Dmitry Podolsky has got his PhD from Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. He currently works as postdoc at Case Western Reserve University. He is also one of the editors of NEQNET.

144. For lazy, yet curious students

Suppose you are a cosmologist – a  postdoc or an assistant professor. A student just knocked your door – he has heard that cosmology (inflation, non-gaussianities, dark energy and dark matter) is a cool subject right now. He is also aware of the fact that you are famous (well, not too much, but that he [...]

142. Chaotic inflation on the landscape?

By a chance, do you remember the paper by Nemanja Kaloper and Lorenzo Sorbo that we have recently discussed? There, the authors were modeling quintessence by axion-like fields that dynamically mix with 4-form fields. The mixing introduced mass terms for the axions approximately preserving the shift symmetry. (By the way, I was surprised to see [...]

141. On information loss paradox, statistical and quantum mechanics

Recently, I got into the discussion of information loss paradox in spacetimes with timelike and spacelike horizons (that is, black holes, de Sitter and staff like them). Let me remind you what is the issue (see for example Susskind’s recent book for details). Suppose you prepare some quantum state descrbing a given physical object. This [...]

140. First two weeks of December at NEQNET

Dear friends Before I proceed to the (becoming usual already) list of posts published at NEQNET during the last two weeks, let me say a couple of words about the blog itself, which is currently the source of  my pride 1. First of all, the number of subscribers to our RSS feed has crossed the [...]

138. Synthetic biology and iGem: part 2

This is the next (and probably the last – we will see ) part of my interview with Alexej Skvortsov, the leader of the Russian team in iGem 07, international competition in synthetic biology. D.: How did you check that your bacteria have the properties you wanted (in your case, that the reaction to the [...]

137. Synthetic biology and iGem: interview

This story is rather long one… Browsing the web approximately a year ago , I have found an interesting article on wired.com which did show that biology students are considered somewhat more important asset than physics students nowadays – in particular, they are getting taught more effectively and more money is invested in their education  [...]

136. Google Books now include magazines

As many of you have noticed, Google have recently won the major lawsuit against publishers and authors. Here is the first consequence. Google has just announced that it is going to include all issues of such magazines as Popular Science Popular Mechanics Man’s Health Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Maximum PC many others into the [...]

135. Steven Chu is the Secretary of Energy

Via Cosmic Variance: This is fantastic news. Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics for his work in laser cooling of atoms, has been nominated to be the next Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration. (Thanks to Elliot in comments.) This post is enormously important for [...]

134. Cosmic strings – simple and nice introduction into the topic

After my recent post on textures I have been asked what could a newcomer to the field read about topological defects in cosmology apart from the canonical book by Vilenkin and Shellard that I’ve recommended? Occasionally, a very good introduction level review of cosmic strings has recently appeared in Archives – the paper by A. [...]

132. Fun with Amazon.com

As you know very well, Amazon.com is an incredible source of extremely valuable assets which can become yours with just one click (well… several clicks… and giving them your credit card number… and more clicks… but, anyway, let me be positive ). For example, till this very day I had no idea that it is [...]