pontiff | February 6, 2008An interesting odd/even effect:Although no official count was available early Wednesday, state Democratic party officials predict that Clinton will get 20 to 30 more delegates when all results are in. Because of the relatively close finish, they are likely to split delegates in most of the congressional districts with an even number of delegates, while Clinton will pick up an extra delegate in districts that offer an odd number.
So did the campaign's know about this effect and spend more money and put in more effort in districts with an odd number of delegates? Is that even the correct…
pontiff | February 5, 2008"Jumper" is a new movie about a man (okay, Hayden Christensen, aka Anakin Skywalker) who can teleport himself anywhere just by thinking about it. Quantum teleportation is a procedure where quantum information can be transported using entanglement and a few bits of classical communication. The distance between these two is, *ahem*, rather large. The New York Times today has an article about an event at MIT (that other institute of technology) which brought together the director of Jumper, star Hayden Christensen, and MIT professors Ed Farhi and Max Tegmark.
The article is fun, with the…
pontiff | February 4, 2008Microsoft, which to me is that big collection of buildings across the lake where I yell when Vista bogs down my laptop, has announced a new Research Lab to be located in Cambridge, MA. It will be run by mathematical physicist turned comptuer scientist Jennifer Tour Chayes who was the manager for Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Cryptography at Microsoft Research in Redmond.
For some strange reason I get the feeling that Microsoft and Google are playing a large game of Risk with the pieces being replaced by offices, and the countries being replaced by top teir university towns.
pontiff | February 4, 2008The Turing Award, the Nobel Prize of computing (but really how can we fault Nobel for not having a computing prize when computers for Nobel would have been people), has been won by Edmund Clarke (CMU), E. Allen Emerson (UT at Austin) and Joseh Sifakis (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CARNOT Institute) for research on Model Checking. The citation readsFor their role in developing Model-Checking into a highly effective
verification technology, widely adopted in the hardware and software
industries.
The winners will share a $250,000 prize ($150,000 more this year due to the sponser…
pontiff | February 3, 2008Behold: my new research group webpage! This answers part of the question "what do academics do while watching the Super Bowl?"
pontiff | February 1, 2008Colorado State scores Keck money, D-Wave scores venture money, QICIQ 2008, Reversible computation tutorial, and a review of "Quantum Hoops."
The Keck Foundation has given some dinero to Colorado State for quantum computing research:
The primary goal of the research program is to demonstrate laser cooling and trapping of a single silicon atom. Then, on demand, researchers will ionize the atom and deliver it to the desired qubit location with nanometer accuracy, said Siu Au Lee, a professor of physics at CSU and principal investigator for the program.
D-Wave has closed a $17 million dollar…
pontiff | January 31, 2008I enjoy reviewing papers even knowing it sucks up too much of my time. I mean what better way is there to get out any inner angst than to take it out on the writers of a sub par paper? (That's a joke people.) Reading Michael Nielsen's post taking on the h-index (Michael's posting more these days!), reminded me of a problem I've always wondered about for reviewing.
Suppose that in the far far future, there are services where you get to keep control of your academic identity (like which papers you authored, etc.) and this method is integrated with reviewing systems of scientific journals. (…
pontiff | January 29, 2008Blue Monday, which was January 21, of this year, is supposedly (and I say supposedly when I might have better said, erroneously) the most depressing day of the year. Now there are plenty of reasons given for this: you finally realized your New Year's resolutions aren't going to happen, you've just gotten your credit card bill for all that rampant consumerism you participated in over the holidays, etc. But, if you're in academia, you know the real reason to be depressed during this time of the year. That's right: it faculty search season. Since everyone else is talking about it and…
pontiff | January 28, 2008The CRA Policy Blog has the latest info on the impact of the underfunding of science in the budget. In particularNSF will likely fund 1,000 fewer research grants in FY 08 than planned and the average award size will be smaller.
Sweet! Data to update my probability of employment. Oh wait. (Note for those playing along at home, I think the relevant total number of NSF grants is on the order of 11500.)
pontiff | January 24, 2008Michael sends me a link to an article with the name of the new James Bond movie: Quantum of Solace. If compassion is quantized (down that path leads madness), I really hope I'm in a region where the correspondence principle applies.
pontiff | January 23, 2008Fortune has put out its list of the top 100 companies to work for. The Google Monster is number one. Washington state does pretty good, as it is in a tie for fourth in the total number of companies on the list with headquarters in the state. (Per capita it comes in third, losing to Delaware and D.C.)
Looking through their article on "10 fascinating Googlers" I found Wei-Hwa Huang. Hey, he was in my class at Caltech! Indeed Wei-Hwa was responsible for one of my favorite stories about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. Huh?
Wei-Hwa, you see, is a world class puzzle…
pontiff | January 21, 2008A while ago a message from Kris Krogh appeared on Scirate.com about ariXiv:0712.3934 stating Kris' belief that the paper appeared under a pseudonym (the comment contains the contents of the link which was sent to the arxiv's administrator.) Today I checked with the arxiv and found that the paper had been removed:This submission has been removed because 'G.Forst' is a pseudonym of a physicist based in Italy who is unwilling to submit articles under his own name. This is in explicit violation of arXiv policies.
Roughly similar content, contrasting the relative merits of the LAGEOS and GP-B…
pontiff | January 21, 2008Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel has a scathing op-ed in the San Fransisco Chronicle on the recent spending omnibus and its effect on science funding (via Computing Research Policy Blog):What are they thinking? When will they wake up? It may already be too late; but I genuinely think the citizenry of this country wants the United States to compete. If only our elected leaders weren't holding us back.
Of course, I can hear the cries already: typical liberal west coaster spouting more government spending. But, oh. Doh. Okay, well what can basic science research possibly lead to anyway.
pontiff | January 21, 2008This weekend was "bottling weekend." Here is one of the final products:
That's right, the Villa Sophia, 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon "Gruccia" has found its way, with a little labor on my part, out of the carboys and into the bottle. This year's wine is called "gruccia." You see at one point during the winemaking a bung made its way into the carboy, and well, you can guess how I got it out, can't you?
pontiff | January 18, 2008California company claims steps in human cloning. Witch burning outside of their laboratory to follow this evening.
pontiff | January 18, 2008Second Life, the virtual community, bans banks which aren't banks in the real world.Since the collapse of Ginko Financial in August 2007, Linden Lab has received complaints about several in-world "banks" defaulting on their promises. These banks often promise unusually high rates of L$ return, reaching 20, 40, or even 60 percent annualized.
Second Life imitating the first?
pontiff | January 17, 2008Does anyone know of an RSS reader which adjust the order of your feeds depending on which feeds you tend to click on / spend time reading?