O brave new quantum world!
Throwing off what must be a monkey of cosmological size, the Caltech men’s basketball team won their first conference game since 1985, 46-45 victory over Occidental. For those counting that is 310 straight conference loses:
New York Times article. What the world was like when Caltech men’s basketball last won a conference game. ESPN coverage.
Now I just hope they don’t let their basketball program take over the school at the expense of their academic reputation 😉
Via @fortnow, Wolfram Alpha is now offering answers to classical complexity queries (see blog post at the WolframAlpha Blog).
Coming online now: http://tedxcaltech.com/. See the Optimizer pontificate about P versus NP (now who can verify the Feynman quote at the beginning?)
and two prestigious professors goof around:
I’m trying to put together a list of people who have been hired in the United States universities in CS departments who do theoretical quantum computing over the last decade. So the requirements I’m looking for are (a) hired into a tenure track position in a US university with at least fifty percent of their appointment in CS, (b) hired after 2001, and (c) they would say their main area of research is quantum information science theory.
Here is my current list:
Apologies to anyone I’ve missed! So who have I missed? Please comment!
Update: Steve asks for a similar list in physics departments. Here is my first stab at such a list…though it’s a bit harder because the line between quantum computing theorist, and say, AMO theorist who studies systems that might be quantum computing is difficult.
Physicists, quantum computing theory,
I’m sure I missed a lot hear, please help me fill it in.
Exciting times for machine learning and artificial intelligence fans: IBM’s Watson computer versus two of the flesh bound starting tonight, Feb 14, 2011, on the game show Jeopardy. And not just any humans, I guess, but Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter (I suppose the latter is less known to non-Jeopardy fanatics.) Too bad they aren’t competing against Seth Lloyd (someone have a link to the game show Seth won?) Here is a nice Nova special on the machine and the challenge. I sure hope Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the audience so he can tell us whether Watson is a good Terminator or a bad Terminator.
Update: Here is an amusing curmudgeonly discussion of Watson by Noam Chomsky. Don’t worry Noam, I’m sure Watson won’t feel sad about all your mean words 🙂
The TQC 2011 deadline for submissions is fast approaching: January 24, 2011. You know you want to visit Madrid in May, right?
