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# Posts

### December 10, 2013

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The list of new ACM fellows is out. This year's batch includes two of my UCI colleagues (Rina Dechter and Padhraic Smyth), another former UCI colleague (Mark Ackerman), and theoretical computer scientists and algorithm researchers Mihir Bellare, Sampath K. Kannan, Jon Kleinberg, Madhav V. Marathe, Satish Rao, David P. Williamson, Moti Yung, and David Zuckerman. Congratulations, all!
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…looks like an apt name for several threads from this blog, which are now converging to a common point. To make it more clear, here is a modification of the figure which appears in the post Theatron as an eye. The red decorations changed. Let’s see. DESIGNERS are the new programmers. They are no longer […]
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It's the last day of final exams, and students are trickling in to say their "farewells" and their "see ya next years." Some are saying yet more long-lasting goodbyes, graduation soon to take them far away.An hour or so ago three of our more outgoing Honors students came by to bid adieu to Queshia and me. They sat in the Honors office and we talked for about twenty minutes. Much of our conversation centered on the idea of letting go...or not: end-of-semester goodbyes, helicopter parenting, and […]
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You probably noticed a few things about TheEGG: a recent decrease in blog post frequency and an overall focus on the algorithmic lens — especially its view of biology. You might also be surprised by the lack of discussion of quantum information processing: the most successful on-going application of the algorithmic lens. I actually first […]

Simon, D.R. (1997). On the power of quantum computation., SIAM Journal on Computing, 26 1474. DOI:

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I’ll continue my exploration of Sage’s matroid capabilities (see also here and here). This time I’ll look at extensions within subclasses of matroids, namely representable matroids. Before we get started, let me remind you of the reference manual, in which … Continue reading →
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Reblogged from Dynamic Ecology: Someone* once said that scientists need to study philosophy of science about as much as birds need to study ornithology. And there's definitely some truth to that, as evidenced by the fact that plenty of scientists do plenty of good science without any philosophical training.** But in this post I'll argue […]
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It’s been a while since the last edition of HoTT Math. Fall is always very busy for me and I’ve been composing this installment one $$\varepsilon$$ at a time… We are finally arriving at our destination: fields! The main issue with fields is to correctly handle the implicit negation in the term nonzero. Since the [...]

### December 09, 2013

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Since one of my most read posts this year was my analysis of the passion narrative around Easter time, I thought I’d do another one of these for Christmas. I’m not going to present much historical analysis that the events … Continue reading →
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(Tal Rabin, Shubhangi Saraf and Lisa Zhang asked me to remind you to publicize this: the bi-annual Women in theory (WIT workshop), NYC, May 28-30, 2014. Apps due Jan 20, 2014. Go here for all relevant information) If FAX machines had come out 20 years earlier they would have had far MORE impact. If FAX machines had come out 20 years later they would have had NO impact since by then we all had email and scanners and what not. So when an invention comes out matters. Ask your grandparents […]
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This post is intended as a footnote to one that I wrote a couple of years ago about the meaning of “implies” in mathematics, which was part of a series of posts designed as an introduction to certain aspects of university mathematics. If you are reasonably comfortable with the kind of basic logic needed in […]
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This is a continuation of the thread concerning the mix of the Actor Model (AM) with the graphic lambda calculus (GLC) and/or the chemical concrete machine (chemlambda). A GLC neuron was first defined here, in the freedom sector of the GLC. I shall use the term “neuron”, in a more restrictive sense than previously, as […]
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I have now posted the final pre-meeting draft of the "Use and Abuse" paper (well, more-or-less "final").I'll present it as the JBES Lecture, January 2014 ASSA meetings, Philadelphia. Please join if you're around. It's Friday January 3, 2:30, Pennsylvania Convention Center Room 2004-C (I think).By the way, the 2010 Peter Hansen paper that I now cite in the paper's last paragraph, "A Winners Curse for Econometric Models: On the Joint Distribution of In-Sample Fit and […]
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This is the third thread for the Polymath8b project to obtain new bounds for the quantity either for small values of (in particular ) or asymptotically as . The previous thread may be found here. The currently best known bounds on are: (Maynard) Assuming the Elliott-Halberstam conjecture, . (Polymath8b, tentative) . Assuming Elliott-Halberstam, . (Polymath8b, […]
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My sister-in-law and nephew with their dog,and my daughter with a small guitar.

### December 08, 2013

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I try to focus on serious problems in this blog, mostly environmental issues and the attempt to develop ‘green mathematics’. But I seem unable to resist talking about random fun stuff now and then. For example, the Lebesgue universal covering problem. It’s not important, it’s just strange… but for some reason I feel a desire […]
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by @ulaulaman about #cosmology #mathematics #inflation #Hawking #AlanGuth I published this post some years ago (archived version), but for unilateral decision of the online publisher, it is deleted, so I decide to recover it.In the early years of the 3rd millennium there was a discussion about eternal inflation. This theoric ipothesis was introduce by Alan Guth and other physicists. In particular you can read Guth's paper Eternal Inflation(1):The basic workings of inflationary models are […]

Alan H. Guth (2001). Eternal Inflation, arXiv:

Guth A.H. (2007). Eternal inflation and its implications, Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 40 (25) 6811-6826. DOI:

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For a lot of people it doesn’t really mean much, or at best it has some vague and scary meaning to it. But ten years ago today I was heading out for my first meal as a soldier. I got … Continue reading →
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Una delle particolarità di questo romanzo (scovato su una bancarella al mercato) e della serie cui fa parte è che i protagonisti riescono a viaggiare tra i mondi fantastici delle varie leggende nordiche (uno dei protagonisti viene dal mondo di Faerie, mentre il viaggio raccontato da de Camp e Pratt va dal Kalevala finlandese alle leggende eroiche irlandesi) utilizzando delle formule di logica simbolica opportunamente adattate e recitate per raggiungere il mondo scelto.Questo, quindi, colloca […]
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I'm now three semesters into my stint as Honors Program director, and I think I'm starting to get the hang of the gig. I've learned the ropes well enough to feel confident tweaking things here, cinching it up there, and making many many midcourse adjustments. Give me another term or two and I'm gonna feel ready to make some bigger changes.Like what? I've had a number of conversations with one of my closest colleagues about ways in which the Honors Program could be made to cater more to students […]
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Like most universities, UCI has a requirement that doctoral students get someone outside their own school to serve on their committees (only for us it's the candidacy committee instead of as most other places the thesis committee). Anyway, last week I found myself on the committee of a student in mechanical engineering, whose research project involves developing software to analyze the motion of mechanical linkages formed by systems of linked rigid bodies. In the class of systems he was […]
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(This is an extended blog post version of my talk “Ultraproducts as a Bridge Between Discrete and Continuous Analysis” that I gave at the Simons institute for the theory of computing at the workshop “Neo-Classical methods in discrete analysis“. Some of the material here is drawn from previous blog posts, notably “Ultraproducts as a bridge […]

### December 07, 2013

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FDA’s New Generic Drug Labeling Rule The FDA is proposing an about-face on a controversial issue: to allow (or require? [1]) generic drug companies to alter the label on drugs, whereas they are currently  required to keep the identical label as used by the brand-name company (See earlier post here and here.) While it clearly makes sense to […]
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The first meme is by Krzysztof Onak, who was visiting us few weeks ago. The second one reveals the fundamental truth about Christmas - a follow up to our last year's Christmas meme.

### December 06, 2013

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E' semplice mostrare utilizzando la teoria standard che se un sistema parte in un autostato di una qualche osservabile, e le misure sono fatte tali da osservare N volte in un secondo, allora, anche se lo stato non è stazionario, la probabilità che il sistema sarà nello stesso stato dopo, diciamo, un secondo, tende a uno al tendere di N all'infinito; cioé, che l'osservazione continua impedirà il moto ...(Alan Turing citato da Andrew Hodges in Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great […]

Misra B. & Sudarshan E.C.G. (1977). The Zeno’s paradox in quantum theory, Journal of Mathematical Physics, 18 (4) 756. DOI:

Ghirardi G.C., Omero C., Weber T. & Rimini A. (1979). Small-time behaviour of quantum nondecay probability and Zeno's paradox in quantum mechanics, Il Nuovo Cimento A, 52 (4) 421-442. DOI:

Mandelstam L. & Tamm I. (1945). The Uncertainty Relation Between Energy and Time in Non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics, Journal of Physics-USSR, 9 (4) 115-123. DOI:

Cook R.J. (1988). What are Quantum Jumps?, Physica Scripta, T21 49-51. DOI:

Cook R. & Kimble H. (1985). Possibility of Direct Observation of Quantum Jumps, Physical Review Letters, 54 (10) 1023-1026. DOI:

Itano W., Heinzen D., Bollinger J. & Wineland D. (1990). Quantum Zeno effect, Physical Review A, 41 (5) 2295-2300. DOI:

Koshino K. & Shimizu A. (2005). Quantum Zeno effect by general measurements, Physics Reports, 412 (4) 191-275. DOI:

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Re: Alpha Now, Omega Later • Theorems From Physics? • Isomorphism Is Where It’s At Peircers, In the late 1970s a number of problems in combinatorics and graph theory that I really wanted to know the answers to had driven … Continue reading →
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I meant to write a longer blog entry on strong measure zero sets (on the real line ), but it is getting too long, so it may take me more than I expected. For now, let me record here an argument showing the following: Theorem. If is a strong measure zero set and is a […]
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What is a thing? And what is that “thing” thing from the “Internet of things”? Is not, I think, what is supposed to be. Here is a depiction of a thing [source]: A thing is an assembly, a communication based entity. I learned this by reading another excellent article by Kenneth Olwig: “Heidegger, Latour and […]
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Let $\boldsymbol{X}$ be a random variable and let $1 \leq r \leq \infty$. Recall that the triangle (Minkowski) inequality implies that for real-valued functions $f_1, f_2$, $\|f_1(\boldsymbol{X}) + f_2(\boldsymbol{X})\|_r \leq \|f_1(\boldsymbol{X})\|_r + \|f_2(\boldsymbol{X})\|_r.$ More generally, if $w_1, \dots, w_m$ are nonnegative reals summing to $1$ and $f_1, \dots, f_m$ are real functions [...]
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Yesterday Nelson Mandela died, and the world lost one of its greatest ever agents of peace. Meanwhile, more locally, during the past few weeks several people very close to me have dealt with the deaths of too many loved ones to count: a father, a mother, and so, so many friends (one covered with once-soft black fur). It's been a very rough month, and I don't believe I've handled it as well as I might have. I don't think I've been as present as I could have been; I think I've been too […]

### December 05, 2013

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아침 수업을 듣고 나서 센리문을 통해 하교하고 있습니다. 하교 하는 길에 심심해서 캠코더로 스이타 캠퍼스 모습을 좀 찍어 보았어요. (물론 극히 일부지만..!)   센리문 앞으로 펼쳐진 도로의 모습입니다. 가는 길에 이런 야자수도 있네요. 이 곳의 온난한(?) 기후를 말해 주는 나무군요. … Continue reading →Related Posts ?오사카대학 스이타 캠퍼스, 힘들게 갔더니 […]