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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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Today and tomorrow I am attending a workshop in Padova titled as per the title above (but it is in Italian). If you know the language and are interested in the topic, there is available live streaming at the workshop's site, here: http://www.scicomm.it/p/pbt-2014.html

My contribution will be titled "The researcher who blogs: social value, opportunities, challenges, anathemas". I am speaking tomorrow at 10AM (Rome time zone - it's 1AM in California!). I will post some extract of my slides in the blog later on...

The workshop should be interesting, as many reknowned science popularization operators are present, and the topics in the agenda are attractive. Give it a look if you like...
I wonder how interesting can be to an outsider to learn that the mass of the sixth quark is now known to 0.38% accuracy, thanks to the combination of measurements of that quantity performed by the CMS experiment at CERN. In fact, the previously best measurement was the one recently published by the DZERO collaboration at Fermilab, which has a relative 0.43% accuracy. "So what" - you might say - "this 14% improvement does not change my life". That's undeniably true.
Sense About Science is a non-profit organization that campaigns in favour of more correct diffusion and use of scientific information. It is a great attempt at increasing the quality of the scientific information in circulation, focusing on evidence and debunking false claims. The web site of the organization explains:
Last Friday Samuel Ting, the winner of the 1975 Nobel prize in Physics for the co-discovery of the J/ψ particle, gave a seminar in the packed CERN main auditorium on the latest results from AMS, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer installed on the international space station.
Being at CERN for a couple of weeks, I could not refrain from following yesterday's talks in the Main Auditorium, which celebrated the 90th birthday of Herwig Schopper, who directed CERN in the crucial years of the LEP construction.

A talk I found most enjoyable was John Ellis'. He gave an overview of the historical context preceding the decision to build LEP, and then a summary of the incredible bounty of knowledge that the machine produced in the 1990s.
After four months of frenzy by over 1500 teams, the very successful Higgs Challenge launched by the ATLAS collaboration ended yesterday, and the "private leaderboard" with the final standings has been revealed. You can see the top 20 scorers below.