Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 Will Address Mathematician's Role In Climate Research

Scientific societies, research institutes, universities, and science organizations have dedicated 2013 as a special year for the Mathematics of Planet Earth. As part of the dedication, mathematicians will try to understand weather and climate through math.

Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 (MPE 2013) is an initiative of the science community to encourage research in identifying and solving fundamental questions about planet Earth,encourage educators at all levels to communicate the issues related to Earth, and inform the public about the essential role of the mathematical sciences in facing the challenges to Earth.

MPE also will try and encourage young people interested in sustainability and global issues to consider mathematics as an exciting career choice.

Climate

Climate is the weather condition of an area averaged over a period of time (usually in years). The difference between weather and climate is that weather is the condition of the area in that specified time. Aside from measuring devices such as barometers, weather satellites provide images and data on a global scale on how the present condition of the Earth's climate.

When it comes to forecasting weather and predicting climate there are many factors to consider such as temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed, and elevations. Both weather and climate share these most, if not all, factors.

Mathematics is used to understand the weather and climate models. Short term weather forecasts have become more accurate now compared to 20 years ago. Computers have helped with this development but more so with the mathematics used by these computer models.

High Level of Math Anxiety Linked To Brain Regions For Physical Pain and Threat Detection

Ask any student what subject gives the most anxiety and chances are the answer would be math. Millions of kids have problems with math, they struggle to understand the subject often creating high levels of mathematics anxiety (HMAs).

This form of anxiety creates stress that even uses the brainpower needed to learn and solve math problems. Those who suffer HMA report feelings of tension, apprehension, and fear of math.

In her 1978 book, Overcoming Math Anxiety, Shiela Tobias writes that math anxiety causes people to have low self-esteem, lack of confidence and is predisposed to failure. She states that "math anxiety is not a failure of inellect but a failure of nerve...". She further points out the difference on how culture looks at math, Asians credit hard work in succeeding in mathematics, Americans look at it as an ability.

Science and Math Tracks Crime And Gang Activity In L.A.

A gang is a group of is a group of individuals claiming control over an area or territory and engaging in violent or illegal behavior.

Street gangs refers to neighborhood or street-based groups that are united by mutual interest with an internal organization and leadership. They act collectively as a group or as individuals to achieve a specific purpose, which may include illegal activity and territorial control.

It should be noted that not all gang members are involved in criminal activities. Factors such as age, physique, aggressiveness, and history affect the individuals participation in the gang.

Sizes of current street gangs range from 5 to 10 with bigger gangs having several thousands. These big gangs usually break down into smaller sub groups which typically bring more territory to the main group as they expand and recruit new members. Most gangs operate informally with leadership falling to whoever takes control; others have distinct leadership and are highly structured, much like a business or corporation.

Remapping gang turf: Math model shows crimes cluster on borders between rivals

A mathematical model that has been used for more than 80 years to determine the hunting range of animals in the wild holds promise for mapping the territories of street gangs, a UCLA-led team of social scientists reports in a new study.

"The way gangs break up their neighborhoods into unique territories is a lot like the way lions or honey bees break up space," said lead author P. Jeffrey Brantingham, a professor of anthropology at UCLA.

Further, the research demonstrates that the most dangerous place to be in a neighborhood packed with gangs is not deep within the territory of a specific gang, as one might suppose, but on the border between two rival gangs. In fact, the highest concentration of conflict occurs within less than two blocks of gang boundaries, the researchers discovered.

The findings appear online in Criminology, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by the American Society of Criminology, the world's largest society of scholars conducting research on crime.

Mathematical Model Developed To Predict Success Of A Movie At The Box Office

A mathematical model uses mathematical concepts and language to describe a system or behavior of a system.

Mathematical models are applied in various fields of science. It is a valuable tool in studying and explaining systems and even predict its behavior and effects forward in time.

Pieter Eykhoff, one of the founders of system identification, defined a mathematical model as 'a representation of the essential aspects of an existing system (or a system to be constructed) which presents knowledge of that system in usable form'.

Mathematical models can take many forms, including but not limited to dynamical systems, statistical models, differential equations, or game theoretic models.

One use of mathematical models is in quantifying human economic behavior. A model is developed to study and predict how humans behave in a particular situation. It is used to predict an economic (financial) outcome of a given system such as the stock market or other financial system.

Physicists predict success of movies at the box office

A group of Japanese scientists have surprised themselves by being able to predict the success or failure of blockbuster movies at the box office using a set of mathematical models.

The researchers, publishing their study today, 15 June, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, used the effects of advertising and word-of-mouth communication to create a model that turned out to be successful in predicting how each movie fared once it hit the silver screen.

The only data the researchers needed to put into the model were the daily advertisement costs of 25 movies that appeared in Japanese cinemas.

Gravitational Perturbation Theory Reveals Unseen Saturn Sized Planet Orbiting Star KOI-872

Using Kepler Telescope transit data of planet “b”, scientists predicted that a second planet “c” about the mass of Saturn orbits the distant star KOI-872. This research, led by Southwest Research Institute and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is providing evidence of an orderly arrangement of planets orbiting KOI-872, not unlike our own solar system. Credit: Southwest Research Institute

Researchers used gravitational perturbation theory and believe that they have discovered a previously unseen planet orbiting a distant star.

A perturbation theory is a mathematical method that is used to find a solution to a problem that cannot be solved exactly. This is first done by using the solution of a related problem. Isaac Newton used his formulated laws of gravity and motions to the first analysis of perturbations.

Astronomy utilizes gravitational perturbation theory in studying motions of massive objects that are subject to forces other than the attracting gravity of another single object. These forces may be the gravity of a third or more object, resistance, and the off-center attraction of an oblate or otherwise misshapen body.

Combining data from the Kepler spacecraft and complex mathematical equations, researchers may have discovered a new unseen planet. The Kepler spacecraft is a space observatory of NASA with a mission to discover habitable planets in other galaxies.

Unseen planet revealed by its gravity

More than a 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the motion of Uranus. In a paper published today in the journal Science online, a group of researchers led by Dr. David Nesvorny of Southwest Research Institute has inferred another unseen planet, this time orbiting a distant star, marking the first success of this technique outside the solar system.

Using a laborious computational method to assess the effects of gravity, known as gravitational perturbation theory, Le Verrier argued in favor of Neptune's existence and predicted the position of this hidden world to within an arc degree, as later detected directly by Johann Galle of the Berlin Observatory.

Studying The Innate and Cultural Cognitive Origins of Math

Mathematics or Math evolved from counting, measurement, study of shapes and motions of physical objects. One definition of math is that it is the study of quantity, structure, space, and change.

The practical application of math has been ingrained into human activity since the discovery of writing and communication.

The primary investigation into the origin of math and its discoveries and methods can first be found ancient documents such as the following:

• Plimpton 322 - Babylon c. 1900 BC
• Rhind Mathematical Papyrus - Egypt c. 2000-1800 BC
• Moscow Mathematical Papyrus - Egypt c. 1890 BC

All of these texts cover the Pythagorean theorem, which seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical development after basic arithmetic and geometry.

Some would argue that the discovery of the Pythagorean theorem in 6th century BC is where the study of mathematics begins. The theorem, the square of both sides of a right triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse, is attributed to Greek mathematician, Pythagorias. Even the word "Mathematics" started with the Greeks. It means "subject of instruction. The Greeks expanded and refined math methods through deductive reasoning and mathematical rigor in proofs.

Aside from the Greeks, Chinese mathematics made early contributions as well, including a place value system. The Hindu-Arabic numeral system and its rules likely evolved over the course of the first millennium AD in India and was transmitted to the west via Islamic mathematics. Islamic mathematics, in turn, developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations. Many Greek and Arabic texts on mathematics were then translated into Latin, which led to further development of mathematics in medieval Europe.

Looking past written records, scientists and researchers have wondered how the fundamental concept of math began with the human race.

Study finds twist to the story of the number line

Tape measures. Rulers. Graphs. The gas gauge in your car, and the icon on your favorite digital device showing battery power. The number line and its cousins – notations that map numbers onto space and often represent magnitude – are everywhere. Most adults in industrialized societies are so fluent at using the concept, we hardly think about it. We don't stop to wonder: Is it "natural"? Is it cultural?

Now, challenging a mainstream scholarly position that the number-line concept is innate, a study suggests it is learned.

The study, published in PLoS ONE, is based on experiments with an indigenous group in Papua New Guinea. It was led by Rafael Nunez, director of the Embodied Cognition Lab and associate professor of cognitive science in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences.

"Influential scholars have advanced the thesis that many of the building blocks of mathematics are 'hard-wired' in the human mind through millions of years of evolution. And a number of different sources of evidence do suggest that humans naturally associate numbers with space," said Nunez, coauthor of "Where Mathematics Comes From" and co-director of the newly established Fields Cognitive Science Network at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.

A Short Primer on The Science of The Chinese New Year

The Chinese Calendar is a combination of two calendars, the solar and the lunisolar calendar. The solar calendar starts on the December solstice and follows the 24 solar terms of which the solstice and equinoxes are a part. The lunisolar calendar starts on the Chinese New Year and consists of 12 or 13 months.

The Chinese Calendar based on traditional culture and beliefs has been in use for more than 5,000 years. The year beginning January 23, 2012 based on the chinese calendar system is the year 4710. It is the Year of the (Male) Black Water Dragon.

A lunisolar calendar is a calendar whose date indicates both the moon phase and the time of the solar year. In the chinese calendar, the lunar months are typically simply numbered, following the standard practice with the solar months. The Chinese zodiac is only used in naming years—it is not used in the actual calculation of the calendar. The calendar is not as simple as the Gregorian calendar. Since it is based on moon phases and solar time, there is no exact or consistent tracking system for the calendar. All calculations are based on the exact time the moon has entered a phase.

The day on which the New Moon phase occurs is the first day of the month. A month is calculated from the start of the new moon up to the time of the end of the phase. Instead of leap years, the calendar adjusts based on a "leap month". This is done when the cycle of the moon phase starts to get ahead of how the calendar is calculated. This is remedied by adding a day to synchronize with the moon phase again.