[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 61 (Wednesday, April 20, 2016)]
[House]
[Page H1862]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1215
            FUNDING FOR NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION RESEARCH

  (Mr. McNERNEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McNERNEY. Mr. Speaker, as a mathematician, it is my pleasure to 
discuss recent developments in the topic of prime numbers. 
Historically, it was assumed that prime numbers were randomly 
distributed in the sense that any large section of consecutive integers 
would have an equal number of primes ending in 1, 3, 7, and 9.
  Prime numbers are used in generating pseudo random numbers, found in 
all sorts of applications, and in some methods of encryption. Heck, 
even the lowly cicada insects only emerge after a prime number of years 
to avoid regularly appearing predators.
  Recently, Dr. Soundararajan and Dr. Lemke Oliver, both of Stanford 
University working under NSF funding, discovered that consecutive prime 
numbers have preferences for the digits they end in. For example, 
consecutive primes don't like having the same digit, while primes 
ending in 9 prefer to be followed by primes ending in 1. We must 
provide funding to the National Science Foundation to investigate this 
and other important mathematical questions.

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