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Choosing Your Bets: The Selection Bias

As some of the long-time readers of this blog know, in this column I have occasionally discussed...

Have A Master In Science, Want A Post-Doc Position Directly?

Do you have a master in Science, and want to start a Post-Doc position directly? You can have it...

A Chess Study Requiring Backpropagation

The following position is a win for white. But how?It seems like white is able to grab a knight...

Co-Design Of Scientific Experiments

Next Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, you will find a new bulky paper in the arXiv. Titled "On...

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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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Freedom For Our Kids ?

Freedom For Our Kids ?

Jul 06 2010 | comment(s)

This is a post that has nothing to do with physics or other sciences, for once. I just report here my thoughts as a father upon allowing my 11-years-old son to go spend a day to the beach alone with his friends. Is it too early ? Is it about time ?
Z' Bosons: The Dream Moves Away

Z' Bosons: The Dream Moves Away

Jul 03 2010 | comment(s)

Z' Bosons: The Dream Moves Away

The long-distance competition between CERN and Fermilab - between Europe and the US, if you like - for supremacy in the field of fundamental physics is made of direct challenges, like the search for the Higgs boson, as much as of indirect skirmishes, such as one facility excluding a signal that the other facility has a chance of discovering.
Two Ideas For Publishers

Two Ideas For Publishers

Jul 01 2010 | comment(s)

I have just finished four slides (well, five, if you count the cover) which I will show at ESOF 2010, the "EuroScience Open Forum" which is starting in Torino tomorrow. At ESOF, Sense About Science has organized two interesting sessions. One of them is about Peer Review, and it will discuss the results of a recent survey that SAS conducted on the subject with the help of Elsevier.
First Prize For The Least Appropriate Program Name

First Prize For The Least Appropriate Program Name

Jun 30 2010 | comment(s)

Through a casual browsing of the Arxiv's hep-ph section, I got to read the following title:

"CAMORRA: A C++ Library for Recursive Computation of Particle Scattering Amplitudes"

Authors are R.Kleiss and G. van den Oord. None of which appears Italian by name, so my first reaction to the title (are these people stupid or what?) got tempered by the fact that they may just be ignorant.

Camorra is the name of one of the three main criminal organizations operating in southern Italy. From wikipedia, even a computer-illiterate could learn that

The Camorra is a mafia-like criminal organization [...] It finances itself through drug trafficking/distribution, cigarette
Garrett Lisi's New E8 Paper

Garrett Lisi's New E8 Paper

Jun 28 2010 | comment(s)

Social networks are a great help for this kind of news: a new paper by a FB friend does not go unnoticed (at least by me) as it once would. I learned today that Garrett Lisi (picture below), the surfer and theoretical physicist, has deposited another paper in the Cornell arxiv. And it looks as a significant addition to his previous studies of the E8 group. He explicitly calls it "a companion" to the previous article, "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything".
The Say Of The Week

The Say Of The Week

Jun 25 2010 | comment(s)

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts..."

Sherlock Holmes