Ha, via Pharyngula, a new kind of sorting algorithm, Intelligent Design Sort
More ArXiv News
The arxiv is changing the way it labels papers on 1/1/07, in part because the math arxiv almost reached one thousand papers per month. One thousand papers per month! Basically the new format is YYMM.NNNNvV where YY are the last two digits for the year (starting with 07), MM are the month, NNNN represents the number and vV is the version of the paper. The subject class will now be placed at the end of the paper: for example, “arXiv:0701.0001v1 [quant-ph].” Still no word on when the new naming scheme will be introduced.
Oh: and an interesting paper today, a “lost” paper of David Bohm’s quant-ph/0612002.
MyArXiv v0.01
So for those of you who’ve downloaded all of quant-ph or all of hep-th or all of gr-qc or maybe all three of them, you might be looking for a nice simple way to search the title and authors and abstract of these files with a nice simple application. Because using someone else’s software to do this would be too easy, and I needed an excuse to learn Python, I cobbled together a program to do exactly this, which I call MyArXiv. The program is bare bones. If you’re a windows user, simply install the .exe below and run the program. Then set the base directory to a directory which contains the quant-ph or hep-th or gr-qc folder which you uncommpressed from the arxiv on your hard drive torrent. Then reload the database (this will take a few moments.) You only need to reload the database whenever your local version of the arxiv changes. Searching should result in the appropriate links and double clicking on these should launch the pdf.
Here is the windows setup file: setup.exe.
Here is the python source as a text file: myarxiv.txt
I haven’t tried the program yet on any platfor besides windows, but getting it to run elsewhere should be fairly simple (it requires wxpython as well as buzhug) Comments welcome.
Screenshot (click for full size):
SQuInT 2007
My very favorite conference, the 9th anual SQuInT worshop, is going to be held at Caltech in February. Whoop, we can have quantum margaritas! Here is the announcement:
The Ninth Annual Workshop of Southwest Quantum Information and Technology (SQuInT) with be held on the Caltech campus, Pasadena CA, Februrary 16-18, 2007.
Invited Speakers:
Brian DeMarco (University of Illinois)
Dirk Bouwmeester (UC Santa Barbara)
Renato Renner (Cambridge)
Peter Zoller (Innsbruck)
Invited Tutorials:
Navin Khaneja (Harvard) “Quantum Control Theory”
Second Tutorial – TBA
The workshop web homepage is now available at
http://qmc.phys.unm.edu:16080/SQuInT/SQuInT07/
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: December 15.
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: January 22.
Note that researchers from outside of the network need to contact one of the organizers if they wish to attend (see the registration webpage).
Canadian Quantum Computing Dollars
University of Waterloo moves one step closer to taking over the quantum world and wins a 18 million dollar grant. Even in Canadian dollars thats a lot of moolah. Congrats to the Waterlooans, who, it seems will be getting a new centre (which is something like a “center” but might also be a lookout.)
Benasque 2007
A workshop in the beautiful Pyrenees anyone? Can life get any better for a quantum computing scientist than spending time in the mountains doing quantum information science?
BENASQUE 2007
Dear Colleague,
We are pleased to inform you that following a very successful editions of Benasque 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2005 we are organizing another workshop of the similar type in June 2007. This is to invite you to apply using
the electronic form that you can find on the website specified below. We encourage you to apply as soon as
possible and not later than the end of March 2007. The number of participants at the Benasque Centre at any given time is limited to about 50. We will do our best to accommodate most of the applicants, however, in some cases we may be unable to find suitable time slots for all of them, i.e. we cannot guarantee acceptance. Budget permitting, we expect to offer a modest allowance to some participants. Preference will be given to those staying for the whole
duration of the workshop.
We do hope to see you in Benasque next year!
Ignacio Cirac and Artur Ekert
_________________________________________________________
BENASQUE 2007
Title: Quantum Information
Venue: Benasque in the Spanish Pyrenees.
Date: The 3 week period 10– 29 June 2007.
Website: http://sophia.ecm.ub.es/
Registers at: http://benasque.ecm.ub.es/2007qi/2007qi.htm
_________________________________________________________
Got quant-ph?
I just noticed that the project to supply the arxiv as a single file has moved beyond covering hep-th and now includes quant-ph and gr-qc. Sweet! Closer and closer to all of physics on my harddrive.
Die Anthropic Reasoning! Die!
Okay, so the title’s a bit harsh, but this PRL by Starkman and Trotta (Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 201301 (2006) ) is an interesting read.
This Post Written Tomorrow
John Cramer, inventor of the transcational interpretation of quantum theory (not to be confused with transactions in software or hardware, although you may be surprised to learn that they aren’t totally unrelated! ) is apparently going to try (here at UW) to see if there is any juice behind his interpretation by looking for possible violations of quantum theory in the form of retrocasual signals. In related news Andrew Steane has an intriguing paper out on foundational questions where he pursues ideas similar to the transactional interpetation (quant-ph/0611047). Me? I love the transaction interpretation because mucking with time really makes my head spin (and time is such a strange, strange beast!)
Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow
Sweet, Crystal is open!