Matlab for Yacht Racing

The America's Cup is the world's premier yacht-racing contest and boasts
the oldest trophy in sporting history. Previous years' entries have shown
that, by trading-off one parameter against another, a minuscule increase
in speed can mean the difference between winning or losing a race.

The design team of GBR Challenge, the company behind the British entry
to the 2007 America's Cup, used Matlab to help maximise the performance
of the yacht. The real-time data analysis using Matlab during training runs
enables the crew to make instant decisions on mast and rig set-up.

During training, data is taken from optical-fibre strain gauges on the boat,
as well as sensors measuring boat speed, wind speed and direction. (Fibre
optics change refractive index when put under strain, so the strain can be
measured via the change in wavelength of the light transmitted.) The data
is read via a wireless LAN connection into data files, which can then be
quickly and easily manipulated in Matlab on a support boat.

Encyclopedia of ....

Elsevier has published "Encyclopedia of Mathematical
Physics" edited by Jean-Pierre Françoise of Universite
Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, Greg Naber of Drexel
University in Philadelphia and Sheung Tsun Tsou of
the University of Oxford, UK. It has over 400 articles
on a wide-range of topics covering all aspects of
Mathematical Physics.

The description from publisher says,"... provides a
complete resource for researchers, students and
lecturers with an interest in mathematical physics. It
enables readers to access basic information on topics
peripheral to their own areas, to provide a repository
of the core information in the area that can be used to refresh the
researcher’s own memory banks, and aid teachers in directing students
to entries relevant to their course-work. The Encyclopedia does contain
information that has been distilled, organised and presented as a
complete reference tool to the user and a landmark to the body of
knowledge that has accumulated in this domain".

It costs $1495.

100 Greatest Theorems!

On his website, Nathan Kahl, a Graduate student of Steven Institute of
Technology has republished a list of the Hundred Greatest Theorems
Of All-Time in the history of mathematics. The list was originally
presented by Paul and Jack Abad in 1999 as a response to all of the Top
100 lists circulating at the end of the millenium. Their ranking is based
on the following criteria: "the place the theorem holds in the literature,
the quality of the proof, and the unexpectedness of the result."

The top five are: (i) The irrationality of the square root of two by
Pythagorus, (ii) The fundamental theorem of algebra by Gauss, (iii) The
denumerability of the rationals by Georg Cantor, (iv) Pythagorean
Theorem by Pythagoras (v) Prime Number Theorem by Jacques
Hadamard and (separately) Charles-Jean de la Vallee Poussin.