The beauty of mathematics lies in its ability to prove that something is absolutely true – absolutely. How comforting that is when the rest of our lives are fraught with such uncertainties.

The Walnut Street Theatre – Studio 3; has mounted a marvelous production of David Aubun’s prize winning drama. The play deals with mathematical genius, madness, filial devotion, personal doubt and that maze of ambivalent and contradictory attractions, empathies and motivations that draw us into love.

Auburn turns the esoteric world of higher mathematics literally into a back porch drama, one that is as accessible and compelling as a detective story. The play is fundamentally a mystery about the authorship of a particularly important proof, a mystery that is solved in the end; it is also, however, about the unravelable enigma of genius, and the toll it can take on those who are beset with it, aspire to it or merely live in its vicinity.

In that service, the play takes great pains to depict the study of mathematics as a painful joy, not as the geek-making obsession of stereotype, but as human labor, both ennobling and humbling, by people who, like musicians or painters or playwrights, can envision an elusive beauty in the universe and are therefore both enlivened by its pursuit and daunted by the commitment.

In this play, the discovery of a groundbreaking mathematical formula serves as a trigger to set off a psychological mystery surrounding its authorship. Unlike the play “Copenhagen” which introduces much scientific talk into its dialogue, Auburn seems to lean over backward to avoid techno talk in order to keep the play’s human issues in the forefront.

Most striking is Aubun’s sense of structure; at once imaginative and stringently coherent. Veering gracefully from past to present and from reflection to confrontation, the playwright traces the development of his characters and plot with a scientist’s preciseness and a poet’s lyricism.

Alex Keiper plays Catherine, who at 25 has spent the last four years caring for her father Robert (Bill Van Horn), a brilliant-minded mathematician who has made stunning math contributions in his early 20s and then

descended into mental illness.

Now he has passed away, and Catherine is left to confront her life, which doesn’t seem to consist of much more than taking mediocre care of the family’s Chicago house, nicely drawn from the perspective of the back porch in Andrew Thompson’s evocative set design.

Like her father, Catherine has a keen mathematical mind, and she’s able to trade flirtatious, math-laced barbs with Hal (David Raphaely), one of her father’s former students, who has been perusing Robert’s notebooks to see if they contain anything but the musings of dementia.

Quite early, the play also begins questioning whether Catherine may also have inherited her father’s mental instability. Her sister Claire (Krista Apple) thinks that’s the case and wants Catherine to move to New York so she can keep an eye on her.

Hal, who has professional ambitions of his own, isn’t exactly disinterested and may not be trustworthy; his sleeping with Catherine has also complicated the issue. The elusiveness of genius in general and the difficulty of a mathematical proof in particular here become metaphors for the uncertainties of love, trust, and personal integrity.

Proof represents back-to-basics theater. Auburn speaks in a modern voice but practices solid traditional playwriting. Skillfully plotted, this story is a family drama, offbeat romance and mystery yam. Theater buffs will also get an added kick from the shades of Arthur Miller – especially Catherine and Claire’s debate over their respective sacrifices during their father’s illness, echoing the showdown of brothers in Miller’s “The Price.”

Director Kate Galvin brings to bear her ability to draw from the actors genuine emotions. Apple, Raphaely and Van Horn bring fully human complexity to each of the roles. Their emotional tone can change, either subtly or dramatically, within a few lines. However, Keiper’s outbursts seem abrupt, even occasionally forced. Most amazing of all is Thompson’s scenic rendering of the play; at first glance appearing to be simple; yet it speaks volumes about the situation and its characters.

Without any baffling erudition – there isn’t a single line of dialogue you would find perplexing – the play presents mathematicians as both blessed and bedeviled by the gift for abstraction. Perhaps most satisfying of all; it does so without a moment of meanness. “Proof’ reaches into remote cerebral terrain and finds – guess what? – good people.

Proof continues at The Walnut Street Theater, Studio 3, 825 Walnut St. in Philadelphia through Feb. 5. Tickets $30. Information: 215-574-3550 or walnutstreettheatre.org .

“A major unanswered question regarding the dispersal of modern humans around the world concerns the geographical site of the first steps out of Africa.

“One popular model predicts that the early stages of the dispersal took place across the Red Sea to southern Arabia, but direct genetic evidence has been thin on the ground,” said team leader Dr Luisa Pereira at the University of Porto.

In fact, in its research, the team analysed three of the earliest non-African maternal lineages. These early branches are associated with the time period when modern humans first successfully moved out of Africa.

Using mitochondrial DNA analysis, which traces the female line of descent, the scientists compared complete genomes from Arabia and the Near East with a database of hundreds more samples from Europe.

They found evidence for an ancient ancestry within Arabia.

Team member Prof Martin Richards at the University of Leeds added: “The timing and pattern of the migration of early modern humans has been a source of much debate and research.

Our new results suggest that Arabia, rather than North Africa or the Near East, was the first staging-post in the spread of modern humans around the world.”

The findings have been published in the latest edition of the ‘American Journal of Human Genetics’.

Some Android applications send out control signals once every three to five minutes even when not in use. This translates to ten times that of a conventional mobile phone, placing additional strain on the network, the newspaper said.

Sharp rise in data consumption puts more pressure on wireless operators to speed up capacity investments, as they are struggling with clogged telecom networks to keep up with growing demand for data services on the go.

Android transmits control signals automatically every 28 minutes. DoCoMo intends to request that Google make it do so less often, since frequent service disruptions could negatively impact the popularity of Android phones, the Nikkei reported.

DoCoMo also hopes to team up with other mobile service providers, along with Google, to ask Android application developers to limit the frequency of control signals, the Japanese paper said.

But since one of Android’s selling points is that anyone can develop software for it freely, such requests may not have much effect, Nikkei said.

“A new trend that is becoming visible is the launch of dual SIM smartphones by vendors”, stated Tarun Pathak, a telecom sector analyst associated with CyberMedia.

According to a media research, multi-SIM shipments accounted 54 per cent of the total handsets market during November 2011 in the country. Nokia is leading the race with 19 per cent market share, followed by Micromax (7.1 per cent) and Karbonn (6.9 per cent).

Finnish handset manufacturer, Nokia entered the Dual SIM market in 2010.

Nokia took corrective steps by joining the bandwagon of dual-SIM mobile phones by launching its first ever C1-00 and C2-00 phones in mid-2010.

However, Nokia, a late entrant in the multi-SIM device category, fast tracked the process of consolidation by rolling out five models by Sept 2011, to make its presence felt in every price segment in India.

Nokia has launched as many as seven phones including the Asha series in the dual-SIM category.

According to the report, Nokia also managed to cope with the foreign exchange fluctuation as it mainly sources components for the low end phones from local market.

On the other hand, the Indian phone makers such as Maxx Mobile, Lava, Micromax and Karbon were forced to increase price as the components of their phones are sourced from China and other Asian nations. The report pointed out that other Indian manufacturer had to increase price to keep their profit margins safe.

In the overall India mobile handsets market, Nokia is followed by Samsung at second position with 12 % and Micromax at third position with 4 % market share.

“All issues have been resolved. We will receive 70,000 improved Aakash tablets from Datawind (the company supplying the tablets) by January-end,” said HRD minister Kapil Sibal, after reports of the ministry planning to put its pact with Datawind on hold.
Ministry officials said Datawind may not get order in future as it had violated the contract condition of providing the tablets first to the government before selling it in open market.

The HRD ministry had asked Datawind of Montreal-based Suneet S Tuli to supply one lakh Aakash tablets for around $50 each. In the initial lot, 600 tablets were given to students for testing.

IIT, Rajasthan, which had prepared the Aakash prototype cited several deficiencies in the tablet including short battery life, processor unable to handle multiple operations at a time and poor picture quality.

Datawind has already supplied 30,000 tablets by the time the report by the IIT came. The ministry held back the order and asked the firm to fix the deficiencies. Ministry sources said the company was initially reluctant to upgrade the tablet without increasing the cost. However, it agreed when ministry threatened to cancel the order.

Tuli was not available for comments. A company spokesperson said the remaining 70,000 tablets would be supplied as per the pact. “Not only Aakash from Datawind but all future tablets will have minimum Aakash 2 specifications,” said NK Sinha, additional secretary, HRD ministry.

Google and Facebook are among 21 companies that have been asked to develop a mechanism to block objectionable material, after a private petitioner took the websites to court over images deemed offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

At the heart of the dispute is a law passed last year in the country that makes companies responsible for user content posted on their websites, requiring them to take it down within 36 hours in case of a complaint.

The case was originally filed in a lower court, but the companies have appealed to the Delhi High Court, challenging the lower court’s ruling asking them to take down some content.

“The search engine only takes you till the website. What happens after that is beyond a search engine’s control,” Neeraj Kishan Kaul, a lawyer for Google’s Indian unit, told a packed High Court hearing on Monday.

“If you use blocks, which is very easy for people to say, you will inadvertently block other things as well. For example: the word ‘sex’. Even a government document like a voter ID list or a passport has the word ‘sex’,” he added.

Siddharth Luthra, a lawyer for Facebook told the court it was not possible for the social network to “single out” any individual on the basis of religion or views and said the users should be held responsible for content they post.

Less than a tenth of India’s 1.2 billion population have access to Internet although its 100-odd million users make it the third biggest Internet market after China and the United States. Internet users in India are seen nearly tripling to 300 million over the next three years.

Despite the new rules to block offensive content, India’s Internet access is still largely free unlike the tight controls in neighbouring China.

Civil rights groups have opposed the new laws. But politicians say that posting offensive images in the socially conservative country with a history of violence between religious groups presents a danger to the public as Internet use grows.

The high court will resume hearing the case on Thursday, Justice Suresh Kait said. The judge was last week quoted by local media warning the websites of China-style controls if they did not create a means to curb material seen as offensive.

Of course, there are some really obvious choices for physics-themed costumes (Einstein: rumpled clothes, white hair, distracted manner, German accent; Feynman: black pants, white shirt, brushed-back hair, bongo drums. Both of these are accentuated by shamelessly hitting on every woman at the party.), but here are a few ideas for costumes that might not be so obvious, to add a physics flavor to your Halloween party:

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: As soon as you arrive, hide in a secluded place and remain perfectly still. If anybody sees you, run really fast in a random direction.

The Pauli Exclusion Principle (Requires two people): Dress in identical outfits, and refuse to be in the same room with one another. If circumstances force you to be close together, one of you must stand on your head.

Schrödinger’s Cat: Wear an ordinary cat costume, but when you get to the party, go hide in a closet. When somebody opens the door to check on you, flip a coin, and if it comes up heads, pretend to be dead.

The Higgs Boson: Stand in a narrow hallway, and impede the motion of anybody who tries to get past you.

Isaac Newton, Alchemist: Wear a long silver wig, and babble to people about the transmutation of elements and the nature of God. For the Method-actor version of this, drink a bunch of mercury a week before the party, and then just be yourself.

P. A. M. Dirac: Dark suit, thin mustache. Don’t say anything.

“For people who work in this field, it’s huge,” said neutron-star astronomer M. Coleman Miller of the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the new Green Bank Telescope study. “It’s a big new addition to our information about a state of matter that we cannot explore in labs.”

Weighing in at twice the mass of the sun, the new heavyweight champ — a pulsar dubbed J1614-2230 — is 20 percent more massive than any previously measured star of its class.

Pulsars are a special type of neutron star — the dense remains of ordinary stars that exploded as supernovas — that sweep the sky with a lighthouse-like beam of radio waves as they spin. As these radio beams swish past Earth, the stars appear to “pulse” at extremely regular intervals.

Neutron stars, true to their name, are formed almost entirely of neutrons, which can pack tightly into the densest form of matter known to exist without forcing the star to collapse into a black hole. But some theories suggest neutron stars could squish down even further by converting their neutrons to exotic types of matter. If neutron stars were packed with heavy, strange particles like hyperons or kaons, the stars would collapse under their own weight at much lower masses.

“If you’re able to establish that there really is an object out there with high mass,” Miller said, “it takes a lot of the predictions you would make with the exotic forms of matter and different particles, and says ‘I’m sorry, you’re wrong. Try again.’”

To take the extra-heavy pulsar’s measurements, astronomers relied on a relativistic trick of the light.

Pulsars are usually among the most accurate clocks in the universe, blinking regularly tens to thousands of times per second. But J1614-2230 has a companion star, a white dwarf. When the radio pulses brush past the white dwarf, they slow down as if they were swimming through molasses, and take a longer time to get to Earth.

This effect, called the Shapiro delay, is due to Einstein’s general-relativistic prediction that clocks run slower in a gravitational field, at least as seen from far away. The more massive the white dwarf is, the slower the pulses get.

Astronomer Paul Demorest of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and colleagues used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to watch how the times between pulses changed at different points in the pulsar’s orbit around the white dwarf over the course of 8.7 days. A new instrument called GUPPI (Green Bank Ultimate Pulsar Processing Instrument) provided more precise measurements of the pulse delay than previous attempts could muster.

The astronomers used the mass of the white dwarf plus data on the pulsar’s orbit to find the pulsar’s mass: A whopping 1.97 times the mass of the sun. The next-most-massive neutron star was 1.67 times the mass of the sun, and most neutron stars cluster around 1.25 to 1.44 times the mass of the sun. The results are reported in the Oct. 28 Nature.

“The pulsar mass is quite a bit higher for this system than any that have been previously measured,” Demorest said. “That changes our thinking about what is the maximum possible mass a neutron star can have.”

Because the team used the Shapiro delay, the measurement is more reliable than previous attempts to measure neutron-star mass, Miller added.

“The Shapiro delay depends only on the mass, full stop, no other effects,” he said. “It’s much easier to interpret than others that have previously suggested higher masses.”

The bulky star rules out all but a few models for the composition of neutron stars. Rather than containing exotic particles, the stellar corpses are probably made of plain neutrons and protons.

But that’s hardly a disappointment to Miller. “It’s cool,” he said. “It represents a state of matter and a state of physics that we cannot reproduce on Earth. By these distant and safe observations, we’re able to learn things about fundamental physical law that we could not learn otherwise.”

One pressing theoretical question remains: How did the pulsar get so big? Is it slowly devouring its companion? Or was it just born this big?

“Either would be a valid explanation,” Demorest said. “We just don’t know which is correct yet.”

He said studying mathematics should not only gear towards examination and neglecting the basic understanding of its concept, which constitutes the foundation to make mathematics easy for students.

Prof Anku said this at a press conference to brief the media on a road show organized by the Ghana Mathematics Society and the Meagasa Mathematics Academy to sensitise the public on the need to take the study of mathematics serious in Accra.

The road show was on the theme: “Mathematics for National Development.”

He said the road show was organised in all the regional capital to inform students about the need to apply the principles of mathematics appropriately.

Prof Anku said the show was also aimed at introducing secondary ideas that could help revamp national interest in mathematics.

“A nation cannot develop without applying the concepts of mathematics in our daily lives,” he said.

Prof Anku said although the show was successful in all 10 regions, most regional directors of education failed to corporate to enhance its success.

He said the Academy was ready to help solve the problem of mathematics in the country and urged teachers to reduce canning during mathematics classes in order not to put fear in pupils in learning the subject.

Mrs Mary Quaye, Director Pre-Tertiary, Ministry of Education, said parents should be responsive to their wards education and council them in the selection of their courses.

She said parents should make sure their children passed in all the four compulsory subjects, mathematics, English language, integrated science, and social studies, with a least grade of six, to qualify for placement into senior high schools.

Mrs Quaye commended the academy for its hard work and asked them not to relent in their efforts to uplift the image of mathematics in the country.

Organised by Sociable Intellectual Progressive Academy (SIP), the annual event helps children develop memory, concentration, and arithmetic skills by using internationally proven tools like abacus, brain gym and speed writing.

“The event was excellent and around 1,000 kids participated. We also have a national and international championship. The idea behind these is to motivate the kids,” Dinesh Victor, managing director, SIP Academy said in an Interview.

Participating in such a big event at an early age also gives the children the confidence to prepare for much bigger challenges, Victor added.

The programme has 11 levels spread across three courses – foundation, advanced and grand master, meant for kids between the ages of five and 12.

“We charge a registration fee of Rs.875 and a monthly fee of Rs.650 to Rs.750, depending upon the rent we are paying for the centre. The duration for each level is 3 months, with one two-hour session held every weekend,” Victor said.

Ankit Gupta, a ten-year-old from Faridabad who reached level seven, said: “Earlier I was very weak in mathematics tables and could not concentrate well, but since I’ve joined SIP, I’ve improved a lot in all my subjects.”

“I’ve reached the grand master level A and I’ve improved a lot in mathematics. After joining SIP, I’ve started scoring above 90,” said a proud Jatin Sardana from Noida.

Aman Bhardwaj, a nine-year-old from Amritsar, also was delighted with the results. “I got my half-yearly result yesterday and I’ve scored A1s in all my subjects.”

The parents too were pleased with their children’s performances.

“There has been a noticeable improvement in my son’s results, especially maths. It definitely makes me feel proud and happy,” said Meena Sardana, mother of Jatin.

The academy has been conducting programmes in India since 2002 and has trained 100,000 children in 450 centres across 18 states.

The course has earned three Limca National Book of Records certificates, and is available in over 1500 centres worldwide.