A Quantum Diaries Survivor

Since I am temporarily hampered in my typing ability because of a bulky bandage on my left hand, this morning I thought I’d post a few pictures from last weekend’s vacation on Achensee, a pleasant alpine lake in Austria.

Here Filippo (left) and Ilaria (right) are pirates relaxing on their ship with their colleagues Achille and Olga.

A closeup of Ilaria.

And to be democratic, a picture of Filippo.

What is the name of these funny, beautiful flowers ?

The indoor pool of our hotel, where we spent the better part of our afternoon -kids loved it.

Ilaria in the pool.

A bit of the lake towards Maurach.

Filippo studying the dynamics of stones bouncing on the water.

Everybody loved the big jacuzzi.

“The probability that there’s a bomb on your flight is really small, and yet still non negligible for anxious people like me. But the probability that there are two bombs is really ridiculously tiny! That’s why I always take one with me in my carry-on“.

Anonymous

I am writing this single-handedly because of a stupid mistake. I am  spending this long week-end (1st of May is a holiday in Italy) in a nice mountain place in the austrian alps with family and friends, and I found a way to make things interesting…

I was carving a small wooden ship for Ilaria this afternoon, on the terrace of our hotel room, and I forgot that the blade should be always aimed in the opposite direction of your flesh. So as a hard piece of wood gave in all of a sudden, I found myself shocked, looking at a wide cut on the second finger of my left hand. The skin layer was parted, allowing a entertaining view of the bone, partly attacked by the violent blow. Blood was copious but fortunately not threatening.

After some initial trouble - arranging for a trip to an emergency room isn’t straightforward with two kids, one of them sleeping - things were straightened out. The tendon was not damaged, and four stitches did the job. I am still shocked, though, by how stupid I have been. In cases such as this, however, I tend to feel happy for the fact that things are easily repaired - bad luck could see me impaired in my playing the piano or typing for what’s left to live… And since I intend to live for a long while more, it would have really been disappointing!

I spent the afternoon today at a conference on neutrino physics, . The conference is held this week in my beloved home town, and precisely in Palazzo Franchetti, which houses the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, a pleasant venue close to the Grand Canal.

The program of the day was centered on astrophysics, and I decided to visit the conference to find inspiration for two forthcoming talks I will be giving, one in Padova next week and one in Albuquerque next month. The nice weather made for a pleasant coffee break: below you can see a pic of mself in palazzo Franchetti’s garden.

Later today - if I have enough stamina - I will post my summary of a couple of interesting talks:

• G. Steigman, Neutrinos and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

• G.F. Giudice, Colliders and Cosmology

For now, I can only say that I did learn from the above talks some interesting details on the information about relic neutrinos one can extract from big-bang nucleosynthesis, and on the complementarity of searches for dark matter in direct astrophysics experiments and at the Large Hadron Collider…

UPDATE: I found out yesterday evening that Alexey Petrov is also at this conference, and in fact he discusses in his blog the talk given yesterday by R.Bernabei about the tentative dark matter signal observed by DAMA-LIBRA.

UPDATE 2: since this post is getting linked by high-traffic sites only because of a rather careless and potentially harmful remark I made in the comments section, I would rather direct you to a more accurate post which I wrote on the DAMA-LIBRA result today, which better represents my thoughts and is more politically correct on the matter.

I have been invited by David Orban, a friend and fellow blogger, to speak on the divulgation of Science next May 17th at the Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milano, at a meeting called SCI(bzaar)NET. The event, organized by Gianandrea Giacoma, is described in its web site as (my translation)

“Subjects active in the net meet in a new way to ponder on the challenges that Internet poses to scientific divulgation, production of knowledge, and Open Culture in the academic world.”

The meeting will have three main threads:

1. The hunger of scientific outreach: scientific research and the fast technological evolution are increasingly becoming, as is evident to all, among the main factors of change in the world and in our daily life. For these reasons a growing number of people, fascinated and awed, feel the need to understand and make their own opinion on the matter.
2. Production of knowledge: if internet is historically connected to the academic world, on the other hand one cannot claim that the majority of researchers as indivudials and the italian University institutions have adopted these new instruments for a more advanced presence online and a more effective handling of knowledge, students, researchers, and professors.
3. Open Culture: the growing impact of legal, economical, organizational and cultural scenarios of a diffusion of Open Culture in Universities under the pressure of internet.

I will contribute with a video, because I unfortunately cannot be there in person… On the following morning I am leaving to New Mexico for PPC 2008;. I am planning to post the video here, with a transcription (the language of the meeting is Italian…). The subject of my talk will be “Fare divulgazione scientifica con un blog: opportunita’ e limiti” (doing scientific outreach with a blog: opportunities and limits).

UPDATE - the name of this post has been modified according to the request of G.Giacoma on 4/23, reflecting the final name of the event.

Just a note to post here the permanent link to the proceedings of a conference I attended in Corfu (Greece) three years ago. This is a long (32 pages) report on “High- Physics: from the Tevatron to the LHC“, now published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series [Tommaso Dorigo 2006 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 53 163-194]. I think I did post a draft of the paper on this blog a couple of years ago, but then I forgot to post the final version as well.

The paper is a bit dated in some parts, where the most recent (back then) results from the Tevatron are discussed; however, some parts -especially a discussion of the usefulness of Tevatron data for LHC physics- are still readable IMHO. Also worth noting is the fact that the acknowledgments section mentions the late Riqie Arneberg, a friend who passed away last fall, who had accepted the offer I had made to all readers of this blog to proofread the manuscript, and contributed in several places to the clarity of the text.

The publisher has now made available online all its 100 open access volumes through the JPCS home page. Of course I salute this contribution to the free diffusion of science with enthusiasm.

I am sitting on an EuroStar train to Rome right now, and I am thinking at all the time it took me to get here.

Rome is not my final destination: it is rather Frascati, a bit further South, where the headquarters of INFN are located. INFN (for Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, the italian national institute for nuclear physics) is the organization which hired me in 2005 with a 5-year contract. In November that year I passed a national selection (a tough one at that) for 16 positions as HEP researcher which had been made available in a dozen different sections throughout Italy: for the first time INFN had radically changed the selection rules of their scientific personnel, centralizing the admission tests in order to avoid the usual misdemeanors that so frequently happened every time a position was to be filled at one site.

I got first place at the exam, and that was a satisfaction for me -there were about 200 candidates-, but the result of winning it was not, as in past INFN selections, a permanent position as a researcher, but a mere 5-years contract. INFN swore back then that they had already decided these temporary positions would be changed into tenured ones as the first chance arose; but guess what?, it turned out that they could not keep their word to the full.

I am now given a chance to obtain tenure, but that may only happen by passing one further selection exam -formally, not different from other selections: I had to send in a copy of all my publications (a bit less than 300 papers), a detailed resume, certifications of all sorts. In truth, it should be just a formality: a colloquium where I explain what I have done during these last three years as a contract researcher. Nevertheless, it really amounts to one further exam. Somebody will have to judge me and decide whether I am fit for tenure or not.

Of course, I am quite relaxed and I have not even read back the summary of these three years (which I sent with my application three months ago) to prepare for the colloquium. The trip to Frascati will not be unpleasant: just a bit boring, maybe.

This whole affair is obviously a matter of some embarassment for INFN, and since INFN is my employer, I should probably refrain from commenting further. And so I will, but I will only add that my first day as a post-doc, with Harvard University, was October 1st, 1998. It took me about 3500 days to catch this train.

The italian alpine club CAI has just released the results of a re-analysis of the history of the italian ascent to Mount Godwin-Austen, the 8611-meter peak in Karakorum called K-2, the second-highest peak in the world. And it is a wholesome rehabilitation of the role and testimony of Walter Bonatti (right), a member of the expedition and arguably the strongest climber of the time.

In the vigil of the final push to the summit of K2, at camp 8 on July 29th, 1954 Lacedelli and Compagnoni, together with Bonatti, had discussed the plan of assault and had decided where to place the tents of the ninth camp: just above 8000 meters. Despite his excellent physical form Bonatti had been given orders from base camp by Ardito Desio, the chief of the expedition, to leave the glory of the final ascent to his two colleagues, and he had accepted the agenda. Together with a sherpa he was to bring two air cylinders (19 kg each) to camp 9 for Lacedelli and Compagnoni, who would be waiting for them.

As he arrived to the agreed point on the evening of July 30th, Bonatti however found no camp, since Compagnoni had insisted with Lacedelli to place it higher - arguably because he feared Bonatti would join them in the ascent if given a chance. Bonatti and the sherpa Mahdi were thus prevented to reach camp 9 and they had to bivouac with no shelter at an altitude of over 8000 meters, risking their life (and Mahdi losing all the toes of his feet). They were the first men to ever survive such an ordeal.

On July 31st Compagnoni and Lacedelli retrieved the cylinders where Bonatti had left them, and ascended to the summit, conquering K2 for the first time. They later claimed they had found the air cylinders almost empty, and blamed Bonatti for using the air to survive during that night. This, along with other allegations moved to the unguilty Bonatti,  caused a huge controversy that lasted for decades. The official version for a long time favored the reconstruction of the events given by Compagnoni and Lacedelli. 

The committee appointed by CAI has re-examined the whole story and has concluded that Bonatti had not lied: he did not use the oxygen which Lacedelli and Compagnoni later breathed in their final, 12-hour climb: this is probably the last word in the long-standing issue. A picture taken at the summit, showing the two climbers still with their masks on, is probably the clearest evidence.

I may look more anti-patriotic than I really am but sorry, I can’t help it - down with Alitalia! The airline, which is supported by the italian finances (Italy owns 49% of the company’s shares) and has lived of subsidies for years, is probably at the end of its tether. And I rejoice.

Alitalia is unable to stand on its feet - it has demonstrated that quite clearly during the last years, with huge losses in their balances and plummeting shares - and it is finally on sale. The last offer by Air France is humiliating - a hundred something Alitalia shares in exchange for each one of the french company - but it pictures well the rotten state of the deficitary italian company, and it runs the risk of being accepted, in the absence of any other meaningful offer. The only alternative for Alitalia is simply going broke, since the european union has already warned they will not allow further economical aids by the italian government.

On the other hand, we are assisting these days to the strumental use of the bad situation of Alitalia by Berlusconi, who claims he can guarantee a better, all-italian bid which includes his sons as financers. Just amazing: in a month, italians will have to decide whether to elect Berlusconi as the next premier, and he is offering to buy Alitalia! The conflict of interest of a tycoon who owns three television networks and newspapers is not enough: he now wants to buy the country’s airline, probably reasoning that he can then manouver from the government seat into increasing the company’s profits. In the five years as a premier (2001-2006), Berlusconi’s wealth increased threefold. Guess why. And the guy is doubly smart: he knows italians who love their country also hate to see the selling of Alitalia to France, and so his offer is going to win him more votes at the elections of April 13th.

Anyway, why am I happy about this rotten situation ? Well, if you flew Alitalia enough in the past, and had a chance to compare the service it provides to that offered by other major european airlines, chances are you will agree with me: it sucks. I have only found such a nasty mix of bitchy hostesses and stewards, bad service, and crappy planes in Air India, another company in my black list. I guess any frequent traveler has his or her own antipathies, and I invite you to write below your own experience. I can only tell you what was the last time I flew Alitalia, and what happened.

In May 2000 I had a post-doc position with Harvard and was based at Fermilab. I had to travel to Elba for a conference, “Frontier Detectors for Frontier Physics”, where I would present a poster on the muon system upgrade of the CDF II experiment (the paper, later published to NIM, is available at this link [coming shortly]). I reluctantly bought an Alitalia ticket to go from Chicago to Malpensa and from there to Pisa -Alitalia was not my best choice, but the ticket was the cheapest. The flight was not bad, but as I got into Pisa I waited for my suitcase for a full hour, and only then was notified the suitcase had been left in Malpensa “because it did not fit in the plane”. It was a small suitcase, certainly smaller than the ATR700 with which I had arrived in Pisa, but I did not object. I was told the suitcase would arrive with the afternoon flight and they would take care of bringing it to the Elba island.

Three days later, the suitcase was not there yet. I had been told I could buy some clothing, whose price would be refunded if I kept the receipts. I spent hours on the phone with Malpensa offices: the suitcase was nowhere to be found. Eventually, I found some charitable soul in a private office there, and the person went himself to check some racks where lost luggages had been placed. I got it the next day, and proceeded to put together a letter where I listed the items I had bought: a swimsuit, a pair of trousers, a t-shirt, some slips. I think it was about 150$ worth of goods. I of course could not include my telephone bills for the calls to Malpensa, which probably amounted to a third of that, nor other expenses I had ran into because of the lack of my suitcase. Then, I waited.

Three months later, I finally received a letter from Alitalia. It said they were sorry to be unable to process my request, because my letter -which duly included the ticket information and stubs, the receipts, and everything else- lacked a piece of paper they had attached to the lost luggage (and I never found). A lame excuse!

To summarize: they do not notify me that they voluntarily neglect to load my suitcase in Malpensa. Then they fail to let me know. I lose time in Pisa looking for it. Then they make false promises about the delivery. They are not helpful on the phone. It is only through my endless calls that the suitcase is found. And in the end, they refuse a minimal refund! 

I never flew Alitalia after that incident. And I am considering not flying Air France next - these kinds of cancers tend to spread.

Amidst the pile of junk mail I have to sort out in my mail box every time I visit Fermilab, I found a rather uncharacteristic request, from the US District Court Settlement Administrator. It claims I am eligible to receive a Court-approved refund of fees charged to my VISA debit card, based on foreign transactions I made from 1996 to 2006, and it invites me to submit a refund request in case the class action is won against the credit card companies.

Digging a little in the matter, I found out what this is about. Basically, for ten years VISA, Mastercard, and other companies, overcharged transactions made abroad by cardholders, by concealing 1 to 3% fees and other dirty tricks. The behavior you would expect from such pirates, of course. The novelty is that a class action appears to be winning the case against them, and will make them lighter by some 313 million US dollars if that happens.

The funny thing is why I am part of this, and the extent. I have had during those years a VISA debit card because I had a bank account in a bank close to Fermilab. I used the account very little, except during the two years I spent at Fermilab full time, in 1999-2000. Other than that, the card stayed dormant, and I only occasionally used it for purchases outside the United States. So, how much can VISA have taken from me fraudolently ? Maybe five dollars, maybe ten, all in all. Regardless of that, I have the option to claim a refund based on the time I spent outside the US, without the need to specify the use I made of the card: they will compute an average refund from the number of days spent abroad. But that number, in my case, is of the order of 2500! If they were to compute a refund based on that figure alone, I think they would come up with at least a grand…

It would be great to strip VISA of a little cash. I filled my form and here I am, patiently awaiting the outcome of the trial…