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Editorial

  • Beaglemania - The Beagle is missing in action, but it is inspiring a new generation of would-be astronauts.
  • Careers with Maths - Plus has been given a grant to produce posters based on our popular careers library.
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Blood filling a needle

Pools of blood

A biologist has developed a blood test for detecting a certain minor abnormality in infants. Obviously if you have blood samples from 100 children, you could find out which children are affected by running 100 separate tests. But mathematicians are never satisfied by the obvious answer. Keith Ball uses information theory to explain how to cut down the number of tests significantly, by pooling samples of blood.

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Practice makes perfect

In 1997 Garry Kasparov, then World Champion, lost an entire chess match to the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, and it is only a matter of time before the machines become absolutely unbeatable. But the human brain, as Lewis Dartnell explains, is still able to put up a good fight by exploiting computers' weaknesses.
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Making the grade: Part II

Calculus is a collection of tools, such as differentiation and integration, for solving problems in mathematics which involve "rates of change" and "areas". In the second of two articles aimed specially at students meeting calculus for the first time, Chris Sangwin tells us how to move on from first principles to differentiation as we know and love it!
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Riemann zeta function

The music of the primes

Following on from his article 'The prime number lottery' in last issue of Plus, Marcus du Sautoy continues his exploration of the greatest unsolved problem of mathematics: The Riemann Hypothesis.
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Outer space: Wagons Roll

The concept of a speed limit seems a simple one - until you think what can happen when a speed camera clocks a rotating wheel...