Mathematics News

May 1, 2025

Top Headlines

How Math Helps to Protect Crops from Invasive Disease

Apr. 28, 2025 — New research demonstrates how mathematical modeling can predict outbreaks of toxic fungi in Texas corn crops -- offering a potential lifeline to farmers facing billions in harvest ...

New Method Improves Survival Analysis Power in Clinical and Epidemiological Studies

Apr. 24, 2025 — Innovative statistical method helps determine ideal threshold times in restricted mean survival time ...

Using ChatGPT, Students Might Pass a Course, but With a Cost

Apr. 22, 2025 — With the assumption that students are going to use artificial intelligence and large language models such as ChatGPT to do their homework, researchers set out to learn how well the free version of ChatGPT would compare with human students in a ...

Study Shows Addressing Working Memory Can Help Students With Math Difficulty Improve Word Problem-Solving Skills

Apr. 21, 2025 — Working memory is like a mental chalkboard we use to store temporary information while executing other tasks. Scientists worked with more than 200 elementary students to test their working memory, ...

Latest Headlines

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Modeling Method Provides Smarter Way to Predict Customer Demand

Apr. 14, 2025 — Researchers have developed a new forecasting model that helps companies more accurately estimate how many customers are interested in a product -- even when key data is missing. The study introduces ...

Multi-Resistance in Bacteria Predicted by AI Model

Apr. 2, 2025 — An AI model trained on large amounts of genetic data can predict whether bacteria will become antibiotic-resistant. The new study shows that antibiotic resistance is more easily transmitted between ...

Mathematicians Uncover the Logic Behind How People Walk in Crowds

Mar. 24, 2025 — Mathematicians studied the flow of human crowds and developed a way to predict when pedestrian paths will transition from orderly to entangled. Their findings may help inform the design of public ...

AI-Based Math: Individualized Support for Schoolchildren

Mar. 10, 2025 — Researchers have developed an AI-based learning system that recognizes strengths and weaknesses in mathematics by tracking eye movements with a webcam to generate problem-solving hints. This enables ...

Scientists Develop Open-Source Software for Modeling Soft Materials

Mar. 5, 2025 — A team of researchers created Morpho, an open-source programmable environment that enables researchers and engineers to conduct shape optimization and design for soft materials. Applications can be ...

Student Refines 100-Year-Old Math Problem, Expanding Wind Energy Possibilities

Feb. 26, 2025 — An engineering student refined a century-old math problem into a simpler, more elegant form, making it easier to use and explore. Divya Tyagi's work ...

Simulating Scientists: New Tool for AI-Powered Scientific Discovery

Feb. 26, 2025 — Researchers have developed a generative AI tool that mimics scientists to support and speed up the process of scientific ...

What Can Theoretical Physics Teach Us About Knitting?

Feb. 26, 2025 — Physicists bring unprecedented levels of predictability to the ancient practice of knitting by developing a mathematical model that could be used to create a new class of lightweight, ultra-strong ...

Like Human Brains, Large Language Models Reason About Diverse Data in a General Way

Feb. 19, 2025 — Researchers find large language models process diverse types of data, like different languages, audio inputs, images, etc., similarly to how humans ...

The Molecular Einstein: One Molecule, Endless Patterns

Feb. 13, 2025 — Is it possible to tile a surface with a single shape in such a way that the pattern never repeats itself? In 2022, a mathematical solution to this 'Einstein problem' was discovered for the first ...

A Simple Way to Boost Math Progress

Mar. 24, 2025 — Scientists investigated whether email interventions informed by behavioral science could help teachers help students learn ...

School Bans Alone Not Enough to Tackle Negative Impacts of Phone and Social Media Use, Researchers Find

Feb. 5, 2025 — Students attending schools that ban the use of phones throughout the school day aren't necessarily experiencing better mental health and wellbeing, as the first worldwide study of its kind has ...

Study in India Shows Kids Use Different Math Skills at Work Vs. School

Feb. 5, 2025 — A study by economists shows a wide gap between the kinds of math problems kids who work in retail markets do well and the kinds of problems kids in school do ...

Materials Can 'Remember' a Sequence of Events in an Unexpected Way

Jan. 29, 2025 — Many materials store information about what has happened to them in a sort of material memory, like wrinkles on a once crumpled piece of paper. Now, a team of physicists has uncovered how, under ...

Even Quantum Physics Obeys the Law of Entropy

Jan. 29, 2025 — The universe is getting more disordered, entropy is growing -- this is the second law of thermodynamics. But according to quantum theory, entropy should actually stay the same. Scientists took a ...

Synchronization in Neural Nets: Mathematical Insight Into Neuron Readout Drives Significant Improvements in Prediction Accuracy

Jan. 16, 2025 — Researchers applied the mathematical theory of synchronization to clarify how recurrent neural networks (RNNs) generate predictions, revealing a certain map, based on the generalized synchronization, ...

Pioneering Mathematical Model Could Help Protect Privacy and Ensure Safer Use of AI

Jan. 9, 2025 — AI tools are increasingly being used to track and monitor us both online and in-person, yet their effectiveness comes with big risks. Computer scientists have developed a new mathematical model which ...

How Do Directional Connections Shape Complex Dynamics in Neuronal Networks?

Jan. 6, 2025 — In order to uncover the relationship between structure and function, researchers used microfluidic devices to study neuronal ...

How Does a Hula Hoop Master Gravity? Mathematicians Prove That Shape Matters

Jan. 2, 2025 — Hula hooping is so commonplace that we may overlook some interesting questions it raises: 'What keeps a hula hoop up against gravity?' and 'Are some body types better for hula hooping ...

Physicists 'Bootstrap' Validity of String Theory

Dec. 17, 2024 — String theory remains elusive as a 'provable' phenomenon. But a team of physicists has now taken a significant step forward in validating string theory by using an innovative mathematical ...

String Figures Shed Light on Cultural Connections and the Roots of Mathematical Reasoning

Dec. 17, 2024 — New research suggests that the making of string figures, a globally documented practice, may point to shared cultural heritage stretching back millennia. The research offers a new way to investigate ...

Physics and Emote Design: Quantifying Clarity in Digital Images

Dec. 16, 2024 — When analyzing artworks, understanding the visual clarity of compositions is crucial. Inspired by digital artists, researchers have created a metric to quantify clarity in digital images. As a ...

Leap in Modelling Human Impact on Climate May Lead to Early Warning of Climate Disasters

Dec. 10, 2024 — Mathematicians have applied statistical mechanics to climate change detection and attribution for first time. They have shown how to separate the 'signal' of human-made climate change from ...

New AI Cracks Complex Engineering Problems Faster Than Supercomputers

Dec. 9, 2024 — Modeling how cars deform in a crash, how spacecraft responds to extreme environments, or how bridges resist stress could be made thousands of times faster thanks to new artificial intelligence that ...

How Neighborhood Enhances Cooperation

Dec. 6, 2024 — Helping out your neighbor or minding your own business? A challenging choice with different benefits for each decision. Game theory provides guidance in making such choices -- from a theoretical ...

X-Ray Vision: Seeing Through the Mystery of an X-Ray Emissions Mechanism

Dec. 4, 2024 — Since the 1960s, scientists who study X-rays, lightning and similar phenomena have observed something curious: In lab experiments replicating these occurrences, electrons accelerated between two ...

A New Way to Create Realistic 3D Shapes Using Generative AI

Dec. 4, 2024 — An AI method enables the generation of sharp, high-quality 3D shapes that are closer to the quality of the best 2D image models. Previous approaches typically generated blurry or cartoonish 3D ...

Study in Neurosurgery Patients Reveals Numerical Concepts Are Processed Deep in Ancient Part of Brain

Dec. 3, 2024 — New research reveals the unique human ability to conceptualize numbers may be rooted deep within the ...

New Theory Reveals the Shape of a Single Photon

Nov. 19, 2024 — A new theory, that explains how light and matter interact at the quantum level has enabled researchers to define for the first time the precise shape of a single ...

'Walk This Way': How Ants Create Trails to Multiple Food Sources

Nov. 16, 2024 — Researchers have discovered that in a foraging ant's search for food, it will leave pheromone trails connecting its colony to multiple food sources when they're available, successfully ...