Twenty-two meetings with scientists, researchers, professors, writers, science journalists and promoters: the weekly edition of the Mantova Scienza opened yesterday afternoon at the Sala delle Capriate, a festival dedicated to non-experts in high subjects and subjects, which nonetheless closely concerns everyone’s life. “Even brave causes, such as nuclear energy or nanotechnologies, that we feel the need to speak in correct terms” is appreciated by education consultant Serena Pedrazuli, who thanked the organizers while introducing the event in which the municipality is participating.
Born in Mantua, the capital of culture and evolution over time, organized by a team of environmental educators at the Alkemica cooperative and with the support of private sponsors, the festival that wants to understand the secrets of science debuted with a biotechnologist from the University of Granada, Spain, with his team of researchers working on Nanotechnology applied to human health.
The 37-year-old from Mantua is the protagonist of the seminar Mattia Bramini, excited and happy to see himself on a chair in the city where he attended Belfiore High School and made a blue Festivaletteratura shirt. He caught the attention of the (busy) audience by saying that nanoparticles are part of everyday life: “In sun creams, there are titanium nanoparticles, those that avoid sunburn” is one of the examples cited. He explained how they can be used to improve currently incurable diseases: degenerative diseases of the central nervous system (from Parkinson’s disease to Alzheimer’s disease), lesions of the locomotor system, the retina, and tumors that cannot be escaped, such as glioblastoma. It is about this particular brain tumor that the last projects in three years of studies, funded by the Iberian ministries in the amount of 250 thousand euros, have been completed, which have moved to the pilot phase since the beginning of September. Nanoparticles are tiny spheres filled with a specific drug or biomolecule, which are designed to alter the nature of treatment for complex diseases.
“From Pencil to Nobel” is the title of the conference that introduced a new nanomaterial: graphene. “Its superconducting, a property that makes it an ideal ally for neuronal regeneration,” Bramini explained. From the lab to the human body, the step is complex but seems shorter and shorter. Today the festival, which ends on November 20, has three dates on the calendar: at 3.30 pm, marking the centenary of Margherita Hack’s birth, a conversation with astrophysicist and science journalist Gianluca Ranzini; At 6 pm focus on exotic species of Bo with David Persico; 9.15 p.m. “Messengers of the Universe”: information that brings us light, with Massimiliano Razzano. On the website www.mantovascienza.it Conference program (in the Sala delle Capriate, Piazza Leon Battista Alberti) that will be available on the YouTube channel, cinema and theater schedules, instructions, workshops and exhibitions.
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