People with bipolar disorder swing between mood extremes. A team of mathematicians decided to see how much of that swinging they could describe mathematically. Mason Porter, then at the Georgia Institute of Technology and now at Oxford University, with several US colleagues, published a study in 2009, Mathematical Models of Bipolar Disorder. It appeared in the journal Communications […]
Tag: model
The effect of centrifugal birthing on an art critic
Rachel Lavin writes in The University Times, about Science Gallery [Dublin]‘s “Fail Better” exhibition: Some of the highlights are Christopher Reeve’s wheelchair, Samuel Beckett’s original manuscript drafts of Westward Ho, and most intriguingly, a human birthing machine that earned itself an Ig Nobel Prize. The machine has been rebuilt for viewing and is available to […]
She of the industrial standard breasts
From the book World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement by Robert P. Crease: Rita Mazzella is the doyenne of bra fit models. Lingerie companies use her breasts — size 34C — to construct new brassiere lines, then scale the size down to A and B, and up to D. […]
Modeling monks and a cafeteria (hydrology)
Tom Pagano explains “how to model monks going in and out of a cafeteria and how it is like a hydrological model“: The classic analogy for hydrology models is that soils hold and release water like a series of leaky buckets. But instead, let’s start by discussing how to model a cafeteria/mess hall/canteen for hungry meditating monks…. […]