There will be lots of improbable science story sharing in fourteen Italian cities this Friday night, September 30, 2022. Stories about real science. Stories filled with mystery, confusion, excitement, and lots of intriguing uncertainty. This is a new part of SHARPER Night in Italy — Friday night, September 30. (What, you may ask, is SHARPER? […]
In the wake of the Ig Nobel Prize-winning studies about whether eating Italian pizza in Italy might lengthen life, comes a new study about Italians who eat chili peppers: “Chili Pepper Consumption and Mortality in Italian Adults,” Marialaura Bonaccio, Augusto Di Castelnuovo, Simona Costanzo, Emilia Ruggiero, Amalia De Curtis, Mariarosaria Persichillo, Claudio Tabolacci, Francesco Facchiano, […]
Wednesday afternoon, the Ig Nobel EuroTour arrives in Catania, Sicily—featuring random promotion, roller-coaster-induced kidney-stone-passing, homosexual necrophiliac ducks, and all sorts of other prize-winning things that make people LAUGH, then THINK. April 3, Wednesday, 4:30 pm—University of Catania, Italy—at CSFNSM – Centro Siciliano di Fisica Nucleare e Struttura della Materia, via S. Sofia 64—Marc Abrahams will talk about […]
Think, if you will, of the pasta. This study demonstrates one way to begin doing that: “Evaluation of environmental impacts in the catering sector: The case of pasta,” Alessandra Fusi, Riccardo Guidetti, Adisa Azapagic, Journal of Cleaner Production, epub 2015. (Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Università degli Studi […]
Pramit Bhattacharya writes, in the Hindustan Times: The truth behind India’s new GDP numbers It is an open secret that India’s new gross domestic product (GDP) series has flummoxed most observers of the Indian economy. The new numbers seem completely out of sync with other economic indicators… As an analysis of 189 nations over 33 […]
NanoPress published a fond profile of all the Italian winners of the Ig Nobel Prize: “IG Nobel italiani: i vincitori di tutte le edizioni“. Here is one of them, 2013 Ig Nobel Physics Prize co-winner Alberto Minetti: Throughout Italy, people will be staying up late to watch the live webcast of this year’s Ig Nobel […]
Lead author Smelov and colleagues write, in this letter to a medical journal, about a careful investigation that may (and may not) have small or nonexistent implications: “Are human papillomavirus DNA prevalences providing high-flying estimates of infection? An international survey of HPV detection on environmental surfaces,” Vitaly Smelov [pictured here], Carina Eklund, Laila Sara Arroyo […]
Join us for Ig Nobel events in Perugia and Rome, Italy: PERUGIA: Saturday, September 28, 9:00 pm. Perugia Science Fest, Sala di Notari. Science journalist Silvia Bencivelli will introduce and dialogue with Marc Abrahams. The evening features Ig Nobel Prize winners Alberto Minetti (new Italian Ig Nobel winner!) and Kees Moeliker (homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck). [PREVIEW] ROME: Tuesday, […]
A new look at the habits and health prospects of some of the planet’s most glamorous medicos: “Cardiovascular Risk Profile and Lifestyle Habits in a Cohort of Italian Cardiologists (from the SOCRATES Survey),” Pier Luigi Temporelli, Giovanni Zito, Pompilio Faggiano, and the SOCRATES Investigators, American Journal of Cardiology, epub April 12, 2013. The authors, at […]
Undiscouraged by history, the winners of the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize for management have applied their methods to try to make sense of the current state of Italian national politics. Their new study is: “On the efficiency of the new Italian Senate and the role of 5 Star Movement: Comparison among different possible scenarios by […]