pontiff | March 23, 2009Sundries.
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 should be "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's a real communist." (Note, dear reader beginning to flame me in the comments, that I didn't say whether I thought this was good or bad or neither good or bad.) Hard economic times really bring out the daggers in economic ideology. I love to…
pontiff | March 18, 2009Woot! 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 flowers. We need to plan our trip to Las Vegas immediately.
Thanks to all who voted and to the dog for not jumping up and eating the pie off the table. And a special shout out to Bacon, is there anything it can't do?
Lisa: I'm going to become a vegetarian
Homer: Does that mean you're not going to…
pontiff | March 18, 2009Kamil 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 your ordinary quiz show, Qubit challenges convention by including the odd, unique and truly quirky aspects of the world of science.
Sounds like a fun show.
But "Qubit"? Really? I wonder if the PR firm that sold them on that name knew what the word meant and whether Ben Schumacher is offended or…
pontiff | March 18, 2009Things 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 Grover's algorithm (two qubit algorithms) using transmon qubits (superconducting qubits.) Fidelities for their implementation are in the 80 to 90 percent range. Paper: arXiv:0903.2030.
Also, congrats to Robert Schoelkopft for winning the "2009 Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement…
pontiff | March 16, 2009Tonight 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 on water: why your feet get wet" Michael Shelley , Jake Fontana , Peter Palffy-Muhoray
1:15PM, Wednesday Session Q15: "Statistical laws for career longevity" Alexander Petersen , Woo-Sung Jung , Jae-Suk Yang , H. Eugene Stanley
pontiff | March 16, 2009The 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 programs in the United States increased last year, according to an annual report that tracks trends in the academic discipline.
I call bottom! Oops, a bit late.
He noted that seven or eight years ago, few students would think about the possibility of a computer science graduate education, and that it was…
pontiff | March 16, 2009Every 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.
pontiff | March 16, 2009This 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. There is a certain handicap that you get by working in a browser input box and not into a full fledged editor (a similar setup to scibtex that I use in MediaWiki has this same problem.) I'm not sure how solvable this problem is. Has anyone seen, for example, a javascript solution which allows…
pontiff | March 14, 2009Vote for Mrs. Pontiff's entry into the Scienceblogs pie contest here
"Bacon made me do it."
pontiff | March 12, 20093.141592...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 all two of the readers of the Quantum Pontiff (hi mom!) can then vote for Bacon Bacon Bacon Pi Pi Pie Pie!)
Pi is a miraculous number. Who would have thought that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter was always the same? Or that you could express this number with some 4's…
pontiff | March 10, 2009Dear 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, 2009, which coincides with the deadline for booking
accommodation with guaranteed rate. Online registration will be closed
after May 3, 2009.
The program consists of invited talks, contributed talks, and poster
presentations.
(1) Invited speakers include:
Masato Koashi (Osaka University)
John…
pontiff | March 9, 2009Via Swans on Tea: Academic Earth: a collection of top lectures on a variety of academic topics. Nothing on quantum computing yet :)
pontiff | March 3, 2009The 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 spent.)
Cool, now we can set up a betting pool for spending amounts as of a given date :)
pontiff | March 3, 2009People pass on to me a lot of cool Bacon stuff, but Chris topped many of them by sending me the Bacon Lamp Shade.
pontiff | March 3, 2009Martin 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 computing. Areas of interest include:
Quantum algorithms
Quantum communication
Quantum complexity
Quantum cryptography
Quantum error correction
Quantum fault tolerance
More information about the Quantum IT group can be found at Quantum IT Group Website. Interested students can send their resume to…
pontiff | March 2, 2009Stephen 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 :)!
pontiff | February 27, 2009On 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 his daughter is more responsible that President Obama]
Oh my! The horror. Actually spending money studying diseases that infect 65 million U.S. citizens. Yes Rep. Ryan, it would be a real shame if that money improved the lives of those 65 million people (and maybe it might even help, you know,…
pontiff | February 26, 2009For those scientists out on the job market this year, the following from TheLadders.com might be a little scary:
Two annihilated industries and...science.
pontiff | February 25, 2009David 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. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to become a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research program in Quantum Information Processing. Guelph is centrally located in southern Ontario, and the candidate will have the opportunity to participate in activities at the nearby…