Two polymath related items for this post. Firstly, there is a new polymath proposal over at the polymath blog, proposing to attack the “hot spots conjecture” (concerning a maximum principle for a heat equation) in the case when the domain is an acute-angled triangle (the case of the right and obtuse-angled triangles already being solved). Please feel free to comment on the proposal blog post if you are interested in participating.

Secondly, it is once again time to set up the annual “mini-polymath” project to collaboratively solve one of this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad problems. This year, the Olympiad is being held in Argentina, with the problems given out on July 10-11. As usual, there will be a wiki page, discussion thread, and research thread for the project. As in previous years, the first thing to resolve is the starting date and time, so I am setting up a poll here to fix a time (and also to get a preliminary indication of interest in the project).  (I am using 24-hour Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) for these times.  Here is a link that converts the first time given in the poll (Thu Jul 12 2012 UTC 6:00) into other time zones.) Given that the last three mini-polymaths were reasonably successful, I am not planning any changes to the format, but of course if there are any suggestions for changes, I’d be happy to hear them in the comments.