New model offers physics-inspired rankings evaluation

The world is rife with rankings and orderings. They show up in tennis—as in the French Open, which ends with a final ranking of champion players. They show up in pandemics—as when public health officials can record new ...

A new mathematical model of cellular movement

A mathematical model that describes how cells change their shape during movement suggests that the movement is mainly driven by the contraction of the skeletal proteins, called "myosin." The new model developed at Penn State ...

Getting warmer: Improving heat flux modeling

Scientists at Osaka University have simulated heat transport at the smallest scales using a molecular dynamics computer simulation. By studying the motions of the individual particles that make up the boundary between a solid ...

Modeling suggests friendships may lead to lopsided elections

Have you ever thought about not voting because your preferred candidate's victory seems assured? New Cornell research uses mathematical modeling to show that type of thinking can have the opposite effect, resulting in the ...

Strengthening the second law of thermodynamics

According to the second law of thermodynamics, the total entropy of a closed process can increase or stay the same, but never decrease. The second law guarantees, for example, that an egg can wobble off a table and leave ...

Do bubble cascades form only in a glass of Guinness beer?

As far back as 1959, brewers at Guinness developed a system that fundamentally altered the texture of their draft beer. Now, researchers from Japan have solved the physics of Guinness' cascading flow, which will have widespread ...

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