It's called optogenetics: it's a new discipline that wants to study and interveneon the brain thanks to genetics and optical techniques, to treat various diseases Is it possible to manipulate the brain with light? And, in the future, to treat diseases such as Parkinson's or depression, Alzheimer's or post-traumatic stress disorders? The questions are not... Weiterlesen →
Palm oil is obtained from the pulp of the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), which originally comes from Africa and is now also cultivated in South America and Southeast Asia. It is one of the most economically significant plants.The oil palm grows up to 30 meters high and bears up to 6000 fruits, which can weigh... Weiterlesen →
The shadow of the wind In 1945 the young protagonist, Daniel, lives with his father, owner of a modest used book store, in Barcelona. Daniel, who is also the main narrative voice of the novel, wakes up at the dawn of his eleventh anguished birthday because he no longer remembers the face of his mother,... Weiterlesen →
The rotational speed of the Sun at a young age also partially influenced the birth of life on Earth. The atmosphere of our planet in the early stages was different and had the appearance of a thin envelope of hydrogen and helium "stuck" to the Earth's surface. The flares of the Sun, within 200 million... Weiterlesen →
At the turtle hospital in Marathon, Florida, vets are currently taking care of 42 sea turtles. "But five are coming," adds Bette Zirkelbach.The next day, he reports that five others are doing CT scans at a normal hospital - "the human hospital". The Turtle Hospital is a veterinary rehabilitation center that, since opening in 1986,... Weiterlesen →
Narcissus and Goldmund Philosophy and Moral The contrast between nature and spirit, the fulcrum of the novel, lies in the path to the search for truth. Both Narciso, who represents the spirit, and Boccadoro, who represents nature, feel dissatisfied with their research because they use only the spirit or only the senses as a medium,... Weiterlesen →
It is scientifically proven that our brain associates positive or negative sensations with the color of food according to a "mental past" that binds us to pleasant or unpleasant sensations experienced in the past; when a food comes in a different color from the one we are used to, we are immediately hit by a... Weiterlesen →
The history of plastic begins in the 19th century, when, between 1861 and 1862, the Englishman Alexander Parkes, developing the studies on cellulose nitrate, isolates and patents the first semi-synthetic plastic material, which christens Parkesine (better known later like Xylonite). It is a first type of celluloid, used for the production of handles and boxes,... Weiterlesen →
Artificial intelligence, ok. But also the fake news effect and the new migration scenarios. Yuval Noah Harari, the bestselling guru "Sapiens" and "Homo Deus", returns with "21 lessons for the 21st century". And this exclusive interview. Where, in 10 points, he warns: be careful, the more we go forward and the more we go back.... Weiterlesen →
Naturalness and spontaneity do not belong to everyone. In fact, many give too much importance to the thoughts of others and assume forced behavior, which have the sole purpose of taking shelter from external criticism. But this way of life, carried out on a daily basis, ends up exhausting the person: in fact there is... Weiterlesen →
Are they among us? Are they hiding in some distant galaxy? Have they already visited us and, disappointed, have they left? On the existence of aliens - in particular of intelligent extraterrestrial life forms - literature, cinema, music and science have said practically everything and the opposite of everything. And net of more or less... Weiterlesen →
Throughout the course of our history, man has always tried to be part of a community, tribe, society. He always tried to be with others, perhaps because he understood well before the film "Into the wild" was released that happiness is really real only when it is shared.Then something happened. It has happened that man,... Weiterlesen →
The love? It's all about chemistry. To say it is not some disenchanted cynic who no longer has confidence in feelings but numerous scientific studies conducted by analyzing what happens in the brain in love. The data collected in recent years, thanks also to Italian research, support what was initially only a hypothesis: human emotions... Weiterlesen →
Of Mice and Men The two protagonists (classic wanderers, or tramps, Americans of the 1930s) are George Milton and Lennie Small, seasonal laborers who earn their living by wandering through the country from farm to farm. Lennie, although endowed with an imposing size and an extraordinary physical strength (his surname is therefore an oxymoron), characteristics... Weiterlesen →
On average, adults need 7-8 hours per night, while children can sleep up to 10-12 hours a day. Having said that it is also true that the need for rest is an individual characteristic. The transition from wakefulness to sleep is regulated by a timing that changes from individual to individual and even in the... Weiterlesen →
After Brazil, Bolivia and Peru, Australia is also on fire. It is hard not to break into tears at the sight of the photos that are currently going around the world. Around 500 million animals have already fallen victim to the devastating bush fires in Australia - experts say this corresponds to a third of... Weiterlesen →
Muscular dystrophy is one of the most common hereditary muscle diseases and a cure has not yet been discovered. However, hope is coming from the Cnr Biomolecular Chemistry Institute in Pozzuoli. In fact, according to the researchers, some cannabis molecules would be able to counter the course of the disease and recover part of the... Weiterlesen →
The production of flour and fish oil, growing in West Africa, threatens not only the seas off the African coast but also food security and the livelihood of coastal populations. According to the recent report by Greenpeace wasted fish the stocks of small pelagic fish, fundamental for coastal craft fleets and the feeding of countries... Weiterlesen →
The Remains of the Day The Remains of the Day) is a novel by the British writer and Nobel laureate in literature Kazuo Ishiguro from 1989 for which Ishiguro was awarded the Booker Prize in the year of its first publication. In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted The Remains of the Day... Weiterlesen →
Writing a letter is above all an extraordinary tool of self-analysis and reflection.Never as in front of a blank sheet (or screen) our thoughts unravel and reveal our true intentions.Writing a letter, then, is an act of great generosity towards the recipient because as we write we constantly think of him who will read us,... Weiterlesen →
A team of scientists has launched an appeal to establish a worldwide microbiota safe that includes "good bacteria" from the most remote populations on Earth. The equivalent of the Global Seed Vault, to ensure the future health of humanity. Animal model studies have highlighted the existence of a causal relationship between microbiota alterations and conditions... Weiterlesen →
Moral sentiment theory The passage is taken from the "Theory of moral feelings", in which Smith examines the way in which we approve or not approve the conduct of other people, by means of our sympathetic identification. In fact, we evaluate human behavior by judging the actions of others impartially, then transferring this evaluation onto... Weiterlesen →
Predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein, black holes have so far been mysterious cosmic objects, but now things could change: being able to photograph them means not only having direct evidence of their existence, but being able to observe what happens when matter approaches to such an extreme environment, where the force of gravity... Weiterlesen →
Can computer science be taught without even a PC? Surely it is difficult, but not impossible. The proof comes from Ghana, where a 33 year old teacher teaches the use of PCs to his students. His story has become known throughout the world after the publication on Facebook of images depicting the prof in action.... Weiterlesen →
HUNDREDS OF SOLITUDE From Jose Arcadio to Aureliano, from the discovery of the ice to the decipherment of the scrolls of Melquíades: seven generations of Buendía pursue an inevitable destiny. With this tumultuous novel that uses the tones of fable, supported by a portentous language and a prodigious fantasy, Gabriel García Márquez has been able... Weiterlesen →
The German virologist and cancer researcher Prof. Dr. med. Harald zur Hausen (Heidelberg) is one of three Nobel Prize winners for medicine in 2008. In the early 1980s, he had shown that human papilloma viruses (HPV) cause cervical cancer. The other two award winners are also pioneers in the field of virology: Prof. Dr. rer.... Weiterlesen →
Water covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface but for the most part it is composed of salt water and even the sweet one is not always accessible: only 0.3 is found in rivers and lakes and can be used by humans . The danger of tensions and conflicts linked to the access and control... Weiterlesen →
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck. Published April 14, 1939 in New York, it is considered the masterpiece of the American writer, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. The story tells of the epic story of the 'biblical' transmigration of the Joad family, which is forced to abandon its farm in... Weiterlesen →
The Earth is in full "climatic emergency", and "untold human suffering" will be inevitable, without profound and lasting changes in human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. More than 11,000 researchers from 153 countries state this in a study in the BioScience magazine. The climate emergency declaration is based on the... Weiterlesen →
Artificial intelligence, atomic GPS, robotic armor, mind downloaded to hard disk, super fast vaccines, "brain from the Pentagon" projects. The 675 North Randolph Street is a modern seven-storey building with large windows that reflect the green of the front lawn. A building like many others, in the business district of Arlington, Virginia, the city on... Weiterlesen →
The Earth's twin planet, barely smaller than ours in diameter and mass, could indeed be a much better candidate for life than its incandescent surface temperature would assume, which, with over 450 ° C, far exceeds the melting point of lead (327.5 ° C).The study raises on the basis of new and more precise data... Weiterlesen →
Fiktionen Argentinian writer, poet, essayist, translator and academic, Borges has made a fundamental contribution to philosophical narrative and fantasy as a reinvention of reality, so much so that today Borges is an adjective to express the dreamlike, fantastic, bookish and labyrinthine. A false country discovered in "a pirate encyclopedia", Uqbar, and an imaginary planet, Tlön,... Weiterlesen →
Lost 150 million sparrows in 30 years, a sign of a profound change in the ecology of the territory. The latest data has just been published by the magazine Scienze. A study with data from the last 50 years on 529 species of birds flying over the skies of North America (Canada and the United... Weiterlesen →
The theory of the spiral of silence, proposed in 1984 by the German sociologist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, maintains that people always have an opinion on the tendency of the majority on a specific theme and, given that they fear isolation, in the event that find themselves having an opinion that is different from that of the... Weiterlesen →
The compression cradle looks like a remnant of a world that we haven't seen yet but that we could soon live in. One in which the mechanical touch can be an antidote for today's "connection forever", a behavior that has triggered a solitary disconnection with ourselves. Compression Carpet was presented at the Festival of the... Weiterlesen →
Poetry from silence He won the Nobel Prize in 2001. A Swedish poet and psychologist, his books have never been translated, except for a couple of volumes published by the publisher. To read Poetry from silence, a collection of poems that seem to emerge directly from the dream, with modernist and symbolist elements, but also... Weiterlesen →
An artificial intelligence system (AI) has passed a third-level science test, correctly answering 90 percent of the questions. The result was obtained by Aristo, an AI made by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in the United States, demonstrating once again the rapid progress in the field of artificial intelligence. In the future, Aristo could... Weiterlesen →
Madagascar healers who squeeze the leaf juice that will heal a child from his earache? Yes you can! Taking resources from nature to cure diseases is an ancient practice. The Egyptians themselves had developed a technique to extract essential oils from plants and prepare ointments used especially in the embalming procedure. Until the Middle Ages,... Weiterlesen →
The garden of delights The garden of delights tells the proletarian America of the fifties and sixties, America white trash, greedy for social climbs and revenge, cyanotic for the fists set in by the bastards in the taverns and by life. Rye fields in the blazing sun of Arkansas. The hands tear the fruit from... Weiterlesen →
What is consciousness? Although we deal with it every day, it is not so simple to explain. We hear this subject so closely because it is like asking ourselves: what is each of us, what are we, what is each of us, what am I and what are you. Some argue that understanding consciousness is... Weiterlesen →
Doodle for Wanda Rutkiewicz, the woman who climbed Everest: For many, it is still the last great mountain warrior. Wanda Rutkiewicz was a pioneer: of the Himalayan, of high-altitude businesses without oxygen, of impossible challenges, of feminism in mountaineering in a world where then the equal confrontation between man and woman seemed to not exist... Weiterlesen →
Every year at the end of September, volunteers from all over the world meet in over 120 countries to take to the streets and give a concrete signal of a desire to do and a territorial identity. We clean the world consists of many small gestures for the protection and enhancement of common goods, through... Weiterlesen →
In the early 1900s, the English mathematician G. H. Hardy made a very important discovery: mathematics is beautiful. He writes that while he was going by taxi to find his young friend and co-worker Srinivasa Ramanujan, suffering from tuberculosis and dying, he noticed (as always) the car's number. It was 1729. An uninteresting number. I... Weiterlesen →
The challenges of sustainability Theories and empirical data uniquely demonstrate that there is a strong and decisive "human footprint" on climate change. That man is the cause, if not the only, by far the main cause of the increase in temperature and the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This demonstration, according to the... Weiterlesen →
“A target within reach „ Important environmental objectives, from the "vertical farmer" to the "digital architect" which will be the most popular professions in fifteen and twenty years, when our children will enter the world of work. As far as clean sources are concerned, interventions are needed to make existing regulations and procedures more effective,... Weiterlesen →
uncertain future From the temperatures that do not increase to the ice that does not melt, from the innocence of human actions to the excessive costs of reducing emissions. The list, as we shall see, is long. Some criticisms have been detailed, others generic. Some have disappeared soon, others have lasted for years, perhaps after... Weiterlesen →
memory The ability to store information in the memory and know how to use it to one's advantage is not unique to humans and animals, but also to plants. In fact, many plants are able to learn and store information memory. Trees with memory This is demonstrated for the first time by an experiment carried... Weiterlesen →
The natural world is much more than a source of beauty and charm. Nature-inspired innovation is today one of the most influential drivers of innovative technologies ... an ideal opportunity to teach in a simple way, which suggests that politicians who focus exclusively on the classroom lack an opportunity: even modest investments in informal science,... Weiterlesen →
