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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...

Restoring The Value Of Truth

Truth is under attack. It has always been, of course, because truth has always been a mortal enemy...

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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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First Prize For The Least Appropriate Program Name

First Prize For The Least Appropriate Program Name

Jun 30 2010 | comment(s)

Through a casual browsing of the Arxiv's hep-ph section, I got to read the following title:

"CAMORRA: A C++ Library for Recursive Computation of Particle Scattering Amplitudes"

Authors are R.Kleiss and G. van den Oord. None of which appears Italian by name, so my first reaction to the title (are these people stupid or what?) got tempered by the fact that they may just be ignorant.

Camorra is the name of one of the three main criminal organizations operating in southern Italy. From wikipedia, even a computer-illiterate could learn that

The Camorra is a mafia-like criminal organization [...] It finances itself through drug trafficking/distribution, cigarette
Garrett Lisi's New E8 Paper

Garrett Lisi's New E8 Paper

Jun 28 2010 | comment(s)

Social networks are a great help for this kind of news: a new paper by a FB friend does not go unnoticed (at least by me) as it once would. I learned today that Garrett Lisi (picture below), the surfer and theoretical physicist, has deposited another paper in the Cornell arxiv. And it looks as a significant addition to his previous studies of the E8 group. He explicitly calls it "a companion" to the previous article, "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything".
The Say Of The Week

The Say Of The Week

Jun 25 2010 | comment(s)

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts..."

Sherlock Holmes
2000 Days Of Blogging

2000 Days Of Blogging

Jun 24 2010 | comment(s)

Today is the 2000th day of blogging for me. And this is my 2003rd post!

It all started in December 2004, when I first learned about the existence of a thing called "blog". I had been contacted by Judy Jackson, from the office of public affairs at Fermilab. She wanted me in a project for the 2005 International Year of Physics, called "Quantum Diaries". I was taught that I would have to describe my life as a researcher in experimental particle physics, and little more. I accepted with some doubts -I had already grown wary enough of new work proposals by then, but I knew too little to understand just how big a time investment that would grow to become!-, but soon realized I was enthusiastic about the thing!
X-Rayed Pin-Ups: Too Much Of A Good Thing

X-Rayed Pin-Ups: Too Much Of A Good Thing

Jun 22 2010 | comment(s)

Naked girls as you have never seen them before: Eizo, a Japanese company, has an interesting way to advertise their radiological products.





I'd comment that seeing underneath clothing might be good for a pervert, but it takes a bigger pervert to appreciate this total see-through...

Your Thoughts On Peer Review Needed

Your Thoughts On Peer Review Needed

Jun 21 2010 | comment(s)

On July 4th I will speak at ESOF 2010, in Torino (Italy), about the topic of "What's up with peer review: The future of peer review in policy, research and public debates", in a panel which includes Philip Campbell, editor in chief of Nature (the magazine, not the bitch), and Adrian Mulligan from Elsevier.

As you might imagine, the topic is varied and spans several levels. Each of us will have 8 minutes to make a few points, and then a debate moderated by Tracey Brown (from Sense about Science, the organizer of the session) will ensue.