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Increasingly Citizen Science!
In a single night of observation the VST (VLT Survey Telescope), which recently started operation in Cerro Paranal, can accumulate over 100 gigabytes of data, thanks to the efficiency with which it scans the southern sky. If we consider the four VLT and VISTA, also located at Cerro Paranal, and all other telescopes spread around the world, we realize that the amount of data that is being acquired in a year can be measured in petabytes (one petabyte is equivalent to a million gigabytes), and is likely to continue increasing with an expected growth rate of a factor of 2 every year.
Scientists protest in Canada
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“Death of evidence” rally in Ottawa, Canada.
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Fifth Pluto Moon
Solar System
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
English
Read time: 2 minsSubmitted by Marco Milano on 13 July, 2012 - 00:13
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di Marco Milano
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Against smoking, also harm reduction is useful
Smoking kills one person every six seconds and today it is under all respects one of the worst epidemic ever faced globally. The World Health Organisation estimated that almost 6 million people lose their lives each year due to damage from smoking. Among the victims, more than 600,000 are non-smokers exposed to passive smoking. By 2030 total deaths could increase to nearly 8 million per year and if the trend continues, which is what can be inferred from projections, in the twenty-first century smoking will have caused up to one billion deaths, especially hitting
The Higgs Boson
minutephysics
The Higgs Boson, Part I and The Higgs Boson, Part II: What is Mass? are an explanation of the Higgs Boson made by MinutePhysics.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASRpIym_jFM]
Also about the Higgs Boson: Theory of Everything and What is Matter
English
Read time: 1 minSubmitted by Emanuela Clavarino on 12 July, 2012 - 09:14
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CMS and ATLAS bosons
LHC
1 - CMS
English
Read time: 1 minSubmitted by Marco Milano on 9 July, 2012 - 19:07
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di Marco Milano
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Infinity
Numberphile
Infinity refers to something without any limit, and is a concept relevant in a number of fields, predominantly mathematics and physics. But sometimes infinity is even bigger than you think.
In this video Dr James Grime explains with a little help from Georg Cantor.
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a German mathematician, best known as the inventor of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics..
English
Read time: 1 minSubmitted by Emanuela Clavarino on 9 July, 2012 - 11:23
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The sweltering summer of GMOs
In a few days the European Court of Justice shall issue its ruling on
lawsuit no. C--36/11, Pioneer Hi-Bred
Italia Srl vs. MIPAF (Italian Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry), which deals
with the compatibility between EU and Italian legislation on
the authorization to cultivate the GMO varieties included in
European Common Catalogue.
The question that arises is whether Italy can deny
authorization to the commercial growing of GM maize based on the
justification that it has not yet established coexistence regulations between the various
New assessment of 09 swine impact
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Knowing the scale of a potential threat is fundamental to elaborate an effective strategy to face it. This is particularly true when dealing with epidemics. In 2009, 18500 laboratory-confirmed deaths associated with influenza A H1N1, also known as “swine flu”, have been reported, but this number is likely to be an underestimate.