ISSNAF News - Community Update

Ms. Ostrom and Mr.Williamson: This “Common” prize is not a “Tragedy!”

Economics Nobel Prize winners — “The greatest lesson of the work of Ms. Ostrom and Mr. Williamson is a hopeful one: Mankind has an enormous ability to create institutions that enable us to work collectively.” (Edward L. Glaeser)

Prof. Ostrom Elinor is the fifth woman to win the Nobel, and the first to win a Nobel Prize in Economics.

Scajola and Chu Sign Nuclear Agreement

A five year agreement was signed on September 29 in Washington D.C. by Claudio Scajola, Italy’s Minister of Economic Development and US Energy secretary Steven Chu. Read the agreement, renewable, and the joint declaration.

Besides other important forms of cooperation listed in article 3, the agreement provides a framework for the exchange of “scientists, engineers and other specialists for agreed periods of time for participation in agreed research, development, analysis, design and experimental activities conducted in research centers, laboratories, engineering offices and other facilities and enterprises of each Party, each Party's contractors.”

Related readings

Scajola – Chu: firmato accordo di Cooperazione in Materia di Nucleare, Ministero Sviluppo Economico
US and Italy Sign Agreements to Advance Developments in Nuclear Energy, DoE
Italy and USA sign nuclear agreement, World Nuclear News
Comunicato Visita - Embassy of Italy in Washington D.C.
Riaccendiamo le centrali nucleari?, La Scienza in rete

Name It if You Can!

Would you like to have your saying in “Project x”—Fermilab’s next big accelerator? Deputy Director Young-Kee Kim emailed the New York Times asking the readers for suggestions, on October 6.

To judge from the responses received to date, people took this request seriously — over one hundred emailed suggestions. Not a contest, but a participatory naming process, a bonding ritual with project x: you name it…if you can.

Send your suggestions to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and see previous suggestions here.

Numbers and Numerosity in the Blind’s Mind “Eyes”

It is a fact that “spatial schemas” play an extensive role in knowledge organization. Horizontal spatial biases have been studied in various fields, from art history to attention orientation, from neurological and from a cultural perspectives, and more recently investigated from a social psychological point of view.

A recent Study — a joint experiment among Italian and American researchers from Padova and Texas universities— focuses on the way numerical spatial representations are processed in the brain of the blind. The blind and sighted people obviously experience numbers and numerosities in a different way, but behavioural data surprisingly confirm that numbers are represented through a Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC effect), by the blind and the sighted persons as well. Importantly, the study also shows that numbers represented in the blind mind's “eye” are processed in a more controlled way compared to sighted, with a wide range of consequences and applications. The study can be read here.

Related reading

- L'ordine dei numeri e' gia' nella nostra mente, by M. Piattelli Palmarini, Corriere della Sera

"WOW ! " and "Bo"

"Wow," that was Obama's spokesman response, taken by surprise by 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to the US President.

Obama confirmed from the Rose Garden that "Well, this is not how" he " expected to wake up this morning… After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday." And then Sasha added, "Plus we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective." More to the point the President added: "the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century."

The Treasures of Logic Came at a Price

… “The paradoxes should have alerted you, Russel!” says one character of Logicomix - a graphic novel of the epic quest for certainty in science and logic - to the novel’s hero.

The backdrop for the tragicomix quest: Europe: sunny Greece - Athens, and Northern Germany and Britain. The Hero: Bertrand Russell. The authors: Christos H. Papadimitriou and Apostolos Doxiadis, founders of “Thales and Friend" - a nonprofit organization “working to bridge the chasm between mathematics and other forms of cultural activity.”

Christos H. Papadimitriou and Apostolos Doxiadis Logicomix, An Epic Search for Truth (with artwork by Alecos Papadatos and Annie di Donna), Bloomsbury Publishing and Bloomsbury USA, September 2009.

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