News by Subject Mathematics

By combining cutting-edge machine learning with 19th-century mathematics, a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) mathematician is working to make NASA spacecraft lighter and more damage tolerant by developing methods to detect imperfections in carbon nanomaterials used to make composite rocket fuel tanks and other spacecraft structures.

A team of neuroscientists at the University of Tuebingen and MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory shows how to distinguish four classes of brain cells by their spike waveforms. The advance offers brain researchers the chance to better understand how different kinds of neurons are contributing to behavior, perception and memory, and how they are malfunctioning in cases of psychiatric or neurological diseases.

Should hospital advertising be banned? A few policymakers in Washington, D.C., have recently considered such an action based on a long-standing debate on whether it poses the spread of misinformation, and that it is not an effective or responsible use of an already limited healthcare budget. New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science studies the impact of a ban on hospital advertising, and whether those fears are justified.

In the blink of an eye, the human visual system can process an object, determining whether it's a cup or a sock within milliseconds, and with seemingly little effort. It's well-established that an object's shape is a critical visual cue to help the eyes and brain perform this trick. A new study, however, finds that while the outer shape of an object is important for rapid recognition, the object's inner 'skeleton' may play an even more important role.

Detrimental economic effects of global warming are likely to go beyond those being discussed in policy circles -- particularly for wealthier nations, say researchers. Study suggests that 7% of global GDP will disappear by 2100 as a result of business-as-usual carbon emissions -- including over 10% of incomes in both Canada and the United States.