life
Praising the meatball
Let's learn to transform waste into resources How often have we opened the refrigerator to find a couple of eggs and a yoghurt expired a few days ago, a bit of wilted salad, half a bottle of a fizzy drink…
school energy&environment
life
Spider lullaby
There are spiders that weave a classic web, that one we all know, to catch prey. There are others who use the web to line a hole in the ground, building themselves a comfortable, padded den. Still others use silk…
life
Double blow to dinosaurs
The Main Asteroid Belt is between Mars and Jupiter, an enormous ring consisting of millions of large and small rocks that altogether has a tiny mass: only 4% of that of our Moon. Yet the asteroid that changed life on…
life
Amphibians in peril
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warns: the extinction rate of amphibians is about 200 times greater than that of other animal species. This was reported in a study conducted by the University of Copenhagen, which has placed…
life
8 March. We remember Rosalind Franklin, the great female DNA scientist.
DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss biochemist in 1869. It was a brilliant, but not complicated operation: DNA can be extracted from a mixture of any cells, even your own, even at home. The recipe for the…
life
In search of the riders of icebergs
International Polar Bear Day, set up by Polar Bears International, a non-profit organisation, was held on 27 February. The aim of day is to increase awareness in all of us of the challenges that polar bears must face daily due…
life
A naturalist’s voyage around the world
12 February is Darwin Day, the annual event that falls on the birthday of Charles Darwin (born 12 February 1809), the British naturalist who, with his theory of evolution, changed the understanding of events in the natural world. This tradition…
life
The Christmas Star Tradition
A plant that symbolises the Christmas season, decorating homes and shops and featured prominently by the florists and garden centres in our cities. We are talking about the Poinsettia, better known to everyone in Italy as the Stella di Natale…
life
Can you be intelligent without a brain?
Can you be intelligent without a brain? The answer is "in a certain sense, yes" and this is demonstrated by a strange organism that looks like yellowish gelatinous mould but that has nothing to do either with moulds or fungi...…