Fake Banner
Living At The Polar Circle

Since 2022, when I got invited for a keynote talk at a Deep Learning school, I have been visiting...

Conferences Good And Bad, In A Profit-Driven Society

Nowadays researchers and scholars of all ages and specialization find themselves struggling with...

USERN: 10 Years Of Non-Profit Action Supporting Science Education And Research

The 10th congress of the USERN organization was held on November 8-10 in Campinas, Brazil. Some...

Baby Steps In The Reinforcement Learning World

I am moving some baby steps in the direction of Reinforcement Learning (RL) these days. In machine...

User picture.
picture for Hank Campbellpicture for Patrick Lockerbypicture for Heidi Hendersonpicture for Bente Lilja Byepicture for Sascha Vongehrpicture for Johannes Koelman
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 »

 Blogroll
Convicting Scientists For Miscommunicating Risk: What We Should Focus On

Convicting Scientists For Miscommunicating Risk: What We Should Focus On

Oct 29 2012 | comment(s)

As I reported in a post a few days ago, the Italian sentencing of seven scientists to 6-years imprisonment for their misassessment of the risks of the population of L'Aquila, soon thereafter struck by a powerful earthquake which killed 309 and injured 2000, raised interest and disconcertment worldwide and spurred a debate which is not likely to end soon.

Who is guilty ?
Recent CMS Results

Recent CMS Results

Oct 26 2012 | comment(s)

Let me write here a short note -just for the record- to mention a proceedings paper I wrote for the ICFP 2012 conference. I spoke in Crete last June about the latest results of the CMS experiment, but in the meantime a lot happened -the Higgs boson discovery, just to mention one thing. So this writeup includes the new measurements of Higgs boson cross section, mass, and properties that the CMS experiment has produced since last July, as well as selected results in top and electroweak physics, searches for rare B decays, and new physics searches.
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!