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QIP 2009 Registration Now Open

Registration for QIP 2009 is now open:

QIP 2009 — 12th WORKSHOP ON QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING –
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA. January 12-16, 2009.
REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN at http://qipworkshop.org/
Deadline for special conference hotel rates: December 1st.
Quantum Information Processing is the recasting of computer
science in a quantum mechanical framework. QIP 2009 is the twelfth
workshop on theoretical aspects of quantum computing, quantum
cryptography and quantum information theory in a series which
started in Aarhus in 1998. QIP 2009, like its previous editions,
will feature invited talks, contributed talks and a poster session.
While the deadline for paper submissions has passed, poster submissions are still open.
Submission deadline for posters: December 1, 2008.
Acceptance notification for posters: December 8, 2008.
INVITED SPEAKERS:
Andrew Childs (IQC, Waterloo)
Avinatan Hassidim (Jerusalem)
Matt Hastings (Los Alamos)
Charles Marcus (Harvard)
Lluis Masanes (IPS, Barcelona)
Graeme Smith (IBM TJ Watson)
STEERING COMMITTEE:
Dorit Aharonov (Hebrew University)
Cris Moore (UNM/SFI) (Chair)
John Preskill (Caltech)
Jaikumar Radhakrishnan (TIFR, Mumbai)
Renato Renner (ETH Zurich)
Peter Shor (MIT)
John Watrous (Waterloo)
Andreas Winter (Bristol)
Ronald de Wolf (CWI, Amsterdam).
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Hans Briegel (University of Innsbruck)
Harry Buhrman (CWI, Amsterdam)
Wim van Dam (UCSB)
Daniel Gottesman (Perimeter Institute)
Aram Harrow (Bristol)
Patrick Hayden (McGill)
Richard Jozsa (Bristol) (Chair)
Julia Kempe (Tel Aviv)
Manny Knill (NIST)
Andrew Landahl (University of New Mexico)
Debbie Leung (IQC Waterloo)
Keiji Matsumoto (NII Tokyo)
Ben Reichardt (Waterloo)
Alex Russell (University of Connecticut)
Barbara Terhal (IBM)
Frank Verstraete (University of Vienna)
LOCAL ORGANIZERS:
Howard Barnum (LANL)
Jim Harrington (LANL)
Andrew Landahl (University of New Mexico) (Chair)
Cris Moore (University of New Mexico / Santa Fe Institute)
Jon Yard (LANL)

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See Planets!

Direct imaging of extra solar planets. The cat dynamicist has the details. (because, linking, I’ve heard, is good.) Fomalhaut b, a nice name.
When I was on the road to becoming an astrophysicist, as a young grad student, I remember thinking how cool it would be to join the planet hunters. I mean being able to say that in your research you “discovered a planet” well how cool would that be. Alas I caught the quantum bug and so all those days spent studying the interstellar tedium are now lost, like tears in the rain.

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Other NSF News…Of Funny Kind

Melody points me to this gem of an advisory from the NSF:

In the event of a natural or anthropogenic disaster that interferes with an organization’s ability to meet a proposal submission deadline, NSF has developed the following guidelines for use by impacted organizations.  These guidelines will take the place of the previous NSF practice of posting notices to the NSF website regarding each specific event.
Flexibility in meeting announced deadline dates because of a natural or anthropogenic disasters may be granted with the prior approval of the cognizant NSF Program Officer. Proposers should contact the cognizant NSF Program Officer in the Division/Office to which they intend to submit their proposal and request authorization to submit a “late proposal.” Such contact should be via e-mail (or telephone, if e-mail is unavailable). Proposers should then follow the written or verbal guidance provided by the cognizant NSF Program Officer. Generally, NSF permits extension of the deadline by 5 business days. The Foundation, however, will work with each impacted organization on a case-by-case basis to address their specific issue(s). Proposers should be aware that all applications submitted after the submission deadline must be submitted through FastLane since Grants.gov does not accept proposals after the deadline.

Boldface mine. Yeah, read that again: you can get an extension for a natural disaster with prior approval. “Dude, Dr. Program Manager, I know there is going to be an earthquake on the day I have to submit, so could I please have an extension?”

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So Much For Research Faculty

New NSF policies on faculty salaries:

A major revision of NSF’s faculty salary reimbursement policy, to limit compensation for senior personnel to no more than two months of their regular salary in any one year from all NSF-funded grants

This pretty much eliminates any NSF funded research professors, as far as I can tell. Well it was a good run, peoples, but that rule change virtually assures that pseudo-professors like myself don’t exist.

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Can't Spell "Evil" Without "Elsevier"

John Baez (via Zoran Škoda) points to the case of M.S. El Naschie. El Naschie is apparently the answer to the question “how do you publish over three hundred papers of craziness in an Elsevier journal?” Simple: just become the editor and chief of the journal!
Tell me again the argument about scientific publishers rendering a valuable service with their stellar editing?