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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...

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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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The Quote of the Week: Harrison Prosper, Why We Want To Be Sure

The Quote of the Week: Harrison Prosper, Why We Want To Be Sure

Jul 13 2012 | comment(s)

"Given that the search for the Higgs took some 45 years, tens of thousands of scientists and engineers, billions of dollars, not to mention numerous divorces, huge amounts of sleep deprivation, tens of thousands of bad airline meals, etc., etc., we want to be sure as is humanly possible that this is real."

 Harrison Prosper, Kirby W. Kemper Professor of Physics, Florida State University
Tony Smith: My Two Bets With TD

Tony Smith: My Two Bets With TD

Jul 12 2012 | comment(s)

As I explained yesterday, I am in the process of receiving payment for a few bets on possible discoveries at the LHC. Two such bets were on between me and Tony Smith, a long time reader of this blog and a lawyer with deep interest in particle physics (and a few interesting ideas). Tony now concedes them. These are for a total of $200 and a bottle of Strega (an italian liquor); the latter has been agreed to be turned into a bottle of good wine, much closer to my taste. I will post here a picture of the wine as I get it; in the meantime, Tony agreed to write something to describe the heart of the matter to readers of this blog. So the text below is from him.

LEARNING FROM LOSING
 
Peer Review: The Nuts And Bolts

Peer Review: The Nuts And Bolts

Jul 12 2012 | comment(s)

Sense About Science, the British charitable trust that tries to educate the community on the correct handling of scientific claims, and to "work in partnership with scientific bodies, research publishers, policy makers, the public and the media, to change public discussions about science and evidence", has produced today a very interesting booklet on peer review.
First Effects Of Cuts To HEP Research

First Effects Of Cuts To HEP Research

Jul 12 2012 | comment(s)

I cannot resist stealing the picture below, courtesy "IoNonFaccioNiente", the blog of Paolo Valente. Some context for foreigners is needed: the Italian government, in a rather untimely and shocking move, announced a 10% budget cut to the 2013 INFN, the italian institute for nuclear physics that pays my salary and significantly contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN.
The SM Rules: Four Bets Won, $1200 Claimed

The SM Rules: Four Bets Won, $1200 Claimed

Jul 11 2012 | comment(s)

The path of the LHC experiments to the successful observation of a Higgs boson has not been the smoothest I could think of, with delays in construction, incidents, and the like; but we are finally there. And now, with over 10/fb of data fully analyzed and presented at ICHEP, we can take stock and draw the "summer 2012" picture on existing and non-existing subnuclear entities, the non-existing ones notably including SUSY particles and other new physics candidates which are periodically evoked by theorists to mend the shortcomings of the standard model.
Apology to my ATLAS Colleagues

Apology to my ATLAS Colleagues

Jul 10 2012 | comment(s)

I realize I owe an apology to my ATLAS colleagues.

In a post-Higgs-announcement article where I was listing some random "post-mortem" considerations, I wrote a paragraph which could be read as an accusation of malpractice in one of the recent ATLAS analyses. I was misled by the fact that I had no access to the details of the
actual results being shown at ICHEP on the matter -my information was partial and I was not sure whether it was public or not; it was second-hand and I had no way to check its real source.