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On a great cruise. Here’s a conference that investigates the nature of time: his conference will bring together leading researchers across a wide range of fields within physics and cosmology, as well as from computer science, complex systems, biology, philosophy, and psychology. The participants will discuss a number of interrelated foundational questions related to the nature of time. – How does time “flow”? – Why does time have a direction? – How does the universe evolve? – What does it mean to record a memory? – What does it mean to perform a computation? – What happens as we think? – How does complexity emerge? – How do organisms age? – How do species and genomes evolve? All perfect thing Read More ›

Skeptical mathematician Peter Woit explains here (Not Even Wrong, August 18, 2011): The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton announced today that Jim Simons and Charles Simonyi will donate $100 million to the Institute, in the form of matching funds for a $200 million campaign mainly aimed at increasing the endowment. For some idea of previous fund-raising by the IAS, see here. Simons and Simonyi have donated significant sums to the IAS in the past, including $6 million from Simonyi to endow a professorship for Witten. The IAS has about 25 permanent professors, with salaries reaching above $300K/year. To get some idea of the scale of the new endowment funds, if they all went to new permanent professorships (unlikely), the Read More ›