pontiff | October 5, 2009The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2009 has been announced and has been awarded to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak for "how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase." I'm sure the medicalbioblogs here on Scienceblogs will have some fine coverage of this. But one thing jumps out at me: Carol Greider was, I think, a graduate student when she worked did this work! So, dear graduate student procrastinating by reading this blog, please get back to work and win that there Nobel Prize!
Oh, and of course, in the Nobel counting game…
pontiff | October 3, 2009Jorge sends along the answer...Obese skunk put on vegetarian diet to battle bacon addiction.
Mr. Bumble the skunk loves his bacon sandwiches, but his new owners have put him on a vegetarian diet to help shed the extra weight they've added to his frame.
pontiff | October 2, 2009This morning Mrs. Pontiff read me a review out of the New York Times for the film "A Serious Man." The opening paragraph of the review gives you an idea why she thought it might be relevant to me:
Did you hear the one about the guy who lived in the land of Uz, who was perfect and upright and feared God? His name was Job. In the new movie version, "A Serious Man," some details have been changed. He's called Larry Gopnik and he lives in Minnesota, where he teaches physics at a university. When we first meet Larry, in the spring of 1967, his tenure case is pending, his son's bar mitzvah is…
pontiff | October 1, 2009Via physicsandcake, on some days I wish I was as dorky and as elegant as Carl Sagan:
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every…
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 24, 2009Note the new location (updated 9/28/09)
The Optimizer is coming to town, which is always fun:
TIME: 1:30-2:30 pm, Tuesday, September 29, 2009
PLACE: CSE 305
SPEAKER: Scott Aaronson (MIT)
TITLE: Quantum Money
ABSTRACT:
Ever since there's been money, there have been people trying to counterfeit it, and governments trying to stop them. In a remarkable 1969 manuscript, Stephen Wiesner raised the possibility of money whose authenticity would be guaranteed by the laws of quantum physics. However, Wiesner's money can only be verified by the bank that printed
it -- and the natural question of…
pontiff | September 23, 2009Over at Asymptotia, Len Adleman (the A in RSA, founder of DNA computation (but not the A in DNA!), and a discoverer of the APR primality testing algorithm) has a guest post about the foundations of quantum theory. Len suggests, if I understand him correctly, that one should attempt to understand the uncertainty arising in quantum theory as being of the same nature as the fact that there exists statements which cannot be proven true or false within a fixed set of powerful enough axioms.
First of all, I know I've heard a similar argument before, but can't seem to find the reference! Any…
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…
pontiff | September 22, 2009Two conferences. Renato Renner sends along a note about QIP 2010. The paper submission deadline is one month away:
QIP 2010 will be held in Zurich, Switzerland, January 18-22.
The submission deadline for contributed talks is 22 October 2009.
For more information, please see http://www.qip2010.ethz.ch
We look forward to welcoming you to Zurich,
the organizers
Also a conference on superconducting qubits in San Diego:
Please note our conference coming next spring; Coherence in Superconducting Qubits, to be held April 25-28, 2010, in San Diego, CA.
The agenda and registration are described at…
pontiff | September 21, 2009The Netflix prize for movie rankings has been awarded with the winner being BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos. This is very cool, but since it's Monday I think we need a good dose of reality. So here is the first comment on the New York Times Bit blog:
This sounds like an interesting project, but they ought to emphasize acquiring more movies for their online streaming than telling people what to watch. - kt
Good work, BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, but could you work on that tube that delivers my potato chips without me having to get up to go to the kitchen?
pontiff | September 17, 2009Get your daily dose of physics geekery--an interview with LHC director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer--
I need to learn to use "symmetry breaking" in my everyday speech.
pontiff | September 16, 2009Via Asymptotia, an interview with Murray Gell-Mann (who just turned 80. Happy Birthday Murray!) I particularly like the comments at the end of the article:
Battles of new ideas against conventional wisdom are common in science, aren't they?
It's very interesting how these certain negative principles get embedded in science sometimes. Most challenges to scientific orthodoxy are wrong. A lot of them are crank. But it happens from time to time that a challenge to scientific orthodoxy is actually right. And the people who make that challenge face a terrible situation. Getting heard, getting…
pontiff | September 15, 2009Those of you interested in the recent debate over math, beauty, economics, and Paul Krugman, and who are in New York on Oct 5 might be interested in a talk by Eric Weinstein at Columbia:
We will be taking a position opposite to the Claim of Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman:
"As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth."
It is our claim that in Economics as well as Physics, Mathematics and Biology, Elegance has been an essential guide to understanding how to properly construct the foundations of…
pontiff | September 14, 2009Yreka Phlox (phlox hirsuta) is a endangered perennial subshrub with small beautiful purple flowers native to my hometown of Yreka, California. And now, it's Yreka's' official flower. The official resolution from the city council:
"WHEREAS the Yreka Phlox is a hardy, enduring plant that grows in poor soils with little water and is known also as Phlox hirsuta; and
WHEREAS, its flower is a lovely and cheerful harbinger of spring; and
WHEREAS, the Yreka phlox is unique to our hometown; and
WHEREAS, the late City Attorney Larry Bacon had a vision for conservation of the Yreka Phlox which…
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?
pontiff | September 11, 2009Krugman clarifies:
I've been getting some comments from people who think my magazine piece was an attack on the use of mathematics in economics. It wasn't...So by all means let's have math in economics -- but as our servant, not our master.
Word.
(Of course the point I was trying to make was that I read the end of his article as suggesting that because economics must deal with the irrational and unpredictable behavior of humans, that it must therefor be messy and beyond elegant mathematical description. I don't buy this line of reasoning, as I think it is unknown whether the conclusion is…
pontiff | September 10, 2009As I discussed a few blog posts ago a serious hole in our apocalypse protection network was about to be compromised with the non-renewal of the website http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/. But it seems that Domenic has come to the rescue! See comment in the above blog post and the RSS feed update:
Domenic (a true fan of this site) was so distraught at the thought of missing out on further reassurances of the earth's continued existence that he's ponied up the registration cost for another year. So, we're not going anywhere after all.
1. The world has not ended. 2. The website is…
pontiff | September 10, 2009I have been riveted by yesterday's re-argument of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission before the United States Supreme Court. I mean who hasn't? At stake, as they say in media newspeak, is the entire state of campaign finance law (the astute reader will note the choice of words in this sentence and smile.) The Quantum Pontiff is not a lawyer, but he is the son of a lawyer, and greatly admires the ability of supreme court justices to herd the truth in directions more palatable to their preexisting exquisite judicial tastes (why is everyone staring at Justice Scalia?) So I would…
pontiff | September 9, 2009Any quantum people in the area of Japan in early December might be interested in ICQIT 2009. Submission deadline fast approaching (Sep 30):
The International Conference on Quantum Information and Technology ICQIT2009 will be held at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, Japan from 2nd to 5th December 2009. ICQIT2009 focuses on the following topics:
QKD and quantum networks,
Large Scale QIP and architecture design.
Quantum Information Theory
Quantum Algorithms
Measurement Based QIP
Optical QIP Implementations,
Solid State QIP implementations,
SQUID systems
ICQIT2009 is now open for…