Many thanks to Kevin Munday, who pointed out I still have access to this blog. So, I have now a new blog, please come visit me at
The subject of the blogging is unchanged, only the address.
Thanks to all of you who participated and helped make Quantum Diaries a success!
I realized minutes after posting the last post that I have not complied fully with my editor´s request to comment on 2005 from my personal point of view. That is, whatever happened to me this year.
It has been a very complicated, interesting, successful, exhilarating, joyful year for me. Sad, also, because of the death of an old friend. But let´s go in order.
I completed a year of convenership of the jet energy and resolution working group. The group produced jet energy corrections that were instrumental in reducing the uncertainty in the top quark mass measurements by CDF, and opened the door to the most precise determination of that quantity. Of course, the merit is not mine, but I was there to coordinate the works, and I am proud of it.
Scientific results I produced or helped produce include finding the Z decay to b quark pairs in CDF run II data, measuring the top pair cross section using the all-hadronic decay channel, producing a first measurement of the top pair cross section using a new methodology that allowed to rescue many such events and become CDF´s third-best measurement of that quantity.
I must not forget, of course, the development of a brand new algorithm, the Hyperball algorithm, that promises an increased precision in the measurement of jet energy resolution, but is also a versatile tool that I have started investigating how to apply to the stock market or the cardiac risk evaluation.
During 2005 I´ve traveled lots, presenting scientific results in La Thuile, Corfu, Chicago. I went back and forth with Fermilab several times (10). I enjoyed it, but I must confess it was stressful at times.
I was also able to spend a lot of time on vacation with my family and enjoyed the company of my kids immensely. I climbed a couple peaks with Filippo, my 6yo son.
I spent a lot of time also with my students. I want them to succeed in particle physics, and I think I did good in motivating them and giving them the impulse to look at the future with optimism.
Finally, this year I remodeled the house I bought last December, and finally moved there in September. The house is now finally ready, and I enjoy it a lot. I think it came out beautifully!
Last but not least, I managed to keep track of my life on this blog. It was complicated to find the time at times, but I think I managed with some bump and disconnection here and there. QD has been a very interesting experiment and I am proud of having had the honor of participating in it. I often brag about it with friends :)
That is all. The interested reader will find much more in these pages, and should she or he want more, just please ask at dorigo@pd.infn.it
I also would like to mention that I have a permanent web page at
I have not kept it updated for long now, but will go back doing it now that QD is finished. So long everybody!
The quantum diaries are coming to a close, and - as much as I would like to continue with this endeavour - I have to comply, and post this last one with a choice of three representative posts I had in this blog.
I am writing from a bar in Sesto Val Pusteria, a mountain place where I´ve been skiing today. There is a snowstorm out there, and I am a little nervous since Ilaria is sleeping in the car parked outside. Filippo is checking her out every 10 minutes or so, but if the girls wakes up and finds herself alone in the car she´s not going to like it... So this post will be shorter than I would like it to be, and the reader will forgive a poor grammar here and there.
The first post I would like to reference here is Color flow: http://qd.typepad.com/6/2005/02/color_flow.html
There, in connection with a couple of previous posts that the reader will easily find, I discuss a bit in detail the amazing properties of quantum chromodynamics.
A second post I feel compelled to reference here is called Be smarter than a theoretical physicist: http://qd.typepad.com/6/2005/03/be_smarter_than.html
In that post, I asked readers to solve a little puzzle, called Monty Hall problem. I received lots of response from the readers. The following post to that one is the solution, and a discussion follows. Try it by yourself if you do not know it.
The last post I will mention here is about a funny connection I put up with one of my readers, a 14yo girl from Indiana, very witty and scientifically educated. I had her proofread a paper I was about to submit, and she did it very well. I incorporated her corrections and comments, and cited her in the acknowledgements section:
http://qd.typepad.com/6/2005/05/proofreading_by.html
That is all. I am sorry I could not pick a post where there were nice pictures, but you will find many if you dig through the blog.
It is with a bit of sadness that I leave you, dear reader. One day I might decide to run a blog by myself, but that time has not come yet: too many commitments have prevented me to post as much as I would have liked it. And I am just too maximalist to run something that I do not believe I will be able to run at full power. Time, maybe, will change me. The quantum diaries surely have. I sincerely hope I have entertained a few readers throughout the year, and I had my share of fun in doing it. Good luck to you, dear reader, may science be with you!
On the eve of the 23rd, 45 of my colleagues and friends gathered in our new home to party together, celebrate christmas, my new position, and just hang together.
We had several people coming from abroad who were able to attend.
Alberto, who now works at CERN, was coming from Geneva. He's an old friend, we worked together in CDF for quite a while.
Luca, who is at Santander (Spain), arrived with his trolley directly from the airport. I was a tutor for his PhD in Padova.
Andrea, who now works at Philips in Amsterdam, got his PhD when I did. He was working on silicon detectors back then.
Gino, who is now at Purdue University, was visiting Italy with his wife Petra and his kids. It was great to have him here.
Giacomo, who once graduated with a thesis on silicon detectors for CMS, and is now working for Kinsey, was coming from New York.
Gianluigi also graduated with silicon detectors in Padova several years ago, and now works in Munich, Germany. It was fun to see him again after a long time.
Patrizia and Nicola, old colleagues of mine, now work in Geneva at CERN. They arrived in Padova the evening before the party.
Nanni is a professor at University of Cassino. His was a most welcome visit, since I had not expected his presence until Dario told me he was going to come with him and his new girlfriend - congratulations, Nanni!
And of course, the rest of the crew of the CDF-CMS-Padova groups, plus others... It was indeed a nice party.
Food... There was a large salmon, salami, other assorted appetizers for a start. Then Mariarosa cooked her pasta with scampi (the largest scampi I've seen in a while!), two pasticci di lasagne, one pasticcio with artichokes.
Then, we had "seppie col nero", a very special Venetian dish made of cuttle-fish, cooked in their own ink. With white polenta, of course. And swordfish. And roast-beef for those who did not like the former.
Finally, many cakes, baked by our students...
All in all, I think I had 60 empty bottles of good wine to dump in the morning. People enjoyed the party, I am quite sure...
I am sorry I have no pictures to attach here... I decided I would just enjoy the party rather than witness it.
Here it comes - Christmas time. For me, it is a time of continuous partying with colleagues, friends, relatives, family... A string that will eventually leave me 4 pounds fatter, drunk, and eager to escape to the mountains - but that will be only on the 26th.
It started yesterday: I had a dinner with some of my old friends - we left our wives at home with their kids, and could talk freely about what we usually talk: soccer, politics, girls - well little of that: most of my friends frown when I talk them about my cute students.
Today, we had a party at 10AM in the CDF-Padova headquarters to celebrate the PhD of a student, and then another department-wide party at 11AM - the traditional Christmas party. I am now quite drunk and look forward with horror to what will happen tomorrow, since I am throwing a party with 45 people in my new house. All my colleagues - old and new - from the CDF- and CMS-Padova groups will join.
Then, on the vigil of Christmas, dinner at my mother's house with my brother's family plus some friends. Then, Christmas lunch at my house with my mother-in-law.
And finally, we'll leave for Padola, hoping for some healthy dieting and skiing!
Yesterday was the first day of my new job.
.... That is, the very same job, in the very same place, same office, same computer, desk, and papers and books amassed on top of it. But new title. Researcher.
But, new salary (not much anyway). And new badge - I now need to sweep it through a darn machine at the entrance, every time I enter or exit the department. The logic behind it is unclear - I have to total at least 36 weekly hours, but can declare I spent time at home working, and no soul on earth could disprove me: I could have been lying in bed sleeping 24 hours, but maybe I was thinking about a new algorithm or detector.
The logic behind monitoring entrance and exit of INFN personnel is, as far as I understand, only to fill paperwork. And, to prove I can get refunds for my lunches - the thing I don't get if I lay in bed at home.
Anyway, I'm reasonably happy of this change. I have been calling myself a researcher since 1998, but it was an inaccurate description - I used it because more accuracy required a lot more words. Now one word is enough. What a relief!
This morning my father, Wladimiro Dorigo, was insigned of a Laurea Honoris Causa in Urbanistics by the Venice Institute of Urbanistics and Architecture (IUAV).
Wladimiro Dorigo was in charge of the urban plan of Venice in critical years of the post-war restructuring, from 1956 to 1958, but he continued to be involved in the problems of Venice and its surroundings both from a sociopolitical and a historical point of view.
Although he later became a Professor of medioeval art history, his most important books are centered on Venice in the ancient times, with research on the scientific evidence for the effects of climate change of the relationship of the city with its lagoon and waterways, and on the urbanistic and artistic life of Venice during the Romanic and medioeval periods.
This morning Wladimiro gave a long lecture on the history of the last 50 years of Venice, its problems, the attempted solutions, and the entanglement of good and bad ideas for the solution of problems of Venice and its surroundings with political friction against their realization. He finished by warning against micromanagement and political and economical interests, which already killed Venice as a city (the 175000 inhabitants of the late 50's are now reduced to 58000) and threatens its existence in the present century, due to the insufficient measures against rapid climate change and the effects on the Venice lagoon, of which evidence has been brought by his studies of water levels in the medioeval ages as well as by ice core sampling in Greenland.
Tonight I have a spare half hour, and I decided to post a few more pictures of my new house.
(This darn web interface is so slow! It took me five minutes to put here one single pic... This post is going to be much shorter than originally intended!)
Here you see again the stairs leading to the fourth floor, but they've been embellished by a few additions... Vases, music books, Santa, and a big piece of Calcite from China. You can also see the glasses in the lower shelves, since I opened the door of the cabinet.
This is a view of the entrance "hall" from the dining room. The hall has a peculiar shape, with two curved walls with false doors on two sides. The walls are painted with red stucco.
Here is the entrance hall, with the old consolle and the mirror. The false door on the curved wall leads to a smaller hall from which open doors to the bedrooms and the third floor bathroom.
Finally (for tonight), in a corner between dining and living room my electronic piano has found a safe haven. If you zoom in you can see what I've been playing lately, Beethoven's sonatas.
I'm back from a long weekend in the Alps with Filippo. We left on Thursday morning, and spent three very nice days skiing in Padola and San Candido. The weather was marvelous, not a cloud, if only a bit cold (minus six celsius was the average daytime temperature).
On Thursday we arrived at noon in Padola, and were able to profit of the afternoon using the ski pistes there. Filippo was a bit rusty but I soon convinced him to try the big piste, where he had never ventured before. He did great, and on the following day we went to San Candido, where we met some friends - his schoolmate Emma and her parents, my friends Pietro and Elena. By then, Filippo was skiing faster than me, and I had a hard time convincing him to be careful.
On Saturday I wanted to take Filippo to the pistes in Padola, but he had had too much fun in San Candido, and forced me to bring him there again - it's a 30km drive in the mountains to reach it from where we live. But we had fun again.
On that evening, I made a blunder. I had opened the ski carrier on top of my mazda 6 (see pic) with the idea of putting back the skis in the garage, but then forgot to do it. We left at 7PM to have dinner at a very good restaurant on top of the Passo di Montecroce. The road unwinds up a mountain for 12 km from Padola, and there are no lights whatsoever. Upon making the first hairpin bend, I heard the sound of something hefty moving - I thought in the trunk. I shrugged my shoulders, but when, on the second bend, I heard another one, Filippo was quicker than me to shout "WE LOST A SKI!"
It was real luck that we did not cause any accident. There were very few cars going down the road at that time, since the lack of any lighting could have caused an accident. We were quick to get back down the road to collect our harvest of loose skis. Fortunately, no damage to anything, but a bit of embarassment when a car stopped to ask whether things were okay, and could we explain what the hell was going on ?
Tomorrow is a national holiday here in Italy, and I've decided to use the chance to go skiing with Filippo. It will be me and him alone, for three days. Filippo is six years old, but he is a good boy and I am sure he will give me no worry. His only concern was that he is going to lose one day at school! I had to convince him that it was ok, and since this afternoon I had had a colloquium with his teachers - this was a prearranged meeting with the parents, to let them know how the kids were doing - I was able to carry him the word of his teacher who said he could go skiing provided he did his homework.
Filippo did his homework this evening, two days in advance... So we are all set up to leave tomorrow.
By the way, the teacher told Mariarosa and I that he is a wonderful boy, that he behaves well, that he is very tidy with his work at school, and that she is proud of him. We were very happy when we left her.
I'll be back on Sunday.
I just got unofficial news about the standings in the admission test for the INFN research position.
After the final, oral examination, these are the standings:
Name titles written test scores subtotal oral total
(/50) (/60) (/60) (/170) (/80) (/250)
1. Dorigo 46 43 56 145 78 223
2-22 others 151.5 - 219.5
I should not, but I cannot help feeling proud about this... True, I should have won a position such as the one I am winning here three or four years ago, as far as my experience goes. But the situation of research in Italy is not rosy, particularly thanks to the lousy government we have had since 2001. Forza Prodi!
I forgot to mention who I met last Monday, on my trip to Rome.
I was sitting in the first class cabin of the Eurostar train from Venice to Rome on Monday morning, when the train stopped in Bologna. Passengers got off and came in, and shortly after the departure from Bologna Centrale I raised my eyes from the book I was reading to find a familiar face sitting across my table, on the other side of the cabin. Not more than 3 meters away, Romano Prodi was sitting and chatting amiably with a collaborator.
Romano Prodi, former president of the European Union, is the leader of the center-left coalition that will challenge Silvio Berlusconi for the charge of italian Premier next spring.
Nothing strange in finding Prodi on the Eurostar. It is indeed the most comfortable way to travel from Bologna to Roma, if you do not mind blending in with ordinary people. And Prodi does not mind. A different kind of man from Berlusconi, who travels only in his private (or government) jets and cars. Berlusconi himself does not mind to walk amidst his subjects, but he is usually circled by four bodyguards. None appear to be needed by Prodi, who obviously does not think he may be the object of anger or hatred.
Piece by piece, I hope I will soon manage to post pictures of my new house. All in a single post would be nuts... Just think it takes this weblog interface about 3 minutes to process one of my nikon's images... I don't want to be stuck here for one day in a row!
Today, the living room. It is far from complete - I still need to mount the lights on the ceiling, and some paintings on the walls. But I managed to set a few of the paintings during the last weekend, so I am comfortable with inviting you: here we go on tour.
Here you can see the room from one corner - the opening which leads to the kitchen. In this picture the living room does not seem to be very spacious, because the pic has been taken with a 27mm-equivalent lens. The room is in fact 8 by 5 meters, trapezoidal. On one side there are windows and doors which lead to a balcony (you can see two on the left).
Here you see the two openings that lead to the kitchen - and the first step of the stairs that lead to the fourth floor. The painting on the left is a prova d'autore by Mario de Luigi, while the three on the right are by Daniele Bianchi, a very talented painter and a friend of mine. A bit of the kitchen can be seen in the background on the right.
Here are the two doors leading to the balcony, the table, and a smaller crystal-and-mahogany table hand-built in Peru. The painting is a view of a bay with some boats, by G.Morandi. The floor is "alla veneziana", quite typical of buildings in Venice. It is made by small stones flattened and polished.
Here you can see a nifty detail. I placed on the lower shelf of the crystal table a tray, on which I collected some of the gemstones from my collection. This way, the tray is protected by the upper crystal, and I can always enjoy the sight of the gemstones, instead of having to dig them out of the small boxes where I kept them. Moreover, in the daylight when the sun shines through the windows on the stones, the effect is marvelous.
It is a bit hard to see, but if you're curious, on the left there are several colored sapphires, then a couple of large kunzites, a hundred very small yellow sapphires and a dozen peridots in the center, plus a fluorite, a large orange spinel and several garnets, then a large blue sapphire, several alexandrites, a few topazes, a square diamond and a large citrine.
And here you can see the "less modern" corner of the living room. The small table is a wooden sculpture from the late 18th century. The painting on the right is by Emilio Vedova (1950).
That's it for tonight... To be continued.
Well, I have not been a smoker for more than 4 years now, but recently the stress of the coming exams, the move, the remodeling, and the rest, took its toll. I deliberately decided I was giving myself three months of free smoking, which were to finish as soon as the stress was over. It was a predetermined decision: I chose to start smoking, with the agreement that it would be only for a little time.
Be it known that I perfectly well know the risks of smoking, as well as the negative impact it would have on my kids to grow with a smoking father. On the other hand, I did not worry about the risks of not being able to quit once I started again. I know I can quit, and I am about to show it to everybody...
I smoked the last one yesterday evening. Today I felt some cigarette craving in the morning and again after lunch, but it was pretty manageable - it is as if the evil forces that try to get me to smoke again knew theirs is a lost battle, and they did not even try to fight it.
I will be out of it in a week, I think. And, by the way, today I restarted dieting as well! Along with the three months of free smoking which I allowed to myself (actually, it has only been two months), I also allowed myself free eating. So from the 70 kg I reached at the beginning of October, I regained two and a half kilos.... I am back to watching my weight again.
I gave the oral exam for the INFN research scientist position this afternoon. The day was spent traveling to Rome, rushing to the University "La Sapienza", discussing my research plans and topics from selected papers I had presented for the exam, rushing back to the railway station, and traveling back to Venice.
All in all, a busy day! The examiners were fair, and they allowed me to explain in detail my research activities. I have no doubts that I have effectively won one position, so tomorrow is going to be party time at the lab in our headquarters in the physics department in Padova.
I have one single regret - I misled the commissaries when I reported on the number of W events with two b-tagged jets used to extract a limit to Higgs boson production using 300 inverse picobarns of Run II data by CDF. I quoted the number of single tags, which is close to 70, and thus led the commissaries to believe that the Higgs boson will never be found at the Tevatron, with such large backgrounds... In fact, the double tags are rather O(10) events, which still makes it tough but not impossible with the full statistics CDF and D0 will collect by 2009 if all goes well.
Despite this pitfall, I gave a good impression and I am happy of the outcome. So, with a position in the bag, tomorrow, I am back to work!
This morning I am off to Rome again, for the last part of the exam to select 16 INFN research scientists. I am due there at 2.30 PM, and maybe I am relying too much on the italian railway system, because I am taking a Eurostar train that is expected to arrive in Rome at 1PM... It is not rare that trains accumulate a delay of 2 hours or more from Venice to Rome, but objectively Eurostars are more on time than others. I estimate a 3% chance that I will arrive late to the exam, but in that case I can probably alert the commissaries by phone - they would probably move my exam past that of somebody else.
In the evening, I will be back on another Eurostar, and if everything goes smoothly I should be home by midnight. 9 hours spent traveling today. I hope it's worth it! If you've read the previous posts, you know I have expressed some doubts about accepting a INFN position if offered. Most likely I will, however.
The internal flight of stairs that connects the third and the fourth floor of my apartment is the last bit that needed to be completed, to finish the remodeling of our new house. This afternoon the painters finished the last layer of paint, and the outcome is for you to see in the pictures below.
Here you can see the ladder from a side. It is made up of thick steps lying on a structure that supports it and provides space for books and other objects. Part of the niches behind small doors, and part are in open view.
The nice thing about this design is its simplicity, and the trapezoidal base, which becomes narrower as the steps go up. You can see that in the following picture.
In this last picture you see the narrowing of the base of the steps.
This morning I called the INFN secretary in Frascati, to obtain the scores of the two written tests I took last week and the evaluation of my career titles. The scores of written tests and titles are summed together with the score of the final oral exam (which I will take next Monday) to give a total score which determines the ranking of the candidates.
There are 16 positions to fill, and after the written tests 24 candidates have been admitted to the oral examinations. I do not have the score of each of the other physicists who passed the written tests (in Italy a law forbids this, for the sake of privacy), but we are trying to reconstruct the ranking via e-mail... I only have scores for 10 others.
My career titles were rated 46/50, which is pretty high - but I believe it reflects the fact that at 39 years of age, and with 6 years of post-PhD research activity, I am objectively over-qualified for the position offered.
I got 43/60 on the first written test, the one with 42 nightmarish exercises to complete in 4 hours - again, more than I expected. The 42 questions were divided in four blocks (detectors, accelerators, statistics, particle physics) and the commissaries provided us with the total score available for each block, so post-mortem I had been able to compute, with fair approximation, that my total score should have been around 39/60. Evidently, they were forced to rescale the scores upwards a bit, to allow 24 candidates to surpass the minimum admission threshold of 36/60 per written test.
In the last written test, the one where I discussed the CDF calorimeter and its use for the top quark mass measurements, they gave me 56/60, again a high score.
The total, 145/170, will be summed to the xx/80 points allotted for the oral exam. So, in principle none of the 24 candidates (the 11 scores I managed to collect range from 104 to 145) is excluded from the competition. However, I am quite confident that I will remain in the top part of the list, and offering a drink to my colleagues is deferred to next week only as a formal measure.
It remains to be said that I am not yet sure I will accept the position! As I explained a few posts ago, I would rather win a University Research position - and two will open in a few months in Padova, where I would again have good chances. We'll see what happens: it not only depends on the result of my exam - which is not in doubt at this point - but on the result of other candidates who might concur for the University positions in Padova.
I just got news that I passed the written part of the exam.
Among about 200 candidates who sent in their CV and publications, and 110 who participated in the selection, the commission accepted 25 of us. A tight selection!
The score is thus divided: at most 60 points for each written test = 120 points, then 50 points maximum for the CV and the publications, and 80 for the oral exam, for a total of 250 points. Since the minimum score to pass the written part is 84, there is at most a spread of 36 points between all 25 candidates at this point, which can be easily regained by a good CV and/or oral exam. I do not yet know my score, I will tomorrow.
Regardless of the score of the written tests, which in my case I think is marginally positive - I failed several of the 42 questions, and my dissertation on the CDF calorimeter was rather plain - I believe I have a large probability of winning one of the 16 positions. That is because of my curriculum, which is certainly very good if compared with that of the majority of other participants, and because of the fact that from Padova there are 4 admitted candidates, and probably two of the 16 available positions will be assigned to Padova, if my evaluation is correct.
I am not disappointed - one is never happy to fail a written test - but since I would much rather win a University research position, and two will be available shortly in Padova - through yet as many other written and oral tests -, I am rather unsure of what I should do, if I am offered a INFN research position. There is no basic difference between the two jobs, but I want to teach, and so my natural career would pass through a University research position rather than with the INFN. A INFN researcher becomes a research director one day, while a University researcher becomes a full professor. I rather fancy the latter.
What will be decided in the end depends on too many factors yet. Next week we'll have the oral examinations, and then the picture will become more clear: things do not only depend on how well I do, but how do others who might want the University positions in Padova.
...And yesterday we were asked to write about a detector which was critical in the measurement of a physical quantity, explain the physical processes at the basis of the detection process, the mechanical construction, the calibration procedures, the use of the detector for the data analysis, and the measurement of the physical quantity.
I talked about the CDF calorimeter and the measurement of the top quark mass.
I think I did well, although the three hours we were given were barely enough to write a first pass of what I wanted to say, and I did not have the time to make things look pretty nor give more detail than that I had given at the first pass.
All in all, I think I will not be among the first 16 after the written part of the exam. They give 60 points per each written test, then 50 points for the curriculum and the publications, and 80 points for the oral examination. However, they will pass people to the oral part only on the basis of how many positions they wish to fill. It seems they will select about 20-25 candidates for the 16 positions, which makes it tough to be among the ones who will pass the written part. If I were to evaluate my two tests, I would give myself 39 in the first one and 48 in the second, so not much more than the threshold of 84 they set to declare it sufficient.
I will have the results on the 22nd.... As I said, I do not want to be among the winners, but I would not mind being qualified for the oral part.
