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A New Kind of Science is on the iPad!

I spent a decade of my life writing A New Kind of Science. Most of that time was devoted to discovering the science in the book. But another part was spent figuring out how to present the science in the best possible way—using words and pictures. It took a lot of technology to do that […]

Stephen Wolfram
Computation & Analysis

Tapping Into the Power of GPU in Mathematica

Last week we posted an item about Wolfram Research's partnership with NVIDIA to integrate GPU programming into Mathematica. With NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference 2010 starting today, we thought we would share a little more for those who won't be at the show to see us (booth #31, for those who are attending). Mathematica's GPU programming integration is not just about performance. Yes, of course, with GPU power you get some of your answers several times faster than before---but that is only half the story. The heart of the integration is the full automation of the GPU function developing process. With proper hardware, you can write, compile, test, and run your code in a single transparent step. There is no need to worry about details, such as memory allocation or library binding. Mathematica handles it elegantly and gracefully for you. As a developer, you will be able to focus on developing and optimizing your algorithms, and nothing else. Here are a couple of examples to give you a taste of the upcoming feature.
Ulises Cervantes-Pimentel, Senior Kernel Developer Abdul Dakkak, Senior Compiler Developer, Compiler Development
Computation & Analysis

Mathematica and NVIDIA in Action: See Your GPU in a Whole Different Light

Wolfram Research is partnering with NVIDIA to integrate GPU programming into Mathematica. CUDA is NVIDIA's performance computing architecture that harnesses modern GPU's potential. The new partnership means that if you have GPU-equipped hardware, you can transform Mathematica's computing, modeling, simulation, or visualization performance, boosting speed by factors easily exceeding 100. Now that's fast! Afraid of the programming involved? Don't be. Mathematica's new CUDA programming capabilities dramatically reduce the complexity of coding required to take advantage of GPU's parallel power. So you can focus on innovating your algorithms rather than spending time on repetitive tasks, such as GUI design.
Angela Sims, Government Account Executive, Government Sales
Education & Academic

Finding Interesting Dynamics in the Asteroid Belt with Mathematica’s AstronomicalData

Almost everyone has heard of the asteroid belt. This is the place between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter that is home to a very large percentage of the known minor planets in the solar system. Movies love to have space battles in asteroid belts to add to dramatic dogfight scenes. Even the Star Wars universe pays homage to asteroids: in The Empire Strikes Back, C3PO makes a popular statement about the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field. Popular fiction, especially in Hollywood, loves to twist reality for cinematic effect. Often it shows an asteroid belt as an intricate maze of chaotically tumbling boulders that are moving at high speeds relative to each other, requiring advanced evasion techniques to avoid hitting one of them. They are also often shown to collide with each other at high speed, resulting in large explosions. In reality, at least for our asteroid belt, things are not quite so dramatic. If you were actually in our asteroid belt, the chances that you would see an asteroid are fairly small. Most of them are quite small relative to the Earth and the space between them is relatively large. NASA has sent numerous probes through the belt, and not one has had an accidental encounter with an asteroid, although there have been a couple of intentional encounters. We know very little about the physical characteristics of asteroids compared to planets. Very few have been visited. However, their orbital dynamics are well studied and show some pretty amazing features. Let's take a look at a view of all of the asteroids used in Mathematica's AstronomicalData out to the orbit of Jupiter.
Jeff Bryant, Research Programmer, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Design & Visualization

Twisted Pictures

I have a lot to study at the moment, as I learn how to use the technology that's in our development pipeline. One of the first features I played with was so much fun I thought I would share it with you. You will be able to efficiently and easily texture map over any 3D image. Texture mapping has all kinds of practical uses for improving visualization, but the first thing that I thought of was setting fire to a plot...
Jon McLoone, Director, Technical Communication & Strategy
Education & Academic

Tetrahedra Packing

Back in 325 BC, Aristotle talked about which polyhedra can fill space, and noted that regular tetrahedra could fill space. Around 1470 AD, Regiomontanus showed that Aristotle was wrong. He also found the spot where a statue on a pedestal appears the largest, as shown in the Demonstration “The Statue of Regiomontanus”. In 1896, Minkowski tried to solve the problem of how well tetrahedra could pack. He failed. But he did introduce many valuable tools to math, such as “The Minkowski Sum of Two Triangles”. In 1900, Hilbert tried the problem of tetrahedra packing and included it as a part of problem 18 in his list of unsolved problems. Hilbert is also famous for the Hilbert curve and “The Hilbert Hotel”.
Ed Pegg Jr, Scientific Information Editor, Scientific Information Group
Education & Academic

A Call to STEM Teachers: What’s Your Plan for Back to School?

It's back-to-school time in the U.S., and we're starting our trips to meet with educators ranging from the high school to post-graduate level. Many schools will be hearing about Mathematica for the first time, while others have requested specialized training to expand Mathematica usage in their work and in the classroom. Several schools are taking advantage of a program created in response to a recent domestic focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education called the STEM Education Initiative.
Tasha Dunaway, Sales Initiatives Supervisor, Commercial Sales
Best of Blog

25 Best Hangman Words

A simple question from a six-year-old about hangman turned into another analysis obsession that made me play 15 million games of hangman recently. Back in 2007, I wrote a game of hangman for a human guesser on the train journey from Oxford to London. I spent the time on the London Underground thinking about optimal strategies for playing it, and wrote the version for the computer doing the guessing on the return journey. It successfully guessed my test words and I was satisfied, so I submitted both to the Wolfram Demonstrations Project. Now, three years later, my daughter is old enough to play, but the Demonstration annoys her, as it can always guess her words. She asked the obvious question that never occurred to me at the time: "What are the hardest words I can choose, so that I can beat it?"
Jon McLoone, Director, Technical Communication & Strategy
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