MATH NEWS N’ UPDATES_MAY2021
Published in May2021 issue of ‘VEDIC MATH WORLD’ – magazine

PEOPLE WITH WEAK MATH SKILL ARE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO FAKE NEWS ABOUT CORONAVIRUS
A very interesting survey is conducted across five countries i.e., Ireland, Spain, Mexico, the US and UK discloses, people with weak arithmetic solving ability are more open to believing in misinformation or fake news about coronavirus. About this survey Cambridge university suggest that if analytical abilities of people are improved than the wrong information about the pandemic is not believed so easily. In this survey, respondents have to take three set of tests to understand the information. In which nine statements are provided in which some true and some are false. In this statement one is about 5G mobile phone user were at more risk of contracting covid-19. The researcher found that the most common factor which make people easily believe in misinformation regarding covid-19 was lesser numerical literacy. author Dr. Sander vander Linden shared the results of the study on Twitter and said ‘some think the susceptibility to misinformation is related to their reasoning abilities, while some also thought it is linked to their political views too’. Reacher also found a distinctive factor related to belief in covid-19 fake information was age. The older people seemed to be less open to fake information as compared to young people, except in Mexico. The result in Mexico was opposite to other country. Anyhow, the paper does not provide much information about why the wrong information spreads in the first place. This wrong information has the potential to cut off the efforts of health worker to decrease the spread of virus. The great thing is at this worst situation mathematics can help us and reduce the stress of this pandemic.

NEW KIND OF PRIME NUMBERS – ‘DIGITALLY DELICATE’ PRIME NUMBERS
Mathematicians uncover a new category of ‘digitally delicate’ prime numbers.  Digitally delicate prime numbers can change any digit to any other value which bears composite number outcome instead. Delicate prime also have infinite digits. For example, consider a prime number which is 101. Change the digits to 201, 102, or 111 and you have values that are divisible by 3 and therefore a composite number. This is an old approach, now mathematician from the university of south California have established an even more specific slot of the ‘digitally delicate prime: widely digitally delicate prime.’ The characteristic of this primes is (i) these primes have added, infinite ‘leading zeros’, (ii) the primes don’t change the original prime, but make a difference as you change the zeros into other digits to test for delicacy. If you see 000101 instead 101. The value 000101 is prime, and the zeros are there for show, but if you change the zeros, like 000101 to 100101 so, this is a composite number which is divisible by 3. Mathematician feel that there are infinite widely digitally delicate primes, but they can’t find any single real example. They have tested 1,000,000,000 primes by adding leading zeros and doing Math. Math professor Michael Filaseta from South Carolina and former graduate student Jeremiah Southwick worked together on this research. They published their findings in mathematics of computation. However, they don’t have example but they proved the numbers exist in base 10 which means the numbers that use our 0-9 counting system; compare with binary, base 2 with just 0 and 1. They also proves the primes are infinitely many.

MATH BEHIND A CRUMPLED PIECE OF PAPER
Have you ever thought about the math behind the crease on crumpled piece of paper? Well, as you crumple up a sheet of paper, it creates creases on it due to stress. Then the sheet breaks up into series of flat facets to relieve stress. When you open the paper, you can see the creases appears on paper. Mathematician at Harvard university lately discovered something amazing about it. Their experiment shows the total length of each crease in the crumpled paper increase logarithmically as you compact and unfold paper again and again. That follow the general, predictable rule. In this research they were missing the physical basis for why this happens. To revel the physical explanation Harvard’s Jovana Andrejevic and her team focused on flat section (They call “facets”).  They used the ‘Mylar’- a polyester film used in NASA space suite to protect astronauts from radiation. It breaks up in to increasingly smaller piece as the surface is scrunched up over and over. for the Mylar sheet this task become extremely hard because the crease data is confusing and hard for automated computer algorithms to accurately interpret. One co-author discloses that Andrejevic solved this problem by tracing the facets all out by hand with the help of spectacular style. It took days to complete this process. The resulting image of the crumpled sheet of paper looks like resembled the countries on colorized world map.

THE SCIENCE AND MATH BEHIND HORMONE GRADIENT GENERATION BY THE PLANT ROOTS
Starting from the point when germination of a seed happens and the plant passes through the entire lifecycle, Mathematics is associated with its growth! The identical stem cell undergoes radical transformation into specialised roots, stem, leaf and reproductive organ cells. This conversion relies on a suite of molecules called phytohormones which can move between cells and tissues and trigger distinct biological process across the body plan. The advances in molecular and genetics tools that gibberellins (GA) manage growth and development throughout the plant life cycle. The interest of plant scientist in GA that how hormones control plant growth and as a possible target for future crop improvements.  The research team of alexander jones from university of Cambridge and Leah band and Markus Owen from university of Nottingham collaborate to make understandable the biochemical steps which is responsible for distinctive GA distribution seen in plant growth. To regulate cell multiplication and cell expansion GA is very helpful. there is clear longitudinal gradient of GA from root tip to root elongation zone that is related with cell size in growing roots of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. They found an exogenous GA generated gradient with faster accumulation of GA in larger cells, but how the pattern was being created not found yet. To find this pattern researchers use MATHEMATICAL MODEL with experimental observation to take an in-depth examination into cells to see what biochemical or transport activities might be responsible. Dr. Leah band and professor Markus Owen a mathematician from university of Nottingham developed a computational model to simulate the hormone GA dynamics in the plan root, which show how different process contribute to the GA gradient. This research’s finding elaborate which components are important for contributing to plants control and distributing mobile hormone.

MADHVAN MUKUND – A NEWLY APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF CMI
Chennai based a research and educational institute CHENNAI MATHEMATICAL INSTITUTE (CMI) has appointed Madhavan Mukund as director, recently. It is a deemed to be university for physics, mathematics and computer science. Now Madhvan Mukund is a dean and deputy director of the institute. He shall effectively start his tenure from 1st may, 2021. Current Director of the institute, Rajeeva Karandikar, would be retiring from the institute. Mr. Mukund had done B Tach from IIT Bombay and PhD from Aarhus University. He is associated with CMI since founding of the institute 1989.