Sometimes, PHD Comics have true gems…

Well, at least they still see a brain…

No matter how far away, you just can’t help noticing cool/huh news from you’re home country. Case in point: Nadya Vessey, a Kiwi who unfortunately loss both legs due to illness as child, has become the first to attach to herself not a prosthetic legs, but a prosthetic tail! Read more at Crave

Nadya Vessey’s legs were amputated below the knee when she was a child due to illness. At one point, reports Stuff, a child asked her what happened to her legs and she told him she was a mermaid. The idea stuck with her, so she wrote to Weta Workshop in Wellington, New Zealand, two years ago asking for a mermaid tail. To her surprise, they said they’d do it.

There you go. Remember, New Zealand’s not just the place for sheep, it’s also the worlds leading clinic for artificial tails.

Vlatko, my supervisor here in Singapore, was recentally invited to write on article on the Singapore newspaper on the interesting aspects of quntum biology. Not exactly technical material, the article does however outline three biological processes that potentially invite quantum explanations.

I highly invite a read!

While postdocs in most part of the world still live as second class citizens, there’s something remarkably different in East Asian civilizations. Without going into further detail, there’s a sense that academics are simply more valued and respected in such cultures. After all, this was reflected in many opinions polls in China about the most respected proffesion, where Lecturers, Doctors and Teachers ranked consistantly on top. 

One indication of this is in the country of Singapore. Here, postdocs can almost certainly be regarded as middle class citizens, able to afford to rent apartments that, should they choose to work elsewhere, be untenable for quite possibly another decade. Case in point, my current accomodation, Singapore.

If anyone wishes to visit Singapore, and possibly apply for a position, you’re welcome to contact me for some details!

Today, I had the pleasure of giving a talk in regards to the work that I conducted on relating quantum complexity with geometry, based essentially of the paper `Quantum Computation as Geometry‘, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  The talk is primarily designed for a Physics audience, and thus spends a good portion introducing the concepts of computational complexity.

Feel free to download it below

• Quantum Complexity as Geometry Presentation (123)

Both the .ppt and .pptx versions are included. If you have Powerpoint 2007, I would recommend the .ppt version.

New York times has posted an absolutely touching article on why we cannot limit the annual salary of CEOs in New York to 500k per year, arguing that such a tiny amount of money is not enough for the necessities of a resident at Manhantten city. They outline all the costs and bills a CEO has to pay, and conclude that these Banker’s simply need more cash. For example:

..Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.  Total minimum cost: $16,000.. 

And don’t forget:

“Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.” Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

It looks like the Bankers of US are just as bad as managing their own assets as they are at managing those of of their own. Meanwhile, the Postdocs employed at New York Universities… with their average annual salary of $40K, or $26K after taxes… weep.

This pay disparity between jobs that transfer wealth and jobs that create wealth is really at the core of America’s economic problems. How can a country succeed is its best and brightest on drawn into career paths that do not help (and arguably hurt) anyone other than themselves?

…And you wonder why I decided not to go the US.

So we all know that the Game of Life is universal… able to process a stream of gliders and zeroes and ones. Too bad it doesn’t look nearly as impressive to the general public. But what if the Game of Life can talk? Well now it can!  Behold the glory of `Golly’ gliders. 

According to one of the latest research by Ravi Mehta and Juliet Zhu. Science, you should be more careful what color you set your Windows background. In recent psychological studies, the color red was shown to boost attention to detail and memory, what the color blue improved a person’s creativity. So the next time, you’re stuck on a tough problem, it may well be handy to take a trip to the beach. On other hand, proof reading your thesis is probably best done next to a firetruck. 

There’s some interesting side-effects to this. University multi-choice exams are often printed in a variety of colors, so that each color assigns the correct answer to each question with a different letter. Since neither red or blue presented any disadvantages against the control color `white’, it appears that you can now bias exams against students you despise by giving them uncolored exams. Given how many mistakes I make, I for one will be writing any future tests I have in red ink!

Source:  ”Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances.” By Ravi Mehta and Juliet Zhu. Science, Vol. 324, Issue 5915, Feb. 5, 2009.

One of the brilliant things of a visit back to family is hunting down your past, and one of the most interesting photos I’ve obtained is the one taken above in 1927! The lady and the man in the center would be my great, great, grandmother and great great grandfather, or basically the parents of my mother’s father’s father (who is pictured as the fourth son in line with half of his body cut off on the top right corner). The three guys to his left are his older brothers. Of these, the third is probably most successful, and started the first sauce company in Shanghai, which was by all accounts, properous till the Japanese invasion. I guess that’s why he’s the only one wearing a suit! 

So what about my direct ancestor? Well he basically worked the company tell it collapsed, and then moved to Beijing to become a telegraph operator, allowing communication between Germany and that new Empire of the Rising Sun… the knowledge of which he passed to the underground resistance. Well, that’s enough family history for now! More to come.

When I was attending the quantum biology workshop in Singapore, I had a chance to to visit my future accomodation over there, and lets just say, I was suitably impressed. Sure, there’s a few little hiccups, like the fact that the glass walls of bathroom hasn’t yet been tinted (which I was assured, will happen before I move in), everything else looks positively brilliant. It’s going to be hard to resist diving into the pool from the 4th floor balcony in the morning!