Subjects

The book tells the fascinating story of the great mathematical ideas, developed over the centuries, that form the foundation of modern artificial intelligence.

The author aims to answer a crucial question: how–and above all, why–does the heart of AI work? How do these powerful mathematical ideas interact with each other to give rise to machines capable of learning, predicting, and thinking?

Through a narrative that alternates between history and mathematics, Alessandrini reveals how great minds of the past, such as Cardano, Descartes, Newton, Bayes, Grassmann, and Levi-Civita, laid the theoretical foundations of modern AI.

A book that aims to tell what happens in the forest, perceived through the five senses and translated into dance, poetry, song, and knowledge.

Through the exploration of forests in Italy and around the world, the author highlights the relationship between humans and trees–a relationship that unfolds in encounters that are sometimes harmonious, sometimes unbalanced, prompting reflection on a complete change of mindset. Originally, the word “forest” derives from “fores stare,” meaning to stay outside–outside the city, the community, and conventions, away from the light of torches, where it was dark, wild, dangerous, where there were wild beasts and bandits. Today, venturing into forests opens up a new dimension, as a place of refuge where one can seek a reconnection between humans and nature.

A fascinating tale about trees, told through the voices of researchers, mountaineers, artists, and naturalists.

The fundamental concepts of astrophysics are presented in a curious and captivating way, written in the intriguing style of a skilled science communicator.

It starts from the Big Bang, then moves on to the structure of matter, dark energy, spacetime, and complexity, finally arriving at future scenarios such as the possible Big Crunch or Big Rip, and the idea of a cyclic universe.

Each chapter is dedicated to one of the words at the heart of understanding stars and the cosmos, so that by the end, the reader will have the keys to the sky–at least in terms of knowledge.

A concise volume that explores the history of chemistry and particles (Li-Be-Re and Ge-Ni-Al-I, from the combination of the symbols of certain chemical elements) in an original way and addresses some of the most curious aspects of this discipline, from the discovery of matter starting with fire in prehistoric times up to the radioactivity of the last century.

The book, divided into ten sections presented in chronological order, guides readers through the discovery of chemical elements via some more or less well-known scientific personalities who, with tenacity and passion–and sometimes by chance–managed to make significant contributions not only to the history of chemistry but also to culture in general.

The result is a picture that highlights the importance of collective work, both among contemporary scientists and those who lived in very different eras, in a synergy capable of transcending space and time. In particular, the book brings to light several important female scientists whose fame remained for a long time overshadowed by that of their spouses.

With orbits increasingly crowded with satellites, debris and space junk, the use of circum-terrestrial space is in danger of becoming the Wild West of the new millennium.

The overbearing entry of private entrepreneurs into the world of space has multiplied the number of services provided by in-orbit instruments, causing the space economy to grow tumultuously. Orbits are filling up alarmingly, and we are only at the beginning of the proliferation of mega constellations created to provide planet-wide Internet connections. There are no laws to manage the number of satellites in orbit, which are growing at such a dizzying rate that there are fears of real orbital bottlenecks that could cause catastrophic collisions.

We need to extend the concept of sustainable use to the space around us, but also to the other bodies in the solar system, so as not to repeat the same mistakes we have made on the Earth’s surface. Looking further afield, to the Moon and Mars, human settlements will have to respect the ecosystem of celestial bodies. Particular attention must be paid to the risks of biological pollution. Explorers (both human and robotic) risk transporting terrestrial material. Likewise, our handling of extraterrestrial samples requires well-equipped laboratories and continuous surveillance.

Ecological consciousness was also born thanks to images of the Earth from space. Thus we have discovered the beauty and fragility of our planet; now it is time to think about a new space ecology.

A traitorous translation, a capital work in the history of thought and two great scientists: these are the ingredients of Mazzarello’s new book.

The work in question is Darwin’s Origin of Species. The translation is the French one, published in 1862, by Clémence Royer, a liberal and progressive philosopher, which came into the hands of a young Lombroso, a military doctor about to join the expedition to repress banditry in Calabria.

In contact with a harsh and savage world, the scientist was among the first - if not the first - to concretely apply Darwin’s theory to the study of nature in Italy. Having become a professor in Pavia and then in Turin, Lombroso never stopped using evolution as a cognitive tool. From a distant source sprang racial hierarchies, populations, abnormal and criminal behaviour, and the mental inferiority of women.

It is on this basis that Paolo Mazzarello re-reads Lombroso’s anthropological vision, offering an evocative and original interpretation, which also allows him to shed new light on the early spread of Darwinian theories in Europe.

Questions about the Earth and the sky, the stars and the Universe, seemingly trivial, but the answer is not at all.

We all had a head full of questions and curiosity as children. As we grow up, many are answered, but some are simply forgotten. For example, how many really know why the sky is blue during the day and black at night? Or why the Earth spins, or why it is colder in the mountains than by the sea?

Each question is a pretext to make us reflect on what we have always taken for granted but which is not, to look at everyday phenomena with a different, more attentive and aware eye. The answers are designed for an adult audience that has retained the curiosity of children and wants to satisfy it in a serious and mature way.

The book is structured in a series of self-contained chapters, progressively zooming out from the more human and terrestrial questions to the larger ones about the Universe and the highest systems of reality.

A scientific and ethical approach to the preservation of some completely virgin patches of nature, to safeguard the future of humankind.

The book addresses the problem of the extinction of wildlife and plants by proposing solutions to mitigate the collapse in Anthropocene. For example, a deal to ensure the natural processes that guarantee the survival of biodiversity on just a small fraction (10%) of our planet.

From Linnaeus to Alexander von Humboldt and Darwin, the history of nature and of evolution is described, also passing through the disappearance of species or the replacement of some species with others, in a constant adaptation process to keep life on Earth.

The author ranges from the geometry of soccer balls to the combinatorics of tournament calendars, going through the physics of goal shots, the mathematics of sports betting, and the theory of games in penalty kicks.

The book is structured along the lines of a soccer match, with a pre-match stage, a first half, half-time, a second half, extra time, penalty kicks and the after match. That’s not all, since a lot of mathematics is embedded in the game of soccer: numbers, statistics and technology are now rapidly acquiring an important role on the pitches, as evidenced by the increasing significance of systems such as VAR or match analysis.

Every chapter starts with a soccer anecdote, which paves the way to questions where mathematics plays the main role.

Most of the Nobel Prizes in medicine have been awarded for research on the brain: the story of the winners is the story of great achievements in medicine and the neurobiology over the past hundred years.

How does the brain work? By what mechanisms do neurons receive signals from the world and transform them into sensations, anxieties, emotions, memories, with an electro-chemical communication code employed by all living species? And how does the brain produce hormones that regulate major functions of the body? Life and research of the forty Nobel Prize winners have provided crucial answers to these questions.

Authors recount the discovery and treatment of numerous diseases nervous and mental through a pathway that over the course of the twentieth century and the first two decades of this new millennium has opened Pandora’s box of the previously unknown mechanisms that serve us to think and be conscious.