Saturday, January 07, 2023

News items for the new year

After I was not chosen to be Speaker of the US House of Representatives, I think it’s time to highlight some brief items:

  • Here is a great blog post by a Rice grad alum, Daniel Gonzales, about flow to approach faculty searches.  I had written a fair bit on this a number of years ago, but his take is much fresher and up to date.
  • My colleagues in Rice’s chem department have written a very nice obituary in PNAS for Bob Curl.
  • It’s taken nearly 2000 years, but people seem to have finally figured out the reason why Roman concrete lasts hundreds to thousands of years, while modern concrete often starts crumbling after 30 years or so.
  • Capabilities for quantum optomechanical widgets are improving all the time.  Now it’s possible to implement a model for graphene, following some exquisite fabrication and impressive measurement techniques. 
  • From the math perspective, this is just f-ing weird.  For more info, see here.

9 comments:

Alexander Kruel said...

For stuff similar to the last link, see the following list:

The most counterintuitive facts in all of mathematics, computer science, and physics https://axisofordinary.substack.com/p/the-most-counterintuitive-facts-in

Anonymous said...

The blog post on the job search is notably missing the diversity statement. Would you care to comment on this? I've given up applying for jobs which require this, just impossible to do on top of all the other requirements... Simply don't get it, or believe in the performative aspect of it. Nor do I believe that parts of the job market are meritocratic anymore.

Pizza Perusing Physicist said...

Anon, do you not see the value of diversity, equity and inclusion in academia and science generally, or do you simply believe that diversity statements in faculty job searches are not a useful way of developing EDI?

Anonymous said...

The latter of course!

Pizza Perusing Physicist said...

Okay, thank you for clarifying that, and I get where you are coming from. Nurturing EDI in science/academia is a long-term fix that requires systemic cultural change. I admit, it sometimes feels to me that things like diversity training or diversity statements in job applications are just putting a 'bandage on a bullet wound', so to speak. But in the absence of any quick fixes, I like to think that they are better than doing nothing at all.

Anonymous said...

Maybe worth a read,

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/quantum-computing/bernoulli-line-and-the-bloch-sphere/

Douglas Natelson said...

Anon, my 8-year-old post about the job search was written in the days before diversity statements became common. While I understand concerns about whether such things are performative more than substantive, imo they are valuable. When we ask candidates to write a teaching statement, we don't expect a hugely detailed description of their teaching philosophy and plans, but we do expect them to demonstrate that they have actually thought hard about teaching, since it's a critical component of a faculty job. Similarly, given the importance of DEI, it's valuable to see whether and how candidates have been thinking about the issue, while realizing that no one is going to somehow write The Answer to this complex many-dimensional challenge in their statement.

Anonymous said...

Doug, did you follow the recent National Quantum Advisory council meeting that happened late last year? Wonder what your thoughts are about that and where it's looking to take the US in the near term future

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