SPACE.com: The 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society opened yesterday and runs through 13 January in Seattle, Washington. About 2500 scientists are expected to attend. Besides its extensive scientific program, the meeting also features several policy sessions, which will cover such topics as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the Astro2010 Decadal Survey, which made recommendations about the highest-priority astronomy research for the coming decade.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.