Struggling with your maths?
If you are, then you may be one of the 5 to 7% of the population suffering from dyscalculia, the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia. But unlike many dyslexia sufferers, you probably haven't received the help you need to cope with your condition. As a recent article published in the journal Science points out, dyscalculia is the "poor relation" of dyslexia.

Listening out for alien life
Astronomers have trained the world's largest steerable radio telescope on 86 Earth-like planets. The data collected by the telescope will later be analsyed by an estimated one million amateur alien hunters, users of SETI@home, for messages from other civilisations.

Guilt counts
Guilt, so some people have suggested, is what makes us nice. When we do someone a favour or choose not to exploit someone vulnerable, we do it because we fear the guilt we'd feel otherwise. A team of neuroscientists, psychologists and economists have recently produced some new results in this area, using a model from psychological game theory.

European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad – Talent Search
A talent search has just begun to find competitors to represent the UK in the first ever European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO). But why should a girls-only competition be held and what do we hope to achieve?

Anyone for tennis (and tennis and tennis...)?
As the Wimbledon 2011 Championships hove into view, memories will be reawakened of the match of epic proportions that took place last year between the American John Isner and the Frenchman Nicolas Mahut. So just how freaky was their titanic fifth set and what odds might a bookmaker offer for a repeat?

The maths of gold medals: four Olympic thoughts
It's not the winning, it's the taking part that counts. At least, that's what the Olympic creed would have us believe. But, like it or not, what the media and governments focus on is the tally of gold medals.

Keeping track of immunity
Dengue fever does the opposite of what you might expect. Unlike for many diseases, if you've had this tropical virus and recovered, you might be worse off, as a second exposure to the dengue virus can be life threatening. So keeping track of the strains of the diseases is an important problem which can be solved with the help of a little randomness.

How big is the Universe? And how small is the smallest thing within it? This cute website developed by Cary Huang puts things into perspective. It lets you explore the entire range of scales, from the smallest length (the Planck length) all the way up to the entire Universe, via atoms, people, giant earthworms, planets, galaxies and more.

http://www.primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

Kneeling in the mud by a country road on a cold drizzly day, I finally appreciated the wonder that is a lever. I was trying to change a flat tyre and even jumping on the end of the wheel wrench wouldn't budge the wheel nuts. But when the AA arrived they undid them with ease, thanks to a wheel wrench that was three times the size of mine. There you have it ... size really does matter!

A lever is a truly remarkable device that can literally give any of us the strength of ten men. You can counteract 10 men pushing down on one side of a see-saw by applying just 1/10th of their force, as long as you are 10 times further from the see-saw's centre as they are.

This is because the forces acting on a lever are proportional to the distances they are from the fulcrum. In this way a small amount of force moving a longer distance can move a large load over a smaller distance.

Levers are working hard all around us: in see-saws (where the fulcrum is between the loads), in wheel barrows (where the load is between the fulcrum and the force) and even in our very jaws (where the force is applied between the fulcrum and the load).

Archimedes was the first to mathematically describe how levers work and famously said: "Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth with a lever." And give me a long enough wheel wrench and I might just be able to change my next flat tyre for myself!

You can read more about levers from Wikipedia, and more about mechanics and about Archimedes on Plus.

Maths Inspiration, the interactive lecture show for 15-17 year olds, will be returning to the West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge on Monday 5th December.

The speakers are still to be finalised, but are likely to be David Spiegelhalter (the guru on risk), Dorothy Buck (who uses knot theory to find cures for serious illnesses) and Paul Shepherd (who worked on the design of the Olympic stadium in London). There will be a choice of a morning or an afternoon show.

Bookings will be taken from 1st July, and you'll find more details soon on the Maths inspiration website.