pontiff
Posts by this author
April 6, 2009
Scott the optimizer asks a question on a wim:
Come up with a catchy name for growth rates of the form 2^(n^&alpha) , 0<&alpha<1.
I thought the answer was obvious: "probably in BQP."
update: does html superscript not work in a blockquote? I guess the answer is yes.
April 6, 2009
The survey of abused words in quantum computing shows the word "exponential" as having an, um, exponential, lead over its competitors. My own personal choice for the most abused word was "scalable," a word that is, in my opinion, the least debated, but most important, concept in quantum computing…
April 6, 2009
John Preskill writes to me about workshop being quickly organized in response to the release of a report by US National Science and Technology Council calling for a national initiative in quantum information science. I saw this report a while back and have some half written blog posts about it…
April 6, 2009
Over at Xconomy Ed Lazowska writes about the proposed cuts in higher education here in the state of Washington. There I find that the Washington higher eduction is number one! Number one in terms of the percentage being cut by the (proposed) state budget: 23 to 31 percent among global challenge…
April 3, 2009
A note from Ivan Deutsch, Secretary-Treasurer of the APS GQI topical group about the winners of the best student paper awards:
We are pleased to announce the Best Student Paper awards for the 2009 APS March Meeting. For the best experimental paper, the winner is
Eric Lucero, UCSB
for his paper J17…
April 3, 2009
..asks a facebook application.
Apparently I am the kind of physicist who likes proper spelling and proper capitalization, and who thus, will not take a quiz with bad spelling. Which physicist is that? Gell-Mann?
April 1, 2009
Wow, this is a very cool result:
Researchers at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorkstown, NY have announced a breakthrough which they feel could revolutionize power consumption in computers. Today's computers are power hungry: a typical computer consumes hundreds of watts of power. Not…
March 31, 2009
Click Here for PollOnline Survey | Website Polls | Email Marketing | CrowdsourcingView MicroPoll
March 26, 2009
Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to a question that I'm nearly constantly asked: "So...[long pause]...are you a physicist...[long pause]...or are you a computer scientist?" Like many theorists in quantum computing, a field perched between the two proud disciplines of physics and computer…
March 25, 2009
A press release from Caltech about Steve Koonin, who was the boss of my bosses during a SURF project and was a student of my undergraduate advisor at Caltech (and also responsible for severe drops in GPAs for many of the physicist students I knew at Caltech :)):
Steven Koonin, visiting associate in…
March 23, 2009
Sundries.
Warren Buffet is often attributed as saying, "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked" referring to how a bad economy exposes problems in a business. After reading too many comment sections on New York Times articles on the financial crisis, I think it…
March 18, 2009
Woot! Mrs. Pontiff's entry into the Scienceblogs pie competition is the winner! Mrs. Pontiff is on a role. This year we decided not to buy each other gifts for Valentines day. So instead of buying a gift, Mrs. Pontiff entered a photo contest from a flower company and won me some beautiful…
March 18, 2009
Kamil sends along a pointer to www.playqubit.com. "Qubit," according to the website is a new quiz show on the Discovery channel:
Qubit is a quiz show for the 21st century - fast-paced, cut-throat and fun!
Driven by stunning HD visuals, Qubit showcases science, technology and natural history. Not…
March 18, 2009
Things I learned at the APS March meeting. Updated as I learn them. That's right: real time updates of connectivity of my neurons translated into html translated into text and pictures on your browser.
A Yale experiment led by Robert Schoelkopf has demonstrated the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm and…
March 16, 2009
Tonight I hop on a red-eye to Pittsburgh to attend the APS March meeting. 7000 physicists in Pittsburgh, now that's a scary thought for poor Pittsburgh (punishment for winning the superbowl, I guess.)
A list of highlighted papers includes some fun ones:
11:15AM, Tuesday Session B15: "Walking…
March 16, 2009
The New York Times has an article about the CRA Taulbee Survey, which is a survey of computer science enrollments in the United States. (The survey isn't up on the CRA's website, but when it does I'm guessing it will be here.)
For the first time in six years, enrollment in computer science…
March 16, 2009
Every wonder what "The Quantum Pontiff" looks like with a side of Bacon? Me neither. But now you can thanks to bacolicio.us: The Quantum Pontiff with a side of Bacon.
Simultaneous (at least in my reference frame) hat tip to Matt and Jacob.
March 16, 2009
This weekend I got a chance to play around with ScribTex which is a tool for collaborating on LaTeX. In my short test drive, I will say it's one of the better solutions to this problem that I've seen.
(Of course the one thing that is a pain with all of these systems is the lack of good editors…
March 14, 2009
Vote for Mrs. Pontiff's entry into the Scienceblogs pie contest here
"Bacon made me do it."
March 12, 2009
3.141592...om nom nom nom! Behold! Mrs. Pontiff's entry into the Scienceblogs pi day pie contest, variously known as "Spicy Brittle Bacon Chocolate Pie", "Spicy Pi Bacon Squared", or "Bacon brittle...om nom nom nom nom!"
(On the March 14, a poll will open on scienceblogs for the pi contest. Then…
March 10, 2009
Dear Colleagues,
Online registration is now open for the 4th Workshop on Theory of Quantum
Computation, Communication and Cryptography (Waterloo, May 11-13, 2009) at
the following website:
http://www.iqc.ca/tqc2009
The deadline for early registration with a reduced registration fee is
March 29,…
March 9, 2009
Via Swans on Tea: Academic Earth: a collection of top lectures on a variety of academic topics. Nothing on quantum computing yet :)
March 3, 2009
The NSF has put up a "recovery" page for the stimulus bill: http://www.nsf.gov/recovery. Interestingly it appears that there is an link to an rss feed for "weekly reports." These appear to be excel files of the spending done by the NSF under the stimulus act as of that week (so far nada has been…
March 3, 2009
People pass on to me a lot of cool Bacon stuff, but Chris topped many of them by sending me the Bacon Lamp Shade.
March 3, 2009
Martin writes to tell me that there are student internships in quantum information technology available at NEC this summer (see here and here):
The Quantum IT group at NEC Laboratories America, Princeton, NJ has summer internship positions available for graduate students interested in quantum…
March 2, 2009
Stephen sent me a fun google query, discovered by one of his students:
Those are some pretty impressive four entangled qubits: sticking around for nine days without decohering :)!
February 27, 2009
On Morning Edition this morning, there was a story about the annual Conservative Political Action Conference which contained a line which made me guffaw:
Representative Paul Ryan: "[rant on spending in stimulus plan]...$400 million dollars to study sexually transmitted diseases!" [rant on about how…
February 26, 2009
For those scientists out on the job market this year, the following from TheLadders.com might be a little scary:
Two annihilated industries and...science.
February 25, 2009
David Kribbs sends along info about a quantum information position at the University of Guelph:
The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Guelph invites applications for a full-time tenure track position to start 1 July 2009 or thereafter, at the rank of Assistant Professor…