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Travel With Two Infants

The other day I traveled with Kalliopi and our two newborns to Padova from Lulea. After six full...

A Nice Little Combination

Although I have long retired from serious chess tournaments (they take too much time, a luxury...

The Strange Case Of The Monotonous Running Average

These days I am putting the finishing touches on a hybrid algorithm that optimizes a system (a...

Turning 60

Strange how time goes by. And strange I would say that, since I know time does not flow, it is...

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Tommaso DorigoRSS Feed of this column.

Tommaso Dorigo is an experimental particle physicist, who works for the INFN at the University of Padova, and collaborates with the CMS and the SWGO experiments. He is the president of the Read More »

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6 Years To Scientists Guilty Of Not Predicting Earthquakes

6 Years To Scientists Guilty Of Not Predicting Earthquakes

Oct 22 2012 | comment(s)

Italy is a beautiful, crazy country. Take today's verdict, which condemns seven scientists (Franco Barberi, Enzo Boschi, Mauro Dolce, Bernardo De Bernardinis, Giulio Selvaggi, Claudio Eva, and Gianmichele Calvi) to six years of prison, plus a huge fine, for allegedly reassuring the population about the unlikelihood of an earthquake on the eve of the devastating shock of April 6th, 2009, which caused 309 deaths and destroyed most of the mid-size town of L'Aquila, in central Italy.

The Quote of the Week

The Quote of the Week

Oct 19 2012 | comment(s)

"The problem of averaging data containing discrepant values is nicely discussed in Ref. x [...] It is difficult to develop a procedure that handles simultaneously in a reasonable way two basic types of situations: (a) data that lie apart from the main body of the data are incorrect (contain unreported errors); and (b) the opposite -itis the main body of data that is incorrect. Unfortunately, as Ref. x shows, case (b) is not infrequent [...] the choice of procedure is less significant than the initial choice of data to include or exclude."

The Review of Particle Properties 2004, p.16.
Dreaming Of Torsional Building Oscillations During An Earthquake

Dreaming Of Torsional Building Oscillations During An Earthquake

Oct 18 2012 | comment(s)

I had a dream. So what, we all do. Well, this was particular, because I remember all of it well, and because it involved a very interesting situation. I was at Fermilab, in an office on a top-level floor of a tall building, when a powerful earthquake hit.
Follow Me On Twitter

Follow Me On Twitter

Oct 16 2012 | comment(s)

One of the results of the conference "ComunicareFisica 2012" I attended last week (and about which I wrote extensively in the past few posts) was, for me, getting convinced that Twitter cannot really be ignored. I have subscribed long ago and never really used it much, but now I am going to be more careful with that medium. I intend to tweet there news on HEP as well as other things I find interesting. I promise it will be a high signal-to-noise channel.

So this post is just to say that you are all welcome to follow me on twitter at @dorigo. See you there!
A Still Better Analogy To Explain Naturalness

A Still Better Analogy To Explain Naturalness

Oct 15 2012 | comment(s)

See, this is what I really like of a blog: when readers contribute significantly!
Power And Limits Of The Analogy In Particle Physics

Power And Limits Of The Analogy In Particle Physics

Oct 12 2012 | comment(s)

Yesterday I spent a very interesting day at Comunicare Fisica 2012, a conference held in TORINO which brought together researchers, high-school teachers, journalists and other professionals working in the field of the popularization of science. The session in the afternoon dealt with the use of the web 2.0, and of course among the topics discussed in the talks was the use of blogs.