Current Headlines
- NOTICES OF THE AMS--SEPTEMBER ISSUE
 The September issue of Notices of the AMS includes the feature articles "Old and New on the Exceptional Group G2," by Ilka Agricola and "Who Is Alexander Grothendieck?" by Winfried Scharlau. This issue also has an opinion piece "The Wolf Prize and Supporting Palestinian Education," by David Mumford, along with reviews of The Archimedes Codex and The Indian Clerk.
- THE GEOMETRY OF 3-MANIFOLDS
The Geometry of 3-Manifolds is a lecture by Harvard University professor and Fields Medalist Curtis T. McMullen on the Poincaré conjecture, which can be viewed online. The video is divided into sections, including an introduction and a question-and-answer segment. The lecture was part of Harvard's Science Center Research Lecture Series. Other lectures, such as Evolutionary Dynamics by Martin Nowak and Solving Cubic Equations by Benedict H. Gross and William A. Stein, are also available online.
- FEATURE COLUMN and MATH IN THE MEDIA--AUGUST ISSUES
This month's Feature Column is "Percolation: Slipping through the Cracks," by David Austin. The August
Math in the Media includes Tony Phillips' Take on sphere packing and a New Yorker article on physicist Garrett Lisi, who feels that E8 may provide "The Theory of Everything." Also in Math in the Media are Math Digest summaries of press coverage of math, including coverage of the June/July Notices article "From the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra to Astrophysics: A 'Harmonious' Path", by Dmitry Khavinson and Genevra Neumann; and links to Reviews of recent
books, films and plays. (Image: The gravitational lens G2237 + 0305, dubbed the "Einstein Cross," shows four images of a very distant quasar whose light has been bent by a relatively nearby galaxy acting as a gravitational lens, courtesy of NASA).
- CROCHETING LORENZ MANIFOLDS
 Dr. Hinke Osinga and Professor Bernd Krauskopf (Engineering Mathematics, University of Bristol) have turned the famous Lorenz equations into a beautiful real-life object, by crocheting computer-generated instructions of the Lorenz manifold: all crochet stitches together define the surface of initial conditions that under influence of the vector field generated by the Lorenz equations end up at the origin; all other initial conditions go to the butterfly attractor that has chaotic dynamics. See more information, the crochet pattern and mounting instructions, and read a summary of recent articles on knitting and crocheting mathematical objects.
- SUDOKU NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
Start sharpening you pencils and puzzle skills for the 2008 Philadelphia Inquirer Sudoku National Championship to be held Saturday, October 25 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA.. Hosted by Will Shortz, it's the largest puzzle championship in the U.S. There are cash prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners in Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced levels. You can meet the man who gave sudoku its name, Maki-Kaji, who will travel from Japan. There is a student registration rate. You can register onsite that morning (they recommend that you arrive early in that case), and if you register by September 1 you get a free t-shirt.
- MATHEMATICAL MOMENTS' NEW LOOK
 The Mathematical Moments webpage has been redesigned and reformatted. In addition to the new attractive main page, you can now browse through the Moments by topic--and see how mathematics is applied to science, nature, technology, and human culture--by language--several have been translated into Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese, and Portuguese--and by medium--many feature audio interviews with experts, such as the Moment on sea ice which has an interview with Ken Golden of the University of Utah who talks about his research into sea ice and his adventures in Antarctica and the Arctic.
- WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE FICTIONAL MATHEMATICIAN?
The PLUS Magazine Blog asks the question and invites readers to pick from among a list of 18 fictional characters. The Square (Flatland)? Charlie Eppes (Numb3rs)? Professor Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes)? You can also view the results of the poll, which re-calculates on an ongoing basis the voter favorites. And if your favorite character isn't on the list you can submit a comment to the blog editors.
- RESULTS FROM THE 2008 IMO
China finished first in the 2008 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), which was held in Madrid (Spain). The team from China finished with 217 points, out of a possible 252, with five team members winning gold medals. Russia finished second, with 199 points. All six members of the Russian team won gold medals. The U.S. team finished third with 190 points. Alex Zhai of the U.S., who was one of three participants to receive a perfect score, won a gold medal, along with teammates Colin Sandon, Shaunak Kishore, and Krishanu Sankar. The other two members of the U.S. team, Evan O'Dorney and Paul Christiano, each won silver medals. Rounding out the top five teams were Korea with 188 points and Iran with 181 points. All results from the Olympiad are online, with links to more information on the competition. Next year's IMO, the 50th, is in Bremen, Germany.
- PUZZLES BASED ON SPORADIC SIMPLE GROUPS
The July issue of Scientific American has an article about three mathematical puzzles that are based on sporadic simple groups. In the article "Simple Groups at Play," Igor Kriz, a professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Paul Siegel, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, write about some mathematical puzzles that they've created based on M12, M24, and CO1. According to the article, Kriz and Siegel felt the need to go beyond Rubik's Cube, which gives puzzle-solvers an intuition into group theory, and provide puzzlers some insight into sporadic simple groups. The article also explains basic group theory and how it applies to Rubik's Cube. The puzzles can be played online at the Scientific American website. (M24 puzzle image courtesy of Igor Kriz.)
- 2008 MENGER AWARDS
 The 2008 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) was held May 11-16 in Atlanta, GA. Student finalists qualified by winning local, regional, and state fairs in the U.S. or national science fairs abroad. ISEF, federal agencies and professional and educational organizations, including the AMS, participated by giving special awards. Prizes awarded by the AMS included cash, certificates, books, and tote bags. For the AMS, judges reviewed all of the individual and team projects in mathematics and interviewed each student under consideration for a Karl Menger Memorial Award. The 2008 Menger Award winners are as follows:
First Award of US$1,000 to Alexander Lee Churchill, 18, Lincoln East High School, Lincoln, NE, for "Restrictions and Generalizations on Comma-Free Codes." Second Award of US$500 to Shravani Mikkilineni, 17, Detroit Country Day School, Beverly Hills, MI, for "Continued Fractions and Orbits of a Linear Fractional Transformation" and to David Alex Rosengarten, 18, John L. Miller Great Neck North High School, Great Neck, NY, for "Rotation Curves in Five Dimensions." Third Award of US$250 to Eric Kerner Larson, 16, South Eugene High School, Eugene, OR, for "The DNA Inequality in Non-Convex Regions," Alex Hao Chen, 17, York High School, Yorktown, VA, for "On the Reducible Quintic Complete Base Polynomials," Paul Myer Kominers, 17, Walt Whitman High School, Bethesda, MD, for "Chip-Firing Analysis of Stabilization Behaviors, Hitting Times, and Candy-Passing Games," and Matthew Michael Wage, 18, Appleton East High School, Appleton, WI, for "On Lehmer-Type Questions for Special Classes of Arithmetic Functions." Honorable Mention Awards to Swara Satya Kopparty, 17, Terre Haute South Vigo High School, Terre Haute, IN, for "Frequency Sequences: Structure and Properties,"
Sana Raoof, 17, Jericho High School, Jericho, NY, for "Computation of the Alexander-Conway Polynomial on the Chord Diagrams of Singular Knots," Nurlan Taiganov, 16, High School, Ekibastuz, Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, for "Problem of Ramsey Theory," Artem A. Timoshenko, 16, Murmansk Polytechnic Lyceum, Murmansk, Russia, for "Analogue of the Popoviciu's Inequality," and Sarah Lee Sellers, 17, Hedgesville High School, Hedgesville, WV, for "Eisenstein Prime Magic Square." Pictured in the photo, left to right: Menger Prize Committee Chair David Scott of the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, Alex Chen, Shravani Mikkilinen, Alexander Churchill, Matthew Wage, Paul Kominers, David Rosengarten, and Eric Larson.
- YOUTUBE VIDEO CONTEST WINNER
 Mace Mateo of British Columbia, Canada, the winner of the "What Does 'Math and Voting' Mean to You?" YouTube video contest. Mateo received a warm congratulations and a check for US$500 for his entry, "The Beatles--We Can Work it Out." The contest, which was announced on the Mathematics Awarnesss Month website in March, invited anyone interested in mathematics and statistics to create a video using music, humor, or another creative element to express their feelings about the connection between math and voting. Participants were judged on creativity, how well their message was conveyed, the level of entertainment, quality of the video, and relevance to the theme. Members of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics--a collaborative effort of the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics--proclaimed "Math and Voting" the theme for Mathematics Awareness Month 2008 earlier this year. In a presidential election year, the term "voting" brings to mind national elections. But voting is not just about electoral politics. In any situation in which preferences are expressed--where to have dinner, how to raise money for a charity, who makes the team, etc.--voting occurs. Resources for this year's Mathematics Awareness Month help explain what makes votes matter, as well as how the voting system used affects the outcome, regardless of the context of the voting.
- L'EXPLOSION DES MATHEMATIQUES
 The Société Mathématique de France (French Mathematical Society) has translated into English "L'explosion des mathématiques," an illustrated booklet on the many applications of mathematics. Chapters include "What lies behind mobile phones," "Preventing waves from making noise," "From DNA to knot theory," "How to rationalize auction sales," "Puzzles for airline companies," "Financial options pricing," and more. Download individual chapters or the entire pdf of the English-language version of the "L'explosion des mathématiques" booklet.
- NEW ON MATHEMATICAL IMAGERY
 Recent additions to Mathematical Imagery include the album of works by Jean-Francois Colonna, "A Gateway Between Art and Science," and quilts by Mary Candace Williams. See all images in the albums, as well as other mathematical images at the site, and send them as e-postcards.
- MATH PROJECT WINS INTEL YOUNG SCIENTIST AWARDS
 Sana Raoof, 17, of Jericho High School in Jericho, NY, is among three recipients of the 2008 Intel Young Scientist Award, for her mathematics project, Computation of the Alexander-Conway Polynomial on the Chord Diagrams of Singular Knots. She received a US$50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation as part of the award during the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) held in Atlanta May 11-16. "Raoof's research provided new insight into how a better understanding of mathematical knot theory could help resolve classic biochemical problems. Specifically, her work focused on the Alexander-Conway polynomial invariant for chord diagrams to help prove how to classify molecules on a structural basis." (Intel Foundation press release.) She will attend Harvard University this fall. Raoof also received the Intel ISEF Best of Category-Mathematics Award of $5,000 and an Intel Centrino Duo Mobile technology-based notebook computer, and a First Award of $3,000. A $1,000 grant will be given to her school and the Intel ISEF Affiliated Fair she represented. (Photo: Intel Corporation.) See all the award winners in mathematics.
- MATH PROFESSOR HELPS DEVELOP SOFTWARE FOR VISUALLY IMPARIED
 Elizabeth Jones, associate professor of mathematics and computer science at Indiana State University, took a sabbatical for the fall and spring semesters to work as a consultant with ViewPlus Technologies, a company that creates hardware and software for the visually impaired in Corvallis, Oregon. John Gardner, a physicist who went blind as an adult, started the company to create products that would help the visually impaired overcome obstacles in the way of education. After receiving a National Science Foundation small business grant to create math software for students, he contacted Jones to serve as the math educator on the project team. Through technology, a computer provides the voice for the typed words and figures that are on a computer screen. An embosser creates print outs, with not only Braille, but also graphics that the students can feel. See the Indiana State University news release.
- NUMB3RS MATH ACTIVITIES
 The Mathematics Department at Cornell University has developed a series of materials on math behind the TV show Numb3rs. To date there are over 60 topics related to episodes in the first four seasons, including "Counterfeit Reality," "In Plain Sight," "The Mole," "Pandora's Box," and "Tabu." (Image to left: Diagram from Cornell's "Tabu" of a "tabu search, a kind of local search in which one moves from point to nearby point, trying to find an optimal solution." Graphic used with permission.) Each topic includes a brief synopsis of the program's plot and how the mathematician character Charlie used math to solve the crime, a more in-depth look at the mathematics, and often a suggested activity or a "Tangent"--a tidbit of historical background or other application of the mathematics.
- MOVIES ON THE FUTURES CHANNEL
See a series of brief movies that connect math to the real world: "First one in the ballpark," "Air coasters," "Ingrid's cross-country practice," "Tetradice," "Response time," and "New car tips," are just a few of the topics.
- AMS BOOKSTORE PARTNERS WITH GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH
 It is now easier than ever to find information on over 3,000 AMS books
through the online AMS Bookstore. Choose a book you want to view and use
the power of Google Book Search to explore the contents, view sample
pages and search by specific keyword. From that search result page a
search across the entire AMS Bookstore can identify all AMS books of
interest in seconds.
- MATH DOCTORAL PROGRAMS WEBPAGE
The webpage has separate lists for doctoral programs in mathematics, applied
mathematics and operations research, statistics/biostatistics, and mathematics education. The page was created and is maintained by Sarah-Marie Belcastro.
- MATHEMATICS AND VOTING
 "Does my vote matter? Is the election process fair? Are the votes being counted correctly?" Mathematics and statistics provide the means to deal with the complexity of how votes are cast and counted and how that influences the outcome. Try out different voting methods online.
- PLUS MAGAZINE
The latest issue of Plus Magazine inludes the best young writing talent with the winners of the Plus new writers award 2008, and features about the ways math influences and shapes our lives. The issue explores the overlap between the arts and math, the math of tomography, primes, why mathematicians in the movies are always mad, the nature of infinity, and the math of surprises. There are also puzzles and new podcasts.
- HELP AT DIFFERENT STAGES IN YOUR MATH CAREER
The Art of Problem Solving website lists mathematics scholarships including national
mathematics scholarship competitions, university-specific mathematics
scholarships, and links to other opportunities such as study abroad and
summer programs. Use the 2006 Assistantships & Graduate Fellowships in
the Mathematical Sciences to compare graduate math programs, see
stipend amounts, locate sources of support, and more. See what past math
majors are doing now, on the Early Career Profile
Network. See the AMS web page for job-seekers that
includes links to advice on how to develop your curriculum vitae, interview,
decide if teaching is for you, apply for jobs, and more.
- SELECTED MATH BLOGS
See these sites for interesting math blogs, and give the authors feedback:
bit-player, by Brian Hayes,
Senior Writer for American Scientist; Numb3rs, by Mark
Bridger, Northeastern University; What's New, by Terence Tao, University of California, Los Angeles; MathTrek Blogs, by Julie J. Rehmeyer, Science News Web Editor and Mathematics Writer; The Mathematical Tourist, by Ivars Peterson, MAA Director of Publications for Journals and Communications; Teaching College Math Technology Blog, by Maria H. Anderson, Muskegon Community College; and Carnival of Mathematics, hosted by WordPress.com.
- SIAM UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ONLINE - CALL FOR PAPERS
SIAM Undergraduate Research Online (SIURO) is a web-based publication devoted to undergraduate research in applied and computational mathematics. Topics include analysis, discrete mathematics, statistics, operations research, optimization, dynamical systems, modeling, and computation. Papers written by undergraduate students (or teams of students) are being accepted on an ongoing basis and will be posted online as they are accepted. The SIURO web site lists the editorial board and has instructions for authors, review policies, etc.
- STIPENDS FOR STUDY AND TRAVEL
The September 2007 issue of Notices of the AMS includes opportunities for graduate
support, postdoctoral support, travel and study abroad, and study
in the U.S. for foreign nationals. There are various deadlines throughout this academic year.
- MATH IN MOSCOW - SPRING 2009 SEMESTER
Now's the time to consider attending the spring 2009 "Math in Moscow" semester at the Independent University of Moscow. Five
scholarships of US$7500 are available per semester, with funding provided by the National Science Foundation and administered by the American Mathematical Society. U.S. undergraduate mathematics or computer science majors may apply for a scholarship to cover some of the costs associated with attendance at the one-semester program. Occasionally, a scholarship may be awarded to a graduate student. The program provides a fifteen-week-long research experience for students, not only with other mathematically talented and highly motivated undergraduates but with some of the world's leading mathematicians as well. Students learn mathematics in an environment similar in spirit to that of an REU, but with broader representation from the international community. The deadline to apply for the spring 2009 semester and scholarship is SEPTEMBER 30, 2008. Learn more about the program and application requirements.
- ATTENTION STUDENTS!
If you are a member of the AMS, MAA, SIAM, AMATYC, AWM or CMS/SMC,
please please keep your contact information current on the online Combined Membership List. The directory is a
great networking tool, so be sure your mathematical colleagues all
over the U.S. and Canada can find you!
FOR POSTDOCS
- NRC RESEARCH ASSOCIATESHIP PROGRAMS. The National Research Council of the National Academies sponsors a number of awards for post-doctoral and senior researchers at federal laboratories. There are four review cycles annually. The next upcoming submission deadline is AUGUST 1, 2008, then NOVEMBER 1, 2008 and FEBRUARY 1, 2009. The website has detailed program information.
- NSF-AWM TRAVEL GRANTS. NSF-AWM Travel Grants program enables women to attend research conferences in
their fields, thereby providing a valuable opportunity to advance their
research activities and their visibility in the research community. The
grants provide full or partial support for travel and subsistence for a
meeting or conference in the applicant's field of specialization. A
maximum of US$1,500 for domestic travel and US$2,000 for foreign travel will be
available. Women must hold a doctorate (or equivalent experience) and
have a work address in the US (or US home address, in case of unemployed
mathematicians). There are three award periods per year, with
applications due FEBRUARY 1, MAY 1, and, next, OCTOBER 1.
- ALL DEADLINES
|
