The aim of this article is to demonstrate how numpy can be used to dramatically increase the efficiency of the simple task of integrating the two dimensional diffusion equation. There will also be an example of advanced visualization with matplotlib, creating an animated image map to visualize the solution. The code in this article is nowhere near as elegant as it could be, but it is intentionally plain for the beginners eye.

By Yasmin Ranade

Read the full list of 2010 CNMA finalists and explore their websites and work. I’m sure you’ll agree they represent a remarkable, wide-angled portrait of Canadian digital creativity.

As of the date of this post, the latest Ubuntu (10.10) and Debian unstable (Sid) repositories contain an old and slightly obsolete version of matplotlib (0.99). The latest matplotlib (1.0) has several API changes… Luckily, compiling the latest matplotlib is relatively painless.

I shake my head as I watch the constant roll of articles detailing some new height of insecurity or lack of privacy in Facebook. But there’s hardly been a promising alternative: until now.

The velocity autocorrelation function (VAF) is usually calculated when one wishes to analyse the vibrational or diffusive properties of a system of atoms. [...] If the motion of the atoms tends to an oscillatory pattern, the VAF will characterize the ossilations because the velocity of the atoms will self-correlate in a periodic fashion…

The first of what will hopefully be a regular series of comics here on t-square.

This comic pokes fun at the Ghostbusters using Windows to improve their traps.

The site has just been overhauled, which will hopefully be the last time for a while. The new design still needs some tweaks here and there, but needless to say, I’ll be able to focus on writing again. [...]

Mark Shuttleworth has posted an urgent request on his blog, asking for scientists and mathematicians to volunteer for editing of open-content science and mathematics textbooks which will be used for education in South Africa[...] There is a very unfortunate deadline…

Posting has been a little sparse this week on t-square (because I’m working on another redesign of the site), but here’s the t-square 10 for this week! T-SQUARE 10 is a new weekly column where I will post the the most interesting, useful, insightful or wacky things I’ve seen in the past week on the [...]

With exciting new features and many welcomed bug-fixes, Inkscape 0.48 is packaged to please. Although the new 0.48 instalment of Inkscape is yet to be released officially, I have experimented with a pre-release copy. [...] The new Inkscape 0.48 pre-release is incrementally more sophisticated and stable than the current 0.47 is. Inkscape is currently…