Martin Gardner has passed away at age 95. I fondly remember going back through the back issues of “Scientific American” as a kid and devouring Gardner’s “Mathematical Recreations” column (along with the similar columns written by Hofstadter and Dewdney.) If I have any mathematical skills, I probably owe a large chunk of them to some of Gardner’s puzzles. Indeed, in my mind, Scientific American went from a pretty good first rate science magazine, to something less than stellar, when they ended these regular columns along with their “Amateur Scientist” column. (And don’t get me started on the “Skeptic” column in the Scientific American, which yes, I know is ironic considering Gardner’s job after the SciAm gig ended.)
AQIS'10
AQIS’10 submission and registration is now open:
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The 10th Asian Conference on
Quantum Information Science (AQIS’10)
http://www.qci.jst.go.jp/aqis10/
Tutorials: August 27, 2010
Conference: August 28 – 31, 2010
The University of Tokyo, Japan
Submission Deadline (2 to 10 pages): June 14 (Monday), 2010
Notification of Acceptance: July 12 (Monday), 2010
Final version (2 pages): July 30 (Friday), 2010
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Apologies for cross-postings.
Please send to interested colleagues and students.
We would like to draw your attention to
the 10th Asian Conference on Quantum Information Science.
The website is now open for registration and paper submission.
AQIS’10 is a meeting focused on quantum information science and technology. Its broad scope includes advances in various fields such as quantum physics, computer science, mathematics and information technologies. This event is the memorable tenth conference which builds upon a successful series of EQIS’01-05 and AQIS’06-09 conferences.
AQIS’10 will take place on the University of Tokyo from August 27 to 31. Details about the conference are available via the website.
http://www.qci.jst.go.jp/aqis10/
The paper submission deadline is
23:59, Monday, June 14th, 2010, (Pacific Daylight Time).
Tutorial Lecturers:
* Charles Bennett (IBM)
“Quantum information theory”
* Harry Buhrman (Univ. of Amsterdam)
“Quantum non-locality”
* Richard Jozsa (Univ. of Cambridge)
“Classical simulation of quantum circuits”
* Akihisa Tomita (Hokkaido Univ.)
“Interplay between quantum computation and quantum information”
Keynote Speakers:
* David Wineland (NIST, U.S.A.)
* Andrew Yao (Tsinghua Univ.)
Invited Speakers:
* Dagmar Bruss (HHU Dusseldorf)
* Harry Buhrman (Univ. of Amsterdam)
* Bill Coish (Univ. of Waterloo)
* Jonathan P. Dowling (Louisiana St. Univ.)
* Yasunobu Nakamura (NEC Corp.)
* Artur Ekert (NUS, Univ. of Oxford)
We are looking forward to seeing you in Tokyo.
Chairs:
Steering Committee Chair
Jozef Gruska (Masaryk Univ.)
Program Committee Chair
Kae Nemoto (NII)
Program Committee Co-Chair
Michele Mosca (IQC, Univ. of Waterloo, and Perimeter Institute)
Conference Committee Chair
Hiroshi Imai (Univ. of Tokyo / ERATO-SORST)
Organizers:
Hiroshi Imai (chair) (Univ. of Tokyo / ERATO-SORST)
More Canadian Brain Drain, No Joking, Eh
David sends me an article about $200 million spent to recruit 19 researchers to Canada via a program called the Canada Excellence Research Chairs. Two of these positions are, not too surprisingly, in quantum computing/communication: David Cory (formerly from MIT, now at Waterloo) and Bertrand Reulet (formerly from Université Paris-Sud XI, now at Université de Sherbrooke) Congrats to these two for receiving these chairs! Programs like this are always interesting and it will be fascinating to see how effective they are over time.
In related news, there is no such program in the United States. 🙂
Bacon Overload
Bacon has been overflowing my inbox. Some bits…
Hahaha: Email and Bacon.
Also: Kosher Fail.
Bringing home the bacon. I bring it home every night.
Your own Bacon Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers. Someone who cares (enough to harden you arteries.)
Then of course there is the double down. Always when you’ve got hard 11 unless the dealer is showing an ace.
Some food “ideas”: Smoked Bacon Wrapped Bacon and Bacon Egg Loaf. Bacon with a side of bacon, please.
Who Needs Aircars When the Future Looks Like This?
My first real visceral realization of the non-commutative nature of driving a car was the first time I tried to parallel park and attempted to pull front end first into the space.
Holy Cow!
Chris sends me arXiv:1005.1381:
A Mathematical Model for the Dynamics and Synchronization of Cows
Authors: Jie Sun, Erik M. Bollt, Mason A. Porter, Marian S. Dawkins
Abstract: We formulate a mathematical model for daily activities of a cow (eating, lying down, and standing) in terms of a piecewise affine dynamical system. We analyze the properties of this bovine dynamical system representing the single animal and develop an exact integrative form as a discrete-time mapping. We then couple multiple cow “oscillators” together to study synchrony and cooperation in cattle herds. We comment on the relevant biology and discuss extensions of our model. With this abstract approach, we not only investigate equations with interesting dynamics but also develop interesting biological predictions. In particular, our model illustrates that it is possible for cows to synchronize emph{less} when the coupling is increased.
Includes an udder disaster of a last line: “Milking these ideas as much as possible should prove to be very insightful from both theoretical and practical perspectives.”
Liquid Mountaineering
Lidar Interview
Here’s an interview with Daniel Lidar whose was the postdoc who first taught me quantum error correction (and more.) No, not that LIDAR!
Note to all you job seekers, even in your darkest hours know that you have friends out there who are working to change the abysmal state of quantum computing hiring:
I would also hope to see a wave of new faculty positions at US institutions for quantum computation theoreticians and experimentalists. We now have the first generation of students and postdocs trained in this field, many of whom are finding it very difficult to land faculty positions in the US, and are forced to seek such employment in other countries. This is most unfortunate, and I hope that US universities will reverse this trend.
Hella! Huh? Meh. + "How Many Licks? Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything"
What prefix do you use for 1027? If Austin Sendak has his way, it will be ">hella (also Time article here.) The diameter of the observable universe is about one hellameter. As a fellow member of the club “people from Yreka, CA who do physics,” I strongly support Austin’s idea. Indeed it now tops my list of proposed prefix changes, a list that includes “tiny-” for 10-5 and my former front runner for 1027 “bronto-.”
But the real question is what do we call 10x when we don’t know x? I suggest the prefix “huh”. Examples: “My answer of about 5 huh-people wasn’t good enough to land me a job at McKinsey and Company.” “Einstein calculated that the cosmological constant was about huh inverse seconds squared.”
Another prefix that is needed is to express when you don’t really care what the hell the size is. For this I might suggest “meh.” Example: “The circumference of a African swallow’s leg is about mehmeters, thus rendering it incapable of carrying a coconut.”
Which reminds me. A while back I got a review copy of How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything