Wired for sound: vineyards at Paradiso di Frassina in Tuscany. Just in through the grapevine: Music helps grow healthier plants. That’s the preliminary result of research by Italian scientists who have been examining vineyards exposed to classical music to see if sound makes the plants grow larger and more quickly. While sound has long been [...]
by Nicole Martinelli The tiny brick library in Leonardo Da Vinci’s hometown is putting 3,000 pages of the genius’ work online in a high-resolution, searchable archive. The Leonardian Library in Vinci, Tuscany, is making the Madrid Codices and the Codex Atlanticus — two collections of scientific and technical drawings — available as a free digital [...]
If you’ve ever visited the Bel Paese, you know how scarce public toilets are. Before you’ve visited any number of nicely crumbling ruins, your thoughts will inevitably turn to the loo. Where to find one, how to avoid the Turkish kind and how to convince your traveling partner to have yet another caffé so you [...]
Italian scientists are testing a new diet pill that turns into a clear, gelatinous blob the size of a tennis ball that may help shrink waistlines by giving dieters a sense of satiety. The pill, currently undergoing clinical trials at Rome’s Policlinico Gemelli hospital, would be downed with two glasses of water at the first [...]
Foreigners can now live in Italy for study or work for up to three months without the dreaded stay permit (permesso di soggiorno). This cuts in half the amount of bureaucratic headaches — paperwork, rules, lines and time — needed to be legal here. Pinch of salt: the law (here’s a pdf, Italian only) went [...]
