I once was an active chessplayer, but work duties have long taken tournaments off my plate - I simply do not have the time to sit through long hours of chess battles. So I play blitz online on chess.com (my handle is "tommasodorigo", in case you wondered).
Five days are left to apply to a 2-year research position at INFN-Padova, to work in the context of the EIC-Pathfinder-2025 winning project "PHINDER" on the simulation of the apparatus.PHINDER (Picosecond-scale Photonic Heterogeneous Integrated Neuromorphic Detector) is a consortium of seven research institutes led by Lulea Technology University (Sweden), including Universidad de Oviedo, Eindhoven University, Universidad de Cantabria, Lund University, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and INFN-Padova.
Nowadays it has become exceedingly hard to distinguish legitimate academic endeavours from scam in my mailbox. Not even AI filters can sort stuff out properly: my inbox often contains invitations to fake conferences, or to publish with non-existing journals, while my spam folder at times contains honest invitations of academic value.I could touch the reality of the problem a few months ago, when I was invited to an AI conference in Singapore. I was about to trash the email, when something in the name of the sender rang a bell. Upon checking, it turned out that he was a Nobel prize winner in Physics! Needless to say, I was happy to accept the invitation, and indeed in two weeks I will travel to Singapore to deliver my talk at AI4X.
Every now and then, for one reason or another, an academic will have to update one's own CV. This is a chore in general - once you get tenure, why should you care to keep a detailed record of your past activities? - but it also carries some benefits. In fact, by sifting through the data (hard disk folders containing talks, large databases of publications, mailbox) you can get a bird's eye view of where your time has gone, and draw inspiration for future rationalization of your agenda.
[For the first part of this two-part post, see here]
I was reached this evening by the news of the passing of a dear friend, Enrico Stomeo. Enrico was an architect by profession, but for me he was rather defined by his activity as an amateur astronomer - in fact, if I had to define what a serious amateur astronomer is, I would more or less consciously be describing him. [Above, a recent picture of Enrico]The Associazione Astrofili Veneziani
Nobody likes to wait in line.
Whether you are sitting in your car waiting to reach the toll booths, on a
plane waiting to disembark along with the other passengers, or in a queue at
the ticket office, you may experience a range of feelings ranging from perplexity
(“What am I doing here?”) to impatience (“Why is this not moving forward?”), to
annoyance (“What is that idiot in the front chatting about with the operator?”).
As some of the long-time readers of this blog know, in this column I have occasionally discussed probability calculations in the context of gambling and betting. A long time ago I also famously won a $1000 bet on the LHC not discovering any new physics. Below I will mention a similar bet that ended up not being agreed upon by the parties, for the sake of discussing a subtle effect one has to worry about when placing bets: the selection bias.
Do you have a master in Science, and want to start a Post-Doc position directly? You can have it, in Padova (Italy), to work with me on the PHINDER project, an EIC-funded Pathfinder grantee.I am offering a two-year position for research in nanophotonics-powered neuromorphic computing for particle detector development at INFN, Sezione di Padova. The call is open and all the information is available at this link: https://jobs.dsi.infn.it/dettagli_job.php?id=4578.
The following position is a win for white. But how?It seems like white is able to grab a knight for free. However, that would be not a wise idea, as the c4 pawn would then be free to run down to become a queen. You can easily convince yourself that 1.Nxd8? c3! wins for black. White also has its own knight en prise in the starting position, so a move not involving a knight move will result in its demise. E.g., 1.Kb6 seems a desirable attacking move to make, but 1....dxc6 2.dxc6 Nxc6! again turns the tables.
Next Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, you will find a new bulky paper in the arXiv. Titled "On the Co-Design of Scientific Experiments and Industrial Systems", the work is authored by over 80 colleagues. I directed them as co-chair of WG2 of EUCAIF (with Pietro Vischia) in assembling a view of the state of the art of the techniques and the issues connected with the simultaneous optimization of hardware and software of scientific experiments in fundamental physics. Complementing that is a parallel look at a few representative tasks in industrial settings.
The other day I traveled with Kalliopi and our two newborns to Padova from Lulea. After six full months in Lapland - a full autumn and winter, in fact - I needed to get back to my original office, and take care of other business at what has become my second home now. Meanwhile, travel has become considerably more complicated for me: traveling with two infants is no easy matter.
Although I have long retired from serious chess tournaments (they take too much time, a luxury I do not have anymore - even more so now that I have two infants to help grow!), I insist playing online blitz on chess.com, with alternating fortunes. My elo rating hovers in the 2200-2300 range, signalling that I still have my wits around me (I figure it is a very good way to keep a watch on my mental capabilities: if Alzheimer lurks, I will spot it early).
