Science

(ANSA) - Rome, October 29 - Italy has the highest rate of H1N1 flu virus infections in Europe according to new estimates released Thursday by the Italian health ministry.

The government's last official estimates in mid-October, placed the number of cases in Italy at 15,455 but Junior Health Minister Ferruccio Fazio said there were probably ten times as many.

(ANSA) - London, October 29 - The secret of the Mona Lisa's vanishing smile is in the messages sent to the brain by the beholder's eyes, a Spanish neuroscientist claims.

''Sometimes one channel wins over the other, and you see the smile, sometimes others take over and you don't see the smile,'' Alicante-based neuroscientist and art lover Luis Martinez Otero says in the latest edition of British science journal New Scientist.

Otero asked volunteers to look at different-sized versions of the portrait from varying differences and in varying light.

(corrects ''eight'' in first graph, new third graph) (ANSA) - Naples, October 29 - The number of victims in Italy from the H1N1 flu virus rose to eight on Thursday with the death of a Naples prison inmate, health officials said.

Doctors said the patient, a 50-year-old diabetic, already suffered from a chronic lung and heart condition.

The man is Naples' fourth flu victim so far, after a 65-year-old pensioner who died in the same hospital just hours before and a 56-year-old doctor who died of the virus on Tuesday.

(ANSA) - Rome, October 29 - Italy has the highest rate of H1N1 flu virus infections in Europe according to new estimates released Thursday by the Italian health ministry.

The government's last official estimates in mid-October, placed the number of cases in Italy at 15,455 but Junior Health Minister Ferruccio Fazio said there were probably ten times as many.

(ANSA) - Naples, October 29 - The number of victims in Italy from the H1N1 flu virus rose to seven on Thursday with the death of a Naples prison inmate, health officials said.

Doctors said the patient, a 65-year-old diabetic, already suffered from a chronic lung and heart condition.

The man is Naples' third flu victim so far, after a 56-year-old doctor also suffering from serious pre-existing illnesses died of the virus on Tuesday.

(ANSA) - Rome, October 28 - An Italian team has helped pin down the oldest known cosmic event, a giant Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).

Two separate teams under Ruben Salvaterra of the Italian Astrophysics Institute and Nial Tanvir of Leicester University in the UK have dated the GRB to just 630 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was very young.

The GRB ''is evidence of an extremely violent explosion in which a star 20-50 times bigger than our Sun died,'' Salvaterra said.

(ANSA) - Rome, October 27 - A wreck off the Calabrian coast is not the remains of a ship carrying toxic waste as alleged by a mafia turncoat, Italian Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo said on Tuesday.

The minister said the vessel did not appear to be the Cunsky, which ex-mafioso Francesco Fonti claimed had been deliberately sunk by a criminal organization in 1992 in order to conceal illicit waste.

(ANSA) - Salerno, October 27 - Italian police on Friday stopped a man trying to bring 21 rare turtles and a parrot into Italy hidden inside his car.

The man, 30, was caught in the port of Salerno after coming back from a trip to ''certain non-European countries,'' forest guards said.

He will be charged with violating the 1973 Washington Convention banning trade in threatened species.

Trafficking in exotic animals is one of the lucrative sidelines of Italy's mafias, especially the Camorra in Naples.

(ANSA) - Rome, October 27 - Italy will begin vaccinating people at high risk of the H1N1 flu virus over the next couple of days, a health ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

Fabrizio Oleari said the health ministry, which began immunizing healthcare workers and public safety personnel in mid-October, was expected to expand the campaign to pregnant women and people with chronic illnesses by the weekend.

(ANSA) - Rome, October 26 - Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo on Monday cautioned against alarmism over a shipwreck off the Calabrian coast thought to contain toxic waste.

Speaking after a weekend in which thousands took to the streets of a Calabrian town calling for government action to deal with the wreck, the minister said a ''balanced approach'' was needed.

''Alarmist attitudes have already caused considerable economic damage to the area but we do not yet know what is on the seabed,'' she said.

(ANSA) - Rome, October 26 - Italian cities are taking too long to get greener, environmental watchdog Legambiente said Monday.

In its 16th annual Urban Ecosystems report, the organization upbraided city councils around the country for making scant improvements in recycling, public transportation, water management and air quality.

(ANSA) - Rome, October 22 - An Italian-led team of international scientists has identified the furthest known galaxy cluster from earth.

The cluster, known as JKC2041, lies some 10.2 billion light years from Earth, beating the previous record-holder by around a billion light years.

Led by Stefano Andreon of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan, the team is studying the cluster of hundreds of galaxies as they appeared when the Earth was just a quarter of its present age.

(ANSA) - Rome, 21 October - Containers filled with toxic waste retrieved from a shipwreck off the Calabrian coast near Amantea may have been buried in the surrounding countryside, the weekly Espresso said on Wednesday.

In a preview of a report to be published Thursday, the weekly said local women told prosecutors that, after the 1990 shipwreck of the ship Jolly Rosso, they had seen dozens of metal containers being buried along the banks of the river Oliva.

(ANSA) - Rome, October 21 - The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) on Wednesday approved funding for a new Italian gene therapy aimed at preventing the most common form of muscular dystrophy.

A Rome La Sapienza University team led by biologist Irene Bozzoni has patented a so-called 'shuttle virus' aimed at replacing the damaged gene that causes Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD)

''This is an important step forward because it paves the way for the therapy to be tested and gives access to economic aid,'' the university said in a statement.

(ANSA) - Vatican City, October 19 - The Vatican Museum has joined international celebrations marking 400 years since Galileo Galilei's first landmark observations of the night sky, with a major new exhibition.

The event, which is also part of the United Nations' International Year of Astronomy, showcases a host of precious instruments and equipment used to study the sky over the centuries.