Author: Matthew R. Francis
-
Finding the right math for medical problems
The linked article is for SIAM News, the magazine for members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). However, even though the main audience for this magazine is professional mathematicians, I wrote it to be understandable even if you gloss over the math. And it involves the word “tortuosity”, which is just fun […]
-
The danger of climate change may be its rate
As with many of my other contributions to SIAM News, the article “It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Rate: Rate-Inducted Tipping’s Relation to Climate Change” includes some mathematical equations, but I’ve tried to write the piece so you can understand it even if you gloss over that part. And this article in particular has some […]
-
Teaching AI to “Do No Harm”
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] Is There an Artificial Intelligence in the House? For SIAM News: Medical care routinely involves life-or-death decisions, the allocation of expensive or rare resources, and ongoing management of real […]
-
Bicycles, networks, and biological homeostasis
The linked article is for SIAM News, the magazine for members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The audience for this magazine, in other words, is professional mathematicians and related researchers working in a wide variety of fields. While this article contains equations, I wrote it to be understandable even if you […]
-
Coding complicity in police violence
Occasionally people (usually my fellow white men) yell at me to “stick to science!” Well, sticking to science is a luxury that white women and scientists of color can’t afford, and pretending scientists aren’t complicit in violence toward underrepresented groups preserves inequality. At the same time, some within the broad tent of STEM (science, technology, […]
-
Ecological stability far from equilibrium
The linked article is for SIAM News, the magazine for members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The audience for this magazine, in other words, is professional mathematicians and related researchers working in a wide variety of fields. While this article contains equations, I wrote it to be understandable even if you […]
-
The cost of “herd immunity” for COVID-19 is too high
My latest comic with Maki Naro is up at The Nib, the award-winning nonfiction comics site! This time we tackle the question of “herd immunity” for the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been suggested by a number of politicians as a strategy for beating the disease. As Maki and I describe, without a vaccine, this is […]
-
Sizing up the weirdest objects in the universe
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] How big is a neutron star? Astrophysicists are combining multiple methods to reveal the secrets of some of the weirdest objects in the universe. For Symmetry Magazine: Neutron stars […]
-
Cold War treaties aren’t sufficient for the era of asteroid mining
Why did I, a physics/astronomy journalist, write about asteroids for a deep-sea mining trade magazine? Read on! Oh yes, and pledge to my book of science comics with Maki Naro, Who Owns an Asteroid? [ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the […]
Bowler Hat Science 