An article in Times Higher Education (THE) reports on a study that has found that biologists tend to overlook research that is packed with mathematical equations.
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Turing debate in Parliament
Last Thursday a debate about the Turing pardon took place in Parliament. The MKNews website carries a report on the debate, which seems to be a rehashing of Turing’s value and the case for a pardon, including the recent suggestion of extending the new Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 to posthumous cases. The report also includes a suggestion of a special law, in light of the fear of setting a legal precedent, that would specifically clear Turing’s conviction alone. If you’re interest in the full detail, a link to the Hansard record for the debate is given below. You can also watch a video via the link given.
Source: Special report: Alan Turing debated in Parliament.
Hansard: 27 Jun 2012 : Column 108WH.
Video: Centenary of the birth of Alan Turing – Dr Julian Huppert.
Leap Second 30 June 2012
In case you missed it, here is the leap second moment. I loaded several web and desktop clock displays. Notice how many of them didn’t take account of the extra second – but some did! For more details on what this means, see the post ‘Hang on a second‘.
[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbRtco6IryQ]
Math/Maths 103: In which every equation halves the listenership
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released.
A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. This week Samuel and Peter spoke about: malarial transmission; signal processing algorithm to test voice for Parkinson’s disease; baseball run modelling; heavy use of equations impedes communication among biologists; city complexity; gang territorial boundaries; how physicist Jim Kakalios invented a math equation for the new Spider-Man movie; restoration target reached for Bletchley Park’s iconic WW2 codebreaking huts; biggest Turing test results; Alan Turing debated in Parliament; and more.
Get this episode: Math/Maths 103: In which every equation halves the listenership
Hang on a second
Owing to an incredibly small discrepancy between the atomic clock length of a year and the time it takes for the sun to orbit the earth, and the dogged insistence of scientists for being as close as possible to correct all the time, tomorrow is the most recent in a series of days where time goes a bit weird momentarily due to the addition of a leap second. This means 30th June 2012 will last for 86,401 seconds instead of the usual 86,400. Internet mathematician and pedant Matt Parker reports this as an 0.00116% increase on the usual number of seconds in a day.
π vs τ: FOTSN/Tau Day special
Since it’s $\tau$ Day, we thought we’d give Festival of the Spoken Nerd constant-fans Matt Parker and Steve Mould a chance to air their respective viewpoints in the $\tau$ vs $\pi$ debate. It’s a maths showdown!
Etienne Ghys, 2012 LMS Hardy Lecturer
It was a couple of weeks ago now that I saw Étienne Ghys deliver a lecture titled On cutting cloth, according to Chebyshev at Newcastle University, as part of his lecture tour as Hardy Fellow for 2012. I had no idea what the talk was about and only a faint idea of who Prof Ghys was but I was persuaded to go by my ex-supervisor, who also happens to be Newcastle’s LMS rep. It turned out to be an enormously interesting and entertaining talk on a very accessible problem (in the sense that you can easily understand what the problem is and why the solution works, if not how you get there) by one of the most eminent mathematicians working today.