Juggling, interviews and grant opportunities

My time this week is again taken up with work on a few writing projects that I’m trying to wrap up (not to mention end of the term grading).  But I should be back on track with my regular blogs next week.

In the meantime, an article on scientificamerican.com caught my attention, being about the mathematics of juggling!  But the article originated elsewhere, at Simons Science News.  And this is how I became aware of the Simons Foundation website.  It’s worth exploring.

The Simons Foundation’s mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. We sponsor a range of programs that aim to promote a deeper understanding of our world.

It is a private foundation that provides some interesting grant opportunities.

The site provides some video interviews with mathematicians organized under the heading Science Lives.  These interviews include ones with John Nash, Michael Atiyah and Cathleen Morawetz from my own alma mater – The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.   There’s also an interesting article on new observations in biology that are consistent with a mathematical idea of Turing’s proposed in 1952.

Now, more than 60 years later, biologists are uncovering evidence of the patterning mechanisms that Turing proposed in his paper, prompting a resurgence of interest in them, with the potential to shed light on such developmental questions as how genes ultimately make a hand.