Author Archives: sflammia

Uncertain on Uncertainty

Posted on 9/27/2012 by sflammia

Over at BBC News, there is an article about a recently published paper (arXiv) by Lee Rozema et al. that could lead to some, ehm, uncertainty about the status of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP). Before dissecting the BBC article, let’s look at the paper … Continue reading →

Posted in Nitpicker's Paradiso, Science By Press Release | 6 Comments

Taken to School

Posted on 9/25/2012 by sflammia

Here is a fine piece of investigative journalism about a very wide spread scam that is plaguing academia. Definitely worth a watch.

Posted in Education, Fragment, Funny Ha Ha, The Loony Bin Called Academia | Comments Off

Funding boost for the arXiv

Posted on 8/28/2012 by sflammia

This is fantastic news: starting this January, the Simons Foundation will provide the Cornell University Library with up to US $300k per year (for the next five years) of matching funds to help ensure the continued sustainability of arXiv.org. The funds are … Continue reading →

Posted in $$$, Economics, Open Science, Scientific Publishing | 4 Comments

Alexei Kitaev wins Fundamental Physics Prize

Posted on 7/31/2012 by sflammia

Alexei Kitaev was just named as a co-recipient of the inaugural Fundamental Physics Prize, along with 8 other distinguished physicists. This is a brand new prize which was started by a Russian billionaire named Yuri Milner. More at the New York … Continue reading →

Posted in $$$, Announcement | 7 Comments

This post was supported by Goldman-Sachs Grant No. GS98039

Posted on 7/30/2012 by sflammia

After my earlier post about the defense budget, I thought it might be nice if there were some other similar-sized revenue streams that we could tap into other than DoD funding.  It got me thinking… who has the most money? … Continue reading →

Posted in $$$, Science | 5 Comments

Matt Hastings wins a Simons Investigator 2012 award

Posted on 7/26/2012 by sflammia

The Simons Foundation has just announced the recipients of the Simons Investigator awards for 2012. These awards are similar in spirit to the MacArthur awards: the recipients did not know they were under consideration for the grant, and you can’t … Continue reading →

Posted in $$$, Announcement | 5 Comments

Rounding Error in the Defense Budget

Posted on 7/23/2012 by sflammia

I recently (and somewhat belatedly) came across the following news item: NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy The gist of the article is that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) just donated two telescopes with greater optical capabilities than … Continue reading →

Posted in $$$, Science | 4 Comments

Quantum Frontiers

Posted on 7/9/2012 by sflammia

As a postdoc at Caltech, I would often have lunch with John Preskill.  About once per week, we would play a game. During the short walk back, I would think of a question to which I didn’t know the answer. Then … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging, Caltech, Physics, Quantum | 1 Comment