In forthcoming decades summer fire risk may increase in Mediterranean Europe. A recent study published in Scientific Reports, carried out by a research team which involves the Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources of National research Council of Italy (Cnr-Igg), the University of Barcelona, Lisbona and University of California, Irvine, shows that the direct effect of climate change in regulating fuel moisture (i.e., drought leading to larger fires) is expected to be dominant, relative to the indirect effect of antecedent climate on fuel load and structure (i.e., warmer/drier conditions limiting fuel availability)

The national reasearch council clebrates 2017 as the Marconi's year with two anniversaries dedicated to Guglielmo Marconi: 20 July for the 80th anniversary of his death and 2 september for the 90th anniversary of Presidency of Cnr. See also the Cnr Web tv documentary  (italian only)

The ANVUR - National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems, in agreement with the ConPER- Council of Presidents of Public Research Bodies, has published the new guidelines for the evaluation of Public Research Bodies (EPRs)

The First Italian Citizen Science Conference will be held in Rome in November 23rd – 25th 2017, with the aim to explore the state of the art in this relatively new promising field. The Conference is organized by the Italian National Academy of Sciences with the support of the Italian National Research Council (Cnr)

With € 5M of EU funding under the Research and Innovation Action from the Horizon 2020 program, the ElasTest project kicked-off in January 2017. Partners from academia, research institutions and IT companies are working together with the overall aim to increase software quality by reducing the complexity of testing large distributed software systems in the Cloud

A research team at Isa-Cnr analyzed the use of these natural, antioxidant compounds in cancer, highlighting, in two studies, the pros and cons of their use and demonstrating that not always their effect(s) does depend upon the antioxidant activity. The articles have been published on Seminars in Cancer Biology and Oncotarget

The event, co-organised by Cnr-Ibimet, will cover thematic areas ranging from horticulture to innovative technological solutions aimed at improving the efficiency and the management of urban green infrastructures. Transversal visions in which landscape architecture and environmental engineering meet the functional management of horticulture in the urban environment in order to maximise ecosystem service provision

A study published in Royal Society Open Science and coordinated by Isc-Cnr reports that limpets (snails) move like sharks and human hunters, albeit more slowly

Through sophisticated metagenomics and bioinformatics techniques, italian researchers from the Cnr - Italian Research Council - and University of Florence characterized the bacterial and fungal gut microbiota in a cohort of autistic individuals. The study, pulished on ‘Microbiome’, underlines the importance of the microbiome as biomarker and therapeutic target, in dietary intervention studies for the improvement of the quality of life of ASDs patients 

The genesis of these submerged reef, oases of marine biodiversity and geodiversity, dates back to about 7,000 years ago when remnants of fluvial channel of the last glacial period cemented. The study, coordinated by Ismar-Cnr and performed together with OGS, University of Padova, Ispra and Conicet (Argentina), has been published in Scientific Reports journal

Researchers led by Dr. Leonardo Sacconi of the Cnr - National Institute of Optics have measured the electrical properties of cardiac cells exploiting an ingenious analogy between the transport of charges and the transport of matter