The Quantum Pontiff
Archives for February, 2009
links for 2009-02-16
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 16, 2009 Physics – A quantum phase transition for a spin liquid In a Rapid Communication appearing in Physical Review B, Vasile Garlea and collaborators at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA, the Hahn-Meitner Institut in Germany, and the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique in Grenoble, France, report an unusual magnetic-field-induced spin ordering in a geometrically frustrated quasi-one-dimensional…
Perimeter Distinguished Research Chairs
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 14, 2009 In addition to the distinguished Dr. Hawking, the Perimeter institute lands nine very impressive distinguished research chairs, including some familiar quantum names.
Fault Tolerance – It’s No LAFTing Matter
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 13, 2009 Conference of interest to the fault-tolerant crowd (hm, wording not quite right): Event Title: Workshop on Logical Aspects of Fault Tolerance (LAFT) (affiliated with LICS 2009) Date: 08/15/2009 Location: University of California, Los Angeles URL: http://www.aero.org/support/laft Description: We are soliciting papers on logical aspects of fault tolerance. The concept of “fault” underlies essentially all computational…
links for 2009-02-13
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 13, 2009 Luis von Blog (tags: science blog computer genius)
Dark Side of the…Whah?
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 12, 2009 Over at the fact builders blog, the fact master discusses The Physics of….Pink Floyd. Being two areas I greatly enjoy, I was reminded by the fact builders picture of the cover of “The Dark Side of the Moon” of a little known piece of Pink Floyd strangeness. Anyone notice something peculiar about the back and…
Stimulating Morning
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 12, 2009 The Computing Research Policy Blog is reporting possible good news for science funding: Speaker Pelosi’s office just released a fact sheet on the conference agreement for the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act and, wow, it looks good for science agencies in the bill. Here’s the relevant bit: Transform our Economy with Science and Technology:…
GQI ‘Best Student Paper’ Award at APS March Meeting (2009)
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 11, 2009 Fame and fortune could be yours. Tell your supervisor to nominate you: Once again, GQI will award two “Best Student Paper” prizes at the APS March Meeting (2009): one for theory and one for experiment. The awards, each consisting of a $500 cash prize, are sponsored by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada,…
links for 2009-02-10
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 10, 2009 http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/ (tags: omg) MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield fixed data on autism – Times Online THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found. (tags: autism vaccines)
links for 2009-02-09
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 9, 2009 Watch Bill Gates unleash that ‘swarm’ of mosquitoes on crowd – TechFlash: Seattle’s Technology News Source Earlier this week, Bill Gates got a lot of attention for releasing some mosquitoes into a crowd while talking about malaria. The video is now available for viewing, and you can watch it below. The incident comes about 5…
More on Fixed Points
Posted by Dave Bacon on February 8, 2009 In a prior post I asked about the how the structure of fixed points of stochastic maps changes under composition of such maps. Robin provided an interesting comment about the setup, linking this question at least partially with zero error codes: R has at least one fixed point. If it’s unique, there need be no…