The agencies that have been cutting financing for Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars are paying for investigations of a problem that may not even exist.
The solutions of many problems in mathematical physics are involved in investigation of a spectral problem, that is, the investigation of the spectrum and the expansion of an arbitrary function in terms of eigenfunctions of a differential operator.
But much as Democrats hope that the connections between Enron leaders (and their money) to the Bush administration might produce evidence of that kind of corruption, this case may be more like another, rarer sort of inquiry -- an investigation of a serious problem in the economy in which the government is not involved, but perhaps should be.
The Boston Globe Magazine's cover story for Sunday, November 20, 2011, is a Schuster Institute investigation of a longstanding problem facing Massachusetts inmates who claim innocence: No legal right or even a specific legal procedure to test DNA evidence that might help prove their innocence.
Despite the practical significance of studying the vibrations of a tethered sphere in a steady fluid flow, there are almost no laboratory investigations of such a problem, and it was previously unknown whether such a system would tend to oscillate or not.
The results of this investigation identified a problem with the prediction of Vss for a number of compounds (outliers).
Computational biology, in contrast, refers to hypothesis-driven investigation of a specific biological problem by using computers, carried out with experimental and simulated data, with the primary goal of discovery and the advancement of biological knowledge.
See Dittrich and Thiemann (2009) for a detailed investigation of the problem and a possible resolution employing suitably gauge-fixed (by matter) Dirac observables.
For instance, when a sudden drop in eating and rumination variables was observed in a small herd of Scottish Highland cattle, prompt investigation of the problem showed a defective drinking water supply, which had caused the cows to go off feed [ 11].
This could require the application of the best available evidence to each patient and, on a more global scale, an investigation of the problem further, applying improved techniques of both research and methodology.
