1,721,073 research outputs found
Creativity at its best: making science by making art
Full text linkCreativity and vision capability are common to many disciplines and are involved in artistic and scientific thinking and activities. Scientists and artists are often asked to see and think beyond the perceivable reality, to imagine aspects of things and events, which can be better seen from an unusual perspective. Developing such a open-wide perspective to foster the spread of scientific knowledge in high-school is one of the key ingredient of "Art & Science across Italy", a European science communication project led by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in collaboration with CERN. The main idea is to put in practice the basic concept of the STEAM field in which neither STEM nor arts are privileged over the other, but both are equally in play and engaging high school students with science using artistic languages, regardless of student's specific skills or level of knowledge. During the project, high-school students attend scientific seminars and then, inspired by science, create their own artworks. The latter are shown in local and national art shows. The project is now running the third edition (2020 2022). Here we will describe the project and the methodology used, and some results obtained in the first two editions in which more than 7.500 students coming from about 200 Italian high schools participated
Galactic dynamics and long-range quantum gravity
No full textWe explore in a systematic way the possibility that long-range quantum gravity effects could play a role at galactic scales and could be responsible for the phenomenology commonly attributed to dark matter. We argue that the presence of baryonic matter breaks the scale symmetry of the de Sitter (dS) spacetime generating an IR scale r(0), corresponding to the scale at which the typical dark matter effects we observe in galaxies arise. It also generates a huge number of bosonic excitations with wavelength larger than the size of the cosmological horizon and in thermal equilibrium with dS spacetime. We show that for r greater than or similar to r(0) these excitations produce a new component for the radial acceleration of stars in galaxies which leads to the result found by McGaugh et al. by fitting a large amount of observational data and with the MOND theory. We also propose a generalized thermal equivalence principle and use it to give another independent derivation of our result. Finally, we show that our result can be also derived as the weak field limit of Einstein's general relativity sourced by an anisotropic fluid
Dinamite dello spirito. Martirio, Islam e nichilismo
No full textTraduzione (dal tedesco all'italiano) e curatela del libro.
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Dalla quarta di copertina:
Che rapporto c'è fra Nietzsche e Mohammad Atta, fra il nichilismo come brama di distruzione e la tragedia dell'11 settembre 2001? Questa è la domanda a cui cerca di rispondere Navid Kermani, intellettuale nato in Germania da genitori iraniani e rappresentante di quell'"Euro-Islam" laico che si interroga sul perchè dei giovani benestanti e integrati siano caduti nelle maglie dell'internazionale jihadista.
Kermani intraprende un coinvolgente viaggio che inizia a Kerbala, nel lontano anno 680, come spettatori della storia per osservare la battaglia che ha dato vita al culto del martirio nell'Islam sciita, e che prosegue lungo i percorsi filosofici, intellettuali e psicologici del
nichilismo nella storia, in Europa, in Giappone e nelle cabine di controllo dei boeing schiantatisi sul World Trade Center e sul Pentagono. Nietzsche come "co-pilota"
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Long-range quantum gravity
Full text linkIt is a tantalising possibility that quantum gravity (QG) states remaining coherent at astrophysical, galactic and cosmological scales could exist and that they could play a crucial role in understanding macroscopic gravitational effects. We explore, using only general principles of General Relativity, quantum and statistical mechanics, the possibility of using long-range QG states to describe black holes. In particular, we discuss in a critical way the interplay between various aspects of long-range quantum gravity, such as the holographic bound, classical and quantum criticality and the recently proposed quantum thermal generalisation of Einstein's equivalence principle. We also show how black hole thermodynamics can be easily explained in this framework
Anisotropic fluid cosmology: An alternative to dark matter?
Full text linkWe use anisotropic fluid cosmology to describe the present, dark energy-dominated Universe without assuming the presence of dark matter. The resulting anisotropic fluid spacetime naturally generates inhomogeneities at small scales, triggered by an anisotropic stress, that could therefore be responsible for structure formation at these scales. We show that the dynamics of the scale factor a is described by the usual Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker cosmology and decouples completely from that describing inhomogeneities. Assuming that the fluid inherits the equation of state from galactic dynamics, we show that, in the large scale regime, it can be described as a generalized Chaplygin gas. We find that our model fits well the distance modulus experimental data of type Ia supernovae, thus correctly modeling the observed accelerated expansion of the Universe. Conversely, in the small scale regime, we use cosmological perturbation theory to derive the power spectrum P(k) for mass density distribution. At short wavelengths, we find a 1/k4 behavior, in good accordance with the observed correlation function for matter distribution at small scales
Using storytelling to foster the teaching and learning of gravitational waves physics at high-school
Full text linkStudies in Physics Education Research show that interdisciplinary approaches in education foster students’ motivation, creativity, curiosity, and interest in physics. We discuss their features and potential role in bringing contemporary physics topics to high school and how to use them to integrate formal educational programs. We make an explicit example of the use of storytelling and theatrical techniques to introduce secondary school students to black holes and gravitational wave topics. The Educational Division of the Physics Department at the University of Cagliari designed the activity. Participants were 200 high-school students (17 to 19 years old) from five schools (scientific, humanities) in Sardinia. Through a research questionnaire, we measure the efficacy of using artistic tools to communicate and teach the proposed subjects. We collected 76 answers. Results show that our methodology helps introduce students to contemporary physics themes, fostering their interest and learning of such content. Students from the humanities significantly appreciated the use of poetry and artistic tools more than their scientific peers. Finally, we discuss the potentiality of our approach in orientating students towards a STEAM (STEM and Arts) caree
SULLE STRADE D'ORIENTE CON L'UOMO TUTTO VESTITO DI BIANCO: L'ASIA E LE MOLTE ASIE DI TERZANI
No full textLa proposta di un ritratto di Tiziano Terzani e di una rilettura attenta dei suoi libri sull’Asia è l’occasione per entrare nei vari mondi dell’Oriente, per riflettere sulla storia, la politica, le filosofie, le religioni, gli uomini e le cose. Girare per l’Asia in treno, bus, a piedi assecondando i ritmi di vita del continente, serve a vedere i luoghi da una prospettiva nuova, spesso ignorata
Online learning mediated by social teaching platforms: an experience from a flipped undergraduate physics course in renewable energies
Full text linkActive learning strategies and information technology-based pedagogies are perceived as beneficial and their use and development in academic courses is fast increasing. Faculties can use them to design courses that are challenging and fresher, creative, and meaningful for students, to meet students' needs and to promote the learning of contents in a social environment, fostering cooperation and the exchange of ideas among peers. Among the active learning strategies recently developed, the peer-instruction and the flipped classroom are prominent in this field. It has been shown that these practices help students in their understanding of contents and consequently in reaching better results in final exam scores. The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has forced classes in many academic institutions to move to remote teaching under emergency conditions and has deprived students of much of their social interactions. We show here an experience on applying online learning mediated by social teaching platforms and flipped classroom concepts to an undergraduate course on renewable energies provided amid the Covid-19 pandemic at the Physics Department of the University of Cagliari (Italy) in 2020. The constraints of forced distance learning have been turned into an opportunity to test an alternate course format in a complete online environment. An analysis on students' feedback about our learning method has been performed by a post-diagnostic satisfaction questionnaire, indicating an overall positive effects of active learning strategies in the students' learning experience. The analysis of their achievements during the course provides confirmation for the positive outcome and shows that the flipped classroom architecture is as robust as the traditional methods when facing the constraints of remote learning
[Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis of the cervical spine in a patient with ankylosing spondylitis. Description of a personal case]
No full textDiffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) is a well-described disorder of middle-aged people, with a unique spinal pathology characterized by calcification and ossification of the antero-lateral aspect of at least four contiguous vertebral bodies, with the sparing of intervertebral spaces and sacroiliac joints. DISH has rarely been reported associated with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), a chronic inflammatory articular disease most commonly involving the spine and sacroiliac joints. A 63-year-old man with clinical and radiological findings of DISH with associated AS is described here. The authors conclude that these two diseases may, albeit rarely, coexist
Florid papillomatosis of the male nipple
No full textThe authors present a case of an adenoma of the nipple in a 61-year-old man who reported a 6-month history of nodularity and itching at his left nipple. Examination revealed a firm, well-defined, vascularized tumor measuring .8 cm that altered the normal anatomy of the nipple. A total excision of the nipple and areola was performed. The histological diagnosis was adenoma of the nipple. No recurrent tumor has been observed during 4 years of postoperative follow-up. An adequate excision of the lesion is curative without any risk of recurrence or development of malignancyThe authors present a case of an adenoma of the nipple in a 61-year-old man who reported a 6-month history of nodularity and itching at his left nipple. Examination revealed a firm, well-defined, vascularized tumor measuring .8 cm that altered the normal anatomy of the nipple. A total excision of the nipple and areola was performed. The histological diagnosis was adenoma of the nipple. No recurrent tumor has been observed during 4 years of postoperative follow-up. An adequate excision of the lesion is curative without any risk of recurrence or development of malignancy. © 2010 Elsevier Inc
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