Speaking of Music and the Counterpoint of Copyright: Addressing Legal Concerns in Making Oral History Available to the Public

Oral history provides society with voices and memories of people and communities experiencing events of the past first-hand. Such history is created through interviews; an interview, however, like any other type of intellectual property—once in a fixed form—is subject to copyright law. In order to make oral history available to the public, it is critically important that individuals generating and acquiring oral history materials clearly understand relevant aspects of copyright law. The varied nature of how one may create, use, and acquire oral history materials can present new, surprising, and sometimes baffling legal scenarios that challenge the experience of even the most skilled curators. This iBrief presents and discusses two real-world scenarios that raise various issues related to oral history and copyright law. These scenarios were encountered by curators at Yale University’s Oral History of American Music archive (OHAM), the preeminent organization dedicated to the collection and preservation of recorded memoirs of the creative musicians of our time. The legal concerns raised and discussed throughout this iBrief may be familiar to other stewards of oral history materials and will be worthwhile for all archivists and their counsel to consider when reviewing their practices and policies

Sharp Quantum vs. Classical Query Complexity Separations

We obtain the strongest separation between quantum and classical query complexity known to date -- specifically, we define a black-box problem that requires exponentially many queries in the classical bounded-error case, but can be solved exactly in the quantum case with a single query (and a polynomial number of auxiliary operations). The problem is simple to define and the quantum algorithm solving it is also simple when described in terms of certain quantum Fourier transforms (QFTs) that have natural properties with respect to the algebraic structures of finite fields. These QFTs may be of independent interest, and we also investigate generalizations of them to noncommutative finite rings.Comment: 13 pages, change in title, improvements in presentation, and minor corrections. To appear in Algorithmic

Causality and Cirel'son bounds

An EPR-Bell type experiment carried out on an entangled quantum system can produce correlations stronger than allowed by local realistic theories. However there are correlations that are no-signaling and are more non local than the quantum correlations. Here we show that any correlations more non local than those achievable in an EPR-Bell type experiment necessarily allow -in the context of the quantum formalism- both for signaling and for generation of entanglement. We use our approach to rederive Cirel'son bound for the CHSH expression, and we derive a new Cirel'son type bound for qutrits. We discuss in detail the interpretation of our approach.Comment: 5 page

Tsirelson's bound and supersymmetric entangled states

A superqubit, belonging to a $(2|1)$-dimensional super-Hilbert space, constitutes the minimal supersymmetric extension of the conventional qubit. In order to see whether superqubits are more nonlocal than ordinary qubits, we construct a class of two-superqubit entangled states as a nonlocal resource in the CHSH game. Since super Hilbert space amplitudes are Grassmann numbers, the result depends on how we extract real probabilities and we examine three choices of map: (1) DeWitt (2) Trigonometric (3) Modified Rogers. In cases (1) and (2) the winning probability reaches the Tsirelson bound $p_{win}=\cos^2{\pi/8}\simeq0.8536$ of standard quantum mechanics. Case (3) crosses Tsirelson's bound with $p_{win}\simeq0.9265$. Although all states used in the game involve probabilities lying between 0 and 1, case (3) permits other changes of basis inducing negative transition probabilities.Comment: Updated to match published version. Minor modifications. References adde

Identification and Removal of Noise Modes in Kepler Photometry

We present the Transiting Exoearth Robust Reduction Algorithm (TERRA) --- a novel framework for identifying and removing instrumental noise in Kepler photometry. We identify instrumental noise modes by finding common trends in a large ensemble of light curves drawn from the entire Kepler field of view. Strategically, these noise modes can be optimized to reveal transits having a specified range of timescales. For Kepler target stars of low photometric noise, TERRA produces ensemble-calibrated photometry having 33 ppm RMS scatter in 12-hour bins, rendering individual transits of earth-size planets around sun-like stars detectable as ~3 sigma signals.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PAS

A Spitzer Spectrum of the Exoplanet HD 189733b

We report on the measurement of the 7.5-14.7 micron spectrum for the transiting extrasolar giant planet HD 189733b using the Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Though the observations comprise only 12 hours of telescope time, the continuum is well measured and has a flux ranging from 0.6 mJy to 1.8 mJy over the wavelength range, or 0.49 +/- 0.02% of the flux of the parent star. The variation in the measured fractional flux is very nearly flat over the entire wavelength range and shows no indication of significant absorption by water or methane, in contrast with the predictions of most atmospheric models. Models with strong day/night differences appear to be disfavored by the data, suggesting that heat redistribution to the night side of the planet is highly efficient.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letter

Exact quantum query complexity of EXACTk,ln\rm{EXACT}_{k,l}^n

In the exact quantum query model a successful algorithm must always output the correct function value. We investigate the function that is true if exactly $k$ or $l$ of the $n$ input bits given by an oracle are 1. We find an optimal algorithm (for some cases), and a nontrivial general lower and upper bound on the minimum number of queries to the black box.Comment: 19 pages, fixed some typos and constraint

Not Just a Theory—The Utility of Mathematical Models in Evolutionary Biology

Models have made numerous contributions to evolutionary biology, but misunderstandings persist regarding their purpose. By formally testing the logic of verbal hypotheses, proof-of-concept models clarify thinking, uncover hidden assumptions, and spur new directions of study. thumbnail image credit: modified from the Biodiversity Heritage Librar

Substituting Quantum Entanglement for Communication

We show that quantum entanglement can be used as a substitute for communication when the goal is to compute a function whose input data is distributed among remote parties. Specifically, we show that, for a particular function among three parties (each of which possesses part of the function's input), a prior quantum entanglement enables one of them to learn the value of the function with only two bits of communication occurring among the parties, whereas, without quantum entanglement, three bits of communication are necessary. This result contrasts the well-known fact that quantum entanglement cannot be used to simulate communication among remote parties.Comment: 4 pages REVTeX, no figures. Minor correction