From March 15th to March 18th I will be following the NEUTEL 11 conference, which conveniently (for yours truly!) takes place in Venice, in the magnificent setting of Palazzo Franchetti (see picture below).

NEUTEL (first bulletin here) deals with results in particle physics and astrophysics produced by, or in connection to, neutrino telescope experiments; the most recent advances in the theory of neutrinos, astrophysics, and cosmology will also be discussed by eminent theorists.

Just appeared on Physics World online: the first of my two feature articles on LHC physics in 2011, which are being published in this month's issue.

A nice piece of news in my mailbox today: it appears that the CMS collaboration, the experiment I work for at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, has got four different scientific papers approved for publication in the course of the same week. What is more, the four articles will be published on three different international magazines of clear authority. A true success !

Despite my chronic lack of time these days, I always manage to find ten minutes for a blitz chess game on the internet. It is a total waste of time and brain energy, but it never fails to provide some adrenaline shot in my veins. And at times some real satisfaction, when I play a good game and/or I get the better hand with a titled player.

Today I got a little of both, when I won with black against Grandmaster Lars Karlsson (elo 2466), a Swedish player. Not a super-Grandmaster, admittedly, but still a dangerous player with an expected score above 90% against me (I am rated in the 2050 range. Here is the game with minimal commentary.

Karlsson-Dorigo,  20-2-2011
(Jesper(GM)-tonno)