Science In Italy Research Articles

Open Science in Italy: Lessons Learned En Route to Opening Scholarship

Following the analysis of the slow uptake of open science in Italy, we identify four main lessons learned that may be useful to scholars and research policy makers engaged in promoting the uptake of open science culture and practices in their own countries.

Gender Equality in Soil Science in Italy: Wishful Thinking or Reality?

Gender equality in Italian soil science is still far from being a reality although an in-depth investigation has never been carried out. In this work we analyse data on women soil scientists working in public research institutions and universities as well as on those affiliated with soil science societies, considering the changes in gender balance with time. We also recall three female pioneers in Italian soil science who played a key role in both research and scientific societies. An analysis of the impact of papers authored by Italian women is finally provided to gauge the contribution of Italian women to soil science in the last 20 years. The results show that the National Research Institutions reached a more equal balance between genders compared to universities. With regard to scientific societies, we observed a strong lack of female inclusion in the first years of the Italian Soil Science Society, founded in 1952, and the Italian Society of Pedology, even if it was founded much later in 1998. The Italian Society of Agricultural Chemistry was less discriminant, likely due to the presence of different sub-disciplines traditionally more open to women, although always far from real equality. With time, in all societies and research institutions we registered a positive trend with a better balance and a pro-active participation of women. However, we observed a persistent loss of highly qualified women resources from the training phase to the beginning of the career as well as under-representation of women in top roles and in the research centre leaderships. However, when we evaluated the scientific production, no statistical differences appear between women and men at all career levels, confirming the key contribution of women to soil science, despite facing major professional difficulties and disparities. These results show that, notwithstanding the marked progress in the number of women entering and working in Italian soil science, beyond the hard numbers, gender equality still remains a challenge and requires greater investments in resources and research toward structural and systemic interventions that may successfully lead to a more gender-balanced society.

The History of the School of Animal Science at the University of Padova (Padua) and the Evolution of Animal Science in Italy

In its 800-year history, the University of Padova (Padua, Italy) has come to play an important role in the development of animal science in Italy and Europe. Having founded the oldest university botanical garden (1545; UNESCO World Heritage Site) and anatomical theatre (1595), and awarded the first university degree to a woman (Elena-Lucrezia Cornaro-Piscopia, 1678), the University instituted the Public School of Agriculture (Orto Agrario) in 1765 and the Collegium Zooiatricum in 1773. Between 1986 and 1995, under the leadership of Professor Mario Bonsembiante, animal scientist and rector, the scientific-technological center of Agripolis was established, including the Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine (with the experimental farm and veterinary hospital), the Istituto Zooprofilattico delle Venezie, and Veneto Agricoltura. Agripolis rapidly became the most innovative center in Italy for teaching, research, and extension services in the fields of agricultural, animal, veterinary, food and environmental sciences. In the last 35 years, the number of Italian animal scientists has remained almost constant, but they have moved on to more innovative research topics closer to society’s demand and concerns, and significantly enhanced their international standing, reaching the first position in Europe and the fourth in the world in terms of citations.

An archive for the history of limnology at Verbania Pallanza in the Italian Lake District

Since 2010, work has been underway to curate and catalogue the historical documentation archive of the Verbania Pallanza section of the CNR Institute for Research on Waters, located on the shores of Lake Maggiore in the Italian Lake District. This laboratory was established during the first decade of the 1900s with the work of Marco De Marchi, and research activities intensified from 1938 onwards with the foundation of the Italian Institute of Hydrobiology. The curation of the archives dating from these earliest times to the present has been done with professional archivist technicians from the Archival Superintendence and in collaboration with researchers from the Institute. The archived documents include those from the first phase of the organization of the Institute, as well as those derived from scientific and administrative activities and exchanges with the Ministry of Education. The documents also cover activities at a second section of the Institute, located in an ancient historical residence in Varenna, on the shores of Lake Como. The archive has a photographic section, which includes a series of photographic glass plates, digitized to allow for current use, containing photos of the Institute's environments and laboratories at different times through its history. A third section of the archive consists of around 50 interviews with aquatic scientists on topics relating to research projects carried out in the past. A further section concerns the recording of about 150 seminars on environmental research carried out in the institute between 2015 and 2020. The main research topics considered concern physical, chemical and biological limnology, with particular attention to Lake Maggiore, Lake Orta (severely polluted due to industrial waste), and high-altitude lakes in the Alps. The Institute also houses a library dedicated to environmental issues and some miscellaneous papers by the most important scholars of freshwater science in Italy, with publications starting from the second half of the nineteenth century. Other collections of archival interest are a museum of field and laboratory instruments, and a collection of biological samples, mainly plankton, collected in various Italian lakes.

The Status of Educational Science in Italy

This contribution first discusses the definition of educational science, which in Italy expresses two manifestations: on one hand, in the sense of human science (psychology, sociology, psychoanalysis, etc.) provided that they explicitly apply to educational phenomenon; on the other hand, in the sense of the specific branches of general pedagogy (historical pedagogy, didactics, specialized pedagogy, experimental pedagogy, adult pedagogy, etc.). On this basis, the development of educational science after the Second World War is examined, particularly those factors that formed their orientation: first, the social needs established outside of school, and second, the emergence of a real interest in the training of the teachers. Especially interesting is the striving for autonomy of the field of didactics, which demands its own epistemological status and its own research methods.

Theoretical Computer Science in Italy: The Early Years

In this article, we provide an overview of the early developments of theoretical computer science research in Italy in the Sixties and early Seventies. In the same years, the community of researchers working in this domain were organizing to gain an identity among the more traditional disciplines and to obtain a recognition for the “new science” that was taking its first steps. This led in Italy to the creation of Group of Researchers in Theoretical Informatics, in parallel to the institution of European Association for Theoretical Computer Science at European level. In this article, we characterize the Italian contribution to theoretical computer science research in those early years by describing the landscape of activities developed in Italian Universities and research centers in the late sixties and early seventies, on the basis of a census run in 1971 by the newly born GRIT.

Open Science, open research data and the role of IOSSG

The paper illustrates the objectives and the on-going activities of the Italian Open Science Support Group (IOSSG) whose main goal is to promote the development and the dissemination of Open Science in Italy. It provides support and practical tools to researchers in the different steps of research process with reference to data collection, management, legal protection, access, archiving, preservation within the frame of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative.

Results of a Peer Review Activity in an Organic Chemistry Laboratory Course for Undergraduates

This paper presents preliminary results of the incorporation of the peer review process into the laboratory component of an organic chemistry course for second year undergraduate students in the biological sciences in Italy. The study was conducted on a class of 64 students and incorporated a training session, a double-blind peer revision of laboratory reports, and a final debriefing phase with evaluation of the activity both by the instructor and by the students. Improvement of students’ writing skills was monitored together with their ability to provide a feedback review and to critically analyze the feedback comments received. The results indicate that the participants made moderate improvements in their ability to write a laboratory report and were able to evaluate the quality of their peers’ writing but also struggled with various aspects of the peer review process.

The Movement and Sport Science in Italy Towards the European Research Council

Abstract European Research Council Executive Agency, (ERCEA), has the mission to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all field, on the basis of scientific excellence. In 2019, European Research Council (ERC) updates the Panel Structure in 3 areas: Social Sciences and Humanities SH, Physical Sciences and Engineering PE, Life Sciences LS, 25 panels and 333 sub-panels. Every UE countries are updating own academic body system to align to the ERC. In Italy, this alignment is not possible because Movement and sport science has been together place SH and LS as academic disciplines of Physical training and Sport sciences. This is the vexata quaestio that makes the Italian academic system different from the other EU countries with consequences on the development of Italian research in Europa. Historical review explains why this division exists and why it begun after the second great war and developed to nowadays, determining an atypical model than others European countries. Movement and sport science should to be reasonably placed in an unique scientific area or alignments coherently at the related subpanels according to the scientific evidences, even if they are placed in more ERC areas. Both options can be applied according to ERC thought to resolve the actual problem.

Contributions by Italian scholars to regional science

AbstractRegional science in Italy has a long tradition marked by the distinctive characteristics of the country, namely the presence of multiple and dynamic medium‐sized cities, a traditional and persistent spatial dualism, and the success of intermediate income regions marked by the presence of SMEs. Particularly the third element has led to the creation of an “interpretative paradigm”—known as “endogenous development,” or “development from below”—today well‐structured and established in the discipline. It is the generator of innovative theoretical concepts and interpretations. These features are interesting and justify the intention of this paper to provide an analysis of the development of regional science through the major innovative contributions of Italian scholars.

Federico Caffè on the economic science in Italy

This paper proposes a reconstruction of Federico Caffè's stance on the state of economic science in Italy. As has been observed, this subject was developed by Caffè for a project by Gustavo Del Vecchio, who called "for the study of Italian economic thought "on repeated occasions" (Caffè 1975: vii). We will conclude that, in Caffè's view, the Italian economists who took an active part in the debate on Sraffa's thought should more appropriately have relaunched the neglected ideas of the General Theory in order to overcome the «second crisis» of economic theory by means of a system of thought suitable for policy applications.

Current state and perspectives of Space Weather science in Italy

Italian teams have been involved many times in Space Weather observational campaigns from space and from the ground, contributing in the advancing of our knowledge on the properties and evolution of the related phenomena. Numerous Space Weather forecasting and now-casting modeling efforts have resulted in a remarkable add-on to the overall progress in the field, at both national and international level. The Italian Space Agency has participated several times in space missions with science objectives related to Space Weather; indeed, an important field for the Italian scientific and industrial communities interested in Heliophysics and Space Weather, is the development of new instrumentation for future space missions. In this paper, we present a brief state-of-the-art in Space Weather science in Italy and we discuss some ideas on a long-term plan for the support of future scientific research in the related disciplines. In the context of the current roadmap, the Italian Space Agency aims to assess the possibility to develop a national scientific Space Weather data centre to encourage synergies between different science teams with interest in the field and to motivate innovation and new mission concept development. Alongside with the proposed recommendations, we also discuss how the Italian expertise could complement international efforts in a wider international Space Weather context.

Emerging Peptide Science in Italy

Emerging Peptide Science in Italy

Topical Issue on Highlights of Planetary Science in Italy

Topical Issue on Highlights of Planetary Science in Italy

Sartori and Italian politics: joy and sorrow

ABSTRACTThis article explores Giovanni Sartori’s contributions to the analysis and understanding of Italian politics. Sartori never studied and analysed the case of Italy in ‘splendid’ isolation from other cases. Rather he was at pains to place Italy within a broad and empirically grounded comparative perspective. On the basis of his approach, Sartori repeatedly intervened in the Italian public debate to suggest his own proposals for the improvement of the performance of the political system and, more in general, of the democratic regime. In this article, our discussion of Sartori’s approach and contributions to the field of Italian politics will follow three highly intertwined threads. First, we will deal with the contribution provided by Giovanni Sartori to the analysis and definition of the somewhat elusive Italian party system. Second, we will explore his relevant contribution to the study of electoral systems throughout the world, especially taking into account both the specificities and the oddities of the Italian electoral ‘laboratory’. Third, we will investigate the increasing tensions, especially, but not exclusively, provoked by Berlusconi’s enduring influence on Italian politics, between democratic principles, on the one hand, and the doctrine of liberalism and constitutionalism, on the other. The concluding section will evaluate Sartori’s contributions to the advancement/improvement of political science in Italy, in particular as a discipline capable of acquiring and producing knowledge that can and should be applied.

Editorial: River basin hydrology and natural hazards: monitoring, prediction and prevention

The 5th edition of the ‘Hydrology Days’ of the Italian Hydrological Society was held in Perugia, Italy, 6–8 October 2015, to provide a joint forum of hydrologists and a broad range of stakeholders for commenting and discussing on ‘River basin hydrology and natural hazards: monitoring, prediction and prevention’. A total of 58 abstracts were presented at the workshop. The 2½-day conference was organized by the ‘Hydrology Group’ of the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (National Research Council of Italy) in collaboration with the Italian Hydrological Society, the Tiber River Basin Authority and the professional association of Engineers of Perugia. Specifically, the Italian Hydrological Society (SII-IHS) was founded in 2009 to foster progress, enhancement and dissemination of hydrological sciences in Italy, including all aspects related to water resources systems management and possible interaction with human activity. In this perspective, one of the main objectives of the Association is to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration among academia, research institutes, institutional stakeholders and private operators. This Special Issue of Hydrology Research contains a selection of 14 peer-reviewed papers that reflect the multidisciplinary aim of the conference. The papers included in this Special Issue are organized into three main topics; the first topic addresses Innovative techniques for hydrological monitoring , the second topic includes studies focusing on River basin hydrology , the third topic comprises River basin management and mitigation measures …

Philosophy of Science in Italy

Philosophy of Science in Italy

Philosophy of Language and Cognitive Sciences in Italy

Philosophy of Language and Cognitive Sciences in Italy

The AIRInforma experiment: peer-reviewed public dissemination of science in Italy

The AIRInforma experiment: peer-reviewed public dissemination of science in Italy

Chicago – Arcetri 1933

On the evening of October 2, 1933 a most unusual event took place during the Century of Progress World Exposition in Chicago. To celebrate the visit of the renowned scientist Guglielmo Marconi and, by extension, the achievements of science in Italy, that night the lights of the fair were switched on using light emitted by the moon. This feat was realized thanks to the cooperation between the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the Astronomical Observatory of Arcetri, and the Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR). Its purpose was to illustrate – by means of the towering figures of Galileo and Marconi – the past and present greatness of Italian science.