Science 2.0: Academic Reader

A new website of great interest to those of us punished under the crush of information in science, Academic Reader. Created by (I hope I have this right) Michael Nielsen, Peter Rhode, and Alexei Gilchrist the website is a way to manage your academic reading:

The Academic Reader is a new web site that makes it easier to keep track of your scientific reading. Rather than going to multiple websites every day to keep up, we pull all the sources together in a single location, so you can keep track easily. Sources include the preprint arXiv, the Physical Review, and Nature, and many new sources will be added in the months to come, including sources outside physics.

Good stuff, check it out!
And yes, Scirate.com is still down. The open archive protocol they are using is back up but has been changed in ways that may take a bit to fix is still down. Hopefully I can get the site running again before I drop off the edge of the internet and get married.

PCP Slinging Journalists

So many times scientists are very harsh on science journalists. Thus it is refreshing to see this article in the MIT Technology Review by Jason Pontin on D-Wave’s recent Orion quantum computer. The article includes an interview with D-Wave’s Geordie Rose by Pontin which is rather refreshing mostly for the fact that Pontin pulls out the PCP theorem on Geordie (Gunslinging computer scientists come equiped with the PCP theorem strapped to their belts. Only recently were the schematics for how to build this gun made accessible to mere mortals like us physicists.) The article seems rather fair to me, airing both Geordie’s views as well as asking the hard questions, includes criticisms from Scott and Umesh Vazirani, as well as a more moderate view from Seth Llloyd. Whether you are satisfied with the answers Geordie gives, of course, is a different matter! For example, me I don’t think that the current setup they have scales if they continue with the same setup they have here (energy gap goes like one over problem size, I might buy that thermalizing helps a bit, but am extremely skeptical when the energy from the environment will swamp the energy spectrum), but this is different from believing that it’s not possible to modify the path they are taking to actually scale their system.
Update: Here is the New York Times version of the article, where, sadly the PCP theorem has been removed. Sad, I mean all the latte-sipping Volvo-driving lefties I know can speak elegantly in an instancet about the PCP theorem and approximation algorithms.

Why I Loved Caltech

From an article in today’s New York Times on college admissions:

But with more and more students filling out ever more applications, schools like the California Institute of Technology received a record number of applications this year — 3,595, or 8 percent more than last year — and admitted 576 students. Among so many talented applicants, a prospective student with perfect SAT scores was not unusual, said Jill Perry, a Caltech spokeswoman.
“The successful students have to have shown some passion for science and technology in high school or their personal life,” Ms. Perry said. “That means creating a computer system for your high school, or taking a tractor apart and putting it back together.”

I’m imagining a box on the Caltech application which says “Check here if you have ever taken a tractor apart and put it back together.” 🙂

QuJoke

Okay, so I’ve heard qubits and qutrits, but until recently hadn’t heard ququarts. More googling revealed qupents. Okay, then after a little more research I found an old 1999 paper which, while not containing a six level quantum system, did contain,

In particular, our protocol transfers entanglement from a pair of quantum correlated
light fields to a pair of trapped atoms in a process of quantum state exchange, or qusex.

Ahem.

Taxing Fools

This time of year always reminds me of the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm effect.
Whah? Well it’s due entirely to this colloquium on the non-abelian Aharonov-Bohm effect given by John Preskill:

This talk was originally schedule for April 1st. I was delighted. I’ve always wanted to give a talk on April 1st, and this subject seemed like the ideal one for that date. Then, in a stunning reversal, the talk was rescheduled for April 15th. I was shocked. Suddently, instead of speaking on the funniest day of the year, I was speaking on the least funny day of the year. I know that everyone is in a somber mood on April 15th, so I have decided that there will be no jokes in this talk. I’m sorry. I hope that you don’t find the talk to be overly taxing.

Classic! The closest I’ve ever come to giving a talk on a holiday was when I gave a talk here at UW on Valentines day. I’m still disappointed that I didn’t have enough jokes about the day. I’m sure my audience would have loved it.

Are You a Sink? Are You a Source?

In a fit of self-centeredness (okay, maybe I’m always in such a fit 🙂 ) I decided to see if I’m a source or a sink on the arXiv (or at least the arXiv as seen by Citebase.) Below are a list of my papers (excluding my thesis) which I’ve posted on the archive along with citation numbers and reference numbers. Using this I can see whether I am a source or a sink on the graph of citations.

Id Citations References Difference
quant-ph/0612107 0 47 -47
quant-ph/0610088 0 31 -31
quant-ph/0601001 4 51 -47
quant-ph/0506023 10 59 -49
quant-ph/0504083 8 32 -24
quant-ph/0503047 2 16 -14
quant-ph/0501044 14 48 -34
quant-ph/0407082 16 19 -3
quant-ph/0405115 2 36 -34
quant-ph/0405115 4 38 -34
quant-ph/0307148 2 28 -26
quant-ph/0304076 27 11 16
quant-ph/0208057 8 5 3
quant-ph/0112013 24 21 3
quant-ph/0102140 21 11 10
quant-ph/0012018 20 14 6
quant-ph/0009088 20 7 13
quant-ph/0008070 13 22 -9
quant-ph/0007013 29 51 -22
quant-ph/0005116 184 22 162
quant-ph/0004064 147 57 90
quant-ph/9909058 112 23 89
quant-ph/9908064 32 46 -14
quant-ph/9907096 4 22 -18
quant-ph/9902041 42 36 6
quant-ph/9809081 77 17 60

So what’s the verdict? Well, one, it is depressing to make this list on Monday. And two, I’m a source by 52 citations. That means I’ve generated like six citations per year over my career. If I include my thesis in the above table, I definitely become a sink. Apparently writing your thesis really is a waste of time 😉
Anti-troll: And of course, all of this doesn’t matter. But it’s fun and self indulgant.