Carnival of Mathematics will be here on April 6

Yes, right here on Friday, April 6. This is your personal invitation to suggest blog posts on mathematics at any level – your own or someone else's you especially liked. Posts on theoretical computer science or mathematics in other sciences are also...

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P53 protein and tanning

At first this may seem an odd coincidence, but maybe it isn't. P53 is the protein which plays a critical role in preventing runaway division in cells with damaged DNA, and hence inhibiting cancer. Unless p53 itself becomes faulty – which happens in the...

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E8

Hi there, mathematicians. I assume you've heard the big news about E8 by now:248-dimension maths puzzle solvedAn international team of mathematicians has detailed a vast complex numerical "structure" which was invented more than a century ago.Mapping...

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News dump: inflammation

I've been collecting news stories on a variety of interesting topics, but don't quite have the time to discuss all of them right away. So what I'll do is put up the list with short summaries. And hope to come back with more details later. It's sort of...

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Groups and rings

In our previous installment of the series on algebraic number theory, we took a little detour into Diophantine equations in order to provide some motivation for the theory itself. Prior to that, we had looked at different types of numbers, to give a...

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MicroRNA

MicroRNA (miRNA) is a short (about 21 to 23 nucleotides) single-stranded RNA molecule that is now recognized as playing an important role in gene regulation – even though the term has been in use only since 2001. It is similar to, but distinct from,...

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Adolescent sex

Handheld Computer Study Captures Emotional State Of Sexually Active AdolescentsThrough a unique and innovative data-gathering method, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have gained new insight into adolescents' sexual behavior and how sex affects...

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Philosophia Naturalis #8 call for submissions

Philosophia Naturalis #8 will be hosted at Sujit Datta's blog metadatta on Thursday, March 29. If you've recently written or read a noteworthy blog article on physics, math, astrophysics, chemistry, Earth science, advanced technology, or any other physical...

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No Single Gene For Eye Color, Researchers Prove

Since I wrote a little about eye color before, I think I ought to clarify some things. The earlier article was really about how recessive and dominant genes can have an indirect effect on social behavior via evolution. But the truth about the genetics...

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Feeling hot tonight?

I really can't understand why this wasn't terribly obvious. Here's an update of a story I wrote about before.New Measure Of Sexual Arousal Found For Both Men And WomenAccording to a new study published in the latest issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine...

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Oddest science story of the week

Public 'lack knowledge about sex'The public have a worrying lack of knowledge and understanding about sex, a survey suggests.A poll of 495 people by the Family Planning Association found some thought exercise or urinating after intercourse could prevent...

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Diophantine equations

Remember, our eventual goal is to talk more about algebraic number theory. But first let's take a short detour to say a little about plain old-fashioned number theory, which has been a subject of investigation for over 1800 years. Primarily, what this...

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Philosophia Naturalis #7 - tabloid journalism at its best!

The truly amazing and astounding thing about this edition of Philosophia Naturalis is that it does not contain anything about flying saucers and space aliens!How could such a government scandal have been hidden so long? But now the truth is finally coming...

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