Another step towards a fair assessment of research projects comes again from the private sector: we are talking about the Cariplo Foundation. On the wake of Telethon, which opened the road by importing the peer-review system inspired by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and considered the best in the world, the merit-based and impartial model is taking place among private "funding agencies".
After 3 years of data taking in the CNGS neutrino beam from CERN with the OPERA detector at LNGS, and several months of analysis and checks, a really unexpected result has come out last week: the time of flight of CNGS neutrinos detected by OPERA appears to be shorter by 20 parts per million as compared to that of light. The researchers, after a careful scrutiny of statistical and systematical errors have decided to publicize this astonishing anomaly with a series of seminars and with a paper recently appeared on the archives. The goal
Where are they, how do they work, what experiments are the Gran Sasso underground laboratories conducting? An infographics prepared by the press office of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics takes visitors in the halls of the laboratories to discover Borexinus, Opera and other research projects hosted in one of the most fascinating physics laboratories in the world.
A simple explanation of Cloud Computing.
Space Shuttle is perhaps the most complex technological system ever
built. In 30 years, it has flown 135 times and helped humankind to
dispatch and partially even return many satellites and deep-space
probes, to build the International Space Station and to conduct
out-of-this-world science. The Shuttle has transported also 24 European
astronauts to Earth orbit on 25 missions.
This video highlights these flights with European flavour - from STS-9 in 1983 to STS-134 in last May.
Following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Professor Martyn Poliakoff discuss what is causing problems at the nuclear reactors in Fukushima.
In his recent article on Scienzainrete, Pier Mannuccio Mannucci mentioned it as a positive example. The Gruppo 2003 also cited it as a good practice in its Manifesto for a scientific research revival in Italy. What we're talking about is the evaluation system adopted by Telethon to fund research projects.
Take a behind-the-scenes tour of the world's largest collection of wasp
nests with James M. Carpenter, entomologist and curator in the Museum's
Division of Invertebrate Zoology. The Museum's Hymenoptera collection
includes more than 1,200 paper nests made by social wasps, as well as
the 7.5 million-specimen gall wasp collection donated to the Museum in
1958 by the widow of Alfred C. Kinsey.
The primary focus of Dr.
Carpenter's work is the wasp family Vespidae, a group of nearly 5,000
described species that encompasses the most sophisticated societies
