Western researchers have developed a novel technique using math to understand exactly how neural networks make decisions—a widely recognized but poorly understood process in the field of machine learning.
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 could help people better understand...
A team has developed a new method that facilitates and improves predictions of tabular data, especially for small data sets with fewer than 10,000 data points. The new AI model TabPFN is trained on synthetically generated data before it...
In the same way that ChatGPT understands human language, a new AI model developed by computational biologists captures the language of cells to accurately predict their activities.
A new study reveals that generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help expedite the search for solutions to reduce enteric methane emissions caused by cows in animal agriculture, which accounts for about 33 percent of U.S. agriculture...
Geometry is an important branch of mathematics, which we use to understand the properties of 2D and 3D space such as distance, shape, size and position. We use geometry every day: cutting paper to wrap a present, calculating the area of...
Researchers focus on enhancing the aerodynamic performance of autonomous vehicles by reducing drag induced by externally mounted sensors such as cameras and light detection and ranging instruments. After establishing an automated...
Researchers from different fields came together to improve our understanding of anti-diffusion , the process behind the distinct bands of Jupiter, that also plays a role in our oceans and in developing plasma fusion reactors.
Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) are central to both pure and applied mathematics. Any quantity which changes in space and time will satisfy certain partial differential equations because the laws of nature, and the laws of physics...
Political and ideological barriers can shape the progress of academic disciplines, warns Ivan Boldyrev. In a paper appearing in the Journal of Economic Literature , the historian of economics at Radboud University explores the complex...
The solutions to today’s puzzles Earlier today I set you three puzzles that were interview questions at Paypal, the online payments company ran by a group of billionaire tech bros – Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks – now better...
Mind-manglers from the Musk mafia UPDATE: Read the solutions here The book The Founders by Jimmy Soni tells the story of the Paypal Mafia – the tech bros who founded and ran the online payments company. The most famous of this troupe -...
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 than others?' A team of mathematicians explored and...
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 than others?" A team of mathematicians explored and...
Researchers at New York University conclude a narrow waist and large hips are optimal for keeping a hoop spinning Snake hips, good core strength and a willingness to look slightly ridiculous all come in helpful for those wishing to...
With billions of children around the world anxiously waiting for their presents, Father Christmas (or Santa) and his reindeer must be traveling at breakneck speeds to deliver them all in one night.
The manic pace of sharing, storing, securing, and serving data has a manic price—power consumption. To counter this, Virginia Tech mathematicians are leveraging algebraic geometry to target the inefficiencies of data centers.
The solutions to today’s puzzles Earlier today I set you the following two puzzles loosely related to 2025. (For more information on the number 2025 please read the original post .) Here they are again with the solutions. Queens and...
Five fives alive! UPDATE: Read the solutions here As is traditional for the final column of year, we look ahead to all that the following twelve months will bring us. Numerically speaking, of course. 44 2 = 1936 45 2 = 2025 46 2 = 2116...
Researchers trained a large language model to read medical charts, looking for signs that kids with ADHD received the right follow-up care when using new medications.
Researchers trained a large language model to read medical charts, looking for signs that kids with ADHD received the right follow-up care when using new medications.
Half a decade on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a study by the University of Surrey highlights the significant impact of combined public health measures in reducing airborne viral transmission. High-quality face masks were...
Researchers developed a fully open-source biomolecular structure prediction model that achieves state-of-the-art performance, at the level of AlpahFold3, in an effort to democratize biomedical research and drug development.
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 method that points to its 'inevitability.'
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 the evolution and distribution of...
A collaborative study between the University of Helsinki, Aarhus University, the National Museum of Denmark and Seattle University examined the cognitive, cultural and historical significance of traditional string figures. The study...
Nonlinear dynamical systems are systems that can undergo sudden shifts not due to changes in their state or stability, but in response to the rate at which external conditions or parameters change. These sudden shifts, known as...
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 result, scientists can accurately capture...
People who started playing video games at an early school age developed problematic gaming more quickly compared to those who started playing a few years later.
Researchers developed an AI debiasing technique that improves the fairness of a machine-learning model by boosting its performance for subgroups that are underrepresented in its training data, while maintaining its overall accuracy.
A study by a team of scientists finds that AI systems are also prone to social identity biases, revealing fundamental group prejudices that reach beyond those tied to gender, race, or religion.
We know a knight can move across the chessboard faster than the king, but exactly how much faster? Christian Táfula Santos, a doctoral student in UdeM's Department of Mathematics, has done the math and his proof has been published on the...
A new study highlights a hidden challenge of using AI in medical imaging research -- the phenomenon of highly accurate yet potentially misleading results known as 'shortcut learning.' The researchers analyzed thousands of knee X-rays and...
A mathematician at Yonsei University, in Korea, claims to have solved the moving sofa problem. Jineon Baek has posted a 100+-page proof of the problem on the arXiv preprint server.
What do you remember about math at school? Did you whizz through the problems and enjoy getting the answers right? Or did you often feel lost and worried you weren't keeping up? Perhaps you felt math wasn't for you and you stopped doing...
A breakthrough in the theory of climate change science has given scientists the most robust way yet to link observed climate change to both human-made and natural causes and to spot early warning signals for potential climate disasters.
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 the 'noise' of natural climate fluctuations....
Researchers found that adolescents with more symptoms of gaming addiction showed lower brain activity in the region involved in decision-making and reward processing; this blunted response to reward anticipation is associated with higher...
Finding a reasonable hypothesis can pose a challenge when there are thousands of possibilities. This is why Dr. Joseph Sang-II Kwon is trying to make hypotheses in a generalizable and systematic manner.
Pretrained large-scale AI models need to 'forget' specific information for privacy and computational efficiency, but no methods exist for doing so in black-box vision-language models, where internal details are inaccessible. Now,...
To help improve punctuality by understanding how delays propagate and identifying critical trains, researchers have developed a new network-based method.
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 enables personal computers to solve...
A pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) powered model able to understand the sequences and structure patterns that make up the genetic 'language' of plants, has been launched by a research collaboration.
The solution to today’s puzzle Earlier today I set you the following puzzle, which I read in the new Sally Rooney novel, Intermezzo. Here it is again with the solution. A liar who always lies says “All my hats are green.” Continue...
Literary logic UPDATE: Read the solution here Midway though the new Sally Rooney novel, Intermezzo, two of the characters discuss a puzzle about hats. I thought it would make a perfect puzzle for this column, so here it is. A liar who...
In fields ranging from immunology and ecology to economics and thermodynamics, multi-scale complex systems are ubiquitous. They are also notoriously difficult to model. Conventional approaches take either a bottom-up or top-down...
In fields ranging from immunology and ecology to economics and thermodynamics, multi-scale complex systems are ubiquitous. They are also notoriously difficult to model. Conventional approaches take either a bottom-up or top-down...