(Anna Cabre and Michele Catanzaro in the auditorium of Ateneo. Image: ACCC)

“Almost nothing can prove that it is, but if you can prove it’s not.” “Bringing the contrary is unscientific,” are some of the initial thoughts of Anna Cabral, director of the Centre for Demographic Studies (CED), during his lecture ‘Birth, family and aging, what we know about this? “, Held on Wednesday May 11 at the Athenaeum Barcelonès. Cabré repeatedly stressed the importance of place in context the data and not to relate variables that are not comparable.

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Mars mission Meige (Mars Environmental Instrumentation for Ground and Atmosphere) Is part of METNET project (Meteorological Network) Involving Finland, Russia and Spain (National Institute of Aerospace Technology and Universidad Complutense de Madrid.) The project’s scientific director is Professor Luis Vazquez of the UCM. The mission objective is to incorporate Meige payloads in METNET Mars Precursor Mission to be launched to Mars as a secondary payload on the Russian Phobos Sample Return mission in late 2011.

The exploration of Mars poses major new technological challenges in the development of satellite telecommunications. In 2007, NASA conducted an analysis of the strategies needed to support reliable communications in future missions to Mars. In the report noted, among other possibilities, areostacionario a satellite equipped with a 2.5-meter antenna ensure receipt of data on Earth of space for numerous missions to the red planet this decade.

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The investigation of this Italian mathematician has won the America’s Cup yacht Alinghi twice. Regarding the industrial mathematics at the European level, Quarteroni is also a great promoter. Quarteroni discuss mathematical models in sports, medicine and the environment.

The meeting is one of “The Centennial colloquia ‘, programmed by the Royal Mathematical Society (RSME) to celebrate its 100 year history. “Quarteroni is a benchmark for industrial mathematics in Europe. It is a great mathematician and a great promoter,” describes Cendón Carlos Vazquez, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of A Coruña and organizer of the symposium.

Alfio Quarteroni, director of the Institute of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland), show by example the many applications of mathematical modeling.

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Two professors from the Department of Computing and Numerical Analysis University of Cordoba (UCO), Carmen Calzada and Mercedes Marin, have been developed with the collaboration of Enrique Fernández-Cara and Gema Camacho, University of Sevilla (U.S.), a method resolution of a mathematical model able to predict the evolution of a tumor in the avascular phase, when the only nutrients to tumor cells originate in adjacent tissues, “and in the vascular phase, when you have already created a network of capillaries that reach the tumor provides generous amounts of nutrients and making it grow rapidly.

The research team has solved the model using numerical techniques based on level set methods and fictitious domain, used successfully for time on other problems with different origin, such as sedimentation of particles in a fluid.

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Surface tension arises from the intramolecular interactions that tend to retain a molecule within a liquid. For example, if the insect is able to land on water without sinking or steel needle that is kept afloat.

The group at the Department of Applied Physics of the University of Huelva, led by Felipe Jiménez, in collaboration with researchers from Imperial College London, has proposed a new molecular simulation method named Test Area. The objective is to determine the interfacial tension of complex systems, ie those that vary in their intensive properties (weight, hardness, solubility) and interfaces between fluid phases, absorption of fluids in confined spaces or porous structures.

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To carry out this work, funded by the Department of Employment of the Government of Andalusia and the Ministry of Science, Professor Pérez Alonso, along with other experts, visited and analyzed on 20% of total greenhouse builders Almeria is in “a very large sample.” From a general work on occupational hazards out at the University of Granada, Almeria group has adapted and expanded the questionnaire Granada particular sector that they work. First have described the characteristics of each company (turnover, number of employees, type of greenhouses have been built …); after a second aspect of the questionnaire on health and safety at construction procedures (if they use gloves and goggles, or wear appropriate clothing). In a third section has addressed the issue of prevention and specific activities in this regard (if the service contract or manage them if activities are assessed or not …). And finally, wanted to know what the perception of responsibility for safety and security issues and if there is coordination in these areas.

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In recent years, the publication of the PISA report has highlighted the issue of learning mathematics. The concern about finding suitable methods and educational resources for good mathematical training of students is something shared by all countries and is becoming more and more sense, since mathematics are present in many aspects of everyday life and society .

Carlos Figueiredo, a professor in the School Escola Secundaria D. Sancho II of Elvas (Portugal), presented a thesis in which he outlines the importance of using examples in high school mathematics class as a reference for professional knowledge. The study was conducted at the University of Extremadura by Professor Lawrence J. White C. Didactics Department Experimental Mathematics.

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Consider the integer 4. Using only addition and positive integers, we can write it in five ways: 4, 3 +1, 2 +2, 2 +1 +1 and 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. It is said that 4 has five partitions. Determine the number of partitions of an integer, issue resolved long ago, is the enumerative combinatorics. This field of mathematics covers many similar problems, whether in algebra or geometry. It is thus “flat sheet”, a two-dimensional generalization of partitions of integers, which are found in various fields of mathematics and in some models of statistical physics. Now Manuel Kauer, University of Linz, Austria, and two colleagues working in the United States, Doron Zeilberger and Christoph Koutschan, just to prove a conjecture on the plane partitions contained around 1983, independently, by George Andrews by David Robbins, United States.

A partition P is a planar array of positive integers P_{i, j} (i = 1, 2, ETC. j = 1, 2, etc..) Whose sum is finite and decreases in passing from one line to the next or from one column to the next, ie

P_{i, j} ≥ P_{i + 1, j} and P_{i, j} ≥ P_{i, j + 1}.

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