Column
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The ultimate poker face
Two professional poker players will take on a computer, and this year the computer could win.
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Strategies for nurturing science’s next generation
Nobel laureate Thomas R. Cech discusses the conclusions of ARISE, a new report that emphasizes the need for grant support for early-career scientific researchers and basic science research that may have no immediate tangible benefit. Cech is chair of the ARISE report panel and president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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- Astronomy
Accidental astrophysicists
MATH TREK: The mathematicians thought they'd just extended a fundamental result in algebra, but it turns out that they'd also proven a conjecture in astrophysics.
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Challenges to building a disaster-resilient nation
Comment from David Applegate, chair of the National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction and senior science adviser for earthquake and geologic hazards at the U.S.Geological Survey.
- Math
Gender equality closes math gap
Research shows that the greater the gender equality in a country, the more equal the math scores between boys and girls.
- Math
Communities of Communities of …
A new approach to network theory focusing on the subcommunities within networks may shed light on everything from food webs to terrorist cells. It may even act as an oracle, helping scientists identify connections within a network they haven’t yet seen.
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U.S. science policy needs to heed global realities
Comment by Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard University
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- Math
The squint method of data analysis
Mathematicians discover a Klein bottle hidden within the data underlying photographs
- Physics
John Wheeler (1911-2008)
SN Editor in Chief Tom Siegfried remembers the late physicist John Wheeler, who coined the term "black hole" in 1967, with excerpts from conversations the two had engaged in over the past two decades.
- Math
Sensitivity to the harmony of things
The work of Alexandre Grothendieck has transformed math the way the Internet has transformed communication: Once you’re used to it, you can’t imagine what life was like before it.
