n June, the 23rd of last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its Draft Report on the Environment, a report on environmental quality. The EPA is an autonomous federal agency known for its reliability on environmental studies and safeguards. Its Draft Report is considered by Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the nation’s most scientifically reliable analysis on environmental quality. The latest Draft Report makes no reference whatsoever to the changes in global climate.
"Weapons of mass destruction" is the word of the year 2002, at least according to the American Dialect Society, an association which has been studying the English language in North America for more than one century and which yearly chooses the word having more relevance to American society and information. The word of the year 2001 was "Nine eleven", and the passing of the baton was very significant. September 11th has actually marked an extraordinary media watershed in the debate on the dangerousness of weapons of mass destruction. The bioterrorist threat, for instance, seems to have gained
Enrico Fermi's work gave birth to a real cultural revolution in the Italian scientific scenario. His scientific studies concerned almost every field in physics and had far-reaching effects of which virtually everybody, above all in Italy, is still taking advantage. Two important "by-products" of Fermi's ideas and initiatives will be here taken into consideration: the new way of carrying out research and communicating science invented by Fermi and his group and his publications for the general public, which often stood for high examples of scientific popularisation. Then the focus will shift on
"We can only appeal to society, considering that governments and parties have fallen constantly short of expectations since the late eighties. The public must know that without research there is no innovation, and without innovation there is no state-of-theart. The lack of research is a handicap for the development of the country". The words of Silvio Garattini, director of Milan's Mario Negri Institute, reveal rage and passion. This is how he explained the reasons why more than one year ago 1,500 Italian scientists made an unprecedented, resolute and unmediated appeal to the general public to
What may be defined as the "standard model" of the public communication of science began to develop in the second half of the nineteenth century, gained a clear structure (especially in an Anglo-Saxon context) in the first three decades of the twentieth century and dominated until the nineties. Roughly speaking, the model tends to describe science as a compact social (and epistemic) corpus, largely separated from the rest of society by a type of semipermeable membrane. That is, information and actions can flow freely from science to the rest of society (through the application of technologies
Flying Scotsman is arguably the world’s most famous steam locomotive. The engine, a standard bearer of British engineering excellence and modernity in the 1920s, became, in the 1960s, a symbol of the dying age of steam. As Britain’s post war austerity and increasingly lesser role in the world gave way to Harold Wilson’s modernising ‘white heat of technology’ Britain’s ‘cult of the past’ took greater hold. Wistful nostalgia for the past can be seen across the cultural landscape of the 1960s in books, poetry, music, television and film. With a marked increase in the rise and popularity of
This essay is an account of the making of England and her Soldiers (1859) by Harriet Martineau and Florence Nightingale. The book is a literary account of the Crimean War, written by Martineau and based on Nightingale’s statistical studies of mortality during the conflict. Nightingale was passionate about statistics and healthcare. Whilst working as a nurse in the Crimea, she witnessed thousands of soldiers die of infectious diseases that might have been prevented with proper sanitation. After the war, she launched a campaign to convince the British government to make permanent reforms to
Medical photography collections often remind us of the inescapable reality of human suffering and pain, and at the same time they oblige us to deal with questions of ownership and privacy. Medical photography collections are thus considered ‘sensitive’ collections within the museum context. This essay investigates privacy issues involved in the curating of historical photographic collections in museum spaces. When medical photography entered into non-medical domains privacy issues emerged. It is these privacy issues that cast a shadow of sensitivity on the medical material. But the
This essay attempts to contextualise the experience and documentation of the world’s first space tourist, a multi-millionaire American businessman Dennis Tito, who vacationed on the International Space Station in 2001. The essay brings together two parallel elements of this historical event: the political transformation of the Russian space programme which made the private flight possible and the cultural significance and impact of the event. The first space tourist is both a direct product of the newly commercialised space programme and a reflection of a new worldview, with new values and
Focusing on the experience of working with Russia’s cultural, industrial and political sectors, this paper investigates how the development of new contacts and partnerships has contributed not only to the loan of material of historic significance to the Science Museum’s exhibition, but more broadly changes perceptions about Russia and its space programme in the western world. Addressing the multiple challenges involved – legal, political and security, among others – it reveals the importance of many of the space objects themselves as well as demonstrating how the Science Museum has helped to
The collection of Leonardo da Vinci historical models at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan is one of the largest and most important in the world. Created in 1952–53 to celebrate the fifth centenary of the birth of Leonardo and the opening of the Museum, the collection is made up of more than 140 models, interpreting the studies of Leonardo da Vinci and helping Museum visitors to understand and visualise his ideas. Before 1952, Leonardo models were already created and displayed in Florence (1929), Chicago (1933) and above all in the great Leonardo Exhibition held in Milan
A large and successful exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Leonardo da Vinci was held at the Royal Academy, Burlington House, London, in 1952. It was an important event for the public appreciation of Leonardo’s genius. The proposal for the exhibition had come from the Science Museum, whose staff arranged a ‘scientific section’ of the exhibition, providing and displaying photographs and models. The story of these early models is particularly interesting in the light of the subsequent expansion in the use of mechanical models and animations to interpret and present Leonardo