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Droplets That ‘Come to Life’

January 20, 2017

Life might have originated in droplets that behave surprisingly like living cells.

Dividing Droplets Could Explain Life’s Origin

January 19, 2017

Researchers have discovered that simple “chemically active” droplets grow to the size of cells and spontaneously divide, suggesting they might have evolved into the first living cells.

The Shape-Shifting Army Inside Your Cells

January 18, 2017

Proteins work like rigid keys to activate cellular functions — or so everyone thought. Scientists are discovering a huge number of proteins that shape-shift to do their work, upending a century-old maxim of biology.

Graph Isomorphism Vanquished — Again

January 14, 2017

Just five days after posting a retraction, László Babai announced that he had fixed the error in his landmark graph isomorphism algorithm.

How Many Half-Lives Do You Have?

January 12, 2017

Gaining an intuition about half-life requires some unintuitive thinking.

Infant Brains Reveal How the Mind Gets Built

January 10, 2017

Is the brain a blank slate, or is it wired from birth to understand the world?

How Curvature Makes a Shape a Shape

January 9, 2017

The ancient study of an object’s curvature is guiding mathematicians toward a new understanding of simple equations.

Complexity Theory Problem Strikes Back

January 5, 2017

The legendary graph isomorphism problem may be harder than a 2015 result seemed to suggest.

Q&A

Finding the Actions That Alter Evolution

January 5, 2017

The biologist Marcus Feldman creates mathematical models that reveal how cultural traditions can affect the evolution of a species.

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