Math Moments

Describing the Oceans
Imagine trying to describe the circulation and temperatures across the vast
expanse of our oceans. Good models of our oceans not only benefit fish-
ermen on our coasts but farmers inland as well. Until recently, there were
neither adequate tools nor enough data to construct models. Now with
new data and new mathematics, short-range climate forecasting—for
example, of an upcoming El Niño—is possible.
There is still much work to be done in long-term climate forecasting, however,

and we only barely understand the oceans. Existing equations describe ocean
dynamics, but solutions to the equations are currently out of reach. No
computer can accommodate the data required to approximate a good solu-
tion to these equations. Researchers therefore make simplifying assumptions
in order to solve the equations. New data are used to test the accuracy of
models derived from these assumptions. This research is essential because we
cannot understand our climate until we understand the oceans.
For More Information:

What’s Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol 1, Barry Cipra.
Photograph courtesy of the Naval Postgraduate School.
The Mathematical Moments program promotes

appreciation and understanding of the role mathematics
plays in science, nature, technology, and human culture.
w w w. a m s . o r g / m a t h m o m e n t s
MM/1
Making Movies
Come Alive
Many movie animation techniques are based on mathematics. Characters,
background, and motion are all created using software that combines pixels
into geometric shapes which are stored and manipulated using the mathe-
matics of computer graphics.
Software encodes features that are important to the eye, like position,
motion, color, and texture, into each pixel. The software uses vectors,
matrices, and polygonal approximations to curved surfaces to determine the
shade of each pixel. Each frame in a computer-generated film has over two
million pixels and can have over forty million polygons. The tremendous
number of calculations involved makes computers necessary, but without
mathematics the computers wouldn’t know what to calculate. Said one
animator, “. . . it’s all controlled by math . . . all those little X,Y’s, and Z’s that
you had in school—oh my gosh, suddenly they all apply.”

Mathematics for Computer Graphics Applications, Michael E. Mortenson, 1999.
Photograph courtesy of Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette

and Universal Pictures.

MM/2
Designing Aircraft
The flow of air (and water) has been studied for over a hundred years, but
only recently have mathematicians begun to understand the complicated
phenomenon of turbulence that is a crucial part of aerodynamics. With
mathematics and modern computers, wind tunnels are now seldom used in
aeronautical design.
The Navier-Stokes equations describe fluid flow, but there is no precise

solution to these partial differential equations.The faster the fluid flow, the
more a nonlinear term in the equations increases, which increases the diffi-
culty of generating numerical solutions to the equations. So, turbulence
affecting aircraft is especially hard to understand—beyond even the compu-
tational power of today’s supercomputers. Advances in theory are
necessary to allow current technology access to the problem.
Mathematicians are now verifying Richardson’s and Kolmogorov’s laws: two
hypotheses which attempt to explain turbulence.

What’s Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 3, Barry Cipra.
Photograph courtesy of NASA Ames Data Analysis Group.

MM/3
Securing Internet
Communication
No one could shop, pay bills, or conduct business securely on the Internet
without the mathematics of encryption. Although based on algebraic facts
proved centuries ago, today’s sophisticated encryption techniques were
formulated within the past twenty-five years.
Public key encryption allows a user to publish the encryption key for all to
use, while keeping the decryption key secret. One such algorithm, called
RSA, is behind the encryption in modern browsers. The National Institute
of Standards and Technology recently adopted an Advanced Encryption
Standard that will be used for electronic communication in the years to
come. This new standard uses permutations, modular arithmetic, polyno-
mials, matrices, and finite fields to transmit information freely but securely.

“Communications Security for the Twenty-first Century,” Susan Landau,
Notices of the American Mathematical Society, April 2000.

MM/4
Deciphering DNA
Anyone who has used a garden hose knows that knots appear in strange
places. Scientists have found that a branch of mathematics called knot
theory appears in many familiar places, including in our DNA. Mathematics
plays a key role in understanding how DNA functions and replicates itself.
Certain enzymes cut a strand of DNA at one point, pass another part of the
strand through the gap, and then seal the cut. Knot theory gives insight on
how frequently an enzyme has to act, from which one can infer how long
the enzyme might take to make a product. This kind of complex manipula-
tion is significant in many cellular processes—including DNA repair and gene
regulation—and is the type of problem central to the theory of knots.

Left: Photograph courtesy of Paul Thiessen.

Right: Photograph courtesy of the University of Minnesota.

MM/5
Listening to Music
No matter how complicated the music (or data), from Mozart to Twisted
Sister, it is stored on disks using only the numbers 0 and 1. To do this, many
different branches of mathematics, both advanced and elementary, are used
at each step of the process.
Signal Processing: The original sound is sampled, measuring the sound waves
at regular, frequent intervals. How frequently depends on the Shannon
Sampling Theorem.
Binary Arithmetic: The amplitudes are represented as a sixteen-bit sequence of
0’s and 1’s. The 0’s and 1’s are stored on the CD as smooth areas and pits.
Partial Differential Equations: Equations in fluid dynamics govern the process
of compressing the reflective and protective layers over the data.
Linear Algebra: Inevitable corruptions of the 0’s and 1’s (dust or scratches,
for example) are compensated for with error-correcting codes.
Trigonometry and Calculus: To retrieve the data, a tracker moves a laser
which is focused on the data. As the laser reads from the center of the disk
to its edge, a motor must continually move the CD slower to keep the
speed of the data reading constant.
Scientific American, Ken C. Pohlmann, 1998.

MM/6
Forecasting Weather
Forecasting the weather requires enormous amounts of data and computa-
tion. In order to have an accurate model of the weather, one must know
the temperature, humidity, air pressure and wind speed (among other things)
at different points and elevations. Although incorrect forecasts may be more
memorable, current three- to seven-day forecasts are better than 36-hour
forecasts were just 20 years ago. Increases in computing power have helped
improve weather forecasts, but it’s the mathematics behind the models that
has led to the great increase in accuracy.
Collected information is the basis for numerical calculations that output

approximate solutions to the relevant nonlinear partial differential equations.
Weather models take into account the rotation of the Earth and the perpetual
interaction among land, sea, and air. While more data and better computers
are obvious sources of improved forecasting, the not-so-obvious sources of
better sampling techniques and better use of data have helped as well.

“Weather Analysis and Forecasting,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society, 1999.
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

Photograph courtesy of Lloyd Treinish,

MM/7
Storing Fingerprints
Storing and identifying the digitized version of millions of fingerprints is an
almost inconceivably enormous task. Uncompressed, the FBI’s current
fingerprint files would consist of 200 terabytes (200,000,000,000,000 bytes).
A new piece of mathematics, wavelets, makes data compression fast, rela-
tively routine, and much less expensive so that storage is feasible and
retrieval is fast.
Any image is really a function that gives the color and intensity of each pixel.
This function can be written as a combination of special functions—the
wavelets. The rules for how the wavelets fit together are easier to store
and retrieve than the function itself. Wavelets are a twofold improvement
over Fourier transforms—another data compression technique based on
sines and cosines.

Photograph courtesy of Christopher M. Brislawn, Los Alamos National Lab.

MM/8
Creating Crystals
Both the power of mathematics and the speed of today’s computers are
needed in the study of crystal formation. In addition to the aesthetically
appealing possibility of understanding snowflakes, the field of crystal forma-
tion is crucial to the integrity of steel, superconductors, and computer chips.
While crystals are forming, they have moving, irregularly shaped boundaries,
which makes only numerical solutions to their equations possible. Part of
crystal formation follows the principle of a minimum surface area for a fixed
volume, but the orientation of a crystal also affects its formation: Heat is
diffused more easily away from the surface than into it, so crystals in the
direction of the exterior form faster than others. The extra complexity that
orientation brings to the problem of crystal formation makes solving the
relevant equations more difficult.

Photograph courtesy of snowcrystals.net.

MM/9
Experimenting with
the Heart
Experimenting with real human hearts isn’t possible, but experimenting with
accurate mathematical models of the human heart has led to a new under-
standing of its complex processes. Mathematics and the computer can
replace years of experimentation in laboratories. For example, under-
standing resulting from mathematics greatly speeds up the design and
implementation of artificial valves.
Equations based on Hooke’s Law model the geometry of the heart by repre-
senting muscle fibers as closed curves of different elasticities. The Navier-Stokes
equations, which describe all fluid flows, model blood flow in and around the
heart. The fact that the heart’s shape is constantly changing, however, makes the
equations especially hard to solve, and a precise solution to the equation can’t
be found. Approximate solutions are generated by computer.

Photograph courtesy of Professor Peter Hunter.

MM/10
Seeing the World
through Fractals
Fractals are self-similar mathematical objects that make computer graphics
and simulations more realistic. The self-similarity of fractals is like that of a
fern or a country’s coast: successive magnifications yield images, each one
resembling the original.
Because they involve iterations of simple processes, fractals often arise in

the study of chaos. Like a fractal, a chaotic system has hidden complexity.
Small changes at the start of a process that feeds back into itself can
produce dramatic changes later. One example is the butterfly effect, refer-
ring to the effect a flap of a butterfly’s wings may have on global weather
several weeks later.

Chaos and Fractals, H. Peitgen, H. Jurgens, and D. Saupe, 2004.
Photograph courtesy of Seth Green.

MM/11
Tracking Products
Number theory, an area of mathematics on which the security of Internet
communication is based, also guarantees the authenticity of a book’s ISBN
(International Standard Book Number) and its UPC (Universal Product
Code). Authentic ISBN numbers allow computerized tracking of books, and
UPC’s identify each book as unique—ensuring that authors get the royalties
they’re due.
All digits of an ISBN number but the last are multiplied in modular arith-
metic by predetermined numbers. The sum of these products is used to
create a check digit. The check digit is then appended to the end of the
number. Not only does the check digit guard against intentional fraud, but it
also detects human error, like transposing two digits. This process is also
used with most state driver’s licenses and with airline tickets.
More information:
Contemporary Abstract Algebra, Joseph A. Gallian, 1998.

MM/12
Investing in Markets
The past twenty years has seen the creation of many new sophisticated
financial instruments, such as derivatives, which have helped drive the
economy. Financial derivatives are mathematical instruments whose value is
derived from the value of something else, and while some view them as
risky, their purpose is to lessen risk by sharing it with others.
The present value of a future option is approximated with a multivariable

integral. Unfortunately, the complexity of the multivariable integral increases
exponentially with the number of components in the option. Thus, tradi-
tional ways of approximating quickly leave the realm of computer
calculation. New methods (quasi-Monte Carlo methods using low discrep-
ancy sequences) require fewer samples while yielding greater accuracy.
These methods make the desired calculations feasible.


MM/13
Routing Traffic
through the Internet
Understanding the way packets of information move through the Internet is
a challenging problem. Internet traffic behaves quite differently from tradi-
tional phone-line traffic. Fractal-based modeling has been successful in
describing aspects of Internet data traffic ranging from the inter-keystroke
times of a person typing to the sizes of files transferred.
While the characteristics of phone calls are generally predictable, the

Internet has features—like length of session—that are often unpredictable
and behave nothing like voice traffic. For example, as the observed time
period in a phone network increases, the traffic patterns smooth out. With
Internet data, however, no smoothing out ever occurs—the traffic patterns
show bursts over both long and short time scales. Describing the new
Internet with new mathematics might make our experience with the
Internet more predictable.

“Where Mathematics Meets the Internet,” Walter Willinger and Vern Paxson,
Notices of the American Mathematical Society, September 1998.
Photograph courtesy of the National Cable Television Association

and TECH CORPS.

MM/14
Manufacturing
Better Lenses
The design of eyeglass lenses, especially for progressive prescriptions, is a
part of mathematics which involves geometry, materials science, and partial
differential equations in a surprising way. It is an active area of research that
affects people’s lives every day (especially those of us over forty).
The smooth transition between magnification powers in a progressive lens is

convenient for the user but problematic for the designer, who faces the task
of combining parts of at least two different spheres in one lens.
Furthermore, the differences in the curvatures of the spheres result in
distortion (astigmatism) that is reduced by a cylindrical correction—a
compression of the spheres, laterally or vertically. Thus, the designer must
combine flattened portions of different spheres in a way that makes the
transition from one to another as seamless as possible. Advances in differ-
ential geometry, the geometry of curved surfaces, have contributed to faster
and more efficient lens design, so that the optimal shape of a lens is found
without tedious trial and error.

Lens Talk,Vol. 26, No. 13, Darryl Meister.
Photograph courtesy of Visioncoat, Inc.

MM/15
Mapping the Brain
Mathematics is used to understand how to precisely identify the parts of the brain
that correspond to specific functions. Current research involves mapping our three-
dimensional brain to two dimensions, similar to translating a globe to a map. Yet
because of the many fissures and folds in the surface of the brain, mapping our
brains is more complex than converting a globe to a map.
Points of the brain that are at different depths can appear close in a conventional
image. To develop maps of the brain that distinguish such points, researchers use
topology and geometry, including hyperbolic and spherical geometry. Conformal
mappings — correspondences between the brain and its flat map that don’t distort
angles between points — are especially important to accurate representations of
the brain. Just as a map of the earth aids navigation, conformal mappings serve as
a guide for researchers in their quest to understand the brain.

http://www.math.fsu.edu/~mhurdal/research/flatmap.html
Photograph courtesy of Dr. Monica K. Hurdal (mhurdal@math.fsu.edu)

Dept. of Mathematics, Florida State University

MM/16
Eye-dentifying Yourself
Iris recognition may allow us to live in a world without PIN numbers—iden-
tifying ourselves just by looking at the ATM. Identification by iris recognition
is based on pattern recognition, wavelets and statistics.The first two fields
are used to translate the patterns in your iris into a string of 0’s and 1’s,
while statistics establishes that the scanned iris is yours.
The iris is a good physical feature to use for identification because of the
tremendous variability in iris patterns, even between twins.This variability
guarantees that a correct identification is made when the code for a
scanned iris matches a stored code in at least two-thirds of the bits.
Furthermore, the eye and iris are easy for a scanner to find, due to their
shape and placement. Once the iris is located, wavelets are used to translate
the pattern of the sampled portion of the iris into two bits.These bits
reflect the agreement between that portion of the iris and specific wavelets.
The entire iris is encoded in about 2000 bits. Finding a relative match
between this bit pattern and one of the thousands of iris codes in the data-
base completes the identification.This comparison is done in parallel, so that
the whole process takes place in about the blink of an eye.
For more information: “Iris Recognition,” American Scientist, John Daugman
Photograph courtesy of John Daugman.

MM/17
Bidding Wisely
The basic auction format familiar to most people is just one of the many
forms that an auction might take. For example, in the "second-price auction,"
the highest bidder is awarded the object but charged only the amount of the
second-highest bid. (This is not as bad for the seller as it might sound; bidding
can be more aggressive in this format.) This and other auction formats are
studied using mathematical modeling, game theory, combinatorics, integer
programming and optimization. One fundamental conclusion arrived at by
researchers is that inexperienced bidders almost always overbid.
The Internet is one factor that has led to an increase in the number of
items sold at auction. Reverse auctions—in which a company needing a
product allows providers to bid on the price, with the lowest bidder
winning—are also gaining in popularity. Some newly designed auctions allow
bids on groups of items or involve more than one round of bidding.The
increased frequency of auctions is exemplified in the airline industry, where
the gate a flight leaves from and the amount of the voucher you receive for
surrendering your seat may both be determined by auction.
For more information: The Economic Theory of Auctions, Paul Klemperer, ed.
Dana Breslin/Art270

MM/18
Making Votes Count
The outcome of elections that offer more than two alternatives but with
no preference by a majority, is determined more by the voting procedure
used than by the votes themselves. Mathematicians have shown that in such
elections, illogical results are more likely than not. For example, the majority
of this group want to go to a warm place, but the South Pole is the group’s
plurality winner. So if these people choose their group’s vacation destination
in the same way most elections are conducted, they will all go to the South
Pole and six people will be disappointed, if not frostbitten.
Elections in which only the top preference of each voter is counted are
equivalent to a school choosing its best student based only on the number
of A’s earned. The inequity of such a situation has led to the development
of other voting methods. In one method, points are assigned to choices, just
as they are to grades. Using this procedure, these people will vacation in a
warm place—a more desirable conclusion for the group. Mathematicians
study voting methods in hopes of finding equitable procedures, so that no
one is unfairly left out in the cold.
For more information: Chaotic Elections: A Mathematician Looks at Voting,

Donald Saari

MM/19
Simulating Galaxies
Galaxies can be more than 100,000 light years across, consisting of hundreds of
billions of celestial bodies, and with a mass more than a trillion times that of our
sun. Modeling such huge, complex systems, in which many of the stars have
chaotic orbits, requires new computational techniques. Advances in the speed
and memory of computers have improved models, as has parallel computing, but
advances in algorithms—the way the mathematics of a problem is converted
into steps a computer can perform—are indispensable in developing accurate
galaxy models.
The complexity of simulating the behavior of a galaxy is not limited to the galaxy
itself. Since a galaxy is usually part of a cluster or supercluster of galaxies, the
external forces exerted by these larger agglomerations on the galaxy must also be
accounted for.Thus, models must be accurate across many scales of distance. Instead
of numerically solving the equations of the model uniformly across all sectors,
researchers employ multi-scale algorithms that do more calculations in sectors
determined to be more significant.This kind of technique uses computing power
more efficiently, giving us a glimpse of the underlying structure of the universe.
For more information:

http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Cosmos/CosmosGoDigital.html
Image courtesy of Joachim Stadel and Thomas Quinn.

MM/20
Revealing Nature’s
Secrets
Mathematical ecology is a growing and active area of interdisciplinary research
between mathematics and ecology, using almost every part of mathematics (linear
algebra, analysis, differential equations, stochastic processes, numerical simulations,
statistics) to understand and model complex biosystems.This modeling helps
establish important parameters and thresholds, such as the area required to
sustain a species or how fast an invasive species will spread through a region.
Models must be fairly complex to capture how a single species interacts with
other species and with its environment.Today’s mathematical ecology
researchers are faced with the far more daunting task of simulating several inter-
connected networks of organisms across different scales of time, size, and space.
To do that, researchers resort to some relatively new areas of mathematics, for
example non-linear dynamical systems and spatial statistics.
For More Information: Mathematical Models in Biology, Leah Edelstein-Keshet.
Artwork courtesy of Royce B. McClure, © Royce B. Mclure.

MM/21
Folding for Fun
and Function
Origami—paper-folding—may not seem like a subject for mathematical investi-
gation or one with sophisticated applications, yet anyone who has tried to fold a
road map or wrap a present knows that origami is no trivial matter.
Mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers have recently discovered that
this centuries-old subject can be used to solve many modern problems.The
methods of origami are now used to fold objects such as automobile air bags
and huge space telescopes efficiently, and may be related to how proteins fold.
Manufacturers often want to make a product out of a single piece of material.

The manufacturing problem then becomes one of deciding whether a shape
can be folded and if so, is there an efficient way to find a good fold? Thus,
many origami research problems have to do with algorithm complexity and
optimization theory. A testament to the diversity of origami, as well as the
power of mathematics, is its applicability to problems at the molecular level,
in manufacturing, and in outer space.
For More Information: http://db.uwaterloo.ca/~eddemain/papers/MapFolding/
Model designed by Thomas Hull (Merrimack College) and Francis Ow,

folded by PapaJoe (Joe Gilardi)

MM/22
Getting Results
on the Web
Imagine trying to find the right information quickly in a library where billions of
pages are randomly piled in a heap, instead of being in books shelved in order.
That's what Web search engines do, millions of times a day. First-generation search
engines often found useful pages, but those pages may have been too far down the
list to be of any practical use. Current search engines rank pages by using mathe-
matics—probability, graph theory, and linear algebra—so that sites most relevant
to a query are listed at the top, where the user can most easily see them.
The vast number of pages and links on the Web can be represented as a graph in
which the nodes are Web pages and the directed edges are links.Today's search
engines determine the relevance of a page to a query by incorporating the impor-
tance of pages pointing to and from that page.Thus, when it comes to a search, a
page’s links can be just as important as its content.The final ranking comes from
techniques in linear algebra and probability that help formulate and solve equa-
tions which, according to the founders of one search engine, involve millions of
variables and billions of terms. In the future, search engines may use artificial intel-
ligence and information on past searches to discern the actual intent of a query.
For more information: David Voss,“Better Searching Through Science,”

Science, 14 Sept. 2001

MM/23
Enhancing Your Image
Inpainting is the age-old practice of restoring visual works— a process that until
recently was only performed manually by experts. Many people now use
computers to retouch digital photographs, yet the work can still be painstaking.
A promising new field of mathematical research is the development of
algorithms that solve partial differential equations to digitally inpaint with little
input or effort from the user. The technique can also be used, as in the example
below, to recover missing portions of transmitted images without requiring
retransmission of the data.
The apparent ease with which these new algorithms restore pictures masks the
difficulty of creating software to imitate the trained eye and hand of a
professional. Digital inpainting methods must incorporate information not only
about colors near the incomplete area, but also about the direction of change in
the boundaries between existing lines and missing ones. Some inpainting
procedures rely on techniques from computational fluid dynamics, ensuring that
known information “flows” continuously into needed areas. Thus, results from
the well-established field of computational fluid dynamics are applied to the new
field of digital inpainting so that everyone can get the complete picture.
For more information: “Filling in Blanks,” Ivars Peterson, Science News,
11 May 2002.
Photographs courtesy of S. Rane and G. Sapiro

MM/24
Defeating Disease
From modeling microscopic genes and proteins to tracing the progression of an
epidemic through a country, mathematics plays an important role in combating
disease. For example, the basic model used to analyze the dynamics of infectious
disease is a system of differential equations. A new field called “data mining”, involving
statistics and pattern recognition, helps locate significant information in the vast
amounts of data collected from studies of diseases in populations. Mathematics also
plays a key role in connecting changes in the human genome to specific diseases.
Mathematics has helped recent fights against foot-and-mouth disease in the United
Kingdom and against Chagas disease — a disease affecting millions of people in Latin
America. Epidemiologists studying the foot-and-mouth epidemic used mathematical
models to conclude that early efforts were insufficient to stop what would become a
calamitous spread of the disease. The government accepted the conclusions and took
a course of action that, although drastic, did indeed arrest the outbreak. In Latin
America, mathematicians computationally tested several courses of action against
Chagas disease and found a surprisingly simple yet highly effective step (keeping dogs
out of the bedroom) to greatly reduce the infection rate. These examples share three
important characteristics: a mathematical model of the disease, modern computers to
do calculations required by the model, and researchers with the insight to design the
former so as to take advantage of the power of the latter.
For more information: Infectious Diseases of Humans: Dynamics and Control,
R. M. Anderson and R. M. May.
protein, enhances display of icosahedral symmetry.
Wisconsin-Madison. Rhinovirus color-coded by
Image courtesy of: Jean-Yves Sgro, University of
©1993

MM/25
Revolutionizing Computing
In about 20 years, computer chips will be so small that the effects of quantum
mechanics will replace the physical laws we take for granted. While today’s
computing is based on bits that are either 0 or 1, the basic unit in quantum
computing is the quantum bit—the qubit—which can be 0 and 1 simultaneously
(with a probability associated with each). In the strange world of quantum
computing, complicated procedures such as factoring large numbers are done much
faster because the many steps involved can be done concurrently.The ultimate goal
of mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, and engineers in the field is to
create a quantum computer that could solve in seconds some problems that would
take today’s most powerful computers billions of years to solve.
Among the capabilities of a quantum computer would be the ability to do the calcu-
lations necessary to break today’s electronic encryption methods. This is not as
alarming as it may sound, because cryptographers have already designed algorithms
to take advantage of the quantum mechanics principle that observing a system’s
state changes it.Thus, users of a quantum communications network could detect any
attempt to intercept their communication. It is somehow ironic that the laws that
govern the barrier to the miniaturization of today’s computers may provide a boon
to future computing.
For more information: “Rules for a Complex Quantum World,” Scientific American,
November 2002, Michael A. Nielsen.
Image courtesy of the MITRE Corporation.

MM/26
Cutting the Cord
A cellular phone’s size disguises the considerable amount of activity going on inside.
In a digital phone, your voice is converted by the phone’s processor into a stream
of 0’s and 1’s that are transmitted to a base station, received, relayed, and recon-
verted back to the original sound (actually, an extremely good approximation of
that sound) by the receiving phone. Along with sending your words, your phone
transmits an identifying code and determines the nearest base station. Hand-off
algorithms are employed to help maintain a continuous conversation as the phone’s
location changes. (Note that E.T. didn’t phone home until after landing.)
Even when a cell phone is stationary, obstacles such

as buildings and trees, as well as other signals, inter-
fere with transmission and reception. In a much
simpler world with one cellular telephone and one
antenna, one complex number can represent the
resulting variation (in amplitude and phase) in a
signal. With multiple phones and multiple antennas,
a large matrix of numbers is needed to represent
all the variations.The size of these matrices makes
exact computation impractical, but they are being
successfully modeled using random matrix theory.
The modeling makes possible an analysis of system
performance and a determination of limits on
system capacity with the goal of optimizing the
system design. An interesting new technology
allows broadband service by having multiple
antennas even on a single cellular phone.
For more information: The Cell Phone

Handbook, by Penelope Stetz.
Photo courtesy of Tiny Love.

MM/27
Expressing Yourself
The state-of-the-art technology used by researchers to identify active
(expressed) genes in cells is the microarray: a “gene chip” imprinted, not with
circuits, but with DNA. Active genes of fluorescently tagged cell samples placed
on the chip reveal themselves when they bind with their DNA complements on
the chip.The amount of data generated by this microscopic activity is enormous:
just one row in an array can have 15,000 points. Pattern recognition and image
analysis are two fields which use mathematics to help extract important genetic
information about several diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, from
microarray data. In the future, microarrays may enable an individualized
approach to medicine, in which your doctor could use these chips to diagnose
disease and determine the best treatment for your unique genetic profile.
In one particular area of medicine, cancer research, the points in each column of
an array can be thought of as genetic coordinates of samples from tumors.Yet
there are so many coordinates that it is difficult to determine which tumors are
similar. Algorithms employ statistics and different measures of distance in higher
dimensions to group genetically similar
tumors into “clusters” so that experi-
ments can be done on treatments
corresponding to the clusters. In one
case, microarray technology not only
Clive and Vera Ramciotti Functional Genome Array Centre.
distinguished between two different types

Image courtesy of Professor Rodney J. Scott and the
of leukemia (verifying in the time it took

to hit “Return” what had taken 35 years
to discover) but also found different clus-
ters within tumors that had been thought
to be similar— resulting in clinical trials
to confirm the distinction.
For More Information: “Gene Chips

and Functional Genomics,” Hisham
Hamadeh and Cynthia A.Afshari, American
Scientist, November–December 2000.

MM/28
Bringing Robots to Life
Robots of all shapes and sizes now perform tasks as routine as vacuuming the
living room floor and as remarkable as discovering a hydrothermal vent on the
ocean floor. Geometry, statistics, graph theory, differential equations, and linear
algebra are some of the areas of mathematics that allow navigation and decision
making so that robots can function autonomously and do things we either can’t,
or would rather not, do.
The robot pictured below not only dances but also greets visitors and escorts
them to their destinations, providing news and weather updates along the way.
Abilities like these require algorithms for vision, pattern recognition, speech
recognition, and dealing with uncertainty so that accumulated error doesn’t
render the robot ineffective. Most researchers think that we are a long way
from creating machines that behave like humans, but improving algorithms will
improve the capabilities of robots, which have already served in space, in rescues
at disaster areas, and in the operating room, where physicians use robotic arms
that allow for more precise, less invasive surgery.
For more information: Robots, Ruth Aylett
Getty Images

MM/29
Making Connections
People in a society, neurons in the brain, and pages on the Web, along with their
connections, are all examples of networks. Mathematicians study characteristics of
networks, such as the number and distribution of connections, to discover what such
attributes may reveal about the intrinsic nature of a network. For example, the colors
in the picture below indicate how disruptive deleting a node would be to the
network, in this case a living cell.The discovery and verification of network properties
such as this has significance for applications ranging from the microscopic to the
worldwide, including the protection of both computers and humans against viruses.
The study of networks spawned the phrase “six degrees of separation”, the theme of
a game involving actors’ connections via common film appearances. In an experiment
done in the 1960s, over 100 randomly chosen people in the Midwest were found to
be connected to a Massachusetts stockbroker (by a friend of a friend of a friend, and
so on) in an average of just six steps.That people halfway across the country could
be so closely connected was quite a revelation and proved that even a large network
could be a “small world”.Today, researchers use parameters from graph theory and
probability in analyzing networks to determine whether an elaborate network, be it
a power grid or actors connecting to Kevin Bacon, is indeed a small world after all.
For more information: “Scale-Free Networks”, by Albert-László Barabási and

Eric Bonabeau, Scientific American, May 2003
Image, protein-protein interactions, courtesy of:

Hawoong Jeong (KAIST)

MM/30
Beating Traffic
It’s not your imagination; traffic is getting worse. In the last 30 years while the
number of vehicle-miles traveled has more than doubled, physical road space has
increased only six percent.Yet building new roads is no guarantee of relief:
A counterintuitive result in traffic science is that a new road could actually
increase the congestion in a network. Areas of mathematics like queuing theory
and partial differential equations contribute to understanding traffic, which is a
backwards propagating wave —cars move forward but the jam moves backward.
The mathematical study of traffic is relatively new, but a federal report concluded
that the information revolution—that is, the combination of more powerful
computers, telecommunications, and better numerical models—will affect
transportation as much as the inventions of the automobile and jet engine.
Analyzing traffic (like predicting weather ) requires many variables (driver speed,
length of trip, time of day, and origination point) and involves chaos theory (a small
change down the road can drastically change travel conditions). Unlike weather,
however, traffic can change in response to a forecast as alternative routes are
chosen—today by drivers and, in the future, perhaps by the cars themselves.
For More Information: What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 5,

Barry Cipra
Image courtesy of Puget Sound Regional Council

MM/31
Charging Through Space
Electromagnetic disturbances on the sun usually don’t affect us 93 million miles away,
but a major solar storm can, with severe consequences for satellites, electricity, and
communications. For example, in 1989 solar explosions resulted in the collapse of a
major power grid, leaving over six million people in Canada without power. Space
weather forecasters now have better mathematical models from which they make
statistical predictions about solar activity and its effects.The predictions have
improved with technology, but without new mathematics and a refinement of the
models, even the best computers would be lost in space.
Space weather models are based on Maxwell’s electricity and magnetism equations
and fluid flow equations, which due to their complexity, must be solved numerically.
Newly launched satellites—including four which maintain a tetrahedral formation and
provide a three-dimensional image of space weather—supply needed information to
improve our understanding of the space environment and enable warnings about
potential disruptions to modern amenities.
For More Information: Storms from the Sun, Michael J. Carlowicz and
Ramon E. Lopez
Image courtesy of SOHO (ESA & NASA)

MM/32
Tracing Your Routes
The Traveling Salesman Problem entails finding the shortest route that passes through
each assigned town exactly once. (The route below visits over 13,000 towns.) The
problem is noteworthy for its complexity, which grows exponentially with the
number of towns, and for its applications, which range from wiring a chip to sched-
uling airline crews. Researchers use graph theory and linear programming to solve the
problem when feasible and to find near-optimal solutions in other instances, saving
industry time and money.
There may never be a workable general solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem.Yet
even without knowing the best answer, mathematicians still can estimate how close to
optimal a given route is. Perhaps even more surprising: Operating on a map of 25,000
towns, current algorithms design paths whose lengths are within 0.01% of that of a
shortest path.
For More Information: The Traveling Salesman Problem: A Guided Tour of

Combinatorial Optimization, Lawler, Lenstra, Rinnooy Kan, and Shmoys.
Image courtesy of D. Applegate, R. Bixby,V. Chvátal, and W. Cook;

www.math.princeton.edu/tsp.

MM/33
Unlocking the Cell
The processes that cells perform are as wondrous as their individual mechanisms
are mysterious. Molecular biologists and mathematicians are using models to begin
to understand operations such as cellular division, movement, and communication
(both within the cell and between cells).The analysis of cells requires many diverse
branches of mathematics since descriptions of cellular activity involve a combina-
tion of continuous models based on differential equations and discrete models
using subjects such as graph theory.
It may be surprising, but cell functions are depicted with complex wiring diagrams
of circuits with signaling pathways, gates, switches, and feedback loops. Researchers
translate the diagrams into equations, which are often solved numerically. Solving
the equations is only part of a process in which solutions are analyzed, models are
refined, and equations are reformulated and re-solved.This may be repeated many
times.The aim of this process is an accurate representation of cell behavior, which
may allow drugs and treatments to be designed in the same precise way that elec-
tronic circuits are today.
For More Information: Computational Cell Biology, Christopher P. Fall,

Eric S. Marland, John M.Wagner, and John J.Tyson, Editors.
Image: Filamentous actin and microtubules in mouse fibroblasts

(Dr.Torsten Wittmann), courtesy of Nikon Small World.

MM/34
Seeing More Clearly
Twinkling stars are fun for songs but frustrating for astronomers. Current tech-
nology uses adaptive optics to adjust for turbulence in the atmosphere and deliver
an accurate image of stars, planets, and satellites. Correcting for atmospheric
distortion involves linear algebra, geometry, and statistics to determine the extent
of the distortion and continually adjust deformable mirrors which refocus light
waves back along their true paths.
Mathematical algorithms make possible the many real-time calculations required to

clarify views both beyond earth and under the microscope. In fact, adaptive optics
allowed researchers their first views of individual cells in a living eye.This has
brought about the potential for better diagnostics and more accurate surgery, so
that a science created to help some people see a few things more clearly may help
millions see everything better.
For More Information: Adaptive Optics in Astronomy, François Roddier.
Image courtesy of the European Southern Observatory.

MM/35
Canning Spam
Email users ask the same question as surprised diners:Who ordered the spam?
The answer is no one, but sending back email spam only brings more. People are
fighting spam with many new tools, including filters that look for telltale signs that
a messsage is spam. Spammers, however, defeat simple filters by disguising the
words and intent of their messages. New, more sophisticated filters use mathe-
matics to fight spam by training the filters to recognize spam over time, so that
your server brings you what you want.
Spammers adapt their messages to avoid many anti-spam tools, but using a mathe-
matical result known as Bayes’ Theorem, the tools can adapt as well. As users
examine email each day, they indicate which messages passing through the filter
are, in fact, spam.With training, the filter learns how likely it is that certain words
or characteristics are present when a message is spam. Bayes’ Theorem allows the
filter to turn this information around, calculating how likely it is that the message is
spam when those words or characteristics are present. It is a powerful application
of an old and fundamental mathematical result. Using new and old mathematical
tools, mathematicians continue to work on innovative techniques to combat spam.
For More Information: “Math 1, Spam 0,” Dana Mackenzie, SIAM News,
November, 2003.

MM/36
Locating, locating, locating
Originally designed for military use, the Global Positioning System (GPS) now lets
boaters, drivers, and hikers pinpoint their location to within a few meters. Most of
GPS's functionality is derived from arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.The time it
takes for a signal to travel from a transmitting satellite to a GPS receiver estab-
lishes the distance between the two, which places the GPS user on an imaginary
sphere centered at the satellite. Similar calculations are done concurrently using
other satellites. Once corrections for the difference between satellite and receiver
clocks are made, the GPS user's location must be one of the points of intersection
of three spheres.
The basic principles of GPS are simple, but reducing error when using satellites
more than 10,000 miles away to calculate locations is not. Information theory
extracts reliable data from weak signals (which have less than a billionth of the
power of those received by your television) and mathematical models of the
atmosphere account for slight changes in speed as signals travel through different
layers on their way to earth. Differential GPS reduces error even further by using
land-based stationary receivers, whose precise positions are known. Eventually
real-time GPS will be so accurate — with errors on the order of inches — that it
will guide cars and allow planes to land in zero visibility.
For More Information: "Retooling the Global Positioning System," Scientific

American, Per Enge, May 2004.
Image courtesy of The Aerospace Corporation.

MM/37
Targeting Tumors
Detection and treatment of cancer have progressed, but neither is as precise as
doctors would like. For example, tumors can change shape or location between
pre-operative diagnosis and treatment so that radiation is aimed at a target which
may have moved. Geometry, partial differential equations, and integer linear
programming are three areas of mathematics used to process data in real-time,
which allows doctors to inflict maximum damage to the tumor, with minimum
damage to healthy tissue.
One promising area of investigation is virotherapy: using viruses to destroy

cancerous cells. Researchers are using mathematical models to discover how to
use the viruses most beneficially.The models provide numerical outcomes for each
of the many possibilities, thereby eliminating unsuccessful approaches and identi-
fying candidates for further experimentation.Testing by simulation, which led to
the development of anti-HIV cocktails, means good medicine is developed faster
and cheaper than it can be by lab experiments and clinical trials alone.
For More Information: “Treatment Planning for Brachytherapy,” Eva Lee, et al,
Physics in Medicine and Biology, 1999.
optimization (tumor in red), courtesy of Eva Lee, Georgia

Image: Large-scale intensity-modulated radiation therapy
Institute of Technology.

MM/38
Being a Better Sport
From designing uniforms with less drag to adjusting the angle at which an athlete
launches a javelin, mathematics helps improve sports performance. Differential
equations and vector analysis play important roles in determining optimum
mechanics in a sport, as does numerical analysis when equations can't be solved
exactly. Many fields of mathematics are providing legitimate tools that allow
athletes to use mind and body to go swifter and higher.
Mathematics also improves the viewing and coaching of sports.The first-down

stripes and strike zones superimposed on your screens require geometry as well
as algorithms to process position and perspective data for the field and cameras.
In coaching, statistics and game theory are now used to analyze questions such as
"How many days' rest are optimal for a pitcher?" and "When is it profitable to
gamble on fourth down?" Said one coach, "In God we trust. All others must have
data."
For More Information: The Mathematics of Projectiles in Sport, Neville de Mestre
Image courtesy of PRNewswire

MM/39
Recognizing Speech
Current speech recognition systems perform fairly well in non-conversational
settings such as dictation or requests for directory assistance. Applications like
this may not appear impressive, but because of accents, inflections, and pauses,
even such simple situations require sophisticated techniques to transform
speech waveforms into words accurately. One of the most common techniques is
a mathematical tool known as a hidden Markov model, involving conditional probabili-
ties, which trains on candidate sounds so as to locate the best match for a given
input.
Dictating directions to machines, a luxury now, may become a necessity as input

devices become too small. Researchers are looking for new mathematical models
and algorithms (which will probably use subjects like statistics and machine learning)
that can filter out noise, understand casual speech, and adjust to different speakers.
Those are difficult problems, but once solved, it won't be long before your voice
replaces your keyboard, mouse, and–best of all–your many remotes.
For More Information: Speech Processing: A Dynamic and Optimization-Oriented

Approach, Li Deng and Douglas O'Shaugnessy, 2003.
Image courtesy of ACM Crossroads.

MM/40
Compressing Data
Through digitization, films that require 10,000 feet of tape now fit on a disk less
than five inches in diameter. An important part of digitization is data compression,
which involves converting a large file to a smaller version, from which the original
(or a close approximation) can be recreated. Linear algebra, probability, graph
theory and abstract algebra are among the areas of mathematics at the foundation
of various compression algorithms that make modern technologies such as DVDs,
HDTV and large databases, possible.
No one technique can fulfill the compression requirements of all media. For
example, wavelet compression—based on a fairly new mathematical tool—works
well with images and audio files, but not as well with text files.Yet regardless of the
application, compression algorithms use redundancy and relatedness in data to
make storage and transmission more efficient. Does compression work? U b t jdg.
For More Information: Introduction to Data Compression, Khalid Sayood, 1996.
Image courtesy of Charles Trevelyan and the Millennium Mathematics Project.

MM/41
Putting Together the Pieces
Fitting just-broken pieces together is hard enough, but imagine how difficult it
is to do after thousands of years — and a few civilizations — have passed.
Archaeologists faced with hundreds of thousands of pieces at a site have turned to
mathematicians to help reassemble the fragments. The pieces are first digitally
scanned; then software uses geometry, combinatorics, and statistics to
reconstruct ancient artifacts, even when many pieces are missing.
Mathematics is also used in other new approaches to archaeology and paleontology:

in the precise mapping of buried shipwrecks and the recreation of the movement
of dinosaurs. In these cases and others, progress, perhaps paradoxically, actually
brings us closer to understanding the past.Whether it’s refining a basic technique
like triangulation or applying an involved subject such as partial differential equations,
mathematics researchers are breaking new ground to uncover antiquity’s secrets.
For More Information: “Automatic Archaeology,” Haim Watzman, Nature,

January 8, 2004.

MM/42
Scanning the Unseen
By sending low-dose X-rays at an object through a range of angles and measuring
the rays’ absorption, CAT (Computed Axial Tomography)-scans provide precise
images that conventional X-rays can’t. Multivariable calculus and a mathematical
tool known as the Radon transform —invented early in the 20th century—are
crucial to the efficient reconstruction of a three-dimensional image from the
information gleaned along the one-dimensional lines.That efficient reconstruction
allows for better images with less exposure to X-rays— benefiting doctors and
patients alike.
The same mathematical principles used in CAT-scans are also used in a field called
astrotomography, providing unprecedented resolution of binary stars and the
surfaces of rapidly rotating stars. In this application the rotation of a star or pair of
stars replaces the rotation of the scanning machine and positions and velocities are
found based on radiation detected from the star(s).Thus, mathematics discovered
long before CAT-scan technology enables detailed views from within the human
body to far beyond our solar system.
For More Information: Mathematical Methods in Image Reconstruction, F. Natterer

and F. Wübbeling.
Image courtesy of Quest TruTec.

MM/43
Making Designs A Reality
The innovative design of the Sydney Opera House stymied builders for years
until they realized that all the project's specifications could be met with triangles
cut from the same sphere. Since all the pieces were of the same type and from a
surface with well-established geometrical properties, the requisite calculations
(such as determining structural forces) were simplified considerably and the dream
became a magnificent reality.
Many calculations involved in bold plans are made possible by computer-aided

design and the mathematics behind it. Architects and engineers model complex
shapes using a succession of polygons and simpler curved surfaces – with known
characteristics – so that a design's structural properties can be determined. Now,
elements of large buildings which were once chosen to be uniform because of
complexity considerations, can be as individualistic as their designers.
For More Information: "Mathematical Tour through the Sydney Opera House,"
The Mathematical Intelligencer, Joe Hammer, Fall 2004.
Photo courtesy of Gabriel Ditu, www.gabrielditu.com.

MM/44
Making a Splash
The interplay of water, light, and music in some modern fountains is magical to
behold, and mathematics is part of that magic. Geometry is used in the overall
design, mathematical modeling simulates the fluid-particle interactions, and
powerful algorithms drive the software that coordinates thousands of valves and
lights through the numerous sequences in a typical show.
The ability to make water act so precisely results from the use of laminar flow
streams where all particles move in parallel and at the same speed. A complex
mathematical analysis of fluid dynamics makes it possible for water to perform
feats such as climbing stairs or behaving like individual marbles.The result is both
wondrous and efficient: A four-foot column of water wouldn't fill a normal
drinking glass.
For More Information: “Inventive Artist Sculpts in Water,” USA Today, Bill
Meyers, March 14, 1999.
Photo by Ira Kahn for WET Design.

MM/45
Reading Your Mind?
How does something the size of a yo-yo successfully play a game of 20 Questions?
Although its success tempts players to think that the device is reading their minds,
it's not.This sophisticated toy uses mathematics such as probability and fuzzy logic,
and mathematical objects such as matrices to determine your animal, vegetable or
mineral more than 75% of the time.
The online version of the game is an example of artificial intelligence, specifically a

neural network, which uses feedback loops and weights to "learn" as it gets more
information. In this case, answers are given weights, with "unknown" having a
weight of zero, and (in the online game) weights are adjusted as necessary after
each game.The weights form a matrix, with objects and questions indexing the
rows and columns, respectively.The game chooses a question by first determining
which objects are still probable and then finding which question has the most
desirable set of weights for the remaining candidate objects.What is the most
desirable set of weights? Sorry, that's not a Yes-No question.1
For More Information: “A I on the Web,” Monitor Magazine,Tanis Stoliar, April,

1999.
1
The most desirable weights are those closest to a 50-50 split of Yes's and No's.

MM/46
Packing It In
Packing items into bins of given capacities may not sound important (unless you're
packing for a trip), but the topic of bin packing includes situations such as allocating
blocks of computer memory and scheduling airline flights as well as traditional
problems like loading trucks. Researchers use areas of mathematics (such as
number theory, geometry, and probability) to solve packing problems so that time
and storage – both physical and electronic – can be used efficiently.
Mathematicians proved that bin packing problems are “complex,” and a practical
algorithm that gives an optimal solution to all packing problems appears unlikely.
Yet even though there may never be a “fast” general solution, mathematicians still
seek to improve packing algorithms, saving industry time and money. One such
result demonstrates that one of the simplest packing algorithms, first loading the
biggest things that fit, is always within about 20% of the best solution possible.
For More Information: “Approximate Solutions to Bin Packing Problems,”

Coffman, E. G., Jr., J. Csirik, and G.Woeginger, Handbook of Applied Optimization,
P. Pardalos and M. Resende, eds., 2002.
Image courtesy of Olivier Briant.

MM/47
Translating: From Arabic
to Zulu
The current pace of document creation (on the Internet, for example) is much
greater than the capacity of human translators, which makes machine translation a
necessity. Machine translators use probability, statistics and graph theory in combi-
nation with databases of hundreds of millions of words and phrases in many
languages to achieve good translations efficiently.Thus, mathematics, often called
the universal language, also forms a bridge between languages.
Once a document is translated, the question becomes: How good is the translation?
Numerical measures of effectiveness help automate this part of the process as
well, saving time and money. Results from the evaluation improve translation
algorithms so that the urban legend of a computer translating “The spirit is willing
but the flesh is weak” into Russian and back into English as “The vodka is good but
the meat is rotten” will remain a legend.
For More Information: “Machine Translation in the Year 2004,” Kevin Knight and
Daniel Marcu, http://www.isi.edu/~marcu/papers/mt-icassp2005.pdf.
Image courtesy of University of Toronto Libraries.

MM/48
Boldly Going
The “tubes” below are illustrations of low-energy pathways along which space vehicles
can travel using far less fuel.The recent discovery of these pathways has made previ-
ously impossible missions feasible. Much of space travel depends on calculus,
trigonometry, and vector analysis, but the existence of these routes derives from an
area of mathematics called dynamical systems applied to the mutual interaction of the
gravities of the sun, nearby planets, and moons.
Calculations of forces between two celestial bodies and their orbits are fairly direct,
but to understand orbits and trajectories when more than two bodies are involved,
dynamical systems and chaos theory are necessary. Even the simplest extension
beyond two bodies, the three-body problem, has been proven to have no explicit general
solution. Some special cases, however, have been solved and applied not only to
mission design, but also now to atomic physics to study the paths of certain excited
electrons.Thus, mathematics is locating new routes for space travel and establishing
connections between the atomic and the cosmic.
For More Information: "Ground Control to Niels Bohr: Exploring Outer Space
with Atomic Physics," Mason A. Porter and Predrag Cvitanović, Notices of the American
Mathematical Society, October, 2005.
Artist Concept of the Interplanetary Superhighway, courtesy of JPL,

artist Cici Koenig.

MM/49
Boarding Faster
Waiting in line while boarding a plane isn’t just irritating, it’s also costly:The extra
time on the ground amounts to millions of dollars each year in lost revenue for
the airlines. Research into different boarding procedures uses mathematics such as
Lorentzian geometry and random matrix theory to demonstrate that open seating
is a quick way to board while back-to-front boarding is extremely slow. In
fact, mathematical models show that even people boarding at random get to
their assigned seats faster than when boarding back-to-front.
Figuring out your own strategy for boarding a plane is hard enough, but modeling
the general problem—which depends on many variables such as distance
between rows, amount of carry-on baggage, and passengers’ waistlines—is
substantially more complex. So researchers were pleased when they discovered
that their theoretical analysis confirmed simulations conducted by some airlines.
An added bonus to the research is that the mathematics used in the boarding
problem is similar to that used to improve a disk drive’s data input and output
requests. One clear difference: Data doesn’t try to carry on an extra bit.
For more information: “Plane Geometry: Scientists Help Speed Boarding of

Aircraft,” Nicholas Zamiska, The Wall Street Journal, November 2, 2005.

MM/50
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Playing the Game
Video games are a lot of fun, but they’d be much less fun without mathematics.
Geometry, calculus, and linear algebra all help make characters, scenes, and action
look less two-dimensional and more realistic. And, as one game company executive
noted, advancing through mathematics is similar to working through the increas-
ingly more difficult levels of a video game. Who knows, by graduation you may have
enough skills to save the world.
Much of a character’s movement involves inverse kinematics: For example, what

should the angles of the foot, shin, and upper leg be as a character runs? This is
an important area of research that also involves collision and contact detection
(obvious in the real world, but requiring explicit calculation in the video world).
There can be an infinite number of answers to such problems but fast algo-
rithms must find realistic solutions in less time than you can say “The leg bone’s
connected to the hip bone.”
For More Information: Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications,
James Van Verth and Lars Bishop, 2004.
Image courtesy of Electronic Arts.

MM/56
Putting Music on the Map
Mathematics and music have long been closely associated. Now a recent math-
ematical breakthrough uses topology (a generalization of geometry) to represent
musical chords as points in a space called an orbifold, which twists and folds back
on itself —much like a Möbius strip does. This representation makes sense musi-
cally in that sounds that are far apart in one sense yet similar in another, such as
two notes that are an octave apart, are identified in the space.
This latest insight provides a way to analyze any type of music. In the case of
Western music, pleasing chords lie near the center of the orbifolds and pleasing
melodies are paths that link nearby chords. Yet despite the new connection
between music and coordinate geometry, music is still more than a connect-the-
dots exercise, just as mathematics is more than addition and multiplication.
For More Information: “The Geometry of Musical Chords,” Dmitri Tymoczko,

Science, July 7, 2006.
Image: All three-note chord types, courtesy of Dmitri Tymoczko.

MM/57
Solving Sudoku
Sudoku puzzles involve a lot of mathematics. Of course, the puzzles are filled with
numbers, but the solution process would be the same regardless of the symbols
used. More interesting is the logic behind the solution process, which can provide
extra satisfaction upon solving a puzzle (with a lot less erasing). In addition, the
puzzles are examples of Latin squares–important in abstract algebra and in statis-
tics, in experimental design.
Two Sudoku counting problems are: What is the fewest number of filled-in squares
possible for a puzzle, and how many different puzzles are there? There are Sudoku
puzzles with 17 numbers that have only one solution, but no one knows if there
are puzzles with only 16 numbers that have a unique solution. As for the second
question, there are more than five billion different puzzles. For counting purposes,
puzzles that can be transformed by processes such as interchanging numbers
or the top two rows are not considered different. This result depends on group
theory and symmetry, crucial for much of modern physics and chemistry.
For More Information: "Sudoku

Squares and Chromatic
Polynomials," Agnes M.
Herzberg and M. Ram Murty,
Notices of the American
Mathematical Society, June–July,
2007.
Puzzle by Arto Inkala

MM/58
Reconstructing Faces
A new application of mathematics allows surgeons to plan reconstructive facial
surgery by analyzing various operative strategies implemented on virtual three-
dimensional models. Previously, replicas constructed from CT-scans were used,
which were expensive and allowed only one surgical strategy per replica. The new
virtual models use geometry, partial differential equations, and numerical analysis to
represent the movement of bone and soft tissue associated with different options,
so that surgeons and their patients see the predicted results and choose what’s best.
Three-dimensional simulations of facial surgery involve grids with hundreds of

thousands of tetrahedrons to compute the predicted outcomes of relocating bone
and its influence on connecting tissue. The accuracy of the simulations, within one
millimeter of actual results, allows them to be used both as teaching tools and as
platforms for testing new techniques. Thus, mathematical modeling is improving the
outlook for today’s patients and for future patients as well.
For More Information: “Mathematics in Facial Surgery,” Peter Deuflhard, Martin

Weiser, and Stefan Zachow, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, October 2006.
tomographic data) and post-operatively (right, simulated),

Image: A patient pre-operatively (left, reconstructed from
courtesy of Stefan Zachow, Zuse-Institute Berlin (ZIB).

MM/59
Finding Fake Photos
Actually, they weren’t caught together at all—their images were put together with
software. The shadows cast by the stars’ faces give it away: The sun is coming from
two different directions on the same beach! More elaborate digital doctoring is
detected with mathematics. Calculus, linear algebra, and statistics are especially
useful in determining when a portion of one image has been copied to another or
when part of an image has been replaced.
Tampering with an image leaves statistical traces in the file. For example, if a
person is removed from an image and replaced with part of the background, then
two different parts of the resulting file will
be identical. The difficulty with exposing this
type of alteration is that both the location
of the replacement and its size are unknown
beforehand. One successful algorithm
finds these repetitions by first sorting
small regions according to their digital
color similarity, and then moving to larger
regions that contain similar small ones.
The algorithm’s designer, a leading digital
forensics expert, admits that image alterers
generally stay a step ahead of detectors, but
observes that forensic advances have made
it much harder for them to escape notice.
He adds that to catch fakers, “At the end of
the day you need math.”1
For More Information: “Can Digital
Photos be Trusted?,” Steve Casimiro, Popular
Science, October 2005.
_______
1 “It May Look Authentic; Here’s How to Tell It Isn't,”
Nicholas Wade, The New York Times, January 24, 2006.

MM/60
Tripping the Light–Fantastic
Invisibility is no longer confined to fiction. In a recent experiment, microwaves
were bent around a cylinder and returned to their original trajectories, rendering
the cylinder almost invisible at those wavelengths. This doesn't mean that we're
ready for invisible humans (or spaceships), but by using Maxwell's equations, which
are partial differential equations fundamental to electromagnetics, mathematicians
have demonstrated that in some simple cases not seeing is believing, too.
Part of this successful demonstration of invisibility is due to metamaterials–
electromagnetic materials that can be made to have highly unusual properties.
Another ingredient is a mathematical transformation that stretches a point into
a ball, "cloaking" whatever is inside. This transformation was discovered while
researchers were pondering how a tumor could escape detection. Their attempts
to improve visibility eventually led to the development of equations for invisibility.
A more recent transformation creates an optical "wormhole," which tricks
electromagnetic waves into behaving as if the topology of space has changed.
We'll finish with this:
For More Information: “Metamaterial Electromagnetic Cloak at Microwave
Frequencies,” D. Schurig et al, Science, November 10, 2006.
Image courtesy of Michael Bozec

MM/61
Burying Carbon Dioxide
One possible way (along with improving energy efficiency and finding alternate
fuels) to deal with the huge amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere
is carbon sequestration: burying CO2 thousands of feet underground in old or
unusable reservoirs, before it is emitted. Naturally geology is involved, but so too
is mathematics. Linear algebra, numerical analysis, and partial differential equations
underlie the models that combine with small-scale experiments to predict the
extent of underground leakage and help determine the feasibility of carbon
sequestration.
The mathematical models used to quantify the effects of carbon sequestration
are broad in scope–accurate for the motion of CO2 through tiny rock pores
and in giant reservoirs, extending from minutes to centuries. The problem is a
relatively new one in fluid dynamics on which many researchers are now working.
Compounding the complexity of the problem are millions of wells that could
provide an escape route for the gas. Said one researcher, “It’s the modeling
problem of a lifetime,”–for her and for the planet.
For More Information: “Geosciences Conference Tackles Global Issues,” Barry
Cipra, SIAM News, June 2007.
Image: Courtesy of the Energy Information Administration,

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids.

MM/62
Preserving the Past
Structures that have stood for thousands of years are now crumbling because
of air pollution. Mathematicians are using models that incorporate factors such
as humidity, temperature, and the level of pollution to better understand the
degradation process (which occurs when pollutants reacting with water vapor
transform the outer surface of stone into a vulnerable layer of porous gypsum).
The models, based on differential equations, can point to better strategies for
restoring ancient monuments, perhaps preventing their destruction.
One difficulty in modeling the deterioration is that the process depends heavily on
constantly changing conditions among many variables, such as humidity. Due to this
large number of relevant features, simplifying assumptions are made–for example,
that the air temperature equals that of the gypsum layer along the air-gypsum
boundary–to make the models manageable. The resulting non-linear equations
are then solved numerically, and despite the simplifications, the predictions are
accurate. Researchers who developed these models have recently discovered the
following: that there is a humidity threshold below which stone isn’t converted to
gypsum, that removing existing gypsum can be counterproductive, and that the size
of the advancing decaying front varies with the square root of both time and the
concentration of pollutants.
For More Information: “Lost Beauties of the Acropolis: What Mathematics Can
Say,” by Antonio Fasano and Roberto Natalini, SIAM News, July/August 2006.
Image by Mario Lapid, courtesy of Sacred Destinations,

www.sacred-destinations.com.

MM/63
Sailing Faster
A lot of work takes place on the water in competitive racing. Yet there’s also a
great deal of work done on land designing a boat’s hull and sails years before the
starting gun ever sounds. Much of the process of creating a 20-ton vessel that
must move efficiently through air and water involves mathematics–specifically the
theory of fluid flow. In fact, roughly 40 million equations are used in the design
of today’s America’s Cup yachts to ensure that their crews sail the fastest boats
possible.
Yacht design, which often blends seemingly contradictory constraints such as
making a boat both light and strong, is done mainly with computers, where it
is easier to test designs than on the water. A boat’s surface is approximated by
smaller surfaces that can be manipulated algebraically during the design process.
These smaller approximating surfaces are defined with functions called splines
(made up of pieces of polynomials) and are combined, often using curvature as a
measure, in a way that smoothes the interfaces where the surfaces connect. There
is little room for error: A difference of just one percent in speed translates to
minutes, in races where seconds matter.
For More Information: “Design Optimization for the International America’s
Cup Class,” Frank DeBord, Jr., John Reichel, Bruce Rosen, and Claudio Fassardi,
http://www.sailboat-technology.com/links/SNAME-2002.pdf.
Image ©Thierry Martinez.

MM/64 w w w. a m s . o r g / m a t h m o m e n t s
Bending It Like Bernoulli 1
The colored “strings” you see represent air flow around the soccer ball, with the
dark blue streams behind the ball signifying a low-pressure wake. Computational
fluid dynamics and wind tunnel experiments have shown that there is a transition
point between smooth and turbulent flow at around 30 mph, which can
dramatically change the path of a kick approaching the net as its speed decreases
through the transition point. Players taking free-kicks need not be mathematicians
to score, but knowing the results obtained from mathematical facts can help
players devise better strategies.
The behavior of a ball depends on its surface design as well as on how it’s kicked.
Topology, algebra, and geometry are all important to determine suitable shapes,
and modeling helps determine desirable ones. The researchers studying soccer ball
trajectories incorporate into their mathematical models not only the pattern of
a new ball, but also details right down to the seams. Recently there was a radical
change from the long-used pentagon-hexagon pattern to the adidas +Teamgeist TM.
Yet the overall framework for the design process remains the same: to
approximate a sphere, within less than two percent, using two-dimensional panels.
Image courtesy of the University of Sheffield

and Fluent, Inc.
For More Information: “Bending a Soccer Ball with CFD,” Sarah Barber
and Timothy P. Chartier. SIAM NEWS, July/August 2007.
1
Daniel Bernoulli (BurrNOOlee) was a Swiss mathematician who did pioneering
work in fluid flow.

Going with the Floes
Sea ice is one of the least understood components of our climate. Naturally its
abundance or scarcity is a telling sign of climate change, but sea ice is also an
important actor in change as well, insulating the ocean and reflecting sunlight. A
branch of mathematics called percolation theory helps explain how salt water
travels through sea ice, a process that is crucial both to the amount of sea ice
present and to the microscopic communities that sustain polar ecosystems. By
taking samples, doing
on-site experiments,
and then incorporating
the data into models
of porous materials,
mathematicians are
working to understand
Image: Pancake ice in Antarctica, courtesy of Ken Golden.

sea ice and help refine
climate predictions.
Using probability, numeri-
cal analysis, and partial
differential equations,
researchers have recently
shown that the perme-
ability of sea ice is similar
to that of some sedimen-
tary rocks in the earth’s
crust, even though the
substances are otherwise
dissimilar. One major difference between the two is the drastic changes in perme-
ability of sea ice, from total blockage to clear passage, that occur over a range of just
a few degrees. This difference can have a major effect on measurements by satellite,
which provide information on the extent and thickness of sea ice. Results about sea
ice will not only make satellite measurements more reliable, but they can also be
applied to descriptions of lung and bone porosity, and to understanding ice on other
planets.
For More Information: “Thermal evolution of permeability and microstructure
in sea ice,” K. M. Golden, et al., Geophysical Research Letters, August 28, 2007.

Hearing a Master’s Voice
The spools of wire below contain the only known live recording of the legendary
folk singer Woody Guthrie. A mathematician, Kevin Short, was part of a team that
used signal processing techniques associated with chaotic music compression to
recapture the live performance, which was often completely unintelligible. The
modern techniques employed, instead of resulting in a cold, digital output, actually
retained the original concert’s warmth and depth. As a result, Short and the team
received a Grammy© Award for their remarkable restoration of the
recording.
To begin the restoration the wire had to be manually pulled through a playback
device and converted to a digital format. Since the pulling speed wasn’t constant
there was distortion in the sound, frequently quite considerable. Algorithms cor-
rected for the speed variations and reconfigured the sound waves to their original
shape by using a background noise with a known frequency as a “clock.” This clever
correction also relied on sampling the sound selectively, and reconstructing and
resampling the music between samples. Mathematics did more than help recreate
a performance lost for almost 60 years: These methods are used to digitize trea-
sured tapes of audiophiles everywhere.
For More Information: “The Grammy in Mathematics,” Julie J. Rehmeyer,

Science News Online, February 9, 2008.
Photograph by Bradly Brown, courtesy of The Woody Guthrie
Archives, www.woodyguthrie.org.

Getting It Together
The collective motion of many groups of animals can be stunning. Flocks of birds
and schools of fish are able to remain cohesive, find food, and avoid predators with-
out leaders and without awareness of all but a few other members in their groups.
Research using vector analysis and statistics has led to the discovery of simple prin-
ciples, such as members maintaining a minimum distance between neighbors while
still aligning with them, which help explain shapes such as the one below.
Although collective motion by groups of animals is often beautiful, it can be costly

as well: Destructive locusts affect ten percent of the world’s population. Many other
animals exhibit group dynamics; some organisms involved are small while their
groups are huge, so researchers’ models have to account for distances on vastly
different scales. The resulting equations then must be solved numerically, because of
the incredible number of animals represented. Conclusions from this research will
help manage destructive insects, such as locusts, as well as help speed the move-
ment of people—ants rarely get stuck in traffic.
For More Information: “Swarm Theory,” Peter Miller. National Geographic,
July 2007.
Photo by Jose Luis Gomez de Francisco.

Steering Towards Efficiency
The racing team is just as important to a car’s finish as the driver is. With little to
separate competitors over hundreds of laps, teams search for any technological
edge that will propel them to Victory Lane. Of special use today is computational
fluid dynamics, which is used to predict airflow over a car, both alone and in rela-
tion to other cars (for example, when drafting). Engineers also rely on more basic
subjects, such as calculus and geometry, to improve their cars. In fact, one racing
team engineer said of his calculus and physics teachers, “the classes they taught to
this day were the most important classes I’ve ever taken.”1
Mathematics helps the performance and efficiency of non-NASCAR vehicles, as

well. To improve engine performance, data must be collected and processed very
rapidly so that control devices can make adjustments to significant quantities such
as air/fuel ratios. Innovative sampling techniques make this real-time data collec-
tion and processing possible. This makes for lower emissions and improved fuel
economy—goals worthy of a checkered flag.
For More Information: The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, 2008.

1
“Math and science skills essential to race car maintenance,” Morgan Wall,
The Mount Airy News, June 8, 2008.
Image courtesy of CIA Stock Photo.

MM/69
Spinning at Infinity
Colliding black holes produce the strongest gravitational waves since the Big Bang,
offering a unique way to test the theory of general relativity. Yet until recently no
one knew what the waves would look like, because none has ever been detected.
Now, a major computational breakthrough has combined non-Euclidean geometry
and differential equations to simulate the collisions and reveal the waves’ patterns.
This merger of mathematics with supercomputers, while not as momentous
as that of black holes, will have ripple effects on astrophysics, either confirming
general relativity or leading to new theories.
The new models—which can accommodate different spins and masses of the
black holes—divide the collision process into three phases. In the first and final
phases, the general relativity equations and integrals are solved analytically, but in
the middle phase, when the black holes are within a few radii of each other, the
solutions must be obtained numerically. The solutions are made feasible by cleverly
changing coordinates and keying the number of data points to the significance of
the region. One discovery from these latest simulations is that some collisions are
strong enough to eject the black holes from the galaxy.
For More Information: “Computing Cosmic Cataclysms,” Joan Centralla et al.

SciDAC Review, Summer 2008.
Image courtesy of Chris Henze, NASA.

Restoring Genius
Archimedes was one of the most brilliant people ever, on a par with Einstein
and Newton. Yet very little of what he wrote still exists because of the passage
of time, and because many copies of his works were erased and the cleaned
pages were used again. One of those written-over works (called a palimpsest)
has resurfaced, and advanced digital imaging techniques using statistics and linear
algebra have revealed his previously unknown discoveries in combinatorics and
calculus. This leads to a question that would stump even Archimedes: How much
further would mathematics and science have progressed had these discoveries
not been erased?
One of the most dramatic revelations

of Archimedes’ work was done using
X-ray fluorescence. A painting, forged
in the 1940s by one of the book’s
former owners, obscured the original
text, but X-rays penetrated the painting
and highlighted the iron in the ancient
ink, revealing a page of Archimedes’
treatise The Method of Mechanical
Theorems. The entire process of uncov-
ering this and his other ideas is made
possible by modern mathematics and
physics, which are built on his discov-
eries and techniques. This completion
of a circle of progress is entirely
appropriate since one of Archimedes’
accomplishments that wasn’t lost is his
approximation of P.
For More Information: The Archimedes
Codex, Reviel Netz and William Noel, 2007.
Image © The Owner of the Archimedes Palimpsest.

Improving Stents
Stents are expandable tubes that are inserted into blocked or damaged blood
vessels. They offer a practical way to treat coronary artery disease, repairing
vessels and keeping them open so that blood can flow freely. When stents
work, they are a great alternative to radical surgery, but they can deteriorate or
become dislodged. Mathematical models of blood vessels and stents are helping
to determine better shapes and materials for the tubes. These models are so
accurate that the FDA is considering requiring mathematical modeling in the
design of stents before any further testing is done, to reduce the need for expen-
sive experimentation.
Precise modeling of the entire human vascular system is far beyond the reach of
current computational power, so researchers focus their detailed models on small
subsections, which are coupled with simpler models of the rest of the system.
The Navier-Stokes equations are used to represent the flow of blood and its
interaction with vessel walls. A mathematical proof was the central part of recent
research that led to the abandonment of one type of stent and the design of
better ones. The goal now is to create better computational fluid-vessel models
and stent models to improve the treatment and prediction of coronary artery
disease–the major cause of heart attacks.
For More Information: “Design of Optimal Endoprostheses Using Mathematical Modeling,”
˘ ´ Krajcer, and Lapin, Endovascular Today, May 2006.
Canic,
Image courtesy of Michel Leconte.

Working It Out
The music of most hit songs is pretty well known, but sometimes there are
mysteries. One question that remained unanswered for over forty years is: What
instrumentation and notes make up the opening chord of the Beatles’ “A Hard
Day’s Night”? Mathematician Jason Brown–a big Beatles fan–recently solved the
puzzle using his musical knowledge and discrete Fourier transforms, mathematical
transformations that help decompose signals into their basic parts. These trans-
formations simplify applications ranging from signal processing to multiplying large
numbers, so that a researcher doesn’t have to be “working like a dog” to get an
answer.
Brown is also using mathematics, specifically graph theory, to discover who

wrote “In My Life,” which both Lennon and McCartney claimed to have written.
In his graphs, chords are represented by points that are connected when one
chord immediately follows another. When all songs with known authorship
are diagrammed, Brown will see which collection of graphs–McCartney’s or
Lennon’s–is a better fit for “In My Life.” Although it may seem a bit counter-
intuitive to use mathematics to learn more about a revolutionary band, these
analytical methods identify and uncover compositional principles inherent in some
of the best Beatles’ music.
Thus it’s completely natural
and rewarding to apply
mathematics to the Fab 22.
“Professor Uses Mathematics to
Decode Beatles Tunes,” The Wall
Street Journal, January 30, 2009.
Image by Teresa Levy.

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Matching Vital Needs
A person needing a kidney transplant may have a friend or relative who volun-
teers to be a living donor, but whose kidney is incompatible, forcing the person
to wait for a transplant from a deceased donor. In the U.S. alone, thousands of
people die each year without ever finding a suitable kidney. A new technique
applies graph theory to groups of incompatible patient-donor pairs to create the
largest possible number of paired-donation exchanges. These exchanges, in which
a donor paired with Patient A gives a kidney to Patient B while a donor paired
with Patient B gives to Patient A, will dramatically increase transplants from living
donors. Since transplantation is less expensive than dialysis, this mathematical
algorithm, in addition to saving lives, will also save hundreds of millions of dollars
annually.
Naturally there can be more transplants if matches along longer patient-donor

cycles are considered (e.g., A’s donor to B, B’s donor to C, and C’s donor to
A). The problem is that the possible number of longer cycles grows so fast—
hundreds of millions of A→B→C→A matches in just 5000 donor-patient
pairs—that to search through all the possibilities is impossible. An ingenious
use of random walks and integer programming now makes searching through all
three-way matches feasible, even in a database large enough to include all incom-
patible patient-donor pairs.
“Matchmaking for Kidneys,” Dana
Mackenzie, SIAM News, December
2008.
Image of suboptimal two-way matching (in

purple) and an optimal matching (in green),
courtesy of Sommer Gentry.

Predicting Climate
What’s in store for our climate and us? It’s an extraordinarily complex ques-
tion whose answer requires physics, chemistry, earth science, and mathematics
(among other subjects) along with massive computing power. Mathematicians
use partial differential equations to model the movement of the atmosphere;
dynamical systems to describe the feedback between land, ocean, air, and ice; and
statistics to quantify the uncertainty of current projections. Although there is
some discrepancy among different climate forecasts, researchers all agree on the
tremendous need for people to join this effort and create new approaches to
help understand our climate.
It’s impossible to predict the weather even two weeks in advance, because almost
identical sets of temperature, pressure, etc. can in just a few days result in drasti-
cally different weather. So how can anyone make a prediction about long-term
climate? The answer is that climate is an average of weather conditions. In the
same way that good predictions about the average height of 100 people can be
made without knowing the height of any one person, forecasts of climate years
into the future are feasible
without being able to predict
the conditions on a particular
day. The challenge now is to
gather more data and use
subjects such as fluid dynamics
and numerical methods to
extend today’s 20-year projec-
tions forward to the next 100
years.
For More Information: Mathematics
of Climate Change: A New Discipline for
an Uncertain Century, Dana Mackenzie,
2007.
Image courtesy of William F. Ruddiman and
W.H. Freeman and Company.

MM/76
Analyzing Data
AMS Podcast Series
Much of modern research—from genome sequencing to digital surveys of outer

space— generates tremendous amounts of multi-dimensional data. Unfortunately,
visualizing dimensions higher than three is not easy, which makes analyzing and
understanding the data difficult. Topology, a branch of mathematics concerned
with the properties of geometrical structures, helps make sense of large data sets
by providing a way of classifying the shapes of these sets. It’s especially useful for
locating groups of similar points called “clusters”, which can, for example, distin-
guish between distinct types of a given disease, each requiring its own treatment.
Robert Ghrist, Topology (specifically algebraic topology) is also important in the operation of
University of Pennsylvania
wireless sensor networks, which are used in applications as diverse as monitoring
automobile traffic and controlling irrigation. Combined with numerical integration,
results from algebraic topology provide the complete picture based on strictly
local data. The advantage is that such sensor networks, maintained without GPS
or other distance measures, are generally much cheaper to operate. So, in the
case of irrigation, mathematical discoveries made almost a century before the
advent of today’s technology save money while helping us use precious water
wisely. In topological terms, just like the Möbius strip: What goes around, comes
around.
H( )
*
Image: Persistent homology of a simplicial approximation finds hidden structures in large data sets, courtesy of Robert Ghrist.
For More Information: “Topology and Data”, Gunnar Carlson, Bulletin of the
American Mathematical Society (Vol. 46, No. 2), April 2009.

MM/77
Resisting the Spread of
Disease
One of the most useful tools in analyzing the spread of disease is a system of
evolutionary equations that reflects the dynamics among three distinct catego-
ries of a population: those susceptible (S) to a disease, those infected (I) with
it, and those recovered (R) from it. This SIR model is applicable to a range of
diseases, from smallpox to the flu. To predict the impact of a particular disease it
is crucial to determine certain parameters associated with it, such as the average
number of people that a typical infected person will infect. Researchers estimate
these parameters by applying statistical methods to gathered data, which aren’t
complete because, for example, some cases aren’t reported. Armed with reliable
models, mathematicians help public health officials battle the complex, rapidly
changing world of modern disease.
Today’s models are more sophisticated than those of even a few years ago. They
incorporate information such as contact periods that vary with age (young people
have contact with one another for a longer period of time than do adults from
different households), instead of
assuming equal contact periods
for everyone. The capacity to
treat variability makes it possible
to predict the effectiveness of
targeted vaccination strate-
gies—to combat the flu, for
instance. Some models now use
graph theory and matrices to
represent networks of social
interactions, which are impor-
tant in understanding how far
and how fast a given disease will
spread.
For More Information: Mathematical
Models in Population Biology and
Epidemiology, Fred Brauer and Carlos
Castillo-Chavez.
Image © iStockphoto.com/Sebastian Kaulitzki.

MM/78
Knowing How to Fold Them
Sequencing the human genome was a tremendously significant accomplishment,
but now comes the hard part: Understanding the structure and function of
proteins. The 100,000 proteins in our bodies initiate, control, or perform every
one of our biological functions through shapes (called folds) and communication
with other proteins. Misfolded or mistargeted proteins can cause diseases such
as cancer, mad cow, and cystic fibrosis. Computational biologists are using geom-
etry, probability, and knot theory to begin to describe the intricate folding of
proteins. Once it is known just exactly how a malfunctioning protein goes awry,
drugs can be designed that address the problem, thereby restoring affected cells.
Proteins assemble and re-assemble in an infinitesimal space and, most often,

time span, yet the simulations of their functions are enormous, involving millions
of calculations at each of billions of tiny time intervals. Almost every subject in
mathematics— including integrals, partial differential equations, linear algebra,
and numerical analysis—goes into
Image courtesy of Theoretical & Computational Biophysics Group, University of Illinois.
simulating protein behavior, which,
even for the simplest proteins,
requires parallel computation
to solve. It may seem unusual to
concentrate such massive effort on
such a small scale, but it is produc-
tive: Some strains of HIV had
been resistant to treatment, but
models of an HIV protein, integrase,
revealed a nanoscale-sized trench
that researchers can fill with a
compound to overcome the resis-
tance.
For More Information: From

Protein Structure to Function with
Bioinformatics, Daniel John Rigden,
Editor.

MM/79

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