Rita Levi-Montalcini OMRI OMCA (US: /ˌleɪvi ˌmoʊntɑːlˈtʃiːni, ˌlɛv-, ˌliːvi
ˌmɒntəlˈ-/, Italian: [ˈriːta ˈlɛːvi montalˈtʃiːni]; 22 April 1909 – 30 December
2012) was an Italian Nobel laureate, honored for her work in neurobiology. She
was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague
Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). From 2001 until
her death, she also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life. This
honor was given due to her significant scientific contributions. On 22 April
2009, she became the first Nobel laureate ever to reach the age of 100, and
the event was feted with a party at Rome's City Hall. At the time of her
death, she was the oldest living Nobel laureate.
Margherita Hack Knight Grand Cross OMRI (Italian: [marɡeˈriːta ˈ(h)ak]; 12 June 1922 – 29 June 2013) was an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator. The asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honour.
Samantha Cristoforetti (Italian pronunciation: [saˈmanta kristofoˈretti]; born 26 April 1977, in Milan) is an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, former Italian Air Force pilot and engineer. She holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European astronaut (199 days, 16 hours), and until June 2017 held the record for the longest single space flight by a woman until this was broken by Peggy Whitson and later by Christina Koch. She is also the first Italian woman in space. Samantha Cristoforetti is also known as the first person who brewed an espresso in space.
This is a timeline of women in science, spanning from ancient history up to the 21st century. While the timeline primarily focuses on women involved with natural sciences such as astronomy, biology, chemistry and physics, it also includes women from the social sciences (e.g. sociology, psychology) and the formal sciences (e.g. mathematics, computer science), as well as notable science educators and medical scientists. The chronological events listed in the timeline relate to both scientific achievements and gender equality within the sciences.
8 March is International Women’s Day. As in previous years, I’ve put together another edition of this series looking at underappreciated women from chemistry history.
Another fascinating point from Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise is where he talks about how far into the future we can forecast weather. It’s one thing to forecast what tomorrow’s weather will be like, but what about next weekend’s weather? Or next month’s? Silver provided one chart, with data courtesy of Eric Floehr at ForecastWatch.com, that highlights just how hard it is to forecast weather. I’ve reproduced that chart below.
Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium. According to proponents, a thorium fuel cycle offers several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle—including much greater abundance of thorium on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced nuclear waste production. However, development of thorium power has significant start-up costs. Proponents also cite the lack of easy weaponization potential as an advantage of thorium, while critics say that development of breeder reactors in general (including thorium reactors, which are breeders by nature) increases proliferation concerns. As of 2019, there are no operational thorium reactors in the world.[citation needed]
We've all experienced the frustration of traffic jams that seem to come from nowhere -- standstills that occur with no accident, construction, or obstacle in si
Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.
«This post is a condensed version of what I've sent to people who have
contacted me over the years, outlining what everyone needs to learn in order
to really understand physics.»
Someone once in the UK told me that it was a big enough problem that so many
people turn on their electric kettles during the endtitles of Eastenders,
that there's an employee in a hydro plant that needs to watch it to ramp up
the power at the right time. I've finally found a wikipedia page about it.
«These tricks show Feynman taking the method of thought he learned in pure
science and applying it to the more mundane topics most of us have to deal with
every day.»
The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect,[1][2] collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by the NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions.[3] One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.[3]