From Italy and the World

This image shows a large blaze in Pskov, Russia, on August 29. Ostorozhno Novosti/AP Russia has seen the biggest drone assault on its territory since it launched its war on Ukraine, while Moscow killed two men in a near-simultaneous bombardment on Kyiv as the aerial intensity of the conflict ratcheted up.…

Experiencing the harsh sounds of skateboarding can help bridge the gulf between the joy and distaste of the noises created by the sport, a new study says. Skate sounds can also help individuals sense and feel the urban environment in new and novel ways. Skateboarders have a specialised knowledge of…

A new economic analysis has linked, for the first time, conduct problems among kindergarten students with significant costs to society in terms of crime and associated medical expenses and lost productivity when they are adults. “Providing effective, evidence-based programming designed to address behavioral problems early on has the potential to…

The Earth’s surface is covered by plants. They make up the majority of biomass on land and exhibit a wide range of diversity, from mosses to trees. This astounding biodiversity came into existence due to a fateful evolutionary event that happened just once: plant terrestrialization. This describes the point where…

CNN  —  Russia and North Korea are “actively advancing” their negotiations over a potential arms deal that would provide significant ammunition for different types of weapons systems, including artillery, in the latest indication that the Kremlin is desperate to obtain further materiel for its faltering invasion of Ukraine, according to…

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria get extra nutrients and thrive when the drugs kill ‘good’ bacteria in the gut. This is according to new research led by Imperial College London scientists, which could lead to better patient risk assessment and ‘microbiome therapeutics’ treatments to help combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Some antibiotics target specific bacteria,…

Researchers have a new way to connect quantum devices over long distances, a necessary step toward allowing the technology to play a role in future communications systems. While today’s classical data signals can get amplified across a city or an ocean, quantum signals cannot. They must be repeated in intervals…

Remember when IBM’s Deep Blue won against Gary Kasparov at chess in 1996, or Google’s AlphaGo crushed the top champion Lee Sedol at Go, a much more complex game, in 2016? These competitions where machines prevailed over human champions are key milestones in the history of artificial intelligence. Now a…

The amount of screen time spent by one-year-olds is associated with developmental delays. This finding, by researchers at Tohoku University, with collaborators at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. The research examined 7,097 mother-child pairs participating in the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project Birth and…

A new study has found that 12% of Americans are responsible for eating half of all beef consumed on a given day, a finding that may help consumer groups and government agencies craft educational messaging around the negative health and environmental impacts of beef consumption. Those 12% — most likely…

Living in a racially segregated neighborhood puts Black children at a higher risk of having elevated blood lead levels, and this association has persisted over more than two decades, according to new research from the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative, which is led by University of Illinois Chicago Chancellor Marie Lynn…

Molecular photoswitches that can both convert and store energy could be used to make solar energy harvesting more efficient. A team of researchers has used a quantum computing method to find a particularly efficient molecular structure for this purpose. As the team describe in the journal Angewandte Chemie, their procedure…

Coming to a tight spot near you: CLARI, the little, squishable robot that can passively change its shape to squeeze through narrow gaps — with a bit of inspiration from the world of bugs. CLARI, which stands for Compliant Legged Articulated Robotic Insect, comes from a team of engineers at…

Carbon capture is a promising method to help slow climate change. With this approach, carbon dioxide (CO2) is trapped before it escapes into the atmosphere, but the process requires a large amount of energy and equipment. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have designed a capture system using an…

With a remarkable observational campaign that involved 12 telescopes both on the ground and in space, including three European Southern Observatory (ESO) facilities, astronomers have uncovered the strange behaviour of a pulsar, a super-fast-spinning dead star. This mysterious object is known to switch between two brightness modes almost constantly, something…

Scientists believe a huge 14ft smalltooth sand tiger shark, which washed up at Kilmore Quay, Co. Wexford, earlier this year, represents the first of its species to have been found in Ireland’s waters. Two other individuals of the same species also washed up on the UK coastline, suggesting this species’…

In the case of boredom, we think of many situations in life but intuitively not of exams. However, an international team of academics led by Thomas Götz from the University of Vienna has now studied exactly this phenomenon of test boredom for the first time and found remarkable results. According…

A new study has revealed important associations between the gut microbiome and eczema in infancy and has established the basis for the potential prevention and treatment of eczema via modulation of the gut microbiota. The study was published in mSystems, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. “The problem…

The human immune system is adaptive, remembering past infections and training itself to guard against future similar infections. But what happens when people have compromised immune systems due to chronic conditions, aging, or medications that decrease immunity as a side effect? In such cases, people can get opportunistic infections, so…

Students with disabilities are often bullied and socially excluded in school at a far greater rate than their classmates. To help teachers recognize, respond to and prevent bullying toward these students, researchers at the University of Missouri collaborated to develop an evidence-based, online professional development curriculum. The curriculum highlights the…

Our immune system has an ingenious trick up its sleeve. It remembers past foes, stopping potential sickness in its tracks through a phenomenon known as immunological memory. This is thanks to specialized cells — tissue-resident memory T cells — which reside in vital organs like the small intestine, lungs and…

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have identified stem cells in the human thymus for the first time. These cells represent a potential new target to understand immune diseases and cancer and how to boost the immune system. The thymus is a gland located in the front part of the…

University of Oxford researchers have made a significant step towards realising miniature bio-integrated devices, capable of directly stimulating cells. The work has been published today in the journal Nature. Small bio-integrated devices that can interact with and stimulate cells could have important therapeutic applications, including the delivery of targeted drug…

While self-driving vehicles (SDVs) are being hailed as a solution for safer, more efficient roads, new research suggests British Columbians are not quite ready to embrace self-driving cars wholeheartedly — and will need a period of gradual transition before adoption. The study, conducted by the Research on Active Transportation Lab…

In a recent study, scientists at Leipzig University have revised previous assumptions about the influence of pollutant particles, known as aerosols, on global warming. Using satellite data, Dr Hailing Jia and Professor Johannes Quaas have shown that the relationship between water droplets in clouds and aerosol concentration is more non-linear…

The use of active mechanical circulatory support is growing rapidly around the world. The hope is that these systems will improve survival after the most severe form of acute heart failure, cardiogenic shock. A recent clinical trial led by heart specialist Professor Holger Thiele has shown that extracorporeal life support…

The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 had a major impact on the forest ecosystem in Central Europe. After the accident, the consumption of mushrooms was discouraged because of the high radioactive contamination, and the meat of wild animals was also severely affected for several years. While the contamination of deer…