How will climate change in Italy? What will be the consequences for the country? Despite criticism by "climate deniers", a hundred of Italian scientists working in various capacities on climate change - from atmospheric physics to economics, have tackled the issue. The result is a volume of 590 pages which is under all respects the equivalent of the IPCC report for Italy.
Much work has been carried out to identify the neural correlates of the appreciation of beauty of faces, visual art, dance and music (Aharon 2001; Cela-Conde 2004; Jacobsen 2006; Kawabata 2004; O'Doherty 2003; Rhodes 2007; Senior 2003; Vartanian 2004). However, two important issues remain elusive. On the one hand, the possibility of differences between men and women, and on the other, the evolutionary forces that may have shaped this human capacity.
Why - and when - are they round?
Splashing water and soap bubbles, drops of rain or dew, condensation on the cold surface of a glass, on which to write with the tip of a finger. Games that we began to love as children and that since then, have not yet lost their charm. Games that we are 'borrowing' from the so-called 'capillary forces'. The exploration of the world of capillary forces is an inexhaustible source of wonderful surprises and amazement (not only mathematical).
After being mistreated and ignored, the 16th Conference of Parties to the UN convention on Climate Change recently concluded in Cancun, seems to have been a success well above expectations. The credit goes especially to the organizers, and in particular to the diplomatic skills of the Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, who has created consensus among many countries, with the exception of Bolivia.
An epidemic of politics, this is what plagues science in many countries around the world, even in mature democracies like the United States and Italy. In the U.S., President George Bush has strongly interfered with the freedom of scientific research. The same thing happened in Italy in several historical periods: immediately after the Unification of Italy, during Fascism and in the last two decades.
Was there ever really a beginning of everything? Including time? One can hardly imagine a more existential question in the spirit of each human being. Philosophies and religions have approached this issue incessantly since man left traces of his own existence. We find the same questions being asked by the Greek philosophers just as well as by the religious leaders of the Middle Ages. To the question "What was God doing before creating the world?» St.Augustine replied «The question is meaningless because God, together with the world, also created time! ».
Our concerns that global warming can be harmful to tropical forests may probably have to be reconsidered; as a matter of fact, roughly 60 million years ago forests thrived despite a considerably hostile climate.
