links for 2008-09-10

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KR Blog » The Wilderness of Memory "[Chabon asks] a valid question, but I can't escape the feeling that it reflects a particularly American idealization of childhood. Growing up slowly is a privilege of wealth, and few children throughout human history have enjoyed a childhood without the…
Physics - Protecting quantum superpositions from the outside world "Quantum information science relies on superpositions of quantum states with a definite phase relation, but such superpositions are inherently fragile against interactions with their environment. Fortunately, if some kind of…
DLMF: NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions An Abromowitz and Stegun for the Internet age. (tags: math science software physics books internet) Blog U.: Is TED Making Us Stupid? - Technology and Learning - Inside Higher Ed "Pre-TED, I used to be able to sit through a boring lecture or…
Discovering Biology in a Digital World : Another reason why science education sucks "According to the article almost 40% of the 59 science education specialists, surveyed in the California University system, were "seriously considering leaving" their current jobs and some (20%) were considering…

I had long suspected it was possible to create photons with different sorts of waveforms (certainly, the coherence length could be adjusted by means of the formation interval.) However, unimaginative textbooks often said or implied, that a photons is fully characterized by its polarization state and energy,momentum. I don't know why I didn't hear more about the prospects and theory of photon wave-shaping before.