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The presentation of the Galileo Galilei exhibition was on Tuesday, October 18 from 5.30 pm, at the Reading Room of the Central Library of the Politecnico, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24.

The displayed material showed some of the most important discoveries of the great Tuscan scientist Galileo Galilei, together with those of his successors. A journey through the technology of scientific instrumentation, which has continued to evolve over years, following every step of the discovery of the world, from the stars to the atom.

Also tools for teaching and research of the historic collections of DISAT – Department of Applied Science and Technology at Politecnico di Torino was on display: electrometers, galvanometers, ammeters, voltmeters and tools used for studies on polarized light, used from 1920 to 1960.

The MotoStudent competition is a competition in which the best motorcycle prototypes take part. These prototypes have been designed and built by college students from around the world.

This year the competition was held in the Motorland Aragon Circuit in Alcaniz in Spain. While last years 2WheelsPoliTO team had won for two consecutive editions the MS1 phase, which concerns the design, this year the team of Politecnico di Torino won the MS2 stage (race track and dynamic tests).The bike, which has been entirely designed by students of the University with the support of the partner companies, has innovative features including the fully bonded frame, which can impart a significantly reduced weight.

For photos, results and information, the Facebook page of the Team:

https://www.facebook.com/2WheelsPoliTO/

The University of Turin is one of 1500 bodies that was selected to participate in the “Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition“, the most important European innovation fair, which took place from 14th to 16th October.

Among 7000 candidates, the University of Turin was chosen to present five projects:

  1. Agrisu, an instrument created by the incubator of the University 2I3T that provides real-time environmental quality indices in connection with their physiological parameters;
  2. Carioca, an innovative project of the inter-departmental Centre of Innovation of University ICXT, which aims to create an architecture for monitoring and management of industrial machinery in optic smart factory;
  3. First Life, the ‘neighbourhood’ social network created in UniTo that allows you to share information, create groups and co-produce services from the bottom through an interactive map;
  4. #hackUniTO for Ageing, the UniTo’s project to enhance the research for the ageing;
  5. MCS and WHC, the tools designed by the Department of Agricultural, Forestry and Food sciences to measure the constriction and the water holding capacity of meats.

The University of Turin and the University of Milan manage together the Phd of Sociology and Methodology of Social Research, which is a theoretical-analytical and technical-methodological preparation that aims to train researchers who will be able to analyse the processes of contemporary social and cultural change.

Cardano explains: “The idea of ​​creating an inter-university PhD comes from the limits on the number of scolarships required to create a doctorate inside a department. There are two possible ways: we can create inter-disciplinary Phds that put together sociologists and philosophers, historians, political scientists. Or we can reach the critical size to start a course putting together more universities, opting in this case for a more specific field “.

The course will be only in English, to allow access to the doctorate also to foreign students so that they can fit the learning content in an international context. Moreover only students with a master’s degree and a good knowledge of English can enrol in the courses.

The Competence Centre for Scientific Computing (C3S) of the University of Turin has been presented in the Lecture Hall of Campus Luigi Einaudi.

The Centre aims to support scientific research of the Departments of the INFN – National Institute of Nuclear Physics – section of Turin and of businesses in the area, so that they can access computing resources that will accelerate their ability to innovation.

All this will be possible thanks to the Open Computing Cluster for Advanced data Manipulation (OCCAM), the supercomputer that has been designed to meet the needs of calculation of different fields from Big Data to genomics, from biology to chemistry, from medicine to humanistic social science.

Biosphera 2.0 is an experimental research project that involves different study centers: Aktivhaus, the Department of Architecture and Design at the Politecnico di Torino, the University of Valle d’Aosta, ZEPHIR – Italian Passivhaus, Minergie and PEFC.

Biosphera 2.0 is the home of the future. It’s a house of 25 square meters that has been and will be hosted from February 2016 to February 2017 by 6 location: Courmayeur, Aosta, Milan, Riccione, Turin and Lugano. You have twelve months to live a house on a human scale, built with the best available technologies. This house can produce independently all the energy you need to live: LED lighting, induction cooking, household appliances, heating and cooling, divided into living area , sleeping area, bathroom and technical plant.

The living module has arrived in Turin and it has been installed at the Politecnico di Torino, in Via Pier Carlo Boggio 59, where it will remain until 15 November 2016. The official opening of the module is scheduled for 18th October 2016 at 2.30 pm at the Sala Agorà of the Incubator of Innovative Enterprises I3P, in Via Pier Carlo Boggio 59.

UniToNews has decided to take part in Quiz Scienza (Science quiz), a scientific dissemination project by Renato Sartini, a science journalist, which aims to create a virtual contact between the people of the web and the scientific world, in order to simplify scientific concepts and debunk the so-called scientific hoaxes.

It is published on Twitter and Facebook in collaboration with organizations and institutions dealing with scientific research. Luca Bonfanti, professor of veterinary anatomy and neurobiology at the Neuroscience Institute Cavalieri Ottolenghi (NICO) and at the University of Turin answered to question 7 of Quiz Scienza.

The 100 billion neurons that are in the brain the day of our birth have to follow us until the death. This is quite different from the situation in other organs such as skin, blood, bone, in which cells change again and again because they alter or die. […] The problem is that the lack of cell turnover in the brain also prevents regeneration after injury (trauma, stroke, neurodegenerative diseases). This failure is even more serious if we think that man’s life expectancy gets longer and longer. Our ancestors, thousands of years ago, lived on average 25 years, and before the industrial revolution people usually didn’t live 60-70 years. Nowadays, in some countries, we are moving towards medium longevity exceeding 100 years, with an obvious risk of increase in senile dementia.

[…] However, there is the opportunity to take advantage of the plasticity of neurogenesis to keep our brain ‘trained’ throughout our lives, so that it remains healthy and functional even in old age, which it’s a form of prevention against the cognitive deficits . It has been shown that repeated physical activity, especially the running (in addition to intellectual activity), increase the production of new neurons in the hippocampus, proving that the lifestyle we lead and the environment in which we live can change (for better or for worse) the “structure” of the brain, at all ages.

Matteo Fasano, a 29-year-old postdoc at the Politecnico di Torino, uses a metaphor of everyday life to explain the mechanism by which salt water can be turn into drinking water.

He designed this mechanism together with his colleagues of the DENERG, the Department of Energy of the Politecnico, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Minnesota.

A queue at the toll booth: “Let’s suppose that the motorcycle are water molecules and that cars are dissolved ions of salt, and that both are patiently waiting in the queue at the toll booth. Now, imagine that the opening of the toll booth is a meter wide: the bikes in the queue would be able to easily overcome the barrier and to get on the highway, while the cars would be forced to back down. Similarly, a membrane for the reverse osmosis allows the transport of water molecules, while blocking the dissolved salts. An efficient membrane has also a high permeability, this means that as much water as possible equal to the energy that is required for the process passes through the membrane“.

But that’s not all, because it was also thought how to make this process economical “With the heat, especially the low cost, like the sun or the waste heat of the exhaust fumes that would otherwise be wasted“.

It did not take long because this news were circling the world and then be published on October 3 on the Nature Communications.

The AECT, Association of Cameroonian Students of Turin, is a non-partisan and non-denominational volountary association, to promote cultural, recreational and educational activities, and leisure.

Its aim is to facilitate the integration of new foreign students in Turin while promoting the culture of Cameroon in the territory. For the month of October, the AECT association organizes two evenings, 21st October and 22nd October, devoted to music shows, workshops and dances.

For more information, please visit he Facebook page AECT Cameroon.

“Non amo che le rose
che non colsi. Non amo che le cose
che potevano essere e non sono state…”

Guido Gozzano, Cocotte.

On the occasion of the centenary of the death of Gozzano, the Study Centre “Guido Gozzano-Cesare Pavese” of the University of Turin is organizing, in collaboration with other cultural institutions of Turin, the film festival “The cinema at the time of Gozzano“, which will take place from 4th to 25th October at the Cinema Romano, Subalpina Gallery.

The Study Centre is organizing a program of events to talk about his work as a poet, travel writer, author of short stories, fairy tales and Turinese prose, of essays on photography and cinema, of a film script; an occasion to discuss the figure of the author, who was often considered a provincial and not at all international poet. Moreover there will be also the projection of silent films of the collections of the National Museum of Cinema in Turin to recreate the atmosphere of Turin at the beginning of the 20th century .

The movies are Free entry to all the projections until there are available seats. For full and detailed program of the festival, visit the Study Centre “Guido Gozzano-Cesare Pavese“.

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