Madeleine L’Engle has passed away at age 88. I will never forgive her for leading me to believe that scientists could live an idyllic life in the country in a 200 year old farmhouse. Okay, well maybe I’ll forgive her. Especially considering that she was the first to introduce me to the “tesseract.”
Postdocs, Postdocs
Ann of Caltech sends me some postdoc positions at the institute of technology:
CENTER FOR THE PHYSICS OF INFORMATION
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Postdoctoral Research Positions
The Center for the Physics of Information at the California Institute of Technology will have postdoctoral scholar positions available beginning in September 2008. Researchers interested in all aspects of the interface between information science and physical science are invited
to apply.
Please apply on-line at http://www.ist.caltech.edu/joinus/positions.html#postdoc. Electronic copies of your curriculum vitae, publication list, statement of research interests, and three letters of recommendation are required.
The deadline for receipt of all application materials is December 17, 2007.
The California Institute of Technology is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Women, minorities, veterans and disabled persons are encouraged to apply.
INSTITUTE FOR QUANTUM INFORMATION
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Postdoctoral Research Positions
The Institute for Quantum Information at the California Institute of Technology will have postdoctoral scholar positions available beginning in September 2008. Researchers interested in all aspects of quantum information science are invited to apply.
Please apply on-line at www.iqi.caltech.edu. Electronic copies of your curriculum vitae, publication list, statement of research interests, and three letters of recommendation are required. The deadline for receipt of all application materials is December 17, 2007.
The California Institute of Technology is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Women, Minorities, Veterans and Disabled Persons are encouraged to apply.
I’m happy to see the CEPI ad since we really need to counter the number of quantum computing “centre”s out there with the wrong spelling of the word “center”.
Back From Japan
Back from Kyoto, Japan where I attended AQIS07. What time is it right now anyway? (And is there a selective pressure in today’s scientific fields towards people who suffer less jet lag?) AQIS 2008 will be held in Seoul, South Korea.
Here is a picture of me enjoying the awesome hospitality of our hosts at a delicious dinner. This was a dinner held on top of a creek in the mountains north of Kyoto (picture thanks to the quantum computing picture achive, a.k.a Charlie Bennett).
There we a lot of good talks at AQIS, the program can be found here. My favorite line of the entire conference was definitely when one quantum information theorist responded, when asking why a particular quantity was used in a proof, “because we are trying to keep Bob from doing something stupid.” Something about designing proofs guided by keeping the protocol participants from being stupid struck me as quite funny.
The talk which I liked the most was probably the talk by Alexandre Blais (Université de Sherbrooke) on coupling superconducting qubits to microwaves. Much fantastic work has been recently performed (most?) at Yale on coupling superconducting qubits to microwaves (see here for example.) What is cool about this setup is that one can achieve coupling between the superconducting qubits and light which is in a strong-coupling limit, much as is done in cavity QED. Strong-coupling means that the light and qubit coupling is much stronger than other couplings of these two systems to the rest of the world (i.e. such as the rate at which the qubit decoheres or the photons leak out of the cavity you are using.) In particular this allows for very robust coupling/transmission of quantum information between the superconducting qubit and light. What was exciting about Alexandre’s talk was at the end of his talk about recent experimental results from Yale to be published soon about the coupling of two superconducting qubits to each other using the microwave field as an intermediary. Very cool stuff. It seems to me that this offers many of the benefits of traditional cavity QED for building a quantum computer, but in a much more scalable manner than is achievable in cavity QED. It definitely will be interesting to watch as these systems become better characterized and as more complex devices get implemented.
Update: This work is now on the archive at 0708.2135. I
Envelope Calculations
Visiting Shtetl-Optimized always brings out the neologista in me. Reading tonight led me to the following idea for a useful phrase:
Front of the envelope calculation A calculation so simple that you don’t even need to use the back of the envelope to carry it out.
Quantum Peace
JohnQPublic points me to a new use of quantum theory. World peace:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsvEkPNitdQ&mode=related&search=[/youtube]
At about 4:30 you’ll find my favorite line: “…the radiated influence of peace in the environment grows roughly as the square of the number of people doing it together…” Can we expect Grover speedups in achieving world peace if we use quantum theory?
Cool Image Resizing Technique
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etechcrunch%2Ecom%2F2007%2F08%2F28%2Fadobe%2Dhires%2Dco%2Dinventor%2Dof%2Dimage%2Dresizer%2Dtechnology%2F[/youtube]
All Me, All the Time, Yuck!
Because, of course, you’ve all been wondering about goings on in my life. Of couse you have, that’s why you’re wasting your time reading blogs on the intertubes, no?
- Look, I’m a small part physicist! Which part has yet to be determined.
- Please, please, do not let bacn catch on. (Thanks to Brian for pointing me to this link.)
- Anyone else going to AQIS 2007 on United Flight 0885, SFO to KIX, 12:30pm Sep 1? Over eleven hours in an airplane sounds like fun doesn’t it?
- The two trips I took this summer, to Panama and to Orcas Island, have both coincided with resignations from the Bush white house (Gonzales and Rove.) If anyone wants to get rid of Dick Cheney, they might consider sending me on a trip 🙂
- The tomatos have grown tall, a mole is attacking our yard, the puppy ate a pillow and dug many holes, the wine needs to be bottle before I leave for Japan, and I broke the toilet trying to fix the thing I broke when I was trying to fix that other thing which broke. Yes, life at Villa Sophia is good.
Out of Body
From a New York Times article:
Using virtual reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — in healthy people, according to experiments being published in the journal Science.
Link to links to articles here.
Doesn’t this make you want to go out and buy some VR goggles, a camera, and a stick? Seriously if someone set up a stand in a mall to do this, I’d want a ride. Reminds me of a story my dad told me about how he would sell electric shocks to the local kids instead of lemonade. It makes me worry, however, whether someday they will be able to induce Alien abduction experiences as well. Might not be quite as pleasant.
Seventy Four Versions on the Wall, Take One Down, Pass it Around…
Is gr-qc/0504083 the world record holder for number of versions on the arXiv? Seventy four is a lot of versions.
Network of Superheros
Um…arXiv:0708.2410:
Title: How to become a superhero
Authors: P. M. Gleiser
We analyze a collaboration network based on the Marvel Universe comic books. First, we consider the system as a binary network, where two characters are connected if they appear in the same publication. The analysis of degree correlations reveals that, in contrast to most real social networks, the Marvel Universe presents a disassortative mixing on the degree. Then, we use a weight measure to study the system as a weighted network. This allows us to find and characterize well defined communities. Through the analysis of the community structure and the clustering as a function of the degree we show that the network presents a hierarchical structure. Finally, we comment on possible mechanisms responsible for the particular motifs observed.