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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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Think Like a Scientist

Think Like a Scientist

Jun 28 2009 | comment(s)

From Prof. Chad Orzel's Graduation Speech:

Science isn't a body of facts, science is a process for figuring out how the world works: you see something interesting, come up with an idea of why that might happen, and test you're idea to see if you're right. You repeat this process until you figure out why things happen the way they do, and then you use that knowledge to explain new things, or to do things that you couldn't do before.
A Retractatio On The Lepton Jets Affair

A Retractatio On The Lepton Jets Affair

Jun 27 2009 | comment(s)

If you have followed this blog for long enough, dear readers, the words "multi-muons", "anomalous muons", or even "lepton jets" are not foreign to you. They all refer to a paper appeared on the ArXiv on the evening of Halloween last year. In the paper the CDF collaboration published the results of a detailed analysis which described how a component of collider data containing two or more muons could not be explained by known Standard Model processes.
Researchers To Boycott Recruitment System

Researchers To Boycott Recruitment System

Jun 25 2009 | comment(s)

In a few days italian post-docs working in high-energy physics will be asked to gather for a nasty exam, held by the INFN -the italian institute for nuclear physics- to qualify valiant researchers for future hiring in the institute.

The exam generated a wave of outrage among the very pool of people at which it is aimed: the scores of "precari" (temporary workers) who are spending the best years of their life to try and make a career in particle physics.  Let me explain why that is so.
Rocco for President!

Rocco for President!

Jun 24 2009 | comment(s)

After weeks of painful struggling against all evidence, I think I will finally have to accept the fact that Italians actually approve their Prime Minister's behavior and libertine sex habits: the final proof be that they still voted for his lackeys at the last round of administrative elections. However, being a male in a male chauvinist country, I feel I am not very well represented by Berlusconi in this regard. Please consider:





  • he is almost 73 years old;




  • he is constantly afflicted by neck pain, which for sure must prevent him from anything but the most basic reproductory capabilities;




  • he fought a prostate cancer, which certainly took a hit in his sexual performances;
The Say of the Week - on Consistency and Integrity

The Say of the Week - on Consistency and Integrity

Jun 24 2009 | comment(s)

Augusto Minzolini (right), director of the TG1 news program of Rai 1, the most followed public italian TV channel, is under siege in Italy, accused of hiding the news of the embarassing story of Berlusconi and the call girl Patrizia D'Addario and the surrounding affair, which continued to make headlines on World press, but was utterly absent from Rai 1 TV news for over a week.
The Sex Life of an Improbable Prime Minister

The Sex Life of an Improbable Prime Minister

Jun 23 2009 | comment(s)

If you live outside Italy, you read newspapers more often than Italians do. Thus, you probably are more informed about the recent scandal emerging on the private life of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister, than Italians. That is because the news of Berlusconi's private parties with scores of young women, paid or otherwise compensated to cheer up the leader, have never made it to italian television!