A few things to try and avoid at a prospective employer....

Here is a wordle of traits I think I should try and avoid at a prospective employer

BAD-STUFF

In a nushell its all Capability Immaturity Model CIM stuff

Rules over results type thinking....

CIM -1 : Obstructive
Processes, however inappropriate and ineffective, are implemented with rigor and tend to obstruct work. Adherence to process is the measure of success in a Level -1 organization. Any actual creation of viable product is incidental. The quality of any product is not assessed, presumably on the assumption that if the proper process was followed, high quality is guaranteed.
Paradoxically, Level -1 organizations believe fervently in following defined procedures, but lacking the will to measure the effectiveness of the procedures they rarely succeed at their basic task of creating...

Agile in its many forms seems to be on the money with this culture and values to get stuff done eg http://agilemanifesto.org/

if you get this you get it...no biggie

\funny a coffee stain for your next (or 1st) scientific paper


http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349

there is also \goofy \homer from simpsons for LaTeX too

http://ctan.unsw.edu.au/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/4_4/

word lens

As I get older and closer to death, more and more things seem like they have a bit of magic in them - this is one of them
WORD LENS


Arthur C. Clarke : Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The building block of a quantum photon switch

Matthew A. Hall, Joseph B. Altepeter, and Prem Kumar from the Center for Photonic Communication and Computing at Northwestern University in Illinois have constructed a switch which fulfills these requirements and characterize its performance at the single photon level; it exhibits a 200-ps switching window, a 120:1 contrast ratio, 1.5 dB loss, and induces no measurable degradation in the switched photons entangled-state fidelity -less than 0.002

In other words the basic building block for a quantum photon switch

paper is here

Physical review letter is available to buy here

Diagram of the experimental apparatus and summary is here

Ultrafast ten to 200 picosecond switching of photonic entanglement

Solution to Erdös' Distinct Distances Problem has been found

Poincaré conjecture was proved [and confirmed in 2006] and now another of mathematics' holy grails falls by the way side.
While not one of the Millennium problems its very significant none the less...

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/17494.html

Actual paper is here

Information converted to energy

Physicists in Japan have (kind of) built a Maxwell's daemon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon ) that (kind of) converts information into energy

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44385

This does not violate the second law of thermodynamics as far more energy is used in the supporting apporatus than is gained in the experiment.

MAd SciEncE zapzap chooCh0o

Sub micrometer tapered hexagonal pillars of indium-gallium arsenide for on silicon lasers!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20096-first-lasers-grown-directly-on-silicon-chips.html



Programable molecular motor seen to travel 100nm wide DNA base pair track using atomic force microscopy at about 0.1 nm/s!!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110206132857.htm



Richard Feynman nanoprocessor idea becoming a reality thanks to Harvard University and MITRE Corp
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110209131824.htm