As the Abruzzo earthquake death toll approaches 300, Italian science evaluates the damage that it has caused. As Nature reports, the National Gran Sasso Labs, which is where I have worked part of my time for the Cosmic Silence Experiment, last year, sufferred no damage despite being only a few km away from the epicentre. The University of L’Aquila, however, suffered significant damage. Students found death in the collapse of a city dormitory. The University is trying to raise funds to secure that the Academic year is not wasted.
I live in Rome, about 85 km away from L’Aquila, in a 6th floor flat. At 3:30AM I jumped off a seriously shaking bed and watched the walls acting and sounding like springs. Ran to my son’s room with a pounding heart to find him fast asleep. I was exactly his age when, in 1980, the quake hit the Irpinia region, to kill almost 3,000.
At 7AM I called a friend and colleague, Marco B., who was speaking from outside his home in L’Aquila with his family. He exorcised his fear as he laughed at the story that everything had fallen off shelves and walls, TV, books, vases, so that now they had the chance to throw away some old stuff and buy some new. They were lucky to live in a very recently built home, which apparently had suffered no damage. Marco said that they could hear the sirens running all over the place in the city. At that time, they had found just 16 victims. Hours later, the whole world knew what was going on.

Dr Rohn’s book and its international readership!

Away for some while. Mostly spending the time that I allocated to blogging for my Italian blog on Galileo. I am writing from North Hatley, a tiny village in Quebec, on the lake Massawippi. What a masterpiece of nature.
Last week I was visiting the University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, where I also gave a seminar, on Friday. The department of Medical Imaging and Radiation Biology is stunning, efficient, and there is great research being done here. Top class, indeed. They asked me to give the first seminar of a full-day event in which the research of the Department was presented by its MSc and PhD students.
I left abundant time for discussion at the end of my talk and there were several nice questions. The fact that struck me most is that I found answers to those questions, two of them in fact, via things that I have done through my podcast in the past several months. I referred to two interviews that I had conducted myself, and borrowed the words of the interviewees to make my point. It’s rather remarkable how useful these blogging and podcasting activities can be some times.

With protests and strikes against the prospected changes in Italian science funding and career progression, there’s hardly a single day gone un-noticed in the Bel Paese.

Today, at the inauguration of the New Academic Year at the University La Sapienza, in Rome, Rector Luigi Frati was forced to run away from the Aula Magna when a crowd of angry students (hundreds, the press reports) broke in the room demanding for his resignations. Further outside, students claimed, fellow students had been left out of the protest, as gates had been locked, as an emergency measure.

Oh boy. Back to work.

I am following Martin’s proposition…

1. What is your blog about?
It’s a sort of a window of transparency over a weird scientific environment, the Italian science jobs and funding market. Every now and then, I post news about job and funding opportunities.

2. What will you never write about?
Stories involving real people, for which I was left disgusted, pertaining funding and assignment of positions, including tenure, where the best did not win.

3. Have you ever considered leaving science?
No, but I am happy to explore science communication as a complementary activity.

4. What would you do instead?
Well, had I never undertaken this road, I would definitely by a jazz trumpeteer by now.

5. What do you think will science blogging be like
in 5 years?
Videos and audios easily updated from cell phones, but I cannot really imagine what other technologies will bring. This whole thing is just moving so very fast.

6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?
Found a part time blogging job, was interviewed on a national radio and ended up in the national daily press, as well as Nature, of course!. Will tell grandchildren one day. Also, I traveled to London to attend Science Blogging 2008 and I have met with several extraordinary bloggers, in a single day. Bliss.

7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?
No

8. When did you first learn about science blogging?
Some time in 2007

9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?
Most of them know by now, but they are not yet the types of people who fish for news in the blog-sphere. But I do have several readers at work who are real aficionados, including some seniors.

10. Are you able to write an entry to your blog that takes the form of a poem about your research?
Mmmm this is a hard one. It’s not about my research, but on my Italian blog I have created two characters, two young italian university students in the year 2034, and through their dialogues I imagine how science in my country will be in 30 years time.

It was a lovely early morning, this very morning, in Rome. I got to work by bike, speedily across the traffic, and dived into the lab for the first measure of my time-course experiment. I plugged my earphones on, turned on my iPod, and noticed that there was an episode of the Nature Podcast which I had not listened to yet. Much to my delight, there was Henry speaking about feathered dinosaurs…
how good is that…

At the time of opening this blog, back in November 2007, its author wrote:

Italy has a serious scientific research excellence problem at home. Why there are so few foreign scientists in Italian Labs? Is the Italian academic job ladder closed to foreigners? Something new is happening, just may be, and I feel an urge to report it.

Several months later, these hopes, at least for the moment, have capsized. The Government that was bringing some of the boldest attempts of reforming the system, offering a few – albeit crumbles – foundations of hope for research careers as well as laboratory independence for the younger generations, has fallen down.

The new center-right Government has been busy thinking of how to cut public expenditure, including cutting funds to research, which, after all, has not been the focal point of any Government in the past few decades in the Bel Paese. Today’s copy of Nature highlights some of the maneuvers that are being launched.

This has been a week of protests in the streets for Italian Researchers. Though not exactly on North-American style, investigator research-driven tenure tracks, yet on some sort of tracks to stability, a couple of thousands young and not-so-young researchers now risk being derailled back into rough and uncertain seas. Some of the early street protests have been the opposite of compact. Backed by opposed workers’ Unions, there has been competition between them to secure consensus, producing unhealthy fractionation and weak, un-coordinated protests. That was bad.

A few months ago, a competition was launched to offer 0.5M Euros to about 30 researchers to pursue their own ideas. Over 1,700 researchers applied. It’s still unclear what will happen with funds for this initiative, and some have reported bad feelings, including funds being diverted elsewhere. That would be a bold slap in the face of 1,700 hopefuls. I am ready to get my own face slapped, once more. My first time was in 2002, when I had competed in Agenzia 2001, a similar initiative that was set in place to foster young investigator-driven research, supported by the Italian Research Council, CNR. At the time, many young researchers, including myself, had spent weeks putting together and submitting their proposals, only to find out later that the competition had been canceled, due to lack of funds.

Being in a moment of crisis, this blog won’t encourage foreign scientists to pursue a career in this country, at least for some while. Science in Italy is not worth the offenses that it gets offered with. Enter this country at your own risk.

Until better times, this blog will talk about the weather, instead. That, in Italy, is often good, despite our swinging Governments.

Back to the original purpose of this blog, which is to advertise job opportunities in the Bel Paese.

ENEA, the Italian Institute for Research in Alternative Energies and the Environment, with many laboratories across the country, is calling for applications for 15 research fellowships to work in its centres.

Fellowships are being awarded, on a competitive basis, both to:

• Early-stage researchers: Researchers with less than four-year research experience (full-time equivalent), since gaining a University diploma giving access to doctoral studies;
• Experienced researchers: Researchers having at least four years since gaining a University diploma giving access to doctoral studies (full-time equivalent), OR already in possession of a PhD, and up to 10 years research experience (full-time equivalent).

The call, and all documents, are available here

Deadline: September 30, 2008.

See ya.

It’s nice to be back home after a wonderful fortnight in the US, UK and France.

At Science Blogging 2008 in London I have met with people whom I had known for several months only on the virtualsphere. That was great. Just as Marco has already pointed out in his blog, I am astonished at how young you can become a leader in the UK, compared to Italy. Matt, Corie, Timo, Ben, the lady who introduced us to the Royal Institution, and Karen, just to name a few, are all young faces occupying leadership positions. In Italy, that is very rare. To see you all concentrated in one spot for a day was impressive. You guys have all my appreciation for getting there at your age.
At the conference, Matt has convinced me to venture in the world of microblogging. If I am on twitter now, Matt, it’e entirely your responsibility. Likewise, I learned about friendfeed via you.

I am uploading a few pics on flickr. You can find them here

And I have enormously enjoyed conversations with many more of you. Thank you.

Looking forward to seeying you again at the next stop of this blogging virtual bus. If you happened to be in Rome one day, make yourself heard!

I am about to leave Rome for a holiday+work trip that will also take me to London to the great Science Blogging Conference, on August 30.

When I will be back to Rome I will have to change desk. So, just like Seed Magazine, I am going to feature my soon-to-be-ex workbench.

Probably you will read the text better on this larger version

See ya in London.
Massimo