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Mathematics

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 11-May-2026 09:15 ET (11-May-2026 13:15 GMT/UTC)

New paper rocks earthquake science with a clever computational trick

Stevens Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

On Saturday December 6, 2025 Alaska was rocked by a 7.0 magnitude quake. On average, about 55 earthquakes strike daily, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), totaling some 20,000 annually worldwide with 15 hitting within the magnitude 7.0 range and one reaching 8.0 or over. Earthquakes result in fatalities, damaged infrastructure, economic disruptions and can create lasting psychological trauma for individuals affected by them. They are also becoming more costly, in part because more people now live in the earthquake-prone areas, with damage reaching $14.7 billion per year in the US alone. There's no way to predict when earthquakes may hit yet, but a new paper may bring us a step closer to doing so.

Journal: SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing

Optical chip pioneers physical-layer public-key encryption with partial coherence

Opto-Electronic Journals Group
Peer-Reviewed Publication

We experimentally demonstrate encrypted image transmission over 40 km of optical fiber with high decryption fidelity and achieve a 10 Gbit/s optical encryption rate using a lithium niobate photonic chip. This represents the first implementation of public-key encryption at the physical optical layer.

Journal: Opto-Electronic Advances

Quanta Books to publish popular math and physics titles by Terence Tao and David Tong

Simons Foundation
Book Announcement

Quanta Books is delighted to announce two new upcoming books by mathematician Terence Tao and theoretical physicist David Tong. Six Math Essentials will be Tao’s first math book written for a popular audience. Tong’s book, Everything Is Fields, will illuminate quantum field theory — the physics that explains the fundamental makeup of the universe — drawing from Tong’s distinguished track record as a quantum field theorist and public communicator.

New crisis management model for professional soccer

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

When does a soccer team really face a crisis – and in which situations is the dismissal of a coach nothing but an over-hasty reaction? In a recently published study, researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) describe the development of a system that objectively measures crises in professional soccer. Based on three crisis indicators derived from real-world soccer characteristics, it is possible to accurately capture the performance level of a team and detect critical phases at an early stage. The results are published in the German Journal of Exercise and Sport Research (DOI: 10.1007/s12662-025-01078-1 ).

Journal: German Journal of Exercise and Sport Research

Scientists identify the recipe for stabilizing atomically thin metals - A step towards nano-electronic and energy solutions

University of Jyväskylä - Jyväskylän yliopisto
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Metallenes are atomically thin metals, whose unique properties make them extremely promising for nanoscale applications. However, their extreme thinness makes them also flimsy. Now, researchers at the Nanoscience Center of the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) have succeeded in identifying the principles that can maximize their stability. The solution may open up opportunities in materials design, nano-electronics, energy production, and biomedicine.

Journal: Nanoscale

Social lives of viruses affect antiviral resistance

University of Washington School of Medicine/UW Medicine
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Interactions among viruses can help them succeed inside their hosts or impart vulnerabilities that make them easier to treat. Scientists are learning the ways viruses mingle inside the cells they infect, as well as the consequences of their socializing. Although it is debatable whether viruses are living things, they do compete, cooperate and share genome materials that can sometimes alter their responses to antiviral drugs, result in new variants or play a role in virus evolution. A paper today in Nature Ecology & Evolution by UW Medicine scientists looks at the evolution of poliovirus resistance to a promising experimental antiviral drug, pocapavir. While it seemed counterintuitive, the researchers demonstrated that lowering the potency of pocapavir could improve the situation by enhancing the survival of enough susceptible viruses to continue sensitizing the resistant ones.

Journal: Nature Ecology & Evolution

AI in the classroom: Research focuses on technology rather than the needs of young people

University of Würzburg
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study from the University of Würzburg's Chair of Mathematics Education shows that AI research for STEM education focuses too much on technology and neglects the holistic development of students.

Journal: International Journal of STEM Education

Making simulations more accurate than ever with deep learning

Kobe University
Reports and Proceedings

Future events such as the weather or satellite trajectories are computed in tiny time steps, so the computation must be both efficient and as accurate as possible at each step lest errors pile up. A Kobe University team now introduces a new method that uses deep learning for creating tailored, accurate simulations that respect physical laws, while also being more computationally efficient.

Funder: Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, National Institute for Fusion Science
Meeting: Thirty-Ninth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2025)

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