Le Scienze Web News

ABSTRACT

A recent finding highlights that linear genomes are not uniformly repaired. Telomeres, the extremities of linear chromosomes, if damaged cannot be repaired and thus accumulate DNA damage over time independently from their length. This finding sets a new perspective on the process of ageing that could in principle lead to a way to prevent it. However, is ageing a bad thing for us, we really want to get rid of?
Authors: Marzia Fumagalli, Francesca Rossiello, Fabrizio d’Adda di Fagagna

The long but promising path of HIV Research

An international team of scientists has discovered a key molecule that helps the malaria parasite evade the human body's immune system.

Irish researchers have made new strides in the treatment of Huntington's disease by identifying an enzyme linked with genetic mutations associated with the condition.

Publication Date: 2012-02-23
As a result of a joint intensive work of several groups from five different countries, including Basque Country, a new wide class of topological insulators materials that are insulators in the bulk but conductors at the surface with technologically very promising properties has been discovered.

[Date: 2012-02-22]

An international team of scientists has discovered that the effect of fishing for tuna and similar species since the early 1960s has led to a decline in these populations by around 60%.

[Date: 2012-02-14]

Two of the four berths at an EU-funded grid-connected offshore marine-energy test site have now been filled. Wave Hub, located off the Cornish coast in the United Kingdom, is the largest test site of its type in the world.

Authors: Alberto Cazzella (Sapienza University of Rome), Anthony Pace (Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, Malta) e Giulia Recchia (University of Foggia)

Lunar crescent made of agate with cuneiform inscription.

ABSTRACT

Excavations at the sanctuary of tas-Silg (Malta) by the Italian Archeological Mission in Malta have brought to light a Babylonian artefact, made of agate, with a cuneiform inscription dating back to c. 1300 BC. It is the first time that a second millennium cuneiform inscription has been found so far westwards from Mesopotamia. The discovery raises many questions about the date of its arrival in Malta and the possible reasons for its presence in a sanctuary, whose long-term use spanned from the third millennium BC to the first millennium AD.

Quantum gravity can be considered the “Holy Grail” of modern physics. The understanding of fundamental concepts like space and time that could be obtained with the merging of Einstein’s General Relativity and the principles of quantum mechanics are still far from being captured and unified in a single coherent theory.

Introduction

Robotics is a summary discipline, which makes use of fundamental contributions coming from other fields such as mechanical engineering, electronics, software engineering and artificial intelligence, but also bioengineering, neuroscience, cognitive sciences, materials technologies, nanotechnology and quantum computing.