Two-hundred-terabyte maths proof is largest ever

Everything's Bigger in Texas: "The Largest Math Proof Ever"

The Boolean Pythagorean Triples problem has been a long-standing open problem in Ramsey Theory: Can the set N = {1, 2, 3, ...} of natural numbers be partitioned into two parts, such that neither part contains a triple (a, b, c) with a^2 + b^2 = c^2 ? A prize for the solution was offered by Ron Graham decades ago. We show that such a partition is possible for the set of integers in [1,7824], but...

Giant claw reveals the largest ever arthropod.

The fossil record has yielded various gigantic arthropods, in contrast to their diminutive proportions today. The recent discovery of a 46 cm long claw (chelicera) of the pterygotid eurypterid ('sea scorpion') Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, from the Early Devonian Willwerath Lagerstätte of Germany, reveals that this form attained a body length of approximately 2.5 m-almost half a metre longer than pr...

Two hundred treasured issues!

Language is never , ever , ever , random

Language users never choose words randomly, and language is essentially non-random. Statistical hypothesis testing uses a null hypothesis, which posits randomness. Hence, when we look at linguistic phenomena in corpora, the null hypothesis will never be true. Moreover, where there is enough data, we shall (almost) always be able to establish that it is not true. In corpus studies, we frequently...

Two hundred years of surgery.

Copyright © 2012 Massachusetts Medical Society. Surgery is a profession defined by its authority to cure by means of bodily invasion. The brutality and risks of opening a living person’s body have long been apparent, the benefits only slowly and haltingly worked out. Nonetheless, over the past two centuries, surgery has become radically more effective, and its violence substantially reduced — c...