Free Thought
pontiff | August 28, 2008Quantum error correction and quantum hard drives in four dimension. Part IV of my attempt to explain one of my main research interests in quantum computing:
Prior parts: Part I, Part II, Part III.
Quantum Error Correction
Classical error correction worked by encoding classical information across multiple systems and thus protecting the information better than if it was encoded just locally. Fault-tolerant techniques extend these results to the building of actual robust classical computers. Given that quantum theory seems to be quite different from classical theory, an important question to…
catdynamics | August 27, 2008Every now and then I get a message which informs.
"If your jobs are unfortunately killed by the hurricane..."
"...simulation runs, please let us know and we will refund you the used SUs.
Sorry for the inconvenience."
LONI - the Lousiana Optical Network Initiative - is flushing its computing queue for pre-emptive hurricane modeling, this afternoon, and, I presume, through the weekend.
Current National Hurricane Center path predictions have NOLA right in the center of the predicted path - with landfall late sunday/early monday.
Cone of uncertainty stretches from NW Florida to NE Texas.
Click…
pontiff | August 26, 2008The physics of classical information storage. Why is it that your hard drive works? A modern miracle, I tell you! Part III of my attempt to explain one of my main research interests in quantum computing: "self-correcting quantum computers." Prior parts: Part I, Part II
The Physics of Classical Information Storage
Despite the fact that Shannon and von Neumann showed that, a least in theory, a reliable, fault-tolerant computer could be built out of faulty, probabilistic components, if we look at our classical computing devices it is not obvious that these ideas matter much. I mean really,…
drorzel | August 26, 2008NIST's Dave Wineland has been awarded the National Medal of Science. Wineland is one of the most impressive figures in modern AMO physics, with a long list of accomplishments. As the NIST release explains:
Wineland is internationally recognized for developing the technique of using lasers to cool ions (electrically charged atoms or molecules) to near absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature. Wineland achieved the first demonstration of laser cooling in 1978 and has built on that breakthrough with 30 years of experiments that represent the first or best in the world - often both - in…
pontiff | August 25, 2008Why is classical computing possible at all? A silly question, but one which never ceases to amaze me. Part II of my attempt to explain one of my main research interests in quantum computing: "self-correcting quantum computers." Prior parts: Part I
Last time I discussed how quantum computing was a lot like classical probabilistic computing. Given this, one can think about a question which seems silly at first: how is it possible to compute when you have a classical probabilistic computer?
Why Is Classical Computation Possible?
Classical computers are both digital and deterministic. But…
drorzel | August 24, 2008
Evolving Thoughts: The real Olympic performers
"[U]sing the Wikipedia population figures and the official medal tally, I plotted gold medals per million population and medals overall per million population"
(tags: sports blogs silly)
Why You Should Turn Gmail s SSL Feature On Now - Webmonkey
"Browser Connection" in your GMail settings-- set it to "Always Use https://"
(tags: internet computing)
clock | August 22, 200812 New Rules of Working You Should Embrace Today. As you know, point #4 is one of my pet peeves:
4. People don't have to be in an office. This is the one I wish most businesses would get, right now, right away. It's so obvious once you get away from the traditional mindset. Traditionally, people worked in offices (and of course most still do). They go into the office, do their work, go to meeting, process paperwork, chat around the watercooler, clock out and go home.
These days, more and more, that's not necessary. With mobile computing, the cloud, online apps and collaborative processes,…
pontiff | August 21, 2008Quantum computing is hair-brained, but then again so is classical probabilistic computing. Part I of my attempt to explain one of my main research interests in quantum computing: "self-correcting quantum computers."
Quantum Computing, a Harebrained Idea?
Quantum computing, at first sight, sounds like a hairbrained idea with absolutely no possible possibility of actually working in the real world. The reasons for this are plentiful, at least when you first start learning about quantum computers. Quantum states (aka wave functions) are described by a continuum of values. Uh, oh, that sounds…
gregladen | August 20, 2008The Linutop is a tiny Linux computer that you stick onto the back of your flat screen monitor (and hook it to the monitor, obviously), plug in, and go. It makes no noise, produces very little heat, uses hardly any electricity (eight watts) and seems to be reasonably powered. It cost about 300 bucks.
There are things it won't do. The system is solid state, which means it is totally secure but upgrading would not be done in the usual way. I believe this computer is what you want to use if you are not storing data or if all your data is stored on line.
But for public computers in…
aardvarchaeology | August 20, 2008
Ever since individual personal computers first came on-line in large numbers, they have been utilised as a huge opt-in distributed computing array by projects such as SETI at Home and Folding at Home.
But there are information processing tasks that can be distributed yet are still impossible to perform with computers. The Stardust at Home project uses the unparalleled image-recognition capabilities of the human brain to process data from an interplanetary sample collection mission. People all around the world take part in their spare time.
Auntie Beeb's weekly program on the worldwide use of…
pontiff | August 18, 2008"Expeditions in Computing awards" are ten million dollar NSF grants from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering to pursue long-term research agendas. My favorite kinds of projects: high risk, high reward, and long term. Today the first four award winners have been announced. The winning programs are
Open Programmable Mobile Internet 2020
The Molecular Programming Project
Understanding, Coping with and Benefiting from Intractibility
Computational Sustainability: Computational Methods for a Sustainable Environment, Economy and Society
Of note for the theoretical…
revere | August 18, 2008Tropical Storm Fay is bearing down on Cuba and the Florida Keys as I write this and is on the cusp of hurricane strength winds. A new study from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science just published in Geophysical Research Letters looks again at the contentious issue of whether a warmer globe means more or worse hurricanes. The proposition that global warming mean more and fiercer hurricanes is derived from large computer simulations that have relatively low resolution for local weather events like hurricanes. The computing power needed to get better…
clock | August 14, 2008My old neighbor, while I was living in Raleigh, is making some headlines now: Power to the People:
Within weeks of completing his master's degree in advanced analytics at North Carolina State University, Arren Fisher scored a job in data analysis at the Laboratory Corporation of America.
"It involves predictive modeling," Fisher explains. "In layperson's terms, super duper data mining."
Despite the tight national economy, Fisher and his classmates are getting lots of job offers because they're experienced users of the advanced software programs that marketing firms utilize to predict consumer…
clock | August 13, 2008Pushing Boundaries in Information Visualization: Using Virtual, Immersive and Interactive Technologies in Research & Practice
Saturday, September 13, 2008
9am - 4:30pm
This workshop will showcase some of the innovative uses of technology in terms of virtual and immersive environments for interacting with information. The day's events will generate attendee discussion around the use, integration and evaluation of such tools (how do we evaluate the use of these technologies? how can research improve practice? how can practice inform research, etc.).
The program will feature a colorful mix…
clock | August 8, 2008Continuing with asking for your help in fixing my Blogroll:
Every couple of days or so, I will post here a list of blogs that start with a particular letter, and you add in the comments if you know of something that is missing from that list.
See so far:Numbers and SymbolsAB
Today brought to you by letter C. This is what is on the Blogroll right now. Check also the Housekeeeping posts for other C blogs I have discovered in the meantime. Check links. Tell me what to delete, what to add:
Cabinet of WondersCafé Philos: an internet caféCalamusCanadian CynicCannablogThe Cape Fear…
pontiff | August 6, 2008Hot off the presses!In an amazing breakthrough, which this press release has no room to describe in any real detail, scientists at research university BigU have made tremendous progress in the field of quantum computing. The results mean that quantum computers are one step closer to replacing your laptop computer
Quantum computers work by some mechanism that we don't have the time to understand. But we are sure our researchers will explain it to you, but you won't understand anyways, so why ask them? It's definitely got something to do with multiple universes and bits that are both zero…
pontiff | August 5, 2008Summary of what's new and happening on the arXivs according to voters on SciRate.
0807.4935 (15 scites) "Quantum Communication With Zero-Capacity Channels" by Graeme Smith and Jon Yard.
I blogged about this article here.
0807.4753 (9 scites) "Counterexamples to the maximal p-norm multiplicativity conjecture for all p > 1" by Patrick Hayden and Andreas Winter
One of the largest one questions in quantum information theory is the additivity of the Holevo capacity of quantum channels. The Holevo capacity of a quantum channel is the rate at which you can send classical information down this…
drorzel | August 4, 2008
Michael Nielsen û Why the world needs quantum mechanics
A very nice, detailed, and most importantly, accessible explanation of Bell's theorem. Needs more dogs, though.
(tags: physics quantum science blogs)
The Quantum Pontiff : When Two Zeros Are Not Zero: The Strange Lives of Quantum Cell Phones
"There exist quantum channels that, when you use them individually have zero capacity for transmitting quantum information, but when you use them together have a nonzero capacity for transmitting quantum information."
(tags: physics quantum computing theory science)
Intl. Blog Against Racism…
pontiff | August 4, 2008Michael Nielsen has a nice essay up explaining Why the world needs quantum mechanics:Conventional wisdom holds that quantum mechanics is hard to learn. This is more or less correct, although often overstated. However, the necessity of abandoning conventional ways of thinking about the world, and finding a radically new way - quantum mechanics - can be understood by any intelligent person willing to spend some time concentrating hard. Conveying that understanding is the purpose of this essay.
For a good explanation of Bell inequalities, jump to Michael's essay.
At the end of the article,…
drorzel | August 1, 2008
Temporally Controlled Modulation of Antihydrogen Production and the Temperature Scaling of Antiproton-Positron Recombination
"Our observations have established a pulsed source of atomic antimatter, with a rise time of about 1 s, and a pulse length ranging from 3 to 100 s. "
(tags: physics science particles experiment articles)
Hidden Variable Models for Quantum Theory Cannot Have Any Local Part
"In this Letter, we consider general hidden variable models which can have both local and nonlocal parts. We show the existence of (experimentally verifiable) quantum correlations that are…