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Two Body Problem of a Different Kind

Two faculty postions in experimental Quantum Information and Nanoscience are being advertised at the University of Bristol. The positions are a part of the Centre (not sure what that word is) for Quantum Photonics and will be housed in the new £11M Nanoscience & Quantum Information Building. Since quantum and nano are so small they should be able to cram a lot of work in this new building! Oh wait, that’s not how it works.
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Delegate Strategy Questions

An interesting odd/even effect:

Although no official count was available early Wednesday, state Democratic party officials predict that Clinton will get 20 to 30 more delegates when all results are in. Because of the relatively close finish, they are likely to split delegates in most of the congressional districts with an even number of delegates, while Clinton will pick up an extra delegate in districts that offer an odd number.

So did the campaign’s know about this effect and spend more money and put in more effort in districts with an odd number of delegates? Is that even the correct strategy?

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"Jumper" Jumped by Farhi and Tegmark

“Jumper” is a new movie about a man (okay, Hayden Christensen, aka Anakin Skywalker) who can teleport himself anywhere just by thinking about it. Quantum teleportation is a procedure where quantum information can be transported using entanglement and a few bits of classical communication. The distance between these two is, *ahem*, rather large. The New York Times today has an article about an event at MIT (that other institute of technology) which brought together the director of Jumper, star Hayden Christensen, and MIT professors Ed Farhi and Max Tegmark.
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MSR Awarded Fifteen Armies

Microsoft, which to me is that big collection of buildings across the lake where I yell when Vista bogs down my laptop, has announced a new Research Lab to be located in Cambridge, MA. It will be run by mathematical physicist turned comptuer scientist Jennifer Tour Chayes who was the manager for Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Cryptography at Microsoft Research in Redmond.
For some strange reason I get the feeling that Microsoft and Google are playing a large game of Risk with the pieces being replaced by offices, and the countries being replaced by top teir university towns.

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ACM Turing Award 2007

The Turing Award, the Nobel Prize of computing (but really how can we fault Nobel for not having a computing prize when computers for Nobel would have been people), has been won by Edmund Clarke (CMU), E. Allen Emerson (UT at Austin) and Joseh Sifakis (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CARNOT Institute) for research on Model Checking. The citation reads

For their role in developing Model-Checking into a highly effective
verification technology, widely adopted in the hardware and software
industries.

The winners will share a $250,000 prize ($150,000 more this year due to the sponser ship of the Googlemonster.)