LaTeX is something of a misnomer in publishing in the 21st century. On the one hand a language to render and position text on a printed page is solving a problem which is largely solved today – but the markup of equations and mathematical symbols is rarely bettered.

Given a large corpus of existing material is already in LaTeX, then this development from Springer [disclaimer: Springer own BioMed Central and PhysMath Central] could be potentially enlightening for those whose work can be expressed in equations. A LaTeX search engine finds equations or part-equations across all of Springer’s published articles. Very useful for finding a particular approach to solving some engineering problem, say, has already been described in the mathematical …

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PhysMath Central will be at ICPEAC 2009 this week. The International Conference on Photonic, Electronic and Atomic Collisions is being held in Kalamazoo this year and Associate Publisher Chris Leonard will be there, with Dane Brookes, to talk about open access publishing in atomic and molecular physics – and to give away some of our special Rubik’s cubes. There will be a few days to practice before a ‘cube-off’ on Friday to see who can win an iPod nano.

Come and visit us on stand #7 to find out more. 

You may have seen on our RSS feed of latest articles the publication of a very interesting paper in PMC Biophysics by Hsu and Hsu. Prof. John Straub gives us a bit of background, and highlights the work’s particular merits.

Zwanzig-Mori projection operators and EEG dynamics: deriving a simple equation of motion
David Hsu and Murielle Hsu
PMC Biophysics 2009, 2:6 (13 July 2009)

Sometimes it pays to borrow.  A problem frequently encountered in science is to describe the behavior of a few experimental variables when these are coupled to many other variables about which we know very little.  How does one infer relationships between the experimental variables in a rigorous way, …

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Eagle-eyed readers (or those with an RSS feed of latest articles) will have noticed that we have recently published a very interesting paper in PMC Biophysics by Tan and Luo. Handling editor Wei Yang explains below what makes this paper special.

Structural and functional implications of p53 missense cancer mutations
Yuhong Tan, Ray Luo
PMC Biophysics 2009, 2:5 (26 June 2009)

The transcription factor p53 is a central tumor suppressor protein that exerts its functions by relaying upstream stress signals, such as DNA damage, to downstream target genes that control DNA repair, cell cycle arrest, and apoptosis.

Close to 50% of all human cancers have p53 mutations, and 75% of those are missense mutations affecting …

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PMC Physics A board member Brian Cox on what went wrong with the LHC last September, how it was fixed and what they are looking forward to now. Originally presented at Ted U in February 2009.

PMC Physics A is proud to announce the publication of its first review article. The review, entitled "B meson decays" was written by Elisabetta Barberio of the University of Melbourne and Marina Artuso & Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University, New York.

They discuss the most important physics thus far extracted from studies of B meson decays. Measurements of the four CP violating angles accessible in B decay are reviewed as well as direct CP violation. A detailed discussion of the measurements of the CKM elements Vcb and Vub from semileptonic decays is given, and the differences between resulting values using inclusive decays versus exclusive decays is discussed.

Measurements of rare decays are also reviewed.

They point out where CP violating and …

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We have just published an excellent editorial by PMC Physics A editor-in-chief, Ken Peach. In it, he outlines what we might  discover with the LHC apart from the Higgs. In particular, given some of the more outlandish reporting of the LHC start-up, it explains why open access to the original reseach is important for all kinds of science:

The LHC machine has been built as a global collaboration, led by and from CERN. The four large experiments have also been
built as global collaborations. We at PMC Physics A welcome the commitment by CERN and by the experiments to make the results freely available through publication in open access
journals. The media coverage of …