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IMAGE: For the study, the researchers created a computer model of a classroom with students and a teacher, then modeled airflow and disease transmission, and calculated airborne-driven transmission risk. view more
Credit: Michael Kinzel, UCF
ORLANDO, April 5, 2021 - A new study from the University of Central Florida suggests that masks and a good ventilation system are more important than social distancing for reducing the airborne spread of COVID-19 in classrooms.
The research, published recently in the journal
Physics of Fluids, comes at a critical time when schools and universities are considering returning to more in-person classes in the fall.
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(Vienna, March 17, 2021) When complex systems double in size, many of their parts do not. Characteristically, some aspects will grow by only about 80 percent, others by about 120 percent. The astonishing uniformity of these two growth rates is known as scaling laws. Scaling laws are observed everywhere in the world, from biology to physical systems. They also apply to cities. Yet, while a multitude of examples show their presence, reasons for their emergence are still a matter of debate.
A new publication in the
Journal of The Royal Society Interface now provides a simple explanation for urban scaling laws: Carlos Molinero and Stefan Thurner of the
Mathematical analysis of COVID mortality rates in the US and Europe shows that second-wave mortality was often greatly reduced - particularly in wealthier European countries and the northeast of the US.
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IMAGE: (a) Scale-out approach: improve computing performance by increasing the numbers of computing chips; (b) All-to-all connection type combinatorial optimization problems: all variables interact with each other. view more
Credit: Toshiba Corporation
TOKYO - Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502), the industry leader in solutions for large-scale optimization problems, today announced a scale-out technology that minimizes hardware limitations, an evolution of its optimization computer, the Simulation Bifurcation Machine (SBM), that supports continued increases in computing speed and scale. Toshiba expects the new SBM to be a game changer for real-world problems that require large-scale, high-speed and low-latency, such as simultaneous financial transactions involving large numbers of stock, and complex control of multiple robots. The research results were published in
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What do you do after solving the answer to life, the universe, and everything? If you re mathematicians Drew Sutherland and Andy Booker, you go for the harder problem.
In 2019, Booker, at the University of Bristol, and Sutherland, principal research scientist at MIT, were the first to find the answer to 42. The number has pop culture significance as the fictional answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, as Douglas Adams famously penned in his novel The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy. The question that begets 42, at least in the novel, is frustratingly, hilariously unknown.
In mathematics, entirely by coincidence, there exists a polynomial equation for which the answer, 42, had similarly eluded mathematicians for decades. The equation x3+y3+z3=k is known as the sum of cubes problem. While seemingly straightforward, the equation becomes exponentially difficult to solve when framed as a Diophantine equation a problem that stipulate