May 14, 2008
Category: Science • Science 2.0 • Society
Interesting new website from the New York Academy of Sciences: Scientists Without Borders:
Scientists Without BordersSM aims to mobilize and coordinate science-based activities that improve quality of life in the developing world. The research community is already promoting areas such as global health, agricultural progress, and environmental well-being, but current communication gaps restrict its power. Organizations and individuals do not always know about one another's endeavors, needs, or availability, which limits the ability to forge meaningful connections and harness resources. This situation is especially striking in light of the growing realization that integrated rather than focused approaches are crucial for addressing key challenges such as extreme poverty and the glaring health problems that accompany it.
The concept
Opportunities to foster synergy in the capacity-building arena would explode if an effective information-sharing tool existed. Institute leaders, project officers, and individual investigators could gather advice, other forms of human capital, and material assets. Furthermore, a central knowledge store about science-based capacity-building activities would help funding agencies and other institutions apply their efforts efficiently.
The solution
Scientists Without BordersSM is building a Web portal whose cornerstone is a database that serves as a digital repository for such information. The database will provide a way to match needs with resources. This tool will eventually create a record of accomplishments that also identifies the next steps for solving specific problems.
Posted by Dave Bacon at 6:37 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
May 13, 2008
Category: Politics • Quantum
Over at the Optimizer's place, the Optimizer compares libertarians and those who believe in the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory. (Key Ron Paul apologists in three, two, one...) An amusing comparison. So if many worlders are the libertarians of interpretations of quantum theory, what political parties do the other interpretations of quantum theory fall under?
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Posted by Dave Bacon at 12:43 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
May 11, 2008
May 10, 2008
Category: Teaching
For a second straight year, the winner of the U.S. Teacher of the Year, is a University of Washington graduate. Of course I'm not supposed to say that, as not bragging is an sacred northwest tradition. (Did you know that the University of Washington receives the second most federal research funding of any institute in the United States?)
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Posted by Dave Bacon at 3:13 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
Category: Science
Science is full of hard problems. One hard problem is protein folding. Indeed vast amounts of computer power have been thrown at this problem. So one wouldn't think that the computer we've got sitting on top of our body would be much use for this problem. But is this true? Can humans fold proteins better than computers? Enter onto the scene foldit developed by a group of researchers here at the University of Washington.
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Posted by Dave Bacon at 9:20 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
May 9, 2008
Category: Computer Science • Funny Ha Ha
From a student today in office hours before today's midterm: "How many times will the word automata appear in the test, including its use in acronyms like DFA, NFA, GNFA, and WTFA?"
Posted by Dave Bacon at 3:48 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
Category: Funny Ha Ha
From the annals of "is that really the word you wanted?" from a New York Times article on steampunk:
"There seems to be this sort of perfect storm of interest in steampunk right now," Mr. von Slatt said. "If you go to Google Trends and track the number of times it is mentioned, the curve is almost algorithmic from a year and a half ago." (At this writing, Google cites 1.9 million references.)
Certainly I can interpret this as saying that the trend has a curve which can be generated by an algorirthm, but I'm guessing Mr. von Slatt meant something else, considering that the curve which is always zero is also algorithmic.
Posted by Dave Bacon at 12:01 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
Category: Quantum Computing
Of interest to quantum computeristas: Cosmologist Niel Turok has been named the new director of the Perimeter Institute. Onward and upward!
Posted by Dave Bacon at 10:57 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
May 8, 2008
Category: Computer Science • Quantum Computing
The mothership, aka Seed magazine, has a crib sheet for quantum computing. Its not half bad, considering how bad things like this can go. And of course this is probably due in part to the fact that they list the Optimizer as a consultant. But the real question is whether that little shade of black outside of NP is an illustrators trick or the result of a complexity theorist being the person they asked to vet the cheat sheet?
Posted by Dave Bacon at 11:53 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
Category: Baseball • Mathematics
Two fans in Dodger stadium caught back to back fouls during a Mets game (and, almost as importantly, the Dodgers lost, woohoo!)
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Posted by Dave Bacon at 2:44 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
Category: Quantum
When discussing ways that quantum computing may fail, a common idea is that it may turn out that the linearity of quantum theory fails. Since no one has seen any evidence of nonlinearity in quantum theory, and it is hard to hide this nonlinearity at small scales, it is usually reasoned that these nonlinearities would arise for large quantum systems. Which got me thinking about how to well we know that quantum theory is linear, which in turn got me thinking about something totally wacko.
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Posted by Dave Bacon at 1:11 PM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
May 6, 2008
Category: Quantum Basterdizations • Quantum Computing
New leader at the Perimeter Institute this Friday, Perimeter researcher wins prestigious award, a summer school on quantum cryptography, the answer is not quantum physics, and quarter charge quasiparticles for quantum computing.
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Posted by Dave Bacon at 12:02 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
May 1, 2008
Category: Quantum Computing • Quantum Computing Bastardizations
One of the coauthors on the paper which I claimed was shoddy has written a comment in the original post. Which merits more commenting! But why comment in the comment section when you can write a whole blog post replying!
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Posted by Dave Bacon at 11:56 AM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
April 30, 2008
Category: Quantum Computing
Hoisted from the comments, Rod says
You guys are much more blunt than I usually am (except with students :-). You're also a lot more succinct.
This particular paper may be wrong, and the authors should be told that, but: as the field grows, and more engineers join, there are going to be more people who start with naive positions. The goal is not to run them off, but to teach them, so they can help us build these things :-).
To which, of course, I can only plead guilty, guilty, guilty. I mean no harm to engineers, that is for sure, especially considering the fact that I am surrounded by them ;) And damn straight I know how important engineers will be in building a quantum computer, and that physicists all by themselves are more likely to be doomed in this endeavor (but I might add that D-wave or Transmeta might demonstrate that just having the engineering bravado isn't necessarily enough. Damn straight sometimes those physics and theory people know what the hell they are talking about.)
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Posted by Dave Bacon at 8:30 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks • View blog reactions
Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also an assistant research 
