Free Thought
pontiff | October 23, 2009Oh man sometimes even I, a staunch Caltech grad, wish I could be at MIT. The MIT QIP seminar this next Monday looks...intriguing (Monday 10/26 at 4:00 in 36-428 silly MITers and their numbered buildings, so cold.):
David Kaiser (MIT)
How the Hippies Saved Physics
Abstract:
In recent years, the field of quantum information science-an amalgam of topics ranging from quantum encryption, to quantum computing, quantum teleportation, and more-has catapulted to the cutting edge of physics, sporting a multi-billion-dollar research program, tens of thousands of published research articles, and a…
drorzel | October 21, 2009
Chairs : The Quantum Pontiff
"Michael Green is the new Lucasian chair of Mathematics replacing the esteemed Stephen Hawking. Green helped sparked the great optimism in string theory by discovering with John Schwarz the Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation mechanism.
Elsewhere, the Perimeter Institute has named ten new distinguished research chairs, among them a host of the quantum computing afflicted"
(tags: science academia physics quantum blogs pontiff)
FemaleScienceProfessor: On Not Being There
"It can be difficult to balance a typical research university professor teaching load with a…
sb admin | October 20, 2009
I erroneously titled the post that contained Michelle Borkin's final answer "Collaboration and Hemodynamics"
and this definitely reflected an oversight on my part. In addition to discussing hemodynamics Michelle also touched on the Astronomical Medicine project, a venture that definitely deserves some attention as it is a great example of interdisciplinary collaboration. What exactly is the mandate of the project and around which circumstances or scientific problems might astronomers and medical imaging specialists collaborate? Data Visualization. At this moment in time that answer isn't…
gsmith | October 20, 2009
I erroneously titled the post that contained Michelle Borkin's final answer "Collaboration and Hemodynamics"
and this definitely reflected an oversight on my part. In addition to discussing hemodynamics Michelle also touched on the Astronomical Medicine project, a venture that definitely deserves some attention as it is a great example of interdisciplinary collaboration. What exactly is the mandate of the project and around which circumstances or scientific problems might astronomers and medical imaging specialists collaborate? Data Visualization. At this moment in time that answer isn't…
drorzel | October 17, 2009
Career Advice: A Regular Writing Routine - Inside Higher Ed
"In this article, I'm starting a four-part series on developing a regular writing routine. In this column, I'll discuss and debunk two popular myths about writing. In my next column, I'll review two of my favorite articles, one on expert performance and the other on writing research and apply it to developing a regular writing routine. Then I'll write a piece on what a regular writing routine looks like in real-time; that is, when you put your bum on the chair on your fingers on the keyboard, what really happens. To wrap up this…
drorzel | October 13, 2009
The Ostrom Nobel -- Crooked Timber
"To amplify what Kieran has just said - political scientists are going to be very, very happy today. I had seen Lin cited as a 50-1 outsider by one betting agency a few days ago, and had been surprised that she was at the races at all, given that economists tend (like the rest of us) to be possessive of their field's collective goodies. I'm delighted to see that my cynicism was completely misplaced."
(tags: economics Nobel blogs crooked-timber social-science politics)
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Princesses and cats: Kij Johnson's…
drorzel | October 8, 2009
Less-Convergent Culture « Easily Distracted
"Here's what I find as far as standard commercial outfits [for Halloween costumes]. If you're female and a kid and you want to be a superhero, you're basically out of luck unless Wonder Woman is your favorite. "
(tags: kid-stuff gender stupid comics blogs society culture easily-distracted)
Nobel Physics Prize honors optical fibers and CCD sensors - Physics Update
A compact explanation of the physics behind the Prize.
(tags: science physics technology materials Nobel awards blogs physics-update)
US LHC Blog » A stroll down memory lane!
"I…
razib | October 7, 2009My thoughts on the talks at The Singularity Summit 2009 below the fold....
Shaping the Intelligence Explosion - Anna Salamon: A qualitative analysis of the implications of the emergence of artificial general intelligence. Having talked to Anna before, and knowing the general thrust of the work of the SIAI, not too surprising. AGI will come fast if it comes, it will be beyond our comprehension, etc. The main issue with Anna's talk was that it was hurried at the end, so perhaps we missed some points.
Technical Roadmap for Whole Brain Emulation - Anders Sandberg: Interesting. Lots of pictures.…
pontiff | October 6, 2009Israel Gelfand, one of the great mathematicians of our age, apparently passed away yesterday at the age of 96. Check out the list of results that bear his name on the above linked Wikipedia page. Wow. Today I will, in his honor, think a bit more about Gelfand-Tsetlin basis and what they can be used for in quantum computing.
drorzel | October 2, 2009
Physics Buzz: Space invaders: cosmic rays arrive for their 100th birthday
"Cosmic rays constantly bombard earth's atmosphere at a rate of about 100 per square meter per second, but they don't make it through intact. They collide with atmospheric molecules, setting of a cascading shower of secondary particles, such as neutrinos and muons. Researchers probably wish there was less stuff between us and them; because they're messengers from the deep, so to speak, they could offer clues to black holes and supernova. But most of what eventually reaches the ground is very low in energy; above the…
pontiff | September 28, 2009Well it seems that it is that time of year again when grad students and postdocs begin to think about job applications. Last year I had the great pleasure of going through the process (yet one more time!) so yes, I feel your pain. But, at least on the postdoc side of equation for quantum computing, things don't look as bad to me as I've seen in the past. I've already posted about Microsoft Station Q postdocs and the Center for Quantum Information and Control postdocs. Here are a few more to add to the mix.
First up is some loon from the University of Washington:
The quantum computing…
pontiff | September 22, 2009Hm, looks like D-wave has a new CEO. Not sure when this occurred (?), but a reader sends along an email with an announcement from a recruiting (?) firm:
Lonergan Partners is pleased to announce that Vern Brownell has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of D-Wave Systems....
Vern Brownell joins D-Wave from Egenera, were he held various executive roles including CEO. Egenera was founded by Mr. Brownell in 2000 based on his experiences as the Chief Technology Officer at Goldman Sachs, where he and his staff of 1,300 were responsible for worldwide technology infrastructure including…
drorzel | September 22, 2009Buried in the weekend links dump at the arxiv blog was Scalable ion traps for quantum information processing:
We report on the design, fabrication, and preliminary testing of a 150 zone array built in a `surface-electrode' geometry microfabricated on a single substrate. We demonstrate transport of atomic ions between legs of a `Y'-type junction and measure the in-situ heating rates for the ions. The trap design demonstrates use of a basic component design library that can be quickly assembled to form structures optimized for a particular experiment.
At first glance, this isn't a sexy paper…
jdupuis | September 21, 2009That's the question asked by Lance Fortnow in a recent Communications of the ACM Viewpoint article (free fulltext).
Fortnow's article continues a discussion about scholarly communication patterns in computer science that's been going on for a while in the "pages" of the CACM. I've blogged about it a couple of times here and here.
Fortnow's main idea is that CS needs to get past the youthful stage of using conferences as the main vehicle for disseminating new ideas and move to a journal-based model, like most of the rest of scientific disciplines. In the end, it's all about peer review:…
goodmath | September 21, 2009 If you regularly follow comments on this blog, you'll know that I've been
having a back-and-forth with a guy who doesn't know much about information
theory, and who's been using his ignorance to try to assemble arguments against the
Kolmogorov-Chaitin information-theoretic measure of information in a string.
In the course of doing that, I came up with what I think are some interesting ways
of explaining bits of it, so I thought I'd promote it to the top-level to share
with more readers.
To be absolutely clear up front: I'm far from an expert on K-C theory. It's something that I find…
jdupuis | September 16, 2009I haven't done one of these in a while, so there's quite a backlog to clear.
Reports
Digital Scholarly Communication: A Snapshot of Current Trends
Crowdsourcing, Attention and Productivity
Strategic Outsourcing and Cloud Computing: Reality Is a Sober Adversary
Library Storage Facilities and the Future of Print Collections in North America
XC User Research Preliminary Report (Extensible Catalog)
Edgeless University: why higher education must embrace technology
Beyond Scientific Publication: Strategies for Disseminating
How Teens Use Media: A Nielsen report on the myths and realities of teen…
drorzel | September 13, 2009
A Smoove Evening | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"The plan to seduce Michelle Obama in both body and soul has also not moved forward during the last few months. She and her people have stopped returning Smoove's phone calls, and his letters, and the elaborately arranged fruit sculptures he has assembled from the earth's most exotic produce.
Also, I think I am on some kind of FBI watch list now. "
(tags: onion silly sex)
YouTube - I Am a Paleontologist - They Might Be Giants with Danny Weinkauf
Because dinosaurs are awesome.
(tags: dinosaurs music video youtube kid-stuff)…
pontiff | September 12, 2009I'm going to be visiting the Perimeter Institute next week, talking on Monday (switched from Wednesday) at 3pm. Visiting Perimeter is always a treat: quantum information, quantum foundations, quantum gravity, cosmology, particle physics, superstring theory...I think I've thought of going into all of those fields (grad classes in astro at Berkeley not so useful these days in quantum computing. Okay useful in a different sort of way.) Indeed, I think I'm still thinking of going into quantum information.
P.S. anyone recommend a good jogging path starting near the Perimeter Institute?
dsalo | September 11, 2009I wanted to call attention to this event at Harvard, which will be webcast live next Friday at 12:15 Central.
The difficulties in combining data and information from distributed sources, the multi-disciplinary nature of research and collaboration, and the need to move to present researchers with tooling that enable them to express what they want to do rather than how to do it highlight the need for an ecosystem of Semantic Computing technologies. Such technologies will further facilitate information sharing and discovery, will enable reasoning over information, and will allow us to start…
drorzel | September 11, 2009
slacktivist: Vampires & crosses
"Most vampires don't believe in the cross, but that hardly matters. It's the idea of the thing that gives them fits. The cross confronts vampires with their opposite -- with the rejection of power and its single-minded pursuit. It suggests that no one is to be treated as prey -- not even an enemy. The idea of the cross, in other words, suggests that vampires have it wrong, that they have it backwards, in fact, and that those others they regard as prey are actually, somehow, winning.
This notion is incomprehensible for vampires. The one thing they're…