ne abbiamo parlato tanto tra di noi, ne hanno parlato tanto (!) innumerevoli radio in Italia, il rosa delle locandine ha colorato interi paesi (!!)…

ma nessuno lo ha postato su questo blog.

Cerchiamo di metterci una pezza:

“Il Ciclismo a test”  di MICHELE MARENCO

Marina

But what happens to the normal  railway lines? Well, let’s start saying that maybe normal is not the correct word, especially for commuters. If weather conditions are bad, like this morning for example, that is snowing in the North of Italy, it takes me one hour to get from Pavia to Milan, just 30 km: in the same time I could have reached Bologna with a high speed train…

And I do not want to talk about the conditions of my trip as my train has been the only one that traveled this morning, so on my train there were the people that usually stay on 4 trains: do you know that battery  chickens are almost illegal? well, commuters’life is even worse in day like this.

High speed trains: that makes me laugh a lot. Italy is going worse every day…

doriana

…come on and join us!

doriana

Esof 2008 is the 3rd edition of Euroscience Open Forum (2004 in Stockholm and 2006 in Munich) and because I haven’t seen the other two ones I can’t compare one to the others. I’ll try to do my best.

As a beginner of Esofs firstly I studied a bit.

From the website I know that Euroscience is a “pan-European association of individuals interested in constructing scientific Europe from the bottom-up”.

So during the main conference of the association (Esof) I thought to find thousands of people from the bottom who debate about science.

I really looked for them but I didn’t find lots of people from the bottom, neither from the top.

I found a lot of people from the “middle”: communicators and journalists who talked about their area of interest and discussed about the future of science and Europe. But where the public was?

As a volunteer during the conference I’ve worked in the outreach programme that means with the general spanish/catalan public, chidren, teenagers and above all families.

All the communicators involved in the outreach activities had to run their workshops or shows in a huge area (someone of us -including me- have thought that the area was a parking converted to the fair only for Esof) where there was no indication about what show was going on.

People and children seemed a bit lost in such a big area. You could feel more that you were looking for your car than for a workshop about science.

But it’s not the whole story about Esof 2008. I got in touch with people from all over the Europe and listened to a lot of intersting and clever speeches and discussions.

In this kind of conference you switch on your brain at the beginning of the day and you’re worn out at the end. And you might like feeling exahusted with a lot of ideas.

Again it’s not the whole story about Barcelona. VG community, in order to be a good team of reporters, has also been around the city, visiting all the amanities and enjoying some tapas at night.

We’ve also been to CosmoCaixa, the Science Museum of BCN, wondering all the time if CosmoCaixa is more a science museum with a bit of art or an art museum with a bit of science.

I’ve uploaded some pictures from the journey to have an idea of the atmosphere of BCN.

Claudia

Marina Semiglia

Yes, it’s finally out! The new book “Il Sesso a Test” , Alpha Test (only in Italian at the moment, www.alphatest.it) from Silvia Bencivelli.

The author of “Why we like music” (Perchè ci piace la musica, Sironi 2007 – www.sironieditore.it), that will be translated soon in french, this time surprise us with 200 funny and scientific questions, as the leitmotiv of this collection is.

From animals to erotism in art and literature, from cinema to hystory, try to answer… Is it real the the Coke is a good contraceptive? What is the right time for an ideal intercourse? What’s a micropenis exactly?

Comics by Giovanni Vannini.

doriana

It’s cool and unique and it’ll make you feel part of VG all life long!

What do you think about it? Could it be a nice idea?

T-SHIRT A: sfondo nero e disegno grande sul davanti (pumping iron) + scritta viaginnastica.wordpress.com

T-SHIRT B: sfondo nero e disegno piccolo su una manica (pumping iron) + scritta viaginnastica.wordpress.com

From www.telegraph.co.uk

It could easily have been the role model for the terrifying creature in the film ‘Alien’.

A perfect toxin-loaded killing machine, there is no creature on earth that can dispatch a human being so easily or so quickly.The box jellyfish is so packed with venom that the briefest of touches can bring agonising death within 180 seconds.

And if comes under sustained attack it responds by sending its compatriots into a super-breeding frenzy in which millions of replacements are created.

Video – Jellyfish invasion – National Geographic – Nature Shock

The jellyfish have a formidable array of genetic equipment to help them survive:

• Four brains that operate competitively in the search for food.
• A highly complex sensory capacity and the ability to distinguish colour.
• The ability to live in inhospitable waters at a depth of up to 10,900 metres.
• A total of 24 eyes with moveable pupils giving them 360-degree visibility.
• Box jellyfish have 6-8ft long tentacles. Just 5-6ft across the body is enough to kill a human in 180 seconds.
• Venom is released on contact – even after it is dead – and each creature has 4000,000,000 venomous fibres.
• Humans who have been stung and survived have needed 30-40 milligrams of morphine. A broken leg requires between 5-10 milligrams.
• Despite decades of study scientists have been unable to unravel the mysteries of its complex venom but it is known to contain 20 different proteins.

The swarms of jellyfish are multiplying in the Western extent of the Pacific ocean and threatening 20,000 miles of coastline off Japan, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea and Australia.

Marina Semiglia