Researchers have developed a mathematical model that explores how leaders and followers emerge in different circumstances and predicts the most likely personality types of those leaders.

Dwayne Roloson of the Tampa Bay Lightning has embodied the role of the prototypical Stanley Cup playoff hot goaltender, leading his team to a 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the top seeded Washington Capitals. The 41-year-old had a losing record in the NHL's regular season, but has stopped over 94 percent of shots he's faced in the playoffs -- but he's probably not actually this good.

Australian researchers have done the impossible -- they’ve found the sixty-trillionth binary digit of Pi-squared! The calculation would have taken a single computer processor unit (CPU) 1,500 years to calculate, but scientists from IBM and the University of Newcastle managed to complete this work in just a few months on IBM's "BlueGene/P" supercomputer, which is designed to run continuously at one quadrillion calculations per second.

The dyes which are injected into the skin to create tattoos move with time – permanently altering the look of a given design. In this month’s Mathematics Today Dr Ian Eames, a Reader in Fluid Mechanics at UCL, publishes a mathematical model enabling us to estimate the movement of these ink particles and predict how specific tattoo designs will look several years in the future.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientific research is known to happen slowly but the timeframes pale into insignificance compared to the years spent on some of the great unsolved Maths problems.

The University of Arizona's math department is experimenting with a novel approach to early math instruction – one with a heavy emphasis on technology and peer-to-peer tutoring.

(AP) -- Mathematics. It's a subject that can elicit groans and exclamations of "boring." But Glen Whitney, a former hedge-fund quantitative analyst, is betting he can change that with a formula that looks like this: math (equals) discovery (equals) beauty (equals) fun.

If you were asked 'How would you help curb malaria?', would you consider answering 'by letting mosquitoes mature and breed'? Probably not, but a new international study led by the University of Surrey in the UK shows that this could be a potentially effective solution. The findings are presented in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

The SpaceMath@NASA mathematics resource for teachers and students recently achieved a landmark number of downloads.

The persistence and recurrence of H5N1 avian influenza in endemic regions can largely be blamed on movement and infection by migratory birds. Trade in poultry, poultry products and caged birds, and movement of wild birds also account for H5N1 prevalence in these areas. Several recent outbreaks of avian influenza have suggested strong evidence of migratory birds playing a role in transmitting the virus over long distances.

Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants should win their divisions, while the Atlanta Braves will take the wild card slot in the National League (NL), according to NJIT's baseball guru Bruce Bukiet. For over a decade, Bukiet, an associate professor and associate dean, has applied mathematical analysis to compute winning games for each Major League Baseball Team.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Origami, the ancient Japanese art of folding objects in simple, yet complicated ways, has in recent years been applied to various engineering challenges, such as how to fold up a solar array for transport to outer-space where it can be easily unfolded before use.

North Dakota State University mathematics doctoral student Lindsay (Merchant) Erickson is fascinated by the ancient game of Nim. A two-player pastime of combinatorial game theory, Nim's origins date hundreds of years ago in China.

Geometry is the force that shapes both the sound of music and the novel research of Florida State University composer-theorist Clifton Callender, whose work explores and maps the mathematics of musical harmony.

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a move that must have been at least partly aimed at provoking prideful nationalism, Lutz Bornmann of the Max Planck Society in Munich and Loet Leydesdorff from the University of Amsterdam have put together a joint project where they were able to produce what they believe is a graphical representation of the relative importance of the science being done in major cities around the world and have published it on arXiv.org.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A study recently released by a team from Northwestern University and the University of Arizona shows that religion and religious affiliations may be on the verge of extinction in the nine countries studied. Utilizing a mathematical model of nonlinear dynamics, the team analyzed data from censuses taken in nine different countries dating as far back as a century.

The "lily white" has inspired centuries' worth of rich poetry and art, but when it comes to the science of how and why those delicately curved petals burst from the bud, surprisingly little is known.

(PhysOrg.com) -- New light has been shed on the 150-year-old math puzzle known as the Riemann hypothesis, say mathematical physicists at the University of Sydney.

Bracket fanatics beware: University at Buffalo researcher Alex Nikolaev, an expert in statistical analysis, has found the odds do not favor NCAA basketball teams seeded No. 1 in the big tournament -- at least not taken as a group.

Many of the top-ranked teams competing in the 2011 NCAA Division I men's basketball championship tournament look familiar.