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Reference Letters

Lately I have been writing lots of reference letters for students who are applying to Ph.D. positions...

Highlights From MODE And EUCAIF

After a month of intense travel, which among other things included attendance to the MODE Workshop...

Win A MSCA Post-Doctoral Fellowship!

Applications for MSCA Post-doctoral fellowships are on, and will be so until September 10 this...

The Anomaly That Wasn't: An Example Of Shifting Consensus In Science

Time is a gentleman - it waits patiently. And in physics, as in all exact sciences, problems and...

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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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10th World Blogger To Lead Italy

10th World Blogger To Lead Italy

Jul 12 2009 | comment(s)

Beppe Grillo, one of the most successful bloggers in the world (last time I checked his blog was number 11 in the world by traffic) descends in Italy's confusing political arena.
Large Extra Dimensions At Reach Next Year!

Large Extra Dimensions At Reach Next Year!

Jul 11 2009 | comment(s)

A new public document has been made available on the CMS public web page yesterday morning. It reports on a study of the reach of the CMS detector, with data collectable in 2010, for a signal of large extra dimensions, using the very distinctive signature of a high-energy jet recoiling against -well, recoiling against nothing; or better, something which left our world and entered into another dimension of space.
Kobe in September

Kobe in September

Jul 10 2009 | comment(s)

From August 30th to September 2nd I will attend the 29th edition of "Physics in Collision" in Kobe, Japan, to hear a few interesting talks and to present a poster on behalf of CMS, about the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson.

Posters are what they sound like -big, illustrated sheets of paper. Many conferences have a "poster session" in which authors of the posters stand in front of their creation and discuss the details with colleagues and answer questions about the contents. Before the poster session, each poster is usually presented by the author with a short oral memo -five minutes each at PIC.
A Win With An International Master

A Win With An International Master

Jul 10 2009 | comment(s)

Sometimes playing online chess gives me some satisfactions. I only play 5-minute chess, but five minutes (times two, five for each player) are a looong time, during which adrenalin flows free in my veins. Chess is a drug: these 5-minute games are addictive, exhilarating, and damaging to one's ego at times. But when things go the right way, it really feels good.

Today I was paired with a Mongolian international master, IM Myagmarsuren, by the automatic pairing system of 5-minute blitz games on the ICC. Here is the game, with minimal commentary.

Shatar-Tonno, ICC July 10th, 2009, 5' blitz

1. Nf3 d5 2. g3 Bf5 3. d4 c6 4. c4 e6 5. Nc3 Nf6 6. b3 Bd6 7. Bg2 Nbd7 8. c5
Bc7 9. Nh4 Bg4 10. f3 Bh5
Does The Arxiv Blacklist Authors ? Help Finding Out!

Does The Arxiv Blacklist Authors ? Help Finding Out!

Jul 08 2009 | comment(s)

The Arxiv is an online repository of scientific papers in physics, astronomy, maths, cosmology, computer science, and a few other topics, where papers due to be published on scientific journals are submitted by the authors, and become quickly accessible for free to anybody before the peer-review process ran by the journals is over and they get printed there.
Guest Post: Patrick Draper,

Guest Post: Patrick Draper, "Is The Supersymmetric Higgs Behind The Corner ?"

Jul 07 2009 | comment(s)

Patrick Draper is a graduate student in physics at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Lab. He is a native of Illinois and lives in Hyde Park, Chicago with his wife Karen and parrot Felix, to whom he is grateful for their love, patience, and correcting his sign errors. He is a supporter of the international effort to put a muon collider on Mars, and is waiting for NASA to return his phone calls.
I asked Patrick to write here about his studies on the discovery reach for a MSSM Higgs boson after I saw his paper on the arxiv a month ago, and am now glad I did. Enjoy!