Content about “

medicine and health

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Why a positive test result doesn't necessarily mean you have the disease.

Sara Zahedi has won a prestigious prize at the European Congress of Maths. Your future medical diagnoses, and even the welfare of sea life, may depend on her work.

In 2012 the UK government launched a list of the Eight Great technologies of the future. Here's what they are and what role maths has to play in them.

A project involving secondary school students has delivered valuable data for epidemiologists.

The company 23andMe made headlines by launching its DNA testing service in the UK. But how are the risks of developing a disease calculated?

Why maths is an important tool in the fight against Ebola.

How maths helps us understand and fight infectious diseases.

Geometric hallucinations are very common: people get them after taking drugs, following sensory deprivation, or even after rubbing their eyes. What can they tell us about how our brain works?

Modelling the spread of disease is a difficult business. Epidemiologists use incredibly complex models involving huge amounts of transport, social contact and disease data to predict the spread of diseases. But is there a way to hide all this complexity and draw a simpler picture of how diseases spread, even in today's complex world?

Scientists find a new method of storing information in DNA.

When NASA first decided to put a man on the Moon they had a problem: once the Apollo spacecraft was in flight, they would not be able to observe its exact location and neither would they be able to predict it using physics. How could they send astronauts to the Moon if they didn't know where they were? An ingenious mathematician came up with an answer.