Cheers to the new Department Director October 2, 2006
Posted by dorigo in news, personal, physics, politics.add a comment
The Padova Department of Physics has a new Director starting today.
Giovanni Busetto - formerly my boss - is stepping up to replace Antonio Bassetto. Giovanni is a talented physicist, a very intelligent person, an extremely good-mannered individual, and a friend of mine.
Among the experiments in which he worked in the past, he was in DM2, then in UA1, then in CDF since 1990, and now in the GLAST collaboration.
Giovanni is so popular in the Physics Department - mainly for his easy attitude, his ability to listen, and his willingness to help whomever asks for some - that a few months ago he got the most votes in the election for the Director of the Padova section of the INFN. A charge he then declined in favor of Antonio Masiero.
I expect that our Department will be managed very well in the forthcoming three years of his mandate. I am unhappy personally, though, because I have been left alone in my office - the one I shared with him. Now I have nobody with which to discuss particle physics and italian politics anymore!
Thesis number three October 2, 2006
Posted by dorigo in computers, news, personal, physics, science.1 comment so far
Wow… I thought it was going to be tough. It was.
In January this year we (Giovanni, my boss, and I) accepted three undergraduates for three masters thesis internships. That is what in Italy is called “Laurea Magistralis”, the additional two years of specialization after the third year degree.
The three students - Mia, Elena, and Diego - already had a particle physics background. Mia and Elena had in fact completed a third year thesis with our CDF-Padova group in 2004. And both had been Summer Students at Fermilab last year. Diego had followed another path, but wanted to join the group and we ended up with the three of them to be followed through their six-month internships.
The theses were on different topics, although Mia’s and Diego’s work was going to be based on the same algorithm - the Hyperball algorithm I designed in 2003 for the Higgs Sensitivity Working Group (see http://qd.typepad.com/6/2005/06/the_hyperballs_.html for a description of what the thing is and what it does).
Diego used the Hyperball algorithm to try and correct the energy of jets produced in top quark pair decay, to increase the resolution of the measurement, and thereby obtain a better reconstruction of the top mass from events with six hadronic jets (three from each top quark). He worked a lot at several technical aspects of the problem, which delayed his results a little, but in the end he produced nice results.
Following the three of them was going to be entirely on my shoulders, because Giovanni is a bigger fish and he has much important things to deal with - in fact, he started today as the new Director of the Physics Department (I will have a post about him out shortly). And it was indeed not easy to get them to complete their work, although I must say they are all excellent students.
The last one to finish is Diego, who will deliver his completed thesis tomorrow at noon. Then he has two weeks to prepare his talk, and his discussion will be towards the end of October.
It is with a sigh of relief that I salute the event… Of course, it was a privilege to follow these students and to teach them something, but it was also very demanding for me, and it basically forced me to stop my other activities for almost a year. Because it is very difficult for me to concentrate in writing code or other full-immersion activities, if I get interrupted every ten minutes.
Hmmm that sounds a bit like a sorry excuse, doesn’t it ? It is. I have to find the energy again to produce something meaningful - and the new involvement with CMS is the right occasion for that. We shall see… For the moment, my best wishes to Diego, who in the end produced a quite respectable work.
Italian ministers decrease their salary October 2, 2006
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In a unprecedented act of will that speaks volumes about the intention of Prodi’s government to demonstrate that everybody has to carry the weight of putting order in Italy’s agonizing finances, it has been disclosed this afternoon that the ”Finanziaria 2007″, a law that administers the italian finances, contains a norm according to which Ministers and their aides will see their salary reduced by 30 percent from next year on.
Thirty percent of a lot of money is a lot of money. I am sure many of Prodi’s ministers did not quite like the idea, but had to contain themselves for fear of projecting a bad image of themselves.
Way to go, Romano.
The world chess championship continues October 2, 2006
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After a forfeit on game 5 by Vladimir Kramnik - caused by his refusal to play in protest of FIDE’s decisions concerning the complaint by Topalov’s team - the World Chess Championship in Elista was stopped for a few days, but today play finally resumed. Kramnik is playing game 6 but he is contesting the decision to give him a forfeit.
After 30 moves, the position is drawish, despite Topalov’s attempts at forcing the position. Not an overly exciting game today, but at least chess enthusiasts around the world had their share of fun.
The game is now declared drawn at move 31.
