I am presently in Cairns, sitting in a parallel session of the "Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum" conference, where I am convening a session on Statistical Methods for Physics Analysis in the XXI Century, giving a talk on the optimization of t... Continue reading →

Last week I traveled from Venice to Tokyo through Zurich, and during the flights I could do some more tests of the RadiaCode 103 - the nice spectrometer for gamma radiation I have been playing with as of late (for a couple of earlier posts and tests se... Continue reading →

I remember having been flamed, a long time ago, when in this column I ventured to claim that there was an inflation of physics conferences and workshops around, which to me looked both counter-productive (if there are too many such events, they become ... Continue reading →

Each man kills the thing he loves, sang Jeanne Moreau in a beautiful song some thirty years ago. But the sentence is actually a quote from Oscar Wilde - aren't all smart quotes from that amazing writer?Anyway, in some way this rather startling concept ... Continue reading →

In the previous post I have described some of the main functionalities of the RadiaCode 103 radiation spectrometer, which the company graciously made available for my tests. Here I want to discuss some additional tests I have done, using radioactive sa... Continue reading →

A few days ago I put my hands on a RadiaCode 103, a pocket radiation counter, dosimeter, and spectrometer that has recently appeared on the market. The company that produces it, RadiaCode, is located in Cyprus (see https://radiacode.com). The instrumen... Continue reading →

Time and again, I play a "good" blitz chess game. In blitz chess you have 5 minutes thinking for the totality of your game. This demands quick reasoning and a certain level of dexterity - with the mouse, if you are playing online as I usually do.My bli... Continue reading →

Yesterday I was in Oslo, where I was invited tro serve as the leading opposer in the Ph.D. defense of a student of Alex Read, who is a particle physicist and a member of the ATLAS collaboration. Although I have served in similar committees several time... Continue reading →