Greg Lafyatis, an associate professor of physics at (The) Ohio State (University), and his team recently published in Physical Review A on a new approach to quantum computing. According to Science News Daily, they:

designed a chip with a top surface of laser light that functions as an array of tiny traps, each of which could potentially hold a single atom. The design could enable quantum data to be read the same way CDs are read today.

Other research teams have created similar arrays, called optical lattices, but those designs present problems that could make them hard to use in practice. Other lattices lock atoms into a multi-layered cube floating in free space. But manipulating atoms in the center of the cube would be difficult. The Ohio State lattice has a more practical design, with a single layer of atoms grounded just above a glass chip. Each atom could be manipulated directly with a single laser beam.

(Hat tip to Slashdot.)

Look for an article in the April 15th edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) titled “Presidential Panel Recommends Steps to Promote Computational Science” that focuses on an as yet unreleased report about research and funding evolution for computational science. In the report, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Panel is calling for new approaches to computational science research. The report states that

universities and federal R&D agencies must make coordinated, fundamental, and structural changes that affirm the integral role of computational science.

Dan Reed of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who chairs the panel subcommittee that authored the report, calls for new ways of thinking and new ways of working together that will likely require new federal funding incentives to accomplish.

The report calls for both universities and federal agencies to restructure the way they coordinate and conduct joint research to better accommodate cross discipline efforts involving computer science and such fields as chemistry and biology. This line of thinking isn’t really new, but making it a higher priority on the national research agenda is. Word has it the report, “Computational Science: America’s Competitive Challenge”, could be released in a few weeks.

Former Clinton Secretary of Defense William Perry–along with MIT Prof. John Deutch–have an op-ed on proposed funding cuts to the long-term advanced R&D efforts at the defense department. Next year’s budget devotes only about $10 billion of the Pentagon’s $420 budget will be devoted to this “technology base,” down 20 percent from last year.

Perry and Deutch point out:

Of course, the administration and Congress need to make tough budget choices. But to shift money away from the technology base to pay for Iraq, other current military operations or research on large, expensive initiatives, is to give priority to the near term at the expense of the future.

Their line of reasoning is one that is frequently our line of reasoning:

American companies not only draw heavily on the Pentagon’s work, but they have also come to depend on it. The research and development programs of many of America’s major information technology companies are almost exclusively devoted to product development.

In the most recent issue of Communications of the ACM, David Patterson, president of the ACM, makes his own comments on the funding shift at DARPA that we mentioned earlier in the week. He goes one better, discussing the general computer science and engineering funding picture. Among other things, he describes the phrase “very ambitious proposal” as “the kiss of death” when it appears in an NSF review and laments the dimishing funding for long-term research in industry.

A very complimentary article on Dan Reed and his efforts to launch and grow the Renaissance Computer Center appeared in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education. I especially like his vision for providing high-performance computing resources beyond the science and engineering communities, to artists and humanists, for example. Combine the unique, and somewhat different, creative abilities of a high-end technologist and an artist, and who knows what you’ll get? By the way, Dan is a contributor to the first issue of CTWatch Quarterly.

This article, “High-Tech Renaissance,” is available online at
http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=169g4qip74htta5qlfpmq8a9hj2bxlbr

This article will be available to non-subscribers of The Chronicle for up to five days after it is e-mailed.

The article is always available to Chronicle subscribers at
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i25/25a03301.htm
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With the NSF website redesign, comes a page a new page…or at least unearths a page that was more hidden before. The science and engineering statistics site includes publications, data, and analysis. Trends in academic R&D spending and quantitative data on public perceptions of science and technology, for example.

Some of it’s long in the tooth, but some of it looks like a promising source for dropping a stat or sound bite from the horse’s mouth into your next proposal or presentation.