For over 100 years, scientists have agreed that discrete collections of brain cells fire off signals to other brain areas through a series of interconnected fibers. In a new study, researchers applied ...

What if instead of defining a mesh as a series of vertices and edges in a 3D space, you could describe it as a single function? The easiest function would return the signed distance to the closest ...

Brain activity is structured in space and time. The resulting activity patterns are conventionally thought to depend on an intricate web of anatomical connections that link specialized populations of ...

Beer is best served cold, and it turns out that math can help with that. Cláudio de Castro Pellegrini of the Federal University of São João del-Rei in Brazil recently set out to formulate an equation ...

In the late 19th century, Karl Weierstrass invented a fractal-like function that was decried as nothing less than a “deplorable evil.” In time, it would transform the foundations of mathematics.

How can the behavior of elementary particles and the structure of the entire universe be described using the same mathematical concepts? This question is at the heart of recent work by the ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Calculus is a powerful mathematical tool. But for hundreds of years after its invention in the 17th century, it stood on a shaky ...

From industrial robots to self-driving cars, engineers face a common problem: keeping machines steady and predictable. When ...

Deep inside caves, water dripping from the ceiling creates one of nature's most iconic formations: stalagmites. These pillars of calcite, ranging from centimeters to many meters in height, rise from ...

When paleontologists put together a life history for a long-extinct animal, it's common to infer the foods it ate by looking at modern animals with similar skull shapes and tooth patterns. But this ...