! Great, that's what I like about sociological research, every couple of years one can sell the same old story again and again and again... sorry, I'm in a real bullshitter mood today!

gotta agree with luzi here. girls at secondary school in the UK have been outperforming boys for years now after numerous government programmes. As to guidance counsellors - if they were any good at guidance wouldn't they have better jobs?

My daily read, a collection of blog posts related mostly to energy by UCSD prof Tom Murphy. Especially his experiments into home energy storage and his "do the math" attitude towards renewables are insightful and if not, then sometimes just plain funny.

nice one: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-population-problem/#more-1414

an interesting comic about maths, ideas etc. Co-written by a greek mathematician / writer and a Berkeley computer science professor, sold out in Greece and since its international release a couple of months ago is occupying the top selling comics lists of Amazon etc. also: http://www.logicomix.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=53

btw I just ordered it from Amazon, so if you want after I finish it I can lend it

"If it could be proved that two plus two is five, then it could be proved that five is not five, and then there would be no claim that could not be proved, and math would be a lot of bunk."

Fantastic!!!

DARPA funded the development of a new computer chip that's hardwired to make simple mistakes but can help computers understand the world. Your math teacher lied to you. Sometimes getting your sums wrong is a good thing. So says Joseph Bates, cofounder and CEO of Singular Computing, a company whose computer chips are hardwired to be incapable of performing mathematical calculations correctly.

The whole concept boils down to approximate computing it seems to me. In a presentation I attended once I prospected if the same kind of philosophy could be used as a radiation hardness design approach, the short conclusion being that surely will depend on the functionality intended.

Monopoly is one of the classic American games. It's played amongst close friends, loved ones, and trusted business partners. It's also one of the few times in life where it's perfectly acceptable to want to systematically annihilate and crush the aforementioned friends, loved ones and partners. We broke down the must-know math behind Monopoly as well as several lessons you can take away from what truly is The Most Dangerous Game.

written version of a nice talk on Goedel I heard at a conference. No knowledge about math needed.

"Australia's Royal Air Force has been left red-faced after a job ad asked applicants to solve a complex math problem was revealed to be unsolvable. Bosses posted the puzzle in a bid to attract the country's best minds to its ranks"

Engineer : Remember to tip 18%, everybody. Mathematician : Is that 18% of the pre-tax total, or of the total with tax? Physicist : You know, it's simpler if we assume the system doesn't have tax. Computer Scientist : But it does have tax.

[MaRu] Are you curious about the origin of images I put on my desktop wallpaper? This 2-hours (!) movie should help you understand what they are and where do they come from. Even if you're a biologist ;-) You can watch the trailer here: http://youtube.com

new revTex version available ... what do they mean by this? how do they use XML and latex to XML? would this also be an option for acta futura? "While we appreciate the benefits to authors of preparing manuscripts in TeX, especially for math-intensive manuscripts, it is neither a cost-effective composition tool (for the volume of pages AIP currently produces) nor is it a format that can be used effectively for online publishing."

Dunno really, they may have some in-house process that converts LaTeX to XML for some reason. Probably they are using some subset of SGML, the standard generalized markup language from which both HTML and XML derive. Don't think is really relevant for Acta Futura, and the rest of the world seems to get along with TeX just fine...

From the section Science & Environment US researchers have developed what they call a "molten glass sewing machine" by combining 3D printing of glass with a mathematical model of how a liquid thread forms different types of loop. When the nozzle releasing a stream of molten glass is raised above a certain level, that thread begins to wobble.

With self-assembly guiding the steps and synchronization providing the rhythm, a new class of materials forms dynamic, moving structures in an intricate dance. Researchers have demonstrated tiny spheres that synchronize their movements as they self-assemble into a spinning microtube.

This is quite similar to the following paper. Here they show how tiny variations of particle parameters can produce clearly distinct structures: Thermal and Athermal Swarms of Self-Propelled Particles --> http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0180

The next advance in weather forecasting may not come from a new satellite or supercomputer, but from a device in your pocket. University of Washington atmospheric scientists are using pressure sensors included in the newest smartphones to develop better weather forecasting techniques.

An excellent science coffee topic! This is a true breakthrough in pure mathematics with plentiful applications in the lesser sciences (such as theoretical physics). People tell me quantum gravity is already practically solved by this. Conway's powerful theory of Alternative Facts can render many difficult problems tractable. Here we demonstrate the power of AF to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, one of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics. We further suggest applications of AF to other challenging unsolved problems such as the zero-equals-one conjecture (which is also true) and the side-counting problem of the circle.