News and Press Coverage

It is well known that when a team plays home its success rate will increase. For example, in baseball and hockey, the boost is about 8%; in international football, the increase can be 25%.

Análises estatísticas de campeonatos de esportes coletivos como o futebol já comprovaram que o fenômeno da “vantagem de jogar em casa” existe mesmo. Jogar em sua própria arena não é garantia de vitória, mas tende a ajudar.

A wide range of indicators like wages, patents, and R&D employment increase with the population of cities. This behaviour is often referred to as urban scaling. The interesting aspect of urban scaling is that it does not follow a straight line, but rather increases exponentially.

Desde 2003 uma equipe liderada pelo físico Geoffrey West, do Instituto Santa Fé, nos Estados Unidos, acumula evidências de que o desenvolvimento das cidades obedece a certas regularidades estatísticas. É uma espécie de física do crescimento urbano, regido por fórmulas matemáticas relativamente simples – as chamadas leis de escala ou potência – que permitem fazer previsões sobre as propriedades de uma cidade.

(Inside Science) – Similar rules may govern the squeaking of an old hardwood floor, cracking of a dried-out lump of charcoal, and shearing of our planet’s crust during an earthquake. Two recent studies in the journal Physical Review Letters have found that all of these stressful situations share the same underlying mathematical patterns.

Two upcoming papers in Physical Review Letters shed a light on the way that scientists can use analogies to understand fundamental physical processes. Some analogies can be just plain barmy, as with Newton’s analogy between the number of notes in a musical scale and the number of colours in the rainbow (see my very first Mini Story, and also my recent paper in Nature Vol.

A mathematical formula could predict how many murders will occur as the population in Brazil increases, say scientists. The formula can also be applied to other factors such as unemployment and literacy, they claim.

Read the story at: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39016059/hothands.pdf Read our article: Anomalous diffusion and long-range correlations in the score evolution of the game of cricket