Conspiracy doesn't work

I had a job interview in one of the US universities. It was full of conspiracy: one day per every candidate, you're not allowed to attend other candidates' talks or even show up on the campus during that time. I find it great, probably better than the European system where all the short-listed candidates often spend the whole day together.

Flying to London on my way home I started a small talk with a girl sitting next to me. Guess what? It turned out that she was interviewed at the same place the day before. You know, these transatlantic planes are huge, like 50 rows, so the probability of such an event seems to be negligible. But it happened anyway.

Conspiracy just doesn't work.

Take care,

Misha

Faraday Discussions

Last week I participated in Faraday Discussion 142: Cold and Ultracold Molecules, presenting a poster there. For those of you who don't know, what Faraday Discussions are I will describe it in two words.

The conference is organized by the Royal Society of Chemistry, it has a centennial history and takes place a few times a year nowadays. This time it was at Durham University, UK. Faraday Discussions are not "real conferences" with long plenary talks and short student's contributions. Actually, they are nothing but... discussions.

People submit their abstracts well ahead of time, about one year before the conference. The best abstracts are selected for oral presentations and the lucky guys are asked to submit full-length papers about their work. Then, after the peer-review process, preprints are sent to all participants, who are expected to read them carefully before coming to the place.

Talks at the discussions are limited by only 5 minutes - it should be just a "reminder" to people, who already read the preprints. This rule is quite strict: there is a special guy sitting next to traffic lights, which are green when you start a presentation. After four minutes the lights are switched to yellow, and they turn out to be red after five minutes. At this point you are interrupted at half a sentence - no other way around.

Presentations are scheduled in such a way that they are more or less about the same subject within a single session. So, a few five-minutes talks are given one after another. Then the discussion begins - the most interesting part, taking about one hour. People ask a lot questions, both technical and general ones, but "comments" are also possible. The latter are short presentations, also restricted by the traffic lights, which are relevant to the main contributions. For instance, a theorist, who came up with some explanation after having read the experimental preprint, can briefly describe his idea and show some slides with results.

All questions, answers and comments (along with the papers themselves) are then collected and published a few months later as a volume of Faraday Discussions, a journal having quite a good impact factor, about 5.0 these days.

I find this kind of format to be much more efficient, than usual conferences, where people may have no questions simply because they haven't got the idea of the work during the talk.

On my webpage you may find my poster as well as two preprints about our project (0903.0811, 0904.0567).

Chemical Physics vs Physical Chemistry

At one of the last conferences I've attended, we've got a nice informal discussion about a usual subject "what is the difference between physical chemistry and chemical physics". We concluded that there might be a following way to distinguish between those. If you measure/calculate the reaction cross section, you are definitely a chemical physicist. But, if you multiply the cross section by the velocity, and therefore measure/calculate the reaction rate, you belong to the physical chemistry community. What is your opinion on that?

A popular article about Zeno effect

Some time ago we were asked to write a little popular article in the Oktober issue of the Czech journal Chemické Listy, in occasion to the 80th birthday of Prof. Rudolf Zahradnik. For a long time he was a president of Czech academy of sciences, and about ten years ago was even asked to be a Czech president candidate, but refused.

Finally, we came up with an article about quantum Zeno effect, called "Kvantový Zenonův jev aneb co nesejde z oči, nezestárne", which sounds in English as "Quantum Zeno effect, or who's kept in sight, won't age".

This is the first article by myself, which I do not really understand, because it was translated and published in Czech.

еще немножко снега

Вид из окна:
Лыжники:
Это тоже лыжники, только маленькие:

пара вечерних фоток

Доклад позади

Вчера успешно доложился, многим понравилось. Вообще это был единственный теоретический доклад на конференции, возможно, этим он привлек дополнительное внимание. В целом, воркшоп в Дьяволецце мне очень нравится: атмосфера достаточно неформальная, группы работают по близким тематикам, поэтому каждая презентация вызывет уйму вопросов и долгие дискуссии. Вот несколько сегодняшних фоток: погода вроде наладилась.

Швейцария

Наконец приехали в Дьяволеццу, за день поднялись на 3000 метров, это немного ощущается - сонливость и пить постоянно хочется. За окном шторм и аццкий минус, но в общем все хорошо.

Diavolezza meeting

Уже послезавтра, в субботу утром, я еду на конференцию в Швейцарию. Место называется Diavolezza, оно вот здесь:



Или, крупным планом:




Оно расположено у подножия ледника и в это время температура может опускаться до -30 С. Говорят, частенько весь день держится -20 С.

Я буду делать 20ти минутный доклад на тему "An analytical model of rotationally inelastic molecular collisions in electric fields" - расскажу о нашей свежесделанной небольшой теоретической работе. Надеюсь, что экспериментаторы внемлют и померяют что-нибудь.