Why the other line[s] is likely to move faster and psychology.

Bill Hammack explains in simple terms how your line (queue) is likely to be slower compare to others [video] with mentioning Erlang's work. An interesting point in his explanation is that how humans perseive multi-queue over single queue with multiple-servers, namely assumption of multi-queue is necessarily better. Similar misconception appears in the airline boarding rules. It is very interesting that we think that multiple queues would help in row-based boarding on the airline, which is not. Recent work by Israeli group shows that random boarding is superior [doi].

Quantum Monte Carlo: Fast force computation

A recent article [doi] by Italian group proposes usage of algorithmic differentiation for force computations appeared in Quantum Monte Carlo technique.

Charge density identification in ion channels

Israeli group has published a recent article [doi] on the identification of charges in ion channels via PNP formalism ( which I have also reviewed shortly [pdf] ).

Cooperation and punishment via game theory in adversarial societies

A recent work discusses the role of cooperation and punishment from game theoretic perspective in adversarial societies [link]. A counter-intuitive finding is that defectors may lead to a peaceful society by introducing a player -informant- with no clear strategy.

Are we living in a computer simulation?

It isn't science fiction only but there are some scientific bits to this question. Nick Bostrom explains [link].

Humble Ants solve hard problems

Quite interesting recent work show that ants can solve NP-hard problems with changing configuration in an adaptive fashion. Australian & Swedish researchers were able to demostrate it experimentally; Optimisation in a natural system: Argentine ants solve the Towers of Hanoi [doi].

Data Storage: How long can we keep it?

Apart from physical limitations, like extreme heat, failure rate and many other factors,
keeping our data storage accessible and recoverable long time is a huge challenge.
A recent article [link] on ACM queue discusses some issues on this line.

Constraint Satisfaction: A glimpse of computational complexity

A generic problem appear in many different fields from computer science applications to operations research is constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). M. Jerrum gives a generic outline on the field [doi]. An article by Bulatov-Marx on global cardinality constraint has recently appeared [doi].

Pair potentials are not that bad: Water & Silica

One of the challenges in modeling water or silica is the figure out correct description of inter-atomic potential. Usually used models for water in-cooperate 3-body interactions and charges, B.Guillot has a review on the subject [doi]. However there are attempts to use only pair potential for water [doi], as well as for amorphous silica [doi].