British Math Professor Andrew Wiles

British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles, a research professor at the University of Oxford has won the prestigious Abel prize for his contributions to mathematical sciences.

Sir Andrew Wiles is professor at the University of Oxford

Sir Andrew Wiles said that for any three whole numbers, a , b and c , the equation an + bn = cn could not be satisfied by any whole number greater than 2. Although he claimed to have discovered a proof for the seemingly simple puzzle, he did not provide one. With Fermat’s death in 1665, the equation — now known as “Fermat’s Last Theorem” — soon became (in)famous as the most difficult mathematical problem ever conceived, spawning a plethora of unsuccessful proofs.
When Andrew Wiles was 10 years old, he had stumbled upon Fermat’s Last Theorem in E.T. Bell’s “The Last Problem” at his local library in Cambridge. The theorem was formulated by Pierre de Fermat, a French mathematician, in 1637. It states that there are no whole number solutions to the equation x^n + y^n = z^n, when n is greater than 2.

Andrew Wiles said the problem captivated him as a young boy. The theorem has been the most popular problem in mathematics, but he didn’t know it at that time. “What amazed me was that there were some unsolved problems that someone who was 10 years old could understand and even try. And I tried it throughout my teenage years,” Wiles told The Guardian. “When I first went to college I thought I had a proof, but it turned out to be wrong.”

Fermat once claimed that he had proved the theorem, but he also said the margin of the book he was jotting notes in was too narrow to elaborate. Since then, scholars and mathematicians all over the world have attempted to solve the problem but failed to do so.
Wiles’ methods to solve the theorem have had a lasting effect on the field of mathematics, and are still being used today. He actually took a different approach to solve the problem – by proving the 1950s Shimura-Taniyama conjecture, which proposes that two very different branches of mathematics are conceptually equivalent.

The professor Andrew Wiles said the proof didn’t just solve the problem, it also introduced new ways of attacking Langland’s Program – one of the big webs of conjectures of contemporary mathematics. This aims to unify different branches of the discipline. Meanwhile, although it had been difficult for Wiles to get back into work, he is working on another major unsolved conjecture in history – the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture.

“The beauty of mathematics lures you back in,” added Wiles. “It has always been my hope that my solution of this age-old problem would inspire many young people to take up mathematics and to work on the many challenges of this beautiful and fascinating subject.”

Soon after receiving the news, Wiles told the Guardian that it was a “tremendous honor” to receive the prize, adding that he had not thought about what to do with the 500,000 pounds ($704,500) that accompany the award.

“This problem captivated me,” Wiles told the Guardian. “It was the most famous popular problem in mathematics, although I didn’t know that at the time. What amazed me was that there were some unsolved problems that someone who was 10 years old could understand and even try. And I tried it throughout my teenage years. When I first went to college I thought I had a proof, but it turned out to be wrong.”

“I knew from that moment that I would never let it go. I had to solve it,” he added. Since his remarkable achievement in 1995, scores of mathematicians have used it as an inspiration to develop new theorems. The proof provided mathematicians new tools to tackle problems involving elliptic curves, modular forms and Galois representation, among other things.

“Few results have as rich a mathematical history and as dramatic a proof as Fermat’s Last Theorem,” the Abel Committee said in a statement. Although Wiles’ achievement is now two decades old, he continues be a mathematics “rock star,” Martin Bridson, director of Oxford’s Mathematical Institute.

Source : www.albanydailystar.com

Smartphone Battery Saving Chip

Our modern world rests squarely on the shoulders of wireless communications; phones, computers and wearables all rely on a select few wireless protocols, like Wi-Fi. Upgrading one of these protocols means a potential upgrade to the way the world interacts.

A researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Adrian Tang, working with UCLA professor M.C. Frank Chang, has developed a Wi-Fi chip for use in mobile electronics that uses 100 times less power than traditional receivers. This could extend battery life in nearly every device that uses Wi-Fi, and Tang is trying to focus on the expanding market for wearables.

To do something on the internet, your smartphone generates and sends a signal out to your router, and your router generates and sends a new signal back to it. Tang’s Wi-Fi chip reflects a constant signal sent by a specialized router, instead of generating its own original signal. Data is imprinted on the signal when it’s reflected, so all the heavy lifting is essentially done on the router’s side.

“Because you’re only imprinting on a Wi-Fi signal, you’re not generating it, you don’t need power,” Tang said.
Low energy doesn’t mean slow, either. The researchers claim to have reached speeds of 330 megabits per second when transferring files with this technique, which outpaces a majority of consumer Wi-Fi routers. (In more real-world terms, 330 megabits per second is just over 40 MB/s.)
They did this test with a mock wearable, built in their lab.
Tang says that the biggest difficulty was isolating the specific signal that was reflected back, because the initial signal is also being reflected by every surface in the room.
“When you send a signal to the room, the whole room reflects back to you,” Tang said. “So you need to figure out what’s coming from the wearable and what’s coming from the background and get rid of the background.”

That’s where the specialized router hardware comes in, to not only send the signal, but be able to read what data was being reflected back with new information. While the technology bears some resemblance to RFID, according to Tang, it's actually much different in its long-distance operation.

NASA and UCLA have joint ownership of the idea and are in talks with a commercial partner to bring the technology to market, but they also see this technology being used to conserve energy in space.

Source : nasa, popsci

Airtel 4G Ad - Misleading says ASCI

Image from Airtel India

Image from YouTube

Airtel’s claim to be the fastest data network on its 4G network has been termed misleading by the ad industry watchdog Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), which has asked the telco to withdraw or modify the campaign.

Based on consumer complaints, ASCI has asked Airtel to comply with the order by October 7. The campaign ‘Airtel Challenge’ projects Airtel 4G as being the fastest network and proposes that if a consumer can find a faster data network, their mobile bills will be paid by Airtel for life.

ASCI said in a note, seen by BusinessLine, that “The Consumer Complaints Council concluded that though 4G provides better services than 3G under the same operating conditions, it is not right to claim it as ‘the fastest network ever’. The claim in the ad, ‘Airtel 4G is the fastest network ever’ and ‘If your network is faster, we will pay your mobile bills for life’, is misleading by omission in the absence of appropriate disclaimers in the print, TV, hoarding advertisements itself.”

Source: The Hindu Business Line