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Zanichelli Aula di scienze •

La pericolosa “pazzia” dei cervi

Tra il 1967 e il 1979 una malattia mai registrata fino a quel momento aveva colpito 53 cervi muli (Odocoileus hemionus) tenuti in cattività in alcuni centri di ricerca in Colorado e Wyoming, negli Stati Uniti centro-occidentali. Venne chiamata sindrome del deperimento cronico (CWD, dall’inglese chronic wasting disease) o colloquialmente malattia dei cervi zombi. Gli animali colpiti diventavano letargici, digrignavano i denti, perdevano rapidamente peso e nell’arco di alcuni mesi morivano.

Nel 1...
Nature Italy •

Will the Einstein Telescope be split in two?

The competition between Italy and the Netherlands to host the next generation gravitational wave detector might end in a draw if a new proposal to build two detectors instead of one gains momentum.Due to become operational by 2035, the Einstein Telescope was originally proposed as a triangle with 10-kilometer sides located nearly 300 metres underground to reduce noise sources. Around each vertex there would be a pair of V-shaped interferometers, optimized to detect low and high...
Nature Italy •

A bridge too far? Messina Strait project could finally join Sicily to the mainland

Air View of the strait of Messina, that divides Sicily (on the right) from the Italian peninsula. Credit: Andrea Colantoni/Moment Open/Getty Images.A plan has been relaunched for a long-span suspension bridge crossing the Messina Strait to join Sicily and the mainland, an idea first mooted 60 years ago1. In 2012 a project was ready and some preparatory works were underway, but it was halted because of budget constraints.The publicly-owned company overseeing the project, Stretto...
Nature Italy •

What scientists know about the blue crab invasion

The northern Adriatic Sea has been invaded by Callinectes Sapidus, a blue crab species native to the east coast of the United States. It is an adaptable species that reproduces very quickly, and it is threatening the clam farming industry of the Po River delta in the Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions, which normally produces about 15,000 tonnes of clams per year. The Italian government has allocated nearly €3 million for the capture and disposal of the species, authorizing fish...
Nature Italy •

Examining the role of climate change in the Emilia-Romagna floods

Operators of the Italian Red Cross and firefighters seek residents blocked in their homes on May 25, 2023 in Conselice, Italy, after heavy rains caused flooding across Italy's Emilia Romagna region. Credit: Antonio Masiello/ Stringer/ Getty Images News. After severe floods hit the Emilia-Romagna region in May, killing 17 people and displacing 37,000 more, questions emerged about the causative factors. Were the heavy rainfalls that caused the floods exceptional events, or were pr...
Nature Italy •

Italy’s new seismic hazard map is back to square one

The tortuous path of the new Italian seismic hazard map has hit another roadblock. Nature Italy has learned that the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV) has completed the internal evaluation of the map, and that the outcome was negative. This means the new map has effectively been rejected by the same institute whose scientists have worked on it for more than seven years. INGV was tasked in 2015 by the Civil Protection to develop a new map that would update...
Nature Italy •

Scientists protest Italy’s ban on cultivated meat

The Italian government has approved a draft bill banning the production and commercialization of cultivated meat for human and animal consumption. The bill sets out to preserve the Italian food and culinary heritage, to protect human health and the national agri-food industry, and follows a petition launched by the national farmers’ association Coldiretti against ‘synthetic foods’ that collected nearly half a million signatures.Cultivated meat is obtained by taking fat and muscle cells from live...
Nature Italy •

Sardinia’s push to host the next big gravitational wave detector

When he visits Lula, a small mining village in the heart of Sardinia, physicist, Alessandro Cardini, tells the story of the Swiss and French villages around CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Until the 1950s they had fewer than 1,000 inhabitants each. Today their populations are more than ten times bigger, and the area hosts a vibrant international community. Cardini, a physicist at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Cagliari, explains to the...
Nature Italy •

What the fusion breakthrough in the US means for Europe

On 5 December at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, in the US, 192 laser beams hit a small capsule filled with deuterium and tritium housed in a golden cylinder, causing what physicists call ‘ignition’. For the first time, the amount of energy produced by a controlled nuclear fusion reaction was larger than the energy carried by the lasers used to initiate it. The target absorbed 2.05 megajoules of energy, emitting 3.15 megajoules in return, a 54% energy gain. Why does...
Nature Italy •

Internal rumblings over Italy’s new seismic map

Seismologists often say that earthquakes do not kill people, buildings do, when they collapse because of a shock that they were not designed to withstand. An earthquake-prone country such as Italy needs a reliable seismic risk map that indicates what kind of earthquakes can be expected in each area, for authorities to use in designing a building code. Better information reduces the risk of tragedies such as the Irpinia 1980 earthquake, that killed almost 3,000 people; the one in...

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Scienza in rete •

Smettila di dire a Dio che cosa deve fare con i suoi dadi

Si è aperta ieri e prosegue oggi a Parigi la cerimonia di inaugurazione dell’International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, promosso dall’UNESCO in occasione del centenario dallo sviluppo iniziale della meccanica quantistica, la teoria che spiega i fenomeni naturali che avvengono su scala atomica e subatomica.


Copertina del saggio Dio gioca a dadi con il mondo  di Giuseppe Mussardo.

Nel 1925, Werner Heisenberg, allora venticinquenne, mostrò per la prima volta come la meccanica quantis...
Zanichelli Aula di scienze •

La pericolosa “pazzia” dei cervi

Tra il 1967 e il 1979 una malattia mai registrata fino a quel momento aveva colpito 53 cervi muli (Odocoileus hemionus) tenuti in cattività in alcuni centri di ricerca in Colorado e Wyoming, negli Stati Uniti centro-occidentali. Venne chiamata sindrome del deperimento cronico (CWD, dall’inglese chronic wasting disease) o colloquialmente malattia dei cervi zombi. Gli animali colpiti diventavano letargici, digrignavano i denti, perdevano rapidamente peso e nell’arco di alcuni mesi morivano.

Nel 1...
Scienza in rete •

Perché le reti neurali hanno vinto i Nobel per la fisica e la chimica?

Il premio Nobel per la fisica 2024 è stato assegnato a John J. Hopfield, fisico e biologo statunitense dell’università di Princeton, e a Geoffrey Hinton, informatico e neuroscienziato britannico dell’Università di Toronto per aver sfruttato strumenti della fisica statistica nello sviluppo dei metodi alla base delle potenti tecnologie di machine learning di oggi.

Perché il lavoro di Hopfield e Hinton sulle reti di neuroni artificiali sia stato premiato con il Nobel per la fisica si può capire le...
Scienza in rete •

Ponte sullo Stretto e disinformazione scientifica

Il dibattito sul Ponte sullo Stretto di Messina si è riacceso in questi giorni, complici la campagna per le elezioni del Parlamento europeo e un articolo pubblicato sul Corriere della sera del 27 maggio a firma di Domenico Affinito e Milena Gabanelli, per la rubrica “Data Room”.

L’articolo rileva una serie di limiti nella progettazione dell’opera, che ricordiamo sarebbe il ponte sospeso più lungo del mondo, con una distanza tra le due torri pari a 3.300 metri, circa il 60% in più del più lungo...
Zanichelli Aula di scienze •

Come sta procedendo l’invasione del granchio blu nel Mediterraneo

Il granchio blu atlantico, Callinectes sapidus, è una specie aliena che a partire dall’estate del 2023 ha invaso le aree lagunari a nord del mare Adriatico, sulle coste di Emilia-Romagna e Veneto. Le prime segnalazioni della sua presenza nel mar Mediterraneo risalgono al 1949, e l’ipotesi più accreditata è che sia arrivato nelle acque di zavorra delle navi transatlantiche. Si tratta infatti di una specie nativa della costa atlantica dell’America Settentrionale, che ha una delle sue popolazioni p...
Nature Italy •

Water evaporation guides termites as they build their nests

A study found evidence that termites, when building their nests, are guided mainly by water evaporation that allows them to identify the regions of the structure with the largest curvature. Termites nests, or mounds, can reach up to several metres in height, but so far scientists do not agree on how these tiny insects manage to do this. “For a long time, scientists believed that termites marked with pheromones the points in the structure where new pellets should be deposed, sim...
Nature Italy •

Will the Einstein Telescope be split in two?

The competition between Italy and the Netherlands to host the next generation gravitational wave detector might end in a draw if a new proposal to build two detectors instead of one gains momentum.Due to become operational by 2035, the Einstein Telescope was originally proposed as a triangle with 10-kilometer sides located nearly 300 metres underground to reduce noise sources. Around each vertex there would be a pair of V-shaped interferometers, optimized to detect low and high...
Nature Italy •

T-cells could be enough to protect from COVID-19 new variants

A group of immune white blood cells called T-cells, produced in the body after being infected with a SARS-CoV-2 variant, play a key role in preventing re-infection from a different variant, according to a study led by Matteo Iannacone from the San Raffaele scientific Institute in Milan1. This goes against the prevailing view according to which it is mostly neutralizing antibodies that prevent infection, while T-cells are mostly involved in protecting the body from the severe for...
Nature Italy •

Should Italy ban disposable e-cigarettes?

Scientific bodies and patient organisations are piling on pressure for the Italian health authorities to introduce tougher rules on the sales and marketing of electronic cigarettes. They are alarmed by data from the 2022 Global Tobacco Youth Survey (GYTS) that show that almost 20% of Italians between 13 and 15 years old use them — a sharp increase from 8.4% in 2014 and 17.5% in 2018. Even though they cannot be sold to minors, nearly 34% of them have tried the devices at least on...
Nature Italy •

A bridge too far? Messina Strait project could finally join Sicily to the mainland

Air View of the strait of Messina, that divides Sicily (on the right) from the Italian peninsula. Credit: Andrea Colantoni/Moment Open/Getty Images.A plan has been relaunched for a long-span suspension bridge crossing the Messina Strait to join Sicily and the mainland, an idea first mooted 60 years ago1. In 2012 a project was ready and some preparatory works were underway, but it was halted because of budget constraints.The publicly-owned company overseeing the project, Stretto...
Nature Italy •

A prosthetic hand that feels the heat

A man whose right hand was amputated at the age of 20 is now able to feel the temperature of the objects he touches with his prosthetic hand, thanks to a new device integrated in it1.The device, called MiniTouch, was developed last year2 by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and the School of Advanced Studies Sant'Anna in Pisa. It is made by two components, an active thermal sensor which measures temperature and generates realistic signals which ar...
Nature Italy •

The formula for a perfect family

Surveys in industrialized countries used to show that a family with two children was seen as ideal, but that has changed, according to a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences coordinated by Arnstein Aassve, a demographer at Bocconi University in Milan. Aassve’s team interviewed nearly 20,000 respondents in China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Italy, Spain, and Norway, all low-fertility countries.Respondents were asked to rate the contribut...
Nature Italy •

Self-growing robot copies the behaviour of climbing plants

Researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have developed a growing robot, named FiloBot, that responds to gravity and light by autonomously adopting some of the behaviors of climbing plants1. The study, published in Science Robotics, is the culmination of a 10-year project for Barbara Mazzolai’s group, which, inspired by plants roots, used additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, to mimic the growth of climbing plants.“Climbing plants grow against gravity and explo...
Nature Italy •

Robotics team shows extra prosthetic arm can be controlled by breathing

In the experimental set-up, a chest belt monitores the movements of the diaphragm, so that participants could use the way they breathe to control the elongation of the arm. Credit: Alain Herzog/EPFL. Researchers have developed a robotic arm that can be controlled using gaze and the movement of the diaphragm during breathing. The arm, which is designed to be used as an extra limb rather than a replacement, has proved to be easy to learn to use and it can be used while conducting...
Nature Italy •

Pap tests could be used to detect early ovarian cancer at the outset

A new genomic test could detect high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) in its early stages through the analysis of DNA taken in Pap tests used for the screening of cervical cancer.In 2020, 314,000 women worldwide were diagnosed with ovarian cancer. HGSOC is the most common type and has a 5-year survival rate under 30%. It is typically diagnosed late, when it is already at stage III or IV, but early detection at stage I boosts survival to around 90%.Studies have shown that mos...
Nature Italy •

Pesticide cocktails may be harming bumblebees in Europe

The current European legislation on pesticides in agriculture demands that each compound is tested individually in field trials before approval, to measure its toxicity for pollinator insects. But in the real world, pollinators are exposed to a plethora of pesticides, and the effects of these mixtures are not well known.The largest study to date on the subject1 shows that most bumblebees are exposed to more than one pesticide in European fields, and that the higher the exposure...
Nature Italy •

Earliest barred galaxy captured through the James Webb telescope

Most massive disk galaxies in our region of the Universe, including our own Milky Way, have a stellar bar at their centre, which scientists believed could form only in the late stages of galaxies’ lives. But a new study1 on the most distant (and thus ancient) barred galaxy ever observed reveals that this shape can appear during a galaxy’s infancy. The newly discovered object, named ceers-2112, dates back to nearly 11.7 billion years ago, and according to current astrophysics mod...
Nature Italy •

An AI system helps microbiologists identify bacteria

The analysis of bacterial cultures is the most common study in microbiology laboratories and guides decisions such as the choice of antibiotic therapies. In a new study1 a group of researchers led by Alberto Signoroni, at the University of Brescia, has proposed an AI algorithm, called Deep Colony, that can interpret culture plates and offer a first identification of the bacterial species they contain.When tested on nearly 5,000 plates processed by a...
Nature Italy •

The surprising toolbox of the early Homo erectus

In 1981 the mandible of a child was found in Garba, one of the prehistoric sites of the Melka Kunture complex, in the Ethiopian highlands near the Awash River, some 50 kilometres south of Addis Ababa. Since then, scientists have been debating whether the mandible belonged to Homo habilis, a human species that lived from 2.3 million years ago to 1.65 million years ago, or to the most recent Homo erectus, that appeared about 2 million years ago and went extinct about 117,000 year...
Nature Italy •

The scientists behind this year’s physics Nobel prize

At Politecnico di Milano, Mauro Nisoli leads the Attosecond Research Center. His group has contributed to the research that led to the generation and characterization of extremely short light pulses, with a duration of a billionth of a billionth of a second, that can be used to study electrons inside atoms and molecules as they move or change energy. This research won Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier this year's Nobel Prize in physics. Nature Italy talked with...
Nature Italy •

Newly sequenced wild wheat could revive historic Italian crop

Leggi in italianoA variety of durum wheat has been discovered in Southern Italy by a group of researchers led by Fernando Tateo, a food chemist at the University of Milan.After studying it, the researchers concluded that the wheat is related to the renowned Senatore Cappelli, a variety obtained in 1915 and widely used in Italy until the 1960s, when it was replaced by more productive ones. The new variety, labelled TB2018, probably derived spontaneously from the old one, but developed some traits...
Nature Italy •

Sicily is first European port of call for red fire ants

In 2019, people living near the city of Siracusa, in southeastern Sicily, began reporting painful stings from ants in 2019. In November 2022 a man sent a picture of one of these ants to his friend, Antonio Alicata, an ant expert who collaborates with the University of Catania. Now a study in Current Biology1 by researchers, led by Roger Vila, of the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (IBE) in Barcelona, and including Alicata, confirms that the ant belongs to the species Solenopsis i...
Nature Italy •

Deadly olive tree pathogen came by road and rail

Since 2013, when it was first found in the southernmost province of Apulia, the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa has killed nearly 21 million olive trees in the region, affecting a territory as large as 54,000 hectares, which has slowly expanded north, to reach the Bari province. The pathogen, which is endemic in America, is transported from plant to plant by the meadow spittlebug, or Philaenus spumarius.Scientists from Italy’s Council for Agricultural Research and Agricultural Econ...
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