Lifeboat Foundation

As expected, they discovered large fluctuations in the composition and daily changes of the human and mouse gut microbiomes. But strikingly, these apparently chaotic fluctuations followed several elegant ecological laws.

“Similar to many animal ecologies and complex financial markets, a healthy gut microbiome is never truly at equilibrium,” Vitkup says. “For example, the number of a particular bacterial species on day one is never the same on day two, and so on. It constantly fluctuates, like stocks in a financial market or number of animals in a valley, but these fluctuations are not arbitrary. In fact, they follow predictable patterns described by Taylor’s power law, a well-established principle in animal ecology that describe how fluctuations are related to the relative number of bacteria for different species.”

Other discovered laws of the gut microbiome also followed principles frequently observed in animal ecologies and economic systems, including the tendency of gut bacteria abundances to slowly but predictably drift over time and the tendency of species to appear and disappear from the gut microbiome at predictable times.

Continue reading “Dynamics of gut bacteria follow ecological laws” »

For fun, Apple software developer, Forrest Heller, pits a USB-C charger chip against the computer that landed astronauts on the moon. Here’s what he found.

Plant scientists have long known that crop yield is proportional to the dose of nitrogen fertilizer, but the increased use of fertilizers is costly and harmful to the environment. Until now, the underlying mechanisms by which plants adjust their growth according to the nitrogen dose has been unknown—a key finding that could help enhance plant growth and limit fertilizer use.

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), plant genomic scientists at New York University’s Center for Genomics & Systems Biology discovered the missing piece in the molecular link between a plant’s perception of the nitrogen dose in its environment and the dose-responsive changes in its biomass.

Taking a novel approach, the NYU researchers examined how increasing doses of nitrogen created changes in plants’ genome-wide expression as a function of time. They then used mathematical models to investigate the rate of change of messenger RNA (mRNA) for thousands of genes within the genome to this experimental set up.

Zeno’s paradox stumped philosophers, mathematicians, and intellectuals for millennia. It took physics to finally solve it.

Circa 2018

After 10 years, Prof. Raimar Wulkenhaar from the University of Münster’s Mathematical Institute and his colleague Dr. Erik Panzer from the University of Oxford have solved a mathematical equation which was considered to be unsolvable. The equation is to be used to find answers to questions posed by elementary particle physics. In this interview with Christina Heimken, Wulkenhaar looks back on the challenges encountered in looking for the formula for a solution and he explains why the work is not yet finished.

You worked on the solution to the equation for 10 years. What made this equation so difficult to solve?

Continue reading “Mathematician discusses solving a seemingly unsolvable equation” »

Rice University researchers have discovered a hidden symmetry in the chemical kinetic equations scientists have long used to model and study many of the chemical processes essential for life.

The find has implications for drug design, genetics and biomedical research and is described in a study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To illustrate the biological ramifications, study co-authors Oleg Igoshin, Anatoly Kolomeisky and Joel Mallory of Rice’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) used three wide-ranging examples: protein folding, enzyme catalysis and motor protein efficiency.

In each case, the researchers demonstrated that a simple mathematical ratio shows that the likelihood of errors is controlled by kinetics rather than thermodynamics.

Needless to say, not everyone’s convinced.

Hundreds of books are now free to download.

Springer has released hundreds of free books on a wide range of topics to the general public. The list, which includes 408 books in total, covers a wide range of scientific and technological topics. In order to save you some time, I have created one list of all the books (65 in number) that are relevant to the data and Machine Learning field.

Among the books, you will find those dealing with the mathematical side of the domain (Algebra, Statistics, and more), along with more advanced books on Deep Learning and other advanced topics. You also could find some good books in various programming languages such as Python, R, and MATLAB, etc.

Conway, who passed away on April 11, was known for his rapid computation, his playful approach, and solving problems with “his own bare hands.”