Category Archives: academia

An Update!

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Well, hello to you and to 2019!

It has been a little while since I wrote here and not since last month when it was also last year, so let’s break that stretch. It was not a stretch of entire quiet, as those of you who follow on social media know (twitter, instagram, Facebook… see the sidebar for links), but I do know some of you don’t directly on social media, so I apologise for the neglect.

The fact is that I’ve been rather swamped with several things, including various duties that were time consuming. Many of them I can’t talk about, since they are not for public consumption (this ranges from being a science advisor on various things – some of which will be coming at you later in the year, to research projects that I’d rather not talk about yet, to sitting on various committees doing the service work that most academics do that helps the whole enterprise keep afloat). The most time-consuming of the ones I can talk about is probably being on the search committee for an astrophysics job for which we have an opening here at USC. This is exciting since it means that we’ll have a new colleague soon, doing exciting things in one of a variety of exciting areas in astrophysics. Which area still is to be determined, since we’ve to finish the search yet. But it did involve reading through a very large number of applications (CVs, cover letters, statements of research plans, teaching philosophies, letters of recommendation, etc), and meeting several times with colleagues to narrow things down to a (remarkable) short list… then hosting visitors/interviewees, arrangement meetings, and so forth. It is rather draining, while at the same time being very exciting since it marks a new beginning! It has been a while since we hired in this area in the department, and there’s optimism that this marks a beginning of a re-invigoration for certain research areas here.

Physics research projects have been on my mind a lot, of course. I remain very excited abut the results that I reported on in a post back in June, and I’ve been working on new ways of building on them. (Actually, I did already do a followup paper that I did not write about here. For those who are interested, it is a whole new way of defining a new generalisation of something called the Rényi entropy, that may be of interest to people in many fields, from quantum information to string theory. I ought to do a post, since it is a rather nice construction that could be useful in ways I’ve not thought of!) I’ve been doing some new explorations of how to exploit the central results in useful ways: Finding a direct link between the Second Law of Thermodynamics and properties of RG flow in quantum field theory ought to have several consequences beyond the key one I spelled out in the paper with Rosso (that Zamolodchikov’s C-theorem follows). Im particular, I want to sharpen it even further in terms of something following from heat engine constraints, as I’ve been aiming to do for a while. (See the post for links to earlier posts about the ‘holographic heat engines” and their role.)

You might be wondering how the garden is doing, since that’s something I post about here from time to time. Well, right now there is an on-going deluge of rain (third day in a row) that is a pleasure to see. The photo at the top of the page is one I took a few days ago when the sky was threatening the downpours we’re seeing now. The rain and the low temperatures for a while will certainly help to renew and refresh things out there for the (early) Spring planting I’ll do soon. There’ll be fewer bugs and bug eggs that will […] Click to continue reading this post →

And So it Begins…

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It’s that time of year again! The new academic year’s classes begin here at USC today. I’m already snowed under with tasks I must get done, several with hard deadlines, and so am feeling a bit bogged down already, I must admit. Usually I wander around the campus a bit and soak up the buzz of the new year that you can pick up in all the campus activity swarming around. But instead I sit at my desk, prepping my syllabus, planning important dates, adjusting my calendar, exchanging emails, (updating my blog), and so forth. I hope that after class I can do the wander.

What will I be teaching this semester? The second part of graduate electromagnetism, as I often do. Yes, in a couple of hours, I’ll be again (following Maxwell) pointing out a flaw in one of the equations of electromagnetism (Ampere’s), introducing the displacement current term, and then presenting the full completed set of the equations – Maxwell’s equations, one of the most beautiful sets of equations ever to have been written down. (And if you wonder about the use of the word beautiful here, I can happily refer you to look at The Dialogues, starting at page 15, for a conversation about that very issue…!)

Speaking of books, if you’ve been part of the Science Friday Summer reading adventure, reading Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, you should know that I’ll be back on the show on Friday talking with Priyamvada Natarajan, producer Christie Taylor, and presenter Ira flatow about the book one more time. There may also be an opportunity to phone in with questions! And do look at their website for some of the extra material they’ve bene posting about the book, including extracts from last week’s live tweet Q&A.

Anyway, I’d better get back to prepping my class. I’ll be posting more about the semester (and many other matters) soon, so do come back.

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Sandwich Bag Graffiti

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A little while back, toward the end of December last year, I did a long stretch of days where I needed to change my routine a bit to take advantage of a window of time that came up that I could use for pushing forward on the book. I was falling behind and desperately needed to improve my daily production rate of finished art in order to catch up. So, I ended up ditching making a sandwich in the morning, instead leaving very soon after getting up to head to my office. I then stopped taking my sandwich altogether when I ran out of bread and did not make the time in the evening to bake a fresh batch, as I do once a week or so, because I was just coming back home and falling into bed.

The USC catering outlets were all closed that week. This meant that I ended up seeking out a place to buy a sandwich near my office. I found a place […] Click to continue reading this post →

Sabbatical Dreams Fulfilled!

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NYT_Simons_fellowship_announcement_2016Well, today’s hunt for a print copy of the New York Times (click for larger view) was easier than the Wall Street Journal hunt a couple of months back. Been a while since I was in the Science Times, and I’ve not been in it in this capacity before. The Simons Fellowship announcement was today, and I was awarded one. I’m honoured to be in such fine company! Nice to see my friends Lawrence Hall, Jeff Harvey, Petr Horava, Andy Strominger among my fellow Fellows, and congratulations to everyone!

This is a major part of my sabbatical planning for next academic year (half book-completing, half research), and it sure is great to get it. There aren’t many fellowships of this sort for my area of work. Thanks Simons Foundation and all concerned.

-cvj

*And when I say fulfilled… Well, there’s still the matter of actually doing the thing and getting all my planning to work out… Click to continue reading this post →

Gown Uses…

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Well, finally since arriving here in 2003 I’ve found a good use for the academic gown that sits on a hook on the back of my door! It is a master’s gown from Durham University. I had it while I was on the faculty there as I’d joined the excellent University College (housed in the awesome Durham Castle) so that I could have dinner at high table there from time to time (largely because of the aforementioned Castle). Since leaving there and coming here, it has sat largely undisturbed. But today, while crossing campus in a wonderful downpour, my trouser legs got rather soaked (umbrellas and trenchcoats have their limitations), and so I’m now sitting in my office trouser-less while they dry. Needless to say, my door is closed, and just in case […] Click to continue reading this post →

Rearrangements

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office_musings_2 Just thought I’d share with you a snapshot (click for larger view) of my thinking process concerning my office move. I’ve been in the same tiny box of an office for 12 years, and quite happy too. For various reasons (mostly to do with one large window with lots of light), over the years I’ve turned down offers to move to nicer digs… but recently I’ve decided to make a change (giving up some of the light) and so after much to-ing and fro-ing, it seems that we’ve settled on where I’m going to go.

Part of the process involved me walking over there (it’s an old lab space from several decades ago, hence the sink, which I want to stay) with a tape measure one day and making some notes in my notebook about the basic dimensions of some of the key things, including some of the existing […] Click to continue reading this post →

Naked!

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negative_mass_thoughtsSnapshot of my doodles done while talking on the phone to a BBC producer about perhaps appearing in a film discussing anti-gravity*. I explained lots of things, including why General Relativity does not seem to like negative mass, partly because they have something called a “naked singularity”, which is a big problem. Only after the call ended did I recall that in 1999 I co-authored a paper in which we discovered […] Click to continue reading this post →

Fresh Cycle

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brompton_30_08_2015I’ve been a bit quiet here the last week or so, you may have noticed. I wish I could say it was because I’ve been scribbling some amazing new physics in my notebooks, or drawing several new pages for the book, or producing some other simply measurable output, but I cannot. Instead, I can only report that it was the beginning of a new semester (and entire new academic year!) this week just gone, and this – and all the associated preparations and so forth – coincided with several other things including working on several drafts of a grant renewal proposal.

The best news of all is that my new group of students for my class (graduate electromagnetism, second part) seems like a really good and fun group, and I am looking forward to working with them. We’ve had two lectures already and they seem engaged, and eager to take part in the way I like my classes to run – interactively and investigatively. I’m looking forward to working with them over the semester.

Other things I’ve been chipping away at in preparation for the next couple of months include launching the USC science film competition (its fourth year – I skipped last year because of family leave), moving my work office (for the first time in the 12 years I’ve been here), giving some lectures at an international school, organizing a symposium in celebration of the centenary of Einstein’s General Relativity, and a number of shoots for some TV shows that might be of […] Click to continue reading this post →

Almost Done

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So Tuesday night, I decided that it was imperative that I paid a visit to one really good restaurant (at least) before leaving Santiago. My duties at ICMP2015 were over, and I was tired, so did not want to go too far, but I’d heard there were good ones in the area, so I asked the main organizer and he made a recommendation.

imageIt was an excellent choice. One odd thing: the hotel is in two separate towers, and I’d noticed this upon arrival and started calling it The Two Towers in my mind for the time was there. Obviously, right? Well, anyway, the restaurant is right around the corner from it plus a two minute walk, and…. Wait for it…it is called Le Due Tonni, which translates into The Two Towers, but apparently it has nothing to do with my observation about the hotel, since it got that name from a sister restaurant in a different part of town, I am told. So… An odd coincidence.

I will spare you the details of what I had for dinner save to say that if you get the fettuccini con salmon you’re on to a sure thing, and to warn that you don’t end up accidentally ordering a whole bottle of wine instead of a glass of it because you’re perhaps used to over-inflated wine prices in LA restaurants (caught it before it was opened and so saved myself having to polish off a whole bottle on my own)… Another amusing note is that one of my problems with getting my rusty Spanish out for use only occasionally is that I get logjams in my head because vocabulary from Spanish, French, and Italian all come to me mid sentence and I freeze sometimes. I’d just been getting past doing that by Tuesday, but then got very confused in the restaurant at one point until I realized my waiter was, oddly, speaking to me in Italian at times. I still am not sure why.

It was a good conference to come to, I think, because I connected […] Click to continue reading this post →

A Special Graphic Novel Panel!

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graphic_novel_event_postcardI’ll be on family leave this semester (because… see here), so that means I’ll be intensely busy with other matters most of the time, and will be doing a lot less in the areas of teaching, events, committees, etc. But there will be some things here and there, including things that I’d promised to do before I knew I’d be taking leave. One of them is a discussion on graphic novels for the Harman Academy of Polymathic Study here at USC. (While sitting up bleary-eyed with a very small person in the wee hours of Monday morning I designed the graphics for the postcard they will use for advertising the event. They kindly asked me if some samples of my work could be used, and so the graphic above is what I came up with (they added the logos and event info), made from parts of pages of the work-in-progress book.)

In various ways, the graphic novel is a nice example of the confluence of lots of disciplines and different modes of communication, and as such is a good “polymathic” topic to discuss with the students of the academy (part of the point of the enterprise is for them to learn about how going beyond the narrow constraints of subject or discipline can be of tremendous value, so they study people and creative endeavours that have benefited from that approach – see their website for more). I’ll be joined on the panel by Professor Henry Jenkins (from the Schools of Communication, Cinematic Arts, and Education), and Professor Dana Johnson (from the Department of English), both of whom are real experts in the graphic novel – they are involved in teaching the form, and […] Click to continue reading this post →

Dusting off Last Spring’s Excitement

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There has been quite a bit of discussion of the realisation that the exciting announcement made by the BICEP2 experiment back in March (see my post here) was based on erroneous analysis. (In brief, various people began to realise that most, if not all, of what they observed could be explained in terms of something more mundane than quantum spacetime fluctuations in the ultra-early universe – the subtle effects of galactic dust. A recent announcement by another experiment, the Planck team, have quantified that a lot.)

While there has been a bit of press coverage of the more sober realisations (see a nice June post on NPR’s blog here), it is (as with previous such cases) nowhere near as high profile as the initial media blitz of March, for better or worse. I think that “worse” might be the case here, since it is important to communicate to the public (in a healthy way) that science is an ongoing process of discovery, verification, and checking and re-checking by various independent teams and individuals. It is a collective effort, with many voices and the decentralised ever-sceptical scientific process itself, however long it takes, ultimately building and broadening the knowledge base. This self-checking by the community, this reliance on independent confirmation of […] Click to continue reading this post →