Puzzling Pentagons—How Many Ways Can We Cover a Flat Surface?

Can We Recover the Cover?

Data analysis typically involves error recovery and detection of regularities as two different key tasks. In this paper we show that there are data types for which these two tasks can be powerfully combined. A common notion of regularity in strings is that of a cover. Data describing measures of a natural coverable phenomenon may be corrupted by errors caused by the measurement process, or by t...

Can we have it both ways?

Can we change our predatory ways?

As a top predator using rifles and harpoons, humans are shaping ecosystems ina unique way, often killing the wrong animals for the wrong reasons. Considering the ongoing crises of mass extinction and climate change, which is boosted by meat farming, we should employ our species-defining intelligence to reinvent our ecological role and learn to savour alternatives to meat.

How Many Ways Can One Draw a Graph?

Using results from extremal graph theory, we determine the asymptotic number of string graphs with n vertices, i.e., graphs that can be obtained as the intersection graph of a system of continuous arcs in the plane. The number becomes much smaller, for any fixed d, if we restrict our attention to systems of arcs, any two of which cross at most d times. As an application, we estimate the number ...

How many ways can we say that cigarette smoking is bad for you?

H ow many different ways are there to say that cigarette smoking is bad for you? Smoking is an epidemic that affects one in three adults in the world, 23% of adults and 28% of high school students in the United States. 1 Nearly 450,000 persons will die every year of a disease attributable to tobacco use. 2 In the United States, tobacco use kills more people each year than AIDS, suicide, murder,...