Nel 1929 Bruno Rossi, ricercatore presso l’istituto di fisica sperimentale
dell’Università di Firenze [...] intuì quella che sarebbe stata la sua ragione di vita: indagare sulla natura di questi corpuscoli ionizzanti provenienti dall’alto. Doveva realizzare un circuito che permettesse di rivelare e contare le coincidenze che si verificavano in una certa unità di tempo e realizzò uno strumento molto semplice, il circuito a coincidenze.
L’involucro dei tubi Geiger è collegato al polo negativo di una batteria da 1200 volt (non
disegnata). La scarica nei tubi genera un impulso di tensione negativa sulle resistenze da

Sugar is irresistible to humans, and apparently to writers.

There was no better example than this week’s vaygeshray over Mark Bittman’s column in the New York Times. Bittman, the paper’s former food columnist who rose to fame with his fast and easy recipes for modern life, got caught up in one of the biggest food battles on the planet: the sugar wars.

Is sucrose good? Bad? Toxic? Addictive? Causal of illness?

Can you buy leadership?

If you talk to people trying to convince the government to give them more money, the answer is 'yes', even among scientists who know better. Since the cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider, Americans have been shy about Big Physics - politicians don't trust the projections science makes on if projects can be completed at all, much less on time and on budget.  And no one has minded not having Big Physics locally except American physicists, who would rather large colliders be closer to home.

Operator storefronts and portals now account for just 6% of content downloads worldwide, with Google Play and Apple's App Store now comprising nearly 70% between them. The increasing popularity of OTT (Over The Top) stores had led to many operators closing their own mobile storefronts.
 

Fluoride is good but too much of anything can be bad. However, a filter system developed in India using a medicinal herb is very, very good.

The technology uses parts of the plant Tridax procumbens as a biocarbon filter for the ion.

The  divergent lineage of the oldest known genetic branch of the human Y chromosome, the hereditary factor determining male sex, has been pushed back in time.

The new divergent lineage, found in an individual who submitted his DNA to Family Tree DNA, a company specializing in DNA analysis to trace family roots, branched from the Y chromosome tree before the first appearance of anatomically modern humans in the fossil record.

Deleting a specific gene in mice prevents them from becoming obese  - even on a high fat diet, according to a  two-year study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and published in the Journal of Lipid Research.

Each year more than 40 million Americans become sick with foodborne infections. Among those who become ill, 128,000 will be hospitalized and 3,000 will die. Foodborne illness also takes a toll on our economy: Broad estimates are that the US loses $77 billion in lost productivity due to people who become sick - adding in more estimates of economic impact a foodborne illness outbreak has on the affected industry.

Usually, a great deal of effort has gone into preventing foodborne illness outbreaks. In 2010, the Obama administration got the Food Safety Management Act passed but it hasn't been funded or implemented, though they have scuttled other food testing divisions of the government that have been focused on preventing contamination of food supply.

The gravitational field surrounding the massive cluster of galaxies called Abell 68 acts as a natural lens in space to brighten and magnify the light coming from very distant background galaxies.

Like a fun house mirror, lensing creates a fantasy landscape of arc-like images and mirror images of background galaxies. The foreground cluster is 2 billion light-years away, and the lensed images come from galaxies far behind it.

In this photo, the image of a spiral galaxy at upper left has been stretched and mirrored into a shape similar to that of a simulated alien from the classic 1970s computer game "Space Invaders!" A second, less distorted image of the same galaxy appears to the left of the large, bright elliptical galaxy.

The first evidence for an extinct giant camel in Canada's High Arctic has been revealed. The discovery is based on 30 fossil fragments of a leg bone found on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut and represents the most northerly record for early camels, whose ancestors are known to have originated in North America some 45 million years ago. 

The fossils were collected over three summer field seasons (2006, 2008 and 2010) and are about three-and-a-half million years old, dating from the mid-Pliocene Epoch. Other fossil finds at the site suggest this High Arctic camel lived in a boreal-type forest environment, during a global warm phase on the planet.