Nicolai Friis

The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty

"our results indicate that academia pays a price by focusing attention and resources on superstars"

Nice to see this supported by data analysis, now.

H/T: @cxdig.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

„Viel war die Rede vom „tragischen Tod" des Extremsportlers Felix Baumgartner, der mit seinem Paraglider in den Tod stürzte. Wie üblich verblasst jede Kritik an Haltung und Wirken eines prominenten Sportlers hinter einer sich pietätvoll gebenden zugewandten Haltung. Und so heißen dann auch die Nachrufe „Der Grenzüberschreiter", so in der Süddeutschen Zeitung, „Ein Leben in Extremen", im Stern, oder aber, in der Zeit: „Geboren, um zu fliegen." Einige Medien erwähnen zwar, dass Baumgartner bei seinem Absturz eine Hotelangestellte schwer verletzte. Die Frau wurde von einem Holzsplitter am Hals getroffen. Bekannt ist, dass sie inzwischen wieder stabil sein soll. Mehr weiß man allerdings nicht. Es passt ganz gut zum öffentlichen Wirken Baumgartners, dass besagte Hotelangestellte nur als Randnotiz auftaucht. Thomas Ebermann hat diese grundsätzliche Haltung einmal die „Ideologie des Kollateralschadens" genannt. Sie fügt sich nahtlos ein in die öffentlichen Äußerungen Baumgartners, der Fan von Viktor Orbán war und in Osterreich gern eine „gemäßigte Diktatur" gesehen hätte. Natürlich leugnete Baumgartner den Klimawandel, und natürlich war er während der Pandemie für eine Durchseuchung. Sein Standpunkt ist in jeder Frage der gewesen, dass alles, was ihn einschränkt, rigoros bekämpft gehört; auch um den Preis der Unversehrtheit anderer. Er war die größte aller Ich-Hupen. Der allgemeinen Betroffenheit angesichts des Tods von Felix Baumgartner skeptisch gegenüberzustehen, richtet sich nicht gegen den Menschen Felix Baumgartner; es richtet sich gegen die Galionsfigur einer Ideologie, die Rücksichtslosigkeit und Selbstüberschätzung idealisiert und feiert. Dass der Extremsportler schlussendlich selbst Opfer der von ihm verkörperten Ideologie wurde, ist zwar auch bitter. Worin aber unterscheidet sich Baumgartner von einem jugendlichen Raser in der Innenstadt, der in einem egomanen Rausch Passant*innen in den Tod reißt? Der maßgebliche Unterschied ist, dass der jugendliche Raser nich…

Die größte aller Ich-Hupen Kommentar von Frederic Valin Q= Dass bei dem tödlichen Unfall Baumgartners auch eine Frau verletzt wurde, wird kaum berichtet. Der Extremsportler sorgte sich wenig um andere. 20.7.2025 16:25 Uhr

DEN Artikel muss ich teilen, weil ich ihn wirklich sehr gelungen finde. ☝🏼

taz.de/Felix-Baumga...

How many physical and how many logical qubits does this quantum computer have? What kind of data will it process? Which algorithms will run on this QC?

The calm before the storm, Benasque Quantum Information 2025 @ccbpp.bsky.social

Given that I recently saw an advert like that, I wonder, are students really interested in starting a PhD under the premise that they work in one country while the supervisor quite obviously works in another? Is the supervisor going back&forth? At least my students want to meet at least once a week

Interesting piece, although I find the characterization of Marcus as being "of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna" (not so) subtly lacking any reference to his main affiliation at TU Wien ;)

I also don't get why one would give a plaform to somene who is openly supporting such an antiscientific position on such a crucial topic of our time? Couldn't find VCQ on bsky, what is the position of @quantumunivie.bsky.social @tuwien.at @istaresearch.bsky.social @iqoqi-vienna.bsky.social on this?

Am at least occasionally working on QEC, so would not mind joining, but Bluesky does not seem to allow me to message
@riverlaneltd.bsky.social directly

Christoph Sieber gibt Geschichtsnachhilfe 👇

Dass die neue deutsche Bundesministerin für Wirtschaft "Reiche" heißt, ist mindestens so lustig, wie der Umstand, dass der ehemalige österreichische Bundesminister für Gesundheit "Rauch" heißt.

After many years in academia I might have become a bit cynical about certain structural problems and I have found myself disappointed by colleagues and their behaviour on many occasions, but today a colleague managed to show me that decency, honesty, and integrity are not dead yet in academia

Ziemlich erschütternd, was es 2025 noch für Männerbünde mit elitären Fantasien gibt. Gibt es eine öffentlich zugängliche Liste der Mitglieder?

... and encountered some mysterious graphs that we feltresembled the head and tails of a certain Great Old One. If that has piqued your interest, have a look at our paper, if you dare. (6/6)

...and our very own @entangledanarchist.bsky.social @quitphysics.info, we investigate the detection of GME when only restricted sets of measurements can be carried out, e.g., only on certain connected groups of qubits in graph structures. In our study, we designed and tested new witnesses ... (5/6)

Detecting genuine multipartite entanglement in multi-qubit devices with restricted measurements The detection of genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) is a state-characterization task that can be viewed as a benchmark in that it confirms appropriate levels of coherence and the ability to contr...

…microwave photons. In our new paper arxiv.org/abs/2504.21076, led by our talented novice of Lovecraftian lore Nicky Li @tuwien.at and with fearless collaborators Xi Dai and Kevin Reuer (Quantum Center @ethzurich.bsky.social), Manuel Muñoz-Arias (Institut quantique @usherbrooke.bsky.social) ...(4/6)

… is often not easy, but many criteria exist in principle. But what does one do if the measurements required for already existing GME criteria cannot be measured? You design new criteria! We encountered this problem when studying platforms encoding qubits in time bins, e.g., itinerant… (3/6)

… is a multipartite correlation that cannot be understood as merely mixing different pairwise quantum correlations. The detection of GME is a state characterization task that can give us information about structures of resource states for quantum computing and quantum communication. This task… (2/6)

Genuine multipartite entanglement—GME for short—is a type of entanglement that—much like a certain Lovecraftian cosmic entity that took a break from napping at the House of R'lyeh to make a guest appearance in our paper arxiv.org/abs/2504.21076 —is even weirder than regular entanglement: GME … (1/6)

If it was a spider, in Australia, you wouldn't have had the chance to get to your device to post about it

…and showed that GME activation indeed works for all fully inseparable biseparable states in infinite dimensions (the finite-dimensional case had already been solved by Carlos Palazuelos and Julio de Vicente). (3/3)

… We found that a well-established condition on the covariance matrix believed to be a GME criterion for Gaussian states actually is not such a criterion; we designed some new GME witnesses; found examples of GME activation for Gaussian and non-Gaussian states, ... (2/3)

Multi-copy activation of genuine multipartite entanglement in continuous-variable systems Klára Baksová, Olga Leskovjanová, Ladislav Mišta Jr., Elizabeth Agudelo, and Nicolai Friis, Quantum 9, 1699 (2025). Multi-copy activation of genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) is a phenomenon whe...

Am very happy to see this paper by the power duo Klára and Olga out in Quantum: We set out to study the activation of genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) in the continuous-variable setting. On the way, we discovered a treasure trove of results... (1/3)

Big shout out to the talented Nicky Li for working this out in all detail! (3/3)

In our latest paper doi.org/10.1038/s415... we answer this question quantitatively: providing a bound for correlations measured in arbitrary bases for states with fixed Schmidt number, providing a practical way of certifying the latter that in principle works for any bases (2/3)

Entanglement is a form of correlation that is "stronger" than classical correlations in the sense that correlations are equally strong in infinitely many pairs of bases. But how strong do correlations have to be in any arbitrary pair of bases to conclude that the system is entangled? (1/3)

Pleasure was all ours, Phil, pleasure was all ours!

bleats?

Urban dictionary has a very different opinion on what that means

Double-checking the meaning of sclerotic before hitting reply to post (what are tweets called here again?)

Maybe it's just me, but I find it difficult to take an "international" conference seriously if some of the organizers and/or members of the scientific committee are also "invited" speakers, and, independently of that, if all of these three groups exclusively consist of men.