The Chairman of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), Luigi Nicolais has signed up to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (Berlin Declaration) which represents the European "charter" governing adherence to open access to research materials funded by public moneys.
Googol. It is a large number, unimaginably large. It is easy to write in exponential format: 10100, an extremely compact method, to easily represent the largest numbers (and also the smallest numbers). With the smallest of effort, you can also present it in the full format: a “one” followed by one hundred “zeros”. However, in its exponential format, it can be easily read; in the full format, you may loose count of the amount of times you need to use the term, “billion” in “ten billion of billions
When we consider the factors that shape the future, both on an individual and collective basis, such as knowledge, training, innovation, we must ensure good sense, analysis skills, independent judgment, humility, courage, imagination. The future scientific policies of a country must take lead from these aspects and not from the opinions of individual entities, immediate expectations, half-hearted motivations. They must also be able to rely on significant resources.
Never. Impossible. Words we are learning to use with extreme caution in the language of science. As time goes by we become increasingly aware that much of what is impossible today is probably due to the lack of adequate technology and not because it violates some absolute law. What is impossible today might eventually become possible or even normal in the future.
What was impossible yesterday and what is impossible today
Droughts, floods, heat waves, hurricanes. Extreme weather events that have gone hand in hand with the history of mankind, but that are showing rapidly increasing intensity, frequency and variability. Among scientists the hypothesis (for many, a certainty) is gaining ground that the exceptional drought and other anomalous atmospheric events occurred in the last few years are the result of anthropogenic warming.
Neapolitan urban area and Campi Flegrei district represent a wide active volcanic system to which a very high volcanic risk is associated. This risk is defined as the product of the hazard (probability that an area be interested by volcanic phenomena in a given time interval) times the quantity of damages that can be provoked.
In order Anders Behring Breivik finally receives a verdict: he was sentenced to 21 years of “preventive detention” for the massacre carried out one year ago in Norway.
A team of American researchers discovered that an H3N8 influenza A virus of avian origin was responsible for the outbreak of pneumonia that killed 162 harbor seals along the New England coast, between September and December 2011. The results of their analysis has been published on mBio, the online journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
Gravity. The stars in day. Thoughts. The human genome. Time. Atoms. So much of what really matters in the world is impossible to see. A stunning animation of John Lloyd's classic TEDTalk from 2009, which will make you question what you actually know.
View full lesson on ed.ted.com.
