How do you get bacteria to solve math problems for you? Placing them in a life and death situation is one way. In order for them to be able to withstand the drugs, researchers injected these tiny life forms with proteins that will act like variables in an equation. Learn more in the full article up next.

Music and mathematics have a very intimate relationship - otherwise, it'll just be noise. Well, scientists have figured out a way to actually give music a visual mathematical representation in geometric shapes. It gives a new definition to saying that music is beautiful. Check out one of these geometric musical patterns in the full article.

Does seeing numbers and operation symbols bore you out of your wits? Perhaps if you lived as an Aztec, things would be more to your liking. These ancient Americans had a complex system all their own, and they used hearts, arrows, bones, and other indigenous representations to denote expressions. Learn more math after the jump!

You know something's pretty special if it has a day dedicated to its celebration. And one pretty special number is Pi, the mathematical constant with the endless string of numbers that gave a lot of us nightmares in class. In case you didn't know, yesterday was Pi Day, the day we celebrate with Pies (a math pun, if you can bear it). Did you know the great mathematician Archimedes supposedly died because of his research on Pi? Why? You'd better read the full article to find out.

So you think you're smarter than a monkey? A new study from PLoS Biology suggests that monkeys can do math just as well as humans. One study showed that rhesus macaque monkeys performed nearly as well as college students with quick mental math while a study from Duke University found that chimpanzees actually did better than humans at a memory game. More at the full article.

It looks like you may not have to head off to outer space in order to travel through space and time; Allan Greenleaf and his mathematician colleagues have claimed that it may be possible to create "wormholes" right here on the planet.

According to Mr. Greenleaf, the "wormholes" would basically be devices with internal tunnels that are invisible to to detection by electromagnetic waves.

More unintelligible math-speak after the jump!

An ancient prayer book was discovered to contain notes from Archimedes, showing that the Greek mathematician already began to discover the principles of calculus more than a millennium before that branch of math was created. The prayer book was sold at Christie's Auction House for US$ 2 million.

The story of the prayer book starts with, of course, Archimedes who wrote his theories and equations on a papyrus 2,200 years ago. Some time later his notes were copied to animal-skin parchment. Then, 1,500 years later, a monk took down the copy from the shelf. His intention? He needed paper for a prayer book.

You can imagine what he did next. He cut the pages and scraped off the surface to remove the ink. He then used the semi-clean parchment to write his notes. Talk about religion giving science a hard time. Anyhow, the prayer book surfaced in 1908 and Archimedes' notes were found.

However, when the studies of the notes were completed, the book did as all mysterious books of history does. It disappeared, only to resurface again at Christie's Auction House when the family in France who kept the book for seventy years wondered if it was worth anything. (Well, they got US$ 2 million for it, so yes.)

After some intensive restoration, it was found that Archimedes' text contained his work titled The Method, which shows that he was already delving into equations concerning the infinity principle, a concept way ahead of his time. One can only wonder how mankind's technological evolution could have evolved had the text been discovered sooner. Then again homework would have been invented earlier, so maybe it was for the best.

One of the more unconventional uses for the Wii that made it so popular is physical rehabilitation in hospitals. Now it might be gaining popularity in something even more remote for consoles: the classroom. In the Cumberland Elementary School in Indiana, three Wii consoles are the new tools for education.

By incorporating the technology of video games (not to mention the fun factor) the school hopes to engage the students on a more powerful level than traditional methods. The consoles are currently being used to teach Geography, Math and English and the students are getting really into it.

The teachers in the school believe that the potentials for such interaction are unlimited. They even express that the biggest challenge is finding time to incorporate it into already packed lessons. Wii therapy has already spread in hospitals across the U.S. Perhaps the classrooms will follow suit?

Normally, shedding a few pounds - or if you follow the metric system, kilos - spells good news for the average person. But, if you happen to be Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, Paris, you'd probably feel that this could spell trouble for the scientific community.

Nope, we're not talking about Mr. Davis' waistline here - the loss in weight is being attributed to a 118-year-old cylinder that's the internationally recognized constant for the kilogram.

Davis explained that by comparing this cylinder's weight with other duplicate weights, they discovered that the prototype - made back in 1889 - lost 50 micrograms. That's approximately the weight of a fingerprint, meaning those extra notches on your scale are probably due to your extra serving of pie, not because of this minute fluctuation.

But while normal folks aren't expected to feel the effects of this discovery, Davis did note that organizations like the U.S. customary system might run into problems. "They depend on a mass measurement and it's inconvenient for them to have a definition of the kilogram which is based on some artifact," he said. The scientific community might also experience complications - inconsistent metric constant can have considerable effects on calculation for electric generation.

At this point, it's still unclear if the "original" kilogram did indeed lose weight, or if its later kilogram cylinder copies are simply heavier. This was the point raised by senior researcher Michael Borys of Germany's National Measures Institute in Braunschweig.

The whole matter is scheduled to be discussed this November in Paris by a panel of scientists. Specific topics to be touched on are other possible (and more accurate) calculations for not just the kilogram (for weight), but the Kelvin (for temperature), and the mole (for precise amounts).The kilogram cylinder itself, made of platinum and iridium alloy, might also be replaced with more reliable constants. One proposal calls for a Silicon-28 isotope crystal shaped as a sphere.

If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, what more when one glimpses at eternity? BBC's David Malone has recently released an interesting documentary we thought the other math-lovers here would fancy, titled "Dangerous Knowledge."

The film covers four mathematicians: Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. While they were noted for being among the most brilliant minds in the realm of mathematics, all four met the same tragic end of going insane and committing suicide. The film will tackle each of these men's inner thoughts, and the work that would eventually have them immortalized in human history... and locked away in mental asylums.

We've posted a video below,w if you're thoroughly interested in viewing the flick. Be warned, however, that this could take a while - Dangerous Minds is one-and-a-half hours long. Find yourself a comfy chair, a drink, and maybe some snacks - this could be a most interesting math lesson.