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
NA62 Places Bid For Future Observation Of Super-Rare Kaon Decay

NA62 Places Bid For Future Observation Of Super-Rare Kaon Decay

Mar 28 2018 | comment(s)

Yesterday's seminar at CERN by Giuseppe Ruggiero unveiled the preliminary results of a search for the rare decay of charged kaon into a pion and a neutrino-antineutrino pair, performed by the CERN NA62 experiment. The result in truth had been already shown a couple of weeks before at the Moriond conference, so it's no news - or if you prefer, it's two nu's - as indeed (spoiler alert) one such event was observed, with two neutrinos inferred from it.
Some Notes On Jester's Take On The Future Of HEP

Some Notes On Jester's Take On The Future Of HEP

Mar 15 2018 | comment(s)

I am very glad to observe that Adam Falkowsky has resumed his blogging activities (for how long, that's early to say). He published the other day a blog entry titled "Where were we", in which he offers his view of the present status of things in HEP and the directions he foresees for the field.
I was about to leave a comment there, but since I am a very discontinuous blog reader (you either write or read, in this business -no time for both things together) I feared I would then miss any reply or ensuing discussion. Not that I mean to say anything controversial or flippant; on the contrary, I mostly agree with Adam's assessment of the situation. With some distinguos.
RIP Stephen Hawking

RIP Stephen Hawking

Mar 14 2018 | comment(s)

I do not keep crocodiles[*] in my drawer, so this short piece will have to do today.... Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned British cosmologist, passed away yesterday, and with him we lost not only a bright thinker and all-round scientist, but also a person who inspired two or three generations of students and researchers, thanks of his will to live and take part in active research in spite of the difficulties he had to face, which he always managed to take with irony. Confined on a wheelchair by ALS, and incapable of even speaking without electronic assistance, he always displayed uncommon sharpness and wit.
On Lawrence Krauss, BuzzFeed, And #MeToo

On Lawrence Krauss, BuzzFeed, And #MeToo

Mar 09 2018 | comment(s)

Large amounts of ink (well, electrons) have been spilt over the web in the past few months to discuss the #MeToo movement. It seems this blog will eventually join the crowd, although a bit belatedly, and with a slightly different viewing angle. 
After keeping silent on the matter, I am stimulated to discuss it after a BuzzFeed article exposed several cases of alleged sexual harassment and related inappropriate behavior by world-class cosmologist-cum-science-pop-guy-cum-skeptic Lawrence Krauss. Plus, yesterday was international women's day, and I never miss a chance to miss a deadline.

Italian Elections

Italian Elections

Mar 05 2018 | comment(s)

Yesterday over 50 million Italian citizens were called to voted to elect the new government, after a rather tense period of political campaign. And today the results are out, yielding a quite confusing picture, at least for what concerns the chances of forming a coalition with a majority in both chambers.


Excited B_c State Seen By ATLAS Is Not Confirmed By LHCb

Excited B_c State Seen By ATLAS Is Not Confirmed By LHCb

Feb 27 2018 | comment(s)

Statistical hypothesis testing is quite boring if you apply it to cases where you know the answer, or where the data speak loud and clear about one hypothesis being true or false. Life at the interface between testability and untestability is much more fun.