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Earlier this week, Bill Gates got a lot of attention for releasing some mosquitoes into a crowd while talking about malaria. The video is now available for viewing, and you can watch it below. The incident comes about 5 minutes into the speech, but the entire presentation is worth watching if you have time.
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Predictive Bet « Masteroftheuniverse’s WeblogA good friend of mine and I have been discussing the predictive nature of the markets, or as I contend the lack of. Since he’s a follower of the pseudoscience of TA, he says he can predict the markets. He doesn’t trade, but is very interested in the markets and eats, sleeps, and breathes markets. He’s been trying to confuse me with all his mumbo jumbo and I finally said no mas. I proposed a small wager and he accepted. We’re both opening up two small accounts(I’m just segregating an account of mine) and he’s going to use TA to determine his trades. Instead of using my regular methods for finding trades, I’ve decided to use the device pictured below to give me trading guidance.
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A meeting about new approaches to sequencing the human (or any other species) genome. Some of these sound pretty fantastic. One company claims to be able to sequence human genomes for $5000. In 8 days around Christmas, they assembled 254 billion bases of DNA data to create a draft sequence covering 92% of the genome. y June the cost will be $1000 and that they expect to sequence 20,000 by next year. Since little data, it is probably good to be a little skeptical.
Another group presented data on a method they claim will be able to produce entire human genome sequences in 3 minutes. Lets see about 3 billion bases in 180 seconds is 17 million bases a second. Wow. -
Nearly a decade age, a Houston computer scientist posed this heretical question. Today, it’s led to a movement dubbed “probabilistic computing,” which he believes will revolutionize the future of computing.
This afternoon, Krishna Palem, speaking at a computer science meeting in San Francisco, will announce results of the first real-world test of his probabilistic computer chip: The chip, which thrives on random errors, ran seven times faster than today’s best technology while using just 1/30th the electricity
More on Fixed Points
In a prior post I asked about the how the structure of fixed points of stochastic maps changes under composition of such maps. Robin provided an interesting comment about the setup, linking this question at least partially with zero error codes:
R has at least one fixed point. If it’s unique, there need be no relationship between fixed points of P and R. (Q can project to a single vector, which becomes the unique fixed point of R.) If R has N > 1 fixed points, then things get more interesting. The fixed points are closed under linear combination, so they’re a subspace (I’m actually assuming N is the dimension of the subspace). An N-dimensional fixed subspace gives an N-symbol noiseless code for N (not necessarily obvious, but see arxiv/0705.4282), and therefore an N-symbol correctable code for P. Q is the recovery map. So, the dimensionality of R‘s fixed-point space (N) is tightly bounded by the size of P‘s largest zero-error code, and the fixed-point set itself has to be a subspace of one of those codes. You can also transpose R and get an identical bound in terms of QT‘s zero-error codes. (Yes, I know QT isn’t necessarily stochastic, but it works anyway). The zero-error codes are independent sets of P‘s adjacency graph, so (a) there can be quite a few of them, and (b) finding the bound on N is isomorphic to Maximum Clique.
Robin scores double bonus old school points for linking to a paper by Shannon. Okay, so given that the general case seems hard (and my question was vague), maybe it’s better to work with a simpler concrete example of what I’m thinking.
links for 2009-02-07
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"Search the Interactive Madoff Victim Map"
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SciRate Page For 0902.0912We introduce the concept of mutual independence — correlations shared between distant parties which are independent of the environment. This notion is more general than the standard idea of a secret key — it is a fully quantum and more general form of privacy.
links for 2009-02-06
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Via he of uncertain principles
"OpenWetWare tweeted an interesting link to Drew Endy’s take on how to give a good group meeting presentation (though it is clear that this is useful advice for any presentation). Here are a few of my favourite slides:"
Benasque 2009
I’ve never made it to Benasque, and am always profoundly jealous of those who have gone:
Dear Colleague,
We are pleased to inform you that following a very successful editions of Benasque 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, and 2007, we are organizing another workshop of the similar type in June 2009. This is to invite you to apply using the electronic form that you can find on the website specified below. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible and not later than the end of March 2009. The number of participants at the Benasque Centre at any given time is limited to about 50. We will do our best to accommodate most of the applicants,however, in some cases we may be unable to find suitable time slots for all of them, i.e. we cannot guarantee acceptance.
Budget permitting, we expect to offer a modest allowance to some participants. Preference will be given to those staying for the whole duration of the workshop.
We do hope to see you in Benasque!
Ignacio Cirac and Artur Ekert
_________________________________________________________
BENASQUE 2009
Title: Quantum Information
Venue: Benasque in the Spanish Pyrenees.
Date: The 3 week period 7– 27 June 2009.
Website: http://sophia.ecm.ub.es/2009qi/
Registers at: http://sophia.ecm.ub.es/2009qi/cgi-bin/appl.pl
Physics World Article
For subscribers to Physics World, an article I wrote The Race to Build a Quantum Computer has appeared in the February edition. Unfortunately unless you have a subscription you’ll have to pay to read the article…or better yet, pick up a copy of the magazine!
links for 2009-02-05
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What do you do when your industry is shifting under your feet? Taking the lead with radical steps is one strategy. The New York Times did just that this afternoon when it announced that it has released a new Application Programming Interface (API) offering every article the paper has written since 1981, 2.8 million articles. The API includes 28 searchable fields and updated content every hour.
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Different meanings of Bayesian statistics – Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science1. Surprising results from conditional probability. For example, if you test positive for a disease with a 1% prevalence rate, and the test is 95% effective, that you probably don't have the disease.
2. Bayesian data analysis as a way to solve statistical problems. For example, the classic partial-pooling examples of Lindley, Novick, Efron, Morris, Rubin, etc.
3. Bayesian inference as a way to include prior information in statistical analysis.
4. Bayes or Bayes-like rules for decision analysis and inference in computer science, for example identifying spam.
5. Bayesian inference as coherent reasoning, following the principles of Von Neumann, Keynes, Savage, etc.
6. [added at Larry's suggestion; see comments] Bayesian inference as a method of coming up with classical statistical estimators. -
"A new startup company is in the works at the University of Washington, based on inexpensive, portable solar cells that could go far beyond the standard rooftop model. Conventional solar cells are made from expensive silicon, but the UW group, led by materials science and engineering professor Alex Jen, has come up with a way to harness solar energy using thin polymer film–akin to really thin cling wrap"
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"Yes, they were real. No, they didn't carry malaria. And they definitely didn't qualify as a swarm. But they sure did get a lot of attention.
That's the word from a reliable source after the Microsoft chairman set the tech world, ahem, abuzz by opening a jar of mosquitos at the TED conference today — reportedly telling the crowd that not only poor people should experience the problem. We made a few calls and found out that the jar contained a relatively modest collection of mosquitoes: more than a few, but probably fewer than ten." -
Governor Chris Gregoire | How would you balance Washington’s budget?Eliminating the budget shortfall without raising taxes is difficult. It requires balancing what we need with what we value. What would you keep? What would you cut?
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As Comet Lulin moves into the northern sky in mid February to rise around midnight, it should at least be spotted by comet watchers with binoculars and a good sky chart. Tracking observations indicate that the comet officially designated C/2007 N3 (Lulin) has now swung by the Sun and is approaching Earth on a trajectory that will bring it within half the Earth-Sun distance in late February.
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SciRate Page For 0902.0402In this work we describe how a single artificial multi-level Cooper Pair Box molecule, interacting with a superconducting microwave coplanar waveguide resonator, when suitably driven, can generate extremely large optical nonlinearities at microwave frequencies, with no associated absorption.
The World is Such a Wonderful Place
The view from my plane window this afternoon (thank you United Airlines for making me take this Delta Airlines flight):
Check out those lenticular clouds!
One of my fondest memories was on a trip with my father to the Sacramento in a small plane, and on the trip back falling asleep and waking up with spectacular Mt. Shasta right, and I mean right, outside the window.
Long Live Monkey
When dog meets plastic monkey:
Some Upcoming Talks
Some upcoming talks for those in Albuquerque or Ann Arbor (so many A’s!):
- Feb 5, 5pm, University of New Mexico Center for Advanced Studies Seminars: The Symmetry Conjecture
- Feb 6, 4:00 pm, University of New Mexico Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: The Race to Build a Quantum Computer
- Feb 9, 4pm, University of Michigan Seminar: The Race to Build a Quantum Computer.