Gill Eapen's Blog, page 68
April 19, 2012
The threshold
Recent findings (1) that we are getting closer to practical quantum information processing is exciting news for everybody. The self proclaimed futurists and Nobel prize seeking physicists have had their heads in the clouds for decades – envisioning space travel and unification. Nothing has been forthcoming except irrelevant papers and ignorant speculations. The Georgia Tech experiment is important in that it is bridging the gap to the leap – the only leap this generation has any chance of accomplishing. Our 15 minutes of fame has to be the implementation of Quantum computing – a full century later after the theory was proposed.
Practical quantum computing will change everything – and possibly redeem the status quo from the depths of incompetence – in every conceivable dimension. Quantum computing has the potential to change many dimensions – a true step function change that will take computing power out of the critical and constraining path to innovation. Such a regime should usher in fundamental changes – in healthcare, engineering and technology. The real change is figuring out if humans can and should live 1000s of years and not just incrementally extending their painful life a few more months. The real change is figuring out if humans can transport themselves instantly across space and time and not shoving themselves into aluminum tubes that go across the globe faster. The real change is finding out if humans can connect the 7 billion people together in a network of ideas and get away from turf wars and religious ignorance.
Can we step up? Will we reach the threshold?
New technique efficiently creates single photons for quantum information processing. Published: Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 15:37 in Physics & Chemistry .Source: Georgia Institute of Technology Research News
April 16, 2012
Carbon supreme
Recent discovery (1) that Graphene may ultimately serve as a more efficient substrate for electronics - unseating the current leader Silicon – is important from multiple perspectives. First, engineers have been following an incremental path to nowhere, expecting speed to double every 18 months in computer processing. Such a process just increases noise without any chance of fundamental leaps. In the last few decades, a generation – fat and happy from the hard work of the generation before them - have been settling for trinkets and irrelevant technology. They have been lulled into mediocrity by a system that has linear momentum. They never realized that such linearity is akin to failure. It would not matter if the computing speed doubled every 18 months or if people lived a few days more in pain. And, second, questioning the framework itself from a materials perspective will ultimately take us away from the artificial limitations. It is theory that we lack and not practice.
There are signs that we are about to break out of the dark ages of science and engineering. It has to be by the millennials, with no baggage from the past and with little to look forward to in world strip mined dry by those who went before them - unless they fundamentally rethink the world. 9-5 jobs have disappeared and the privilege culture is about to end. They understand that innovation is the only remaining religion and incrementalism has to be extricated from the society like cancer. They understand that interconnectivity is dominant to scale and ignorance is a curable disease. They have to appreciate that optimization of the system that encompasses all participants is far more important that local utility maximization. And, they have to realize that the human mind is completely underdeployed in a world of extremism and irrationality.
Carbon may get us back on track. It is ironic that it has been staring at the face of humanity from inception.
(1) UWM discovery advances graphene-based electronics. Published: Monday, April 16, 2012 - 14:34 in Physics & Chemistry. Source: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
April 13, 2012
Learning Science
Take the mighty atom for example. Dalton’s insight 200 years ago set the course to more fundamentally understanding matter. However, it is not a fundamental unit anymore and the significant advances made since then to explore the quantum world, poses an important education question. Should Scientific education be akin to the study of history – or should it be transformed in such a way that the best available information is used. Should Newton’s laws be taught before quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity? The efforts to feed scientific history to children is creating a world of artificially designed generational overlap that deters progress. In sport, we do not run back to assure an overlap in a relay. Future generations should not be afraid to take off from where the last one finished. We, assuredly, have not understood much, yet.
It is time we fundamentally redesigned scientific education. How one should go about it is a matter of debate. US students need new way of learning science. Published: Thursday, April 5, 2012 - 15:41 in Mathematics & Economics. Further information on 8+1. http://8plus1science.org/ Source: Michigan State University
April 11, 2012
Reviving the past
Recent revelations (1) that the dinosaur DNA is more readily available for manipulation poses a significant question for humans. Although there have been plenty of movies that portray the reincarnation of the deadly beasts, a fundamental question remains. Does it make sense for humans to play with the past and revive a species that has been extinct?
There are plenty of reasons why this is is not a good idea. First, from a systemic perspective, the current stable equilibrium is a function of evolution and any attempts at introducing jumps in such a smooth function may have deleterious effects overall. Second, the extinction of dinosaurs signaled a regime shift – one that cannot be selectively reversed. Humans, one could argue, is the worst outcome of evolution – as they seem to have overdesigned an organ – the brain – and that gives them the power and opportunity to destroy the entire system. They could do this in two ways – either by destroying the planet by physical means or by introducing biological effects that the system is simply not designed to tackle.
It may be time to pull back – it is unclear that the beneficial effects of Science are unambiguously higher than its bad effects. The acceleration of Science ahead of Societal designs that can incorporate it, may not be the best.
Eggs of enigmatic dinosaur in Patagonia discovered. Published: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - 10:34 in Paleontology & Archaeology. Source: Uppsala University
March 30, 2012
Investments in diet
Recent findings (1) that cancer may be caused by diet has implications for the selection and design of societal investments. The returns from investing into societal goods such as education and health are high. They have beneficial effects in many different dimensions and thus any advanced society will prioritize them to be higher. Food habits are known to have been responsible for many metabolic diseases such as diabetes and some cardio-vascular events. The connection of caner to dietary habits further raises these concerns.
Diet, thus, appears to be central to the human strife – some do not have enough to eat and others eat the wrong things. Either way, humans are unable to optimize either individual or societal utility. Education appears to be positively correlated with better diet – both the availability and quality of food. Similarly,beneficial early diet is correlated with the ultimate education gained by the individual. It appears that they are intimately connected.
Policies that focus on the simultaneous improvement of education and diet may be optimal. Investments in these two areas together have a better chance of accomplishing better designs.
(1) Chronic Activation of mTOR Complex 1 Is Sufficient to Cause Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Mice. Suchithra Menon1, Jessica L. Yecies1, Hui H. Zhang1, Jessica J. Howell1, Justin Nicholatos1, Eylul Harputlugil1, Roderick T. Bronson2, David J. Kwiatkowski3, and Brendan D. Manning1
March 28, 2012
Slippery slope
A recent study (1) that showed that one could create alpha by analyzing twitter feeds is a slippery slope. Academics are fickle animals – on the one hand they theorize about efficient markets and on the other, they try to pick pennies by proving markets are not efficient. They seem similar to those who have their heads in the hedges – those who do not understand efficient markets or portfolio theory. In either case, one thing is clear – showing alpha from short periods by ad-hoc analytics does not prove anything, except bolstering the alpha-maker's ego, that has a distinct half-life.
A more interesting question is why one finds correlations between brain dead twitter feeds and stock markets. Causality appears to be demonstrated by showing an alpha – but is it possible that one can find similar effects by randomly investing. Is the wisdom that is doled out in 140 constraining characters that powerful? What if a similar analysis is made based on the number of flights arriving on time in the US airports or the number of tomatoes in the grocery stores that went bad. Could one show alpha with such attributes? will one try? It seems less interesting, however.
It appears that the aura of stock market investing is pulling everybody in – one would have thought that it is time that the Wall street physicists returned to the careers they were actually trained in.
(1) Using Twitter to predict financial markets. Published: Monday, March 26, 2012 - 23:34 in Mathematics & Economics. Source: University of California - Riverside
March 22, 2012
Bowled over
A recent study (1) confirms most intuitively know – white rice is a major culprit in the onset of Type 2 diabetes. With half the population of the world, largely dependent on rice, it is a huge epidemic in the making. Diabetes is likely the biggest sink in healthcare costs as it affects every organ in the body. This is, thus, a healthcare policy question. At the macro level, white rice, is causing more societal and personal strife than most drugs and alcohol, combined.
From a policy perspective, it may be interesting to ask if white rice should be banned. Policy makers are generally focused tactically – some without a significant understanding of medicine – is even opposed to Cannabis, that has known positive effects. White rice, on the other hand is not going to send the user to the hospital immediately – but it is almost certain that she will end up there later. In many cases, such deterioration is incremental – most escaping cardiomyopathy, but succumbing to the loss of limbs and other vital organs.
Healthcare policy needs to consider overall societal impacts of dietary habits. Modern humans, after the advent of agriculture, seem to have progressed backward in the design and consumption of food.
White rice increases risk of Type 2 diabetes. Published: Friday, March 16, 2012 - 20:33 in Health & Medicine. Source: BMJ-British Medical Journal
March 20, 2012
Beautiful experiments
Recent experimental demonstration of quantum criticality at the University of Chicago (1) , provides glimpses of the lost art of insight generation by combining theory with beautiful experiments. It seems to have raised several interesting avenues to pursue including understanding exotic phenomena such as the early universe and gravitational singularities, in simulations. The fact that it provides a different framework for matter itself at 10 nano-Kelvin, also exposes the futility of attempting to explain the unknown by incrementally extending status-quo theories to time and space scales, in which they become invalid.
This has been a problem. Most are unwilling to throw out established ideas, even though they are unable to provide an integrated view of the system. The tendency has been to "plug," the equation with yet another unknown and hope that someday it will become clearer. The Chicago experiment shows that a unified theory based on established assumptions is either unlikely or faulty. Since it is unclear how matter behaves in much of the universe, it is futile to attempt a theory of it. What is more important is to postulate mathematical possibilities and then attempt to support them in experiments – that takes imagination and not long tunnels and big steel.
Attempting to prove the status-quo or even creating a theory based on current assumptions are unlikely to bring new insights. Challenging the assumptions themselves is a more fertile path.
(1) Ultracold experiments heat up quantum research. Published: Monday, March 19, 2012 - 08:34 in Physics & Chemistry. Source: University of Chicago
March 17, 2012
Efficient mouse traps
Research from Northwestern University (1) exposes the fallibility of and predictable patterns in on-line auctions, ultimately proving that large markets will almost always tend towards efficient outcomes. Market efficiency has been challenged on anecdotal evidence – Wall street physicists making inexplicable alpha – only to succumb to more down to earth explanations of fraud or luck. Ego is an inexplicable thing – and most suffering from the disease, generally believe they are winning battles only to be taken out in an outright war. Her fellow traders have had the same idea in a different corner of the same building or a few blocks away from the penthouse.
Mouse trap – an algorithm used at Northwestern (2) in 1986 to naively search design spaces in an attempt to teach students better outcomes in engineering design may still be valid for optimization. Bidding for better outcomes, after all, is an optimization problem with a foundation in game theory. The problem remains to be that there are too many people in the world who sport brain cells disallowing a single genius to capture alpha or discover arbitrage. Although every grand school in the world has been teaching its graduates that they are special and hence will be able to rob the idiots – defined as those who did not go to the elite schools – of their money and pride, the proof is in the pudding. There has not been any alpha in bidding and trading – none without fraud and insider information.
Market efficiency – an almost archaic concept – still is the most simplistic explanation of how markets behave. Those who do not believe may make money today and lose it tomorrow.
(1)Who wouldn't pay a penny for a sports car? Published: Friday, March 16, 2012 - 15:33 in Mathematics & Economics. Source: Northwestern University
(2) Gill R. Eapen, (with S. Shah and E. Rossow), Computer Aided Design and Optimization of Concrete Columns" Source: www.civil.northwestern.edu/docs/Rossow/cv144-ECRBIOS.doc
March 16, 2012
Unprotected innovation
A recent study (1) shows that sharing patents may improve the rate of innovation and the overall economics of the original inventor. This makes sense as systems with no sharing of intellectual property are unlikely to perform better than those with selective sharing. On the other hand, systems with no protection will be much worse off as without some protected property rights, investments are unlikely to happen. So, both from the innovator's perspective as well as from a societal perspective, an inverted U curve appears to exist – with both ends resulting in suboptimal economics. Granted, this relationship is different with the innovator's preferences for protection, which is generally higher than that of the society.
Perhaps, there are better ways to think about it. Innovation and patents are not generic – some are specific and some have platform characteristics. The later variety has a higher potential to add value to both the holder of the IP position and the society in general, by sharing. If this is so, the whole patent system may need to be revamped – differentiating between IP with specific and platform characteristics. More importantly, governments may have a role to play in opening up sharing in cases where the utility of the inventor and the society can be enhanced.
Advanced societal designs will incorporate a system of multi-tiered IP rights that optimizes value by allowing optimal sharing of know-how and ideas.
(1) Sharing patents with competitors may encourage innovation, UB study suggests. Published: Friday, March 16, 2012 - 15:33 in Mathematics & Economics. Source: University at Buffalo
