Abstractions blog

Representation theory was initially dismissed. Today, it’s central to much of mathematics.

To explain why men are on average taller than women, scientists theorized about competition for mates. But the effects of estrogen on bone growth may be answer enough.

Neural networks have been taught to quickly read the surfaces of proteins — molecules critical to many biological processes.

To distinguish between fundamentally different objects, mathematicians turn to invariants that encode the objects’ essential features.

Mathematicians try to figure out when problems can be solved using current knowledge — and when they have to chart a new path instead.

Collider physicists report that several measurements of particles called B mesons deviate from predictions. Alone, each oddity looks like a fluke, but their collective drift is more suggestive.

Studies of collective behavior usually focus on how crowds of organisms coordinate their actions. But what if the individuals that don’t participate have just as much to tell us?

A lizard that both lays eggs and gives birth to live young is helping scientists understand how and why these forms of reproduction evolved.

Anyons don’t fit into either of the two known particle kingdoms. To find them, physicists had to erase the third dimension.