Uncategorized
- Math
Losing to Win
It’s a gift to born losers. Researchers have demonstrated that two games of chance, each guaranteed to give a player a predominance of losses in the long term, can add up to a winning outcome if the player alternates randomly between the two games. This striking new result in game theory is now called Parrondo’s […]
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From the March 1, 1930, issue
BEAUTY IN A DITCH Among the photographs that attracted much attention at an exhibition of the London Salon of Photography not long ago was one that stood out as a gleaming example of the beauty to be found in common things–even in ugly things–by a sufficiently discerning eye. S. Uyeda saw a lot of big, […]
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Weird Science Projects
The name of this site–Bizarre Stuff You Can Make in Your Kitchen–sums it up nicely. It describes, in detail, classic science projects originally published in books and magazines from the 1930s to 1960s. The list includes lessons on how to build your own seismograph, manufacture strange goo, or make pickles glow. The site even explains […]
- Math
Packing spheres around a sphere
A mathematician has proved that the optimal arrangement of 12 identical spheres around and touching a 13th is a highly symmetric pattern based on the 12-faced geometric shape known as the dodecahedron.
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19110
I’m glad to see that other mathematicians are working on the fair-division problem. The challenge is not so much with the optimizing-allocating procedures or algorithms but with how to explain the process and results in a way that is satisfying, understandable, and binding to the participants without seeming to benefit some distant party, like the […]
- Math
A fair deal for housemates
A new mathematical recipe for fair division allows people to resolve disputes over the splitting up of rent, goods, or even burdensome chores.
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Anatomy of antisocial personality
A disturbance in the brain's prefrontal cortex may either contribute to or result from a psychiatric condition called antisocial personality disorder.
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Treatment enigma for disturbed kids
Two new studies offer conflicting views of the effectiveness of mental-health services for children and teenagers.
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19108
This article, in which among other things you gave a description of William’s syndrome, really surprised me. I said to myself, I know a boy like that. I finished the article and called the boy’s parents to see if they had ever heard about this genetic syndrome. They hadn’t. Numerous health-care providers had failed to […]
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Genes to Grow On
Researchers studying children with Williams syndrome say that the unusual condition emerges through a developmental process that's influenced but not predetermined by a genetic defect.
- Earth
Climate’s Long-Lost Twin
New geological evidence suggests that humans have started exploiting fossil fuels and altering Earth's atmosphere at precisely the moment when greenhouse gases could do the most damage to climate.
- Health & Medicine
Hear, Hear
A 14-year study of twin babies shows definitively for the first time that there's a link between middle ear infections and heredity.
