Math behind Internet encryption wins top award: Abel prize awarded to number theorist John Tate

The Abel prize--considered the "Nobel" prize of mathematics--has been awarded to John Tate, recently retired from the University of Texas at Austin, for his work on algebraic number theory, the mathematical discipline that deals with connections between whole numbers and lies at the heart of Internet security.
Established in 2002, the Abel Prize is presented annually by the King of Norway and carries a cash award of $1 million.

Ian Stewart:  Try to find the prime factors of a 200-digit number with pencil and paper--or even with a computer program--and it would take longer than the age of the Universe .

John Tate Biography in Wikipedia

Electrical properties of glass at the nanoscale lead to a pump the size of a red blood cell

Researchers have devised a way to fabricate tiny electrodes from glass, harnessing a phenomenon by which nanoscale glass walls can be transformed from insulators to conductors and back again. At larger scales, that phenomenon, known as  dielectric breakdown , leads to excess heating and structural damage,  but at the nanoscale the process appears to be harmless and  reversible.

Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg

Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg, who made important contributions in many fields of theoretical physics, passed away on 8 November 2009 in Moscow; he had suffered for several years from a blood disease.

Recurrence Analysis of Stock and Commodity indices

In the contemporary global scenario, the working of the complex and multidimensional factors on the time behaviour of financial series necessitates an investigation of the underlying characteristic features of the same. In addition to the state of the art econometric approaches, analysis in terms of state space dynamics considering the financial time series as deterministic chaos has emerged to be of utmost importance. Understanding the dynamics of a financial series, as a stock market index or a commodity market index is still however, a complex task having its specific requirements.  Market behaviour, in case of both commodity and securities is ultimately reflected by the average trading price movement . Thus the time series representing the indices in the respective markets is a key to understanding the economic similarities/dissimilarities in the two markets.  Our purpose was to analyse the time series representing the indices of commodity and stock markets .

CSS3 Examples and Code

We present a set of CSS3 examples which include the state of art in web design. Simple code for the examples are included.
 
http://fisica.ciens.ucv.ve/felix/css3/

Global classical solutions of the Boltzmann equation with long-range interactions

Ludwig Boltzmann
1844-1906

This is a brief announcement of our recent proof of global existence and rapid decay to equilibrium of classical solutions to the Boltzmann equation without any angular cutoff, that is, for long-range interactions. We consider perturbations of the Maxwellian equilibrium states and include the physical cross-sections arising from an inverse-power intermolecular potential r ^-(p-1) with p > 2, and more generally. We present here a mathematical framework for unique global in time solutions for all of these potentials.  We consider it remarkable that this equation, derived by Boltzmann in 1872 and Maxwell in 1867, grants a basic example where a range of geometric fractional derivatives occur in a physical model of the natural world . Our methods provide a new understanding of the effects due to grazing collisions.

http://www.pnas.org/content/107/13/5744.abstract?sid=9d675b61-b4d1-4bc0-88d1-b450d0b4b5ca
 
Philip T. Gressman and Robert M. Strain
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Mathematics, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6395

Time travel? Maybe

Einstein and Rosen made a very bold supposition: What if a traveler fell into the mouth of something that looked like a black hole, but rather than being crushed by a singularity at the center of a black hole, instead emerged from another mouth, potentially many light-years from where he or she started ?. This isn't as crazy as it sounds. Einstein's theory of general relativity -- our current working model for how gravity and space work -- has been confirmed with countless experiments. And, as ad hoc as it sounds, an Einstein-Rosen bridge is a perfectly valid solution to the equations of general relativity.

Graphene transistor could advance nanodevices

For years, scientists and researchers have been looking into the properties of carbon nanotubes and graphene for use in nanoelectronics.  There is no real mass application of devices based on graphene and carbon nanotubes , Zhenxing Wang tells PhysOrg.com.  This is really an opportunity for them to show their capabilities .

Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 173104 ( 2010 )

Death of a star in 3D

( PhysOrg.com ) -- Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching have for the first time managed to reproduce the asymmetries and fast-moving iron clumps of observed supernovae by complex computer simulations in all three dimensions. To this end they successfully followed the outburst in their models consistently from milliseconds after the onset of the blast to the demise of the star several hours later. ( Astrophysical Journal, May 10th, 2010 ).