I’ve been watching the Royal Institution Christmas lectures on FIVE, with Professor Chris Bishop: Hi-tech Trek – The Quest for the Ultimate Computer. The lectures are fun, and especially great for kids. Unfortunately, they seem to have been scheduled at the worst possible time. The lectures are broadcast from 7:15pm-8:00pm. Whilst this may be a [...]
Archive for December, 2008
RI Christmas Lectures
Posted in controversial..., film / tv / music on December 30, 2008 | 7 Comments »
More books…
Posted in book reviews on December 29, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Sometimes I think this blog seems to be turning into a book review site! Hey, I read fast… Well I’ve just finished Parallel worlds by Michio Kaku. Kaku explores many different ideas, all tied together under a general cosmology theme.
The book begins by introducing some of the key concepts of spacetime, the big bang, and [...]
Interesting recent papers
Posted in links, quantum computing on December 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Space-Efficient Simulation of Quantum Computers
and quite a bit of stuff about quantum algorithms lately:
A Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm for Factorization and Its Experimental Implementation
Polynomial-time quantum algorithms for the simulation of chemical dynamics
Quantum algorithm for solving linear systems of equations
A quantum algorithm to solve nonlinear differential equations
Via arXivblog:
Dephasing of entangled atoms as an improved test of [...]
The coolest music video ever
Posted in cool physics, film / tv / music, fun and games on December 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Via Chris:
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I have a bit of a strange fab fetish. That waferstepper is just too sexy. I think I’d be happy to work in a fab if I ever decided that Physics just wasn’t for me; I miss my lithography. The bit with the autobonder gives me goosebumps
Future technology
Posted in BCI, controversial..., fun and games, psychological ponderings, sci-fi, transhumanism on December 23, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Some food for thought over Christmas and the new year:
A few things I’d love to see developed in the future (organised in rough order of near-far future):
1.) Quantum Computers. Obviously. I believe we’re already well on the way to this goal And everything that comes with that development… quantum simulation, bio apps, problem [...]
Bubbles in the blogosphere
Posted in controversial..., web on December 22, 2008 | 3 Comments »
A slightly confusing site I must admit, Alpha Inventions seems to have caught the interest of the blogosphere lately.
The main idea seems to be to display the frontpage of a blog, and every few seconds cycle to a new blog. If the viewer wishes, they can click on a displayed blog. A blog is [...]
Pnictides: They’re not cuprates…
Posted in cool physics, research blogging, superconductors on December 18, 2008 | 1 Comment »
People have recently been pondering over the symmetry of the order parameter in the newly discovered (iron-based) pnictide superconductors. Being layered materials, like the cuprates, it was thought that they might be d-wave. However, there is some theoretical basis to them being s-wave, see here and here (Parental Advisory: contains explicit band structure calculations).
Well, here’s [...]
Experimentalist friendly QC books
Posted in book reviews, expt vs theory showdown, quantum computing on December 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve just picked up a copy of this book from the library:
So far it’s looking quite good. I like it because of the large section in the later chapters dedicated to summarizing the field of experimental progress, whilst still maintaining a thorough introduction to the quantum mechanics, algebra and algorithms. The book covers NMR schemes, [...]
Happy <holiday name here>
Posted in cake, fun and games, humour, links on December 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Merry Christmas from Aperture Science
I love Portal. And not just for the cake
Bio-inspired massively parallel computation
Posted in BCI, learnin' stuff, psychological ponderings on December 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I attended a Computer Science seminar yesterday given by Professor Steve Furber (see here also) of Manchester University (he helped design the BBC Micro and the ARM microprocessor – which can be found in many mobile phones and other portable devices.)
The seminar was about taking inspiration from the architecture of the brain to help design [...]
