New Approximations for the Area of the Mandelbrot Set
  Due to its fractal nature, much about the area of the Mandelbrot set $M$ remains to be understood. While a series formula has been derived by Ewing and Schober to calculate the area of $M$ by considering its complement inside the Riemann sphere, to date the exact value of this area remains unknown. This paper presents new improved upper bounds for the area based on a parallel computing algorithm and for the 2-adic valuation of the series coefficients in terms of the sum-of-digits function. 
Daniel Bittner, Long Cheong, Dante Gates, Hieu D. Nguyen
math.DS