Condensed concepts

Every grant and fellowship program comes with many pages of rules, regulations, guidelines, criteria, ... How carefully should you read them? What can you learn from them? I have two separate points. First, as the applicant it is your responsibility to read and to take note of these regulations. This is time consuming and boring. But it is still your responsibility . Don't expect or demand someone else to do it for you. It is not the responsibility of your supervisor, department chair, local research administrator, group secretary, or the funding agency. Don't ask questions when the answers are there in the rules if you actually read them. And don't ignore the rules. For example, if it clearly states you have to be 5 years past your Ph.D, don't apply anyway if you are 3 years past your Ph.D. This may seem inane to some readers, but it does happen. Also, just because it says you can do something does not meet it is a good idea. For example,  with regard to budget r

Today I am giving a seminar "Emergent quantum matter" in the School of Physics at Central University of Hyderabad . Here are the slides. Next tuesday I am giving a similar talk at the new Hyderabad branch of the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research. 

Tomorrow in the School of Chemistry at Central University of Hyderabad I am giving a talk, "Effect of quantum nuclear motion on hydrogen bonding". Here are the slides. My host is Susanta Mahapatra.

Last week I had a helpful discussion with Arindam Ghosh about this recent paper Conductivity noise study of the insulator-metal transition and phase coexistence in epitaxial samarium nickelate thin films  Anindita Sahoo, Sieu D Ha, Shriram Ramanathan, and Arindam Ghosh The abstract states The normalized magnitude of noise is found to be extremely large, being nearly eight orders of magnitude higher than thin films of common disordered metallic systems , and indicates electrical conduction via classical percolation in a spatially inhomogeneous medium.   The higher-order statistics of the fluctuations indicate a strong non-Gaussian component of noise close to the transition, attributing the inhomogeneity to the coexistence of the metallic and insulating phases.  The figure below shows how the non-Gaussian component [measured by the kurtosis ] increases dramatically as the temperature decreases below the metal-insulator transition. Some of the fundamental and related que

Skype and similar teleconferencing tools are great. I use them regularly to keep in touch with family while travelling and occasionally to talk to collaborators. It is much better than the phone and way better than exchanging emails. There are some techno-enthusiasts who claim we don't need to have conferences anymore because we can do it all on line and save lots of money. In companies there are those who push for tele-commuting and only have a central office with hot desks that people occasionally use. I have even heard of Australian universities who have hired faculty members from overseas solely based on a Skype interview! I think such enthusiasm is a big mistake. I have been at a few conferences where some "big shot" did not attend but gave their talk via tele-conferencing. It really wasn't the same as having them in the room. Even without technical glitches, it was not very engaging. Once I was even at a social event where a couple "attended" via S

Science education in schools in the Majority World faces many challenges including lack of resources, poorly trained teachers, and a fixation on rote learning from textbooks . Even at “good” schools students rarely ever do experiments or hands-on demonstrations. The focus is on preparing standard answers for exam questions. One recent big change in school education in the Majority World is the proliferation of low-cost private schools, even in extremely poor communities. Most of these are English medium. A recent cover story in The Economist chronicled this development. When visiting India, I enjoy reading The Hindu newspaper each day. I think the quality of journalism and the substance of the issues covered is much higher than most Western newspapers. More than once a week there is an op-ed piece or article about the problems with school education. Topics covered include the stifling of critical and creative thinking , the lack of autonomy given to teachers  by all-knowing and co

Tomorrow I am giving a seminar in the Physics Department at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. The talk "Emergent states of quantum matter" is similar to the one I gave two weeks ago at JNCASR.  Then an interesting question was raised. "There are two complementary pictures of the quasi-particles in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect: composite fermions and fractionally charged anyons. Can one explicitly show they are equivalent?" I am not sure. One can certainly show that the overlap of the relevant variational wave functions, Laughlin's and the composite fermion ones, is significant and that for small systems that the overlap of both of these wave functions with exact numerical wave function. However, that "black box" proof is not quite the same as establishing "adiabatic continuity" between the two different representations. Has anyone explicitly done that? I welcome other answers to this question.

This past northern summer I was on vacation on Lopez Island in Washington state [near my wife's hometown]. While browsing in the bookstore I came across this fantastic "coffee table" book The Elements by Theodore Gray  (co-founder of Wolfram Research). There is a page for each element with a fascinating description and beautiful photos. A sample is above. You can view all the pages on the book webpage. I bought a softcover version for US$25. I think it is important to support local bookstores, particularly given the vagaries of Amazon.  I was thinking that it would be really nice if there was also a book about molecules, since they are a lot more interesting than atoms. A week later I was in the U of Washington bookstore and I came across Molecules by Theodore Gray! He has also developed some fancy mobile phone apps. Now the hardcopy cost me US$15. This tells you something else about bookstores... I am also told that some young kids love these boo

Sometimes I give talks about science to high school students and to community groups, mostly churches. Recently I showed this one. Besides the "wow factor" I think it is valuable because it demonstrates some very basic but profound and important points about science. 1. Common sense observation and experience can be misleading. 2. Consequently, nature appears sometimes to be counter intuitive. 3. The way to discover the way things really are is by doing experiments. One can explain the historical significance of this experiment. Aristotle advocated basing science on common sense observations [heavy objects fall faster, objects that start their motion eventually slow down unless a force is applied to them, objects on earth move in a qualitatively different manner to those in the heavens, ....]. In contrast, Galileo went against this and did real experiments, dropping two balls of different mass [probably not from the leaning tower of Pisa]. This can also lead to

In Australia this week is Mental Health Week. 10 October is World Mental Health day. I have been told that some of my posts and talks about  mental health issues have been helpful and so here are a few random observations. These are just some things that I have recently noticed and are helpful for myself. They are personal and so may not be helpful  for others. But, hopefully they may stimulate you to think about your own situation. Overstimulation. This is one reason to turn off email occasionally. Do you really need email on your phone? It is one of the reasons I don’t even have dumb phone! I am currently in India and something I like about one of the places we regularly stay is there is no internet in our room. You have to walk outside 100 metres to a different building to access it. Short breaks. Several times a day I take a brief walk on campus to clear my head. UQ has quite a nice campus and so this helps. Exercise. The more that it is integrated into your weekly/

Tomorrow I am giving a seminar, "Emergent states of quantum matter" at JNCASR in Bangalore. Here are the slides . My host is N.S. Vidhyadhiraja

How do you do it while maintaining sanity and quality? In Australia a Bachelor of Science is a three year degree. Students have the option of doing an additional year, and being awarded an Honours degree. This is necessary to do a Ph.D. and may help to get into some government jobs. The honours year is roughly half course work and half a research project leading to a thesis. The thesis is a bit like a mini Masters degree in other countries. The thesis is meant to involve original research. For the best students their results may be part of a publication. The thesis is typically 40-80 pages. I believe that Princeton is unusual among US universities in requiring ALL their students to complete a senior thesis. Assigning, supervising, and completing these projects is particularly challenging for both advisors and students. Previously I posted advice for students giving seminar talks based on these projects. Now I turn to the thesis. First, students don’t actually know much sc