News

Astronomy, technology, seismology, climate, genetics and nanotechnology in local pubs: Pint of Science is coming to Trieste from May 15th to May 17th. An event for science lovers, for those who want to find out what’s going on within the many research centers in town, for curious people as well as for those who simply want to drink a good pint while talking about science. Founded five years ago in the UK, Pint of Science will take place this year in 11 countries worldwide.

In Trieste four pubs will host some brilliant scientists to discuss their latest research and findings.

It was already known that people affected by Parkinson’s disease, when subjected to deep brain stimulation, gained weight, but it was less clear why that was so. Thanks to new SISSA research, it has been realized that the weight gain after implant has a multifactorial origin.

Vaccine communication is a complicated affair. On the one hand, the risk of oversimplification or making mistakes is always present; on the other, communicators, politicians, doctors and scientists have to face increasing skepticism on this issue. On Wednesday 10 May, a seminar organized by the Master course in Science Communication “Franco Prattico” will offer an interesting opportunity to discuss this critical topic. In the first part, Professor Andrea Grignolio, from the University of Rome "La Sapienza", will present the theme focusing on a historical perspective.

SAGA (a global UNESCO project with the support of Sida) aims to contribute to improving the situation of women and reducing the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields in all countries at all levels of education and research. A distinguishing feature of SAGA is its focus on data. Some of its core methodologies are determination, measurement and assessesment of sex-disaggregated data.

New approaches to the study of vision both from the neurobiological perspective and with a view to the technological development of artificial vision systems: that is the key result of the research project led by the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Rovereto and published in the science journal eLife.

A sports person who has accidentally caused serious injury to a rival. A distracted driver who has caused an accident. Or a colleague who has involuntarily made a very serious error. Even outside the court room we have all been in situations in which we have had to express judgements on specific events on the basis of the seriousness of the incident but also on the intentions of those who caused them.

Collective changes in biological groups require all individuals in the group to go through a behavioral change of state. Sometimes these changes are triggered by external perturbations, as in evasive maneuvers of animal groups under predatory attacks. Often, however, they occur spontaneously and are only due to internal behavioral fluctuations. In all cases, the efficiency of information transport is a key factor to prevent cohesion loss and preserve collective robustness.

From JUNE 26TH TO JULY 7TH 2017 | SISSA

The 7th Neuron Technology Summer School aims to provide practical and theoretical training on the application of a large spectrum of techniques to neuroscience. 
The School will address the following topics:

According to Istat, almost 7 million women in Italy are mistreated by their partners in the course of their life. Every year, more than 100 women are killed by someone they once trusted. More and more often journalist are asked to tell these tragic stories. In this sensitive context, the word choice is of great importance as it may help to bring about cultural change that would ensure that the most vulnerable members of society, like women, old people and children, are protected and respected.

From synthetic life to the chemistry of beauty, from the myth of the Ancient Astronauts to the latest genome editing techniques, from the wonders of botany to the science of sex. Scientific research will be on stage during the second edition of Scienza e Virgola, a series of book presentations organized by the Masters’ course in Science Communication "Franco Prattico" of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of SISSA, the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste.

Through a series of ten meetings with the authors, free and open to the public, we will discover some of the most interesting science books published in Italy over the last months. All events will be held in Italian.

Anyone who has been on a sailing boat knows that tying a knot is the best way to secure a rope to a hook and prevent its slippage. The same applies to sewing threads where knots are introduced to prevent them slipping through two pieces of fabric. How, then, can long DNA filaments, which have convoluted and highly knotted structure, manage to pass through the tiny pores of various biological systems?

The silence of an immense desolate land in which to search for reverberations coming from the time at which everything began. The Simons Observatory will be built in the Chilean Atacama desert at an altitude of several thousand meters for the purposes of studying primordial gravitational waves which originated in the first instants of the Big Bang. The SISSA research group led by Carlo Baccigalupi and Francesca Perrotta will take part in this prestigious international project which will lead to the realization  of an ultra-modern telescope project.

On Wednesday 22 March 2017 the historian of physics Anna Maria Lombardi will give a seminar dedicated to the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s laws are encompassed by the laws of classical mechanics established by Newton in 1687. But they were discovered almost 80 years before, in a dramatically different context, in which the German astronomer could rely neither on appropriate maths or physics, nor on what we call nowadays “scientific method”. How could he succeed in finding his astronomical laws?

«Leading-edge science can succeed only with the support of small-scale, bottom-up research». World-renowned scientist Giorgio Parisi, at SISSA in Trieste on March 17th to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the European Research Council (ERC), outlines his vision of research policy.

A computer-based environment developed with the aim to shed light on the origins of altruism: this is the innovative approach used by a research group at SISSA in collaboration with the University of Udine. This new study - recently published in the journal Neuropsychologia – immersed participants in a virtual environment that reproduced a building on fire which they had to evacuate in a hurry, deciding whether to save their lives or interrupt their escape and help rescue an injured person.

Attractive and international: SISSA is swimming against the tide. As emerged in a recent UNESCO report on trends in higher education worldwide, entitled “Towards 2030”, in Italy foreign doctoral students account for just 11% of the total. SISSA is way ahead, pulling in 34% of its PhD students from abroad. And that’s not all. The new government report on Italian academic research quality (VQR) highlights SISSA’s ability to attract internationally acclaimed researchers from the world’s most renowned universities.

Artificial intelligence, language, time perception, nutrition, vaccines: these are some of the themes that will be covered from the 13th to 18th of March in Trieste - and for the first time also in Gorizia - for Brain Awareness Week. The local initiative is organised by the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of SISSA in Trieste and the BRAIN Centre of the Department of Life Sciences of the University of Trieste, in collaboration with the Science Centre Immaginario Scientifico and the Municipality of Trieste.

On Friday 24 February 2017, SISSA will participate in the initiative “M’illumino di meno 2017” dedicated to energy saving and organized by the Radio2 program Caterpillar. The Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers and several other institutions and organizations will join the initiative. Tomorrow afternoon, the corridor lighting will be turned off from 6.00 to 8.00 p.m. We invite the scientific and administrative staff to participate switching off the lights in the offices and labs.

First in physics, first in neurosciences, second in mathematics. The aggregate data issued by ANVUR - the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems – prove beyond doubt SISSA’s absolute prominent role in these research areas within the national panorama.

On Tuesday 28 February 2017, Adele La Rana, from University of Rome “La Sapienza”, will give a seminar on the history of gravitational waves studies, focusing on the origin of the first experimental activities in Italy aimed at detecting gravitational radiation. “The Birth of Gravitational Wave. Research in Italy: Insights into a Scientific Frontier Adventure” is one of the “History of science” seminars organized by SISSA Interdisciplinary Laboratory.