If you place a drop of ink into a glass of water, the ink will slowly dissipate into the surrounding water until it is perfectly mixed. If you record your experiment with a camera and play the film backwards, you will see ...

An operad is an abstract mathematical tool encoding operations on specific mathematical structures. It finds applications in many areas of mathematics and related fields. This snapshot explains the concept of an operad and ...

The study of mathematical biology attempts to use mathematical models to draw useful conclusions about biological systems. Here, we consider the modelling of brain tumour spread with the ultimate goal of improving treatment ...

Imagine you have a cutout from a piece of squared paper and a pile of dominoes, each of which can cover exactly two squares of the squared paper. How many different ways are there to cover the entire paper cutout with ...

Sleeping sickness is a neglected tropical disease that affects rural populations in Africa. Deadly when untreated, it is being targeted for elimination through case finding and treatment. Yet, fundamental questions about ...

Very simple mathematical equations can give rise to surprisingly complicated, chaotic dynamics, with behavior that is sensitive to small deviations in the initial conditions. We illustrate this with a single recurrence ...

In this snapshot, we will consider the problem of finding the number of solutions to a given system of polynomial equations. This question leads to the theory of Newton polytopes and Newton-Okounkov bodies of which we will ...