News by Subject Mathematics

Researchers have developed a simple model to study how ants balance their large heads relative to their body size. Such models may have useful applications in bio-inspired designs.

Suitable catalysts are of great importance for efficient power-to-X applications -- but the molecular processes occurring during their use have not yet been fully understood. Using X-rays from a synchrotron particle accelerator, scientists of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have now been able to observe for the first time a catalyst during the Fischer-Tropsch reaction that facilitates the production of synthetic fuels under industrial conditions. (Reaction & Chemical Engineering, DOI: 10.1039/c9re00493a)

Without stem cells, human life would not exist. Due to them, a lump of cells becomes an organ, and a fertilized egg develops into a baby. But what actually makes a stem cell? Are these a stable population of specially gifted cells? Scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria discovered that instead, stem cells might emerge due to the collective behavior of cells within the organs.

Research explains how a unicellular marine organism generates light as a response to mechanical stimulation, lighting up breaking waves at night.

Biological builders like beavers, elephants, and shipworms re-engineer their environments. How this affects their ecological network is the subject of new research, which finds that increasing the number of "ecosystem engineers" stabilizes the entire network against extinctions.

A new study by the University of Plymouth explains for the first time how quantum supercomputers could be helpful in the world of making and performing music

Researchers from Duke University propose a new approach to finding an optimal solution for controlling large numbers of robots collaboratively completing a set of complex linear temporal logic commands called STyLuS*, for large-Scale optimal Temporal Logic Synthesis, that can solve problems massively larger than what current algorithms can handle, with hundreds of robots, tens of thousands of rooms and highly complex tasks, in a small fraction of the time.