Author: dabacon

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Watch NSF Spend?

The NSF has put up a “recovery” page for the stimulus bill: http://www.nsf.gov/recovery. Interestingly it appears that there is an link to an rss feed for “weekly reports.” These appear to be excel files of the spending done by the NSF under the stimulus act as of that week (so far nada has been spent.)
Cool, now we can set up a betting pool for spending amounts as of a given date 🙂

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NEC Quantum Internships

Martin writes to tell me that there are student internships in quantum information technology available at NEC this summer (see here and here):

The Quantum IT group at NEC Laboratories America, Princeton, NJ has summer internship positions available for graduate students interested in quantum computing. Areas of interest include:

  • Quantum algorithms
  • Quantum communication
  • Quantum complexity
  • Quantum cryptography
  • Quantum error correction
  • Quantum fault tolerance

More information about the Quantum IT group can be found at Quantum IT Group Website. Interested students can send their resume to internship [[[at]]] nec-labs.com and reference “Quantum-Intern” in the subject line.

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Nine Days, Four Qubits

Stephen sent me a fun google query, discovered by one of his students:
Those are some pretty impressive four entangled qubits: sticking around for nine days without decohering :)!

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Earth to Republicans: Curing STDs Would Probably Be a Good Thing

On Morning Edition this morning, there was a story about the annual Conservative Political Action Conference which contained a line which made me guffaw:

Representative Paul Ryan: “[rant on spending in stimulus plan]…$400 million dollars to study sexually transmitted diseases!” [rant on about how his daughter is more responsible that President Obama]

Oh my! The horror. Actually spending money studying diseases that infect 65 million U.S. citizens. Yes Rep. Ryan, it would be a real shame if that money improved the lives of those 65 million people (and maybe it might even help, you know, those outside of the United States as well…I know, I know blasphemy.)
Now I’m all for the Republican’s ranting on the stimulus bill and spending, but really guys, why do you keep picking on the scientific studies (Jindal’s “something called volcano monitoring”, McCain’s Bear DNA)?

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QI Position at the University of Guelph

David Kribbs sends along info about a quantum information position at the University of Guelph:

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Guelph invites applications for a full-time tenure track position to start 1 July 2009 or thereafter, at the rank of Assistant Professor. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to become a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research program in Quantum Information Processing. Guelph is centrally located in southern Ontario, and the candidate will have the opportunity to participate in activities at the nearby Institute for Quantum Computing and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, and the Fields Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Toronto. Minimum qualifications are a Ph.D. in a relevant discipline, outstanding promise in research, and evidence of strong teaching potential. The successful candidate will be expected to actively participate in our graduate programs emphasizing applied mathematics and statistics. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. A review of applications will begin April 3, 2009 and continue until the position is filled. Candidates should submit curriculum vitae, research statement and teaching statement and arrange for three letters of reference to be sent directly to
Professor David W. Kribs
QIS Appointments Committee
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1.
Fax (519)837-0221.
E-mail: qispos [[[(at)]]] uoguelph.ca
All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply. Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority. The University of Guelph is committed to an employment equity program that includes special measures to achieve diversity among its faculty and staff. We therefore particularly encourage applications from qualified aboriginal Canadians, persons with disabilities, members of visible minorities, and women. The position is subject to final budgetary confirmation.

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Zotero 1.5 Beta and More

Zotero, a Firefox extension for managing research sources, has announced the release of Zotero 1.5 beta. I’ve heard good things from those who use Zotero. This major update adds some nifty synchronizing and automatic backup. The next step after this for Zotero, I believe, is adding sharing capabilities.
By the way does anyone know what happened to arXiv on you harddrive? It’s not been updated in over a year, which is a shame. Personally I find the arXiv’s lack of publicity accessible methods for obtaining the full text kind of a bummer. There is so much fun you could have given the ability to have the arXiv on your own local system. Sure there are bandwidth issues, but I’ve been hanging around long enough with computer scientists to know that there are serious good solutions to these problems as well.

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You Down With Symmetry? You Know Me

For those local to Seattle, I’m talking tomorrow in the Paul Allen center:

TIME: 1:30 — 2:30 pm, Tuesday, Feb 24, 2009
PLACE: CSE 503
SPEAKER: Dave Bacon, University of Washington
ABSTRACT:
Quantum computers can outperform their classical brethren at a variety of algorithmic tasks. Uncovering exactly when quantum computers can exponentially outperform classical computers is one of the central questions facing the theory of quantum algorithms today. In this talk I will argue that a key piece of this puzzle is the role played by symmetry in quantum algorithms. I will show how this point of view can be used to make progress in finding new quantum algorithms. This talk will assume no prior knowledge of quantum theory, but hopefully by the end of the talk you will have enough to begin to understand quantum algorithms.