Sign this petition! EU commission sustain free-access research!

"The European Commission, the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB) and the European Research Councils have each recently recommended adopting the policy of providing Open Access to research results ..."

"A petition in support of the European Commission recommendation is now being sponsored by a consortium of European organisations: ..."

...text extracted from here! ---> so NOW SUBSCRIBE THE PETITION, CLICK HERE AND SIGN!
I have already done as you see (see signatures), sign the form for a free research, science must be free for all want to know! This fact do not imply it not must be payed (...), or it is clear to everyone or it gives immediately practical results...(!!!), is very hard find the truth and always what is not practical suddenly is the best one, is the solution of some mystery as Ignacio R-I says "Give me a lot of questions about my works, if it is not my works are bad, works that generate a lot of questions have got an inestimable value such as models that do not describe the reality in all aspects! Give me sharpen question and we can discuss! The beauty of Nature!"... believe a little scientist as a PhD student is :)!

Thanks! Ciao!

Research Frontiers in Environment & Sustainability!

Take a look at the proceedings of this super-interesting symposium take in Zurich at ETH, CCES, on 17 to 19 September 2007, in which have a talk even my principal advisor Prof. Andrea Rinaldo, my foreign advisor Prof. Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe, the WRR editor and "marathon Professor" Marc Parlange, etc.. etc..

SEE my 1st Article on Water Resources Research!

accepted paper on 2 August 2007 (in press): "The probabilistic structure of the distance between tributaries of given size in river networks", Convertino, M., R. Rigon, A. Maritan, I. Rodriguez-Iturbe, A. Rinaldo, 2007WR006176 [Convertino et al., 2007].

I am always too strict with myself because I want to do "more and more" and better, but I have to admit, it's really a very very nice paper which extends the theory of universal features in river basins in a simple ("... but not simpler" as Einstein said!) mathematical formulation, or better by a statistical mechanics formulation. Distances and associated areas can be in fact viewed, as any quantity in Nature, as a stochastic variable, in this case obtained by the stochastic optimization evolution that forms river basins.
Are also analyzed other river networks' models, Scheidegger and Peano ones, obtaining exact results.

The exciting things are that these results are strongly correlated to other themes I am studying (and even writing other 1, 2 (?) articles..., work in progress..., i can not say more...), about heterogeneous conditions (input) on fluvial aggregation models, climate change studies and implications on ecological species and landsliding for example, transport processes in river basins.

See it and stay tuned for my next research papers!

IVSLA SSED next editions!

What about the Istituto Veneto of Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Summer School on Environmental Dynamics? I have been in Venice for the last edition on June 2007, see here and the photos on my Google Picasa gallery, and it was wonderful! Fantastic PhD students & researchers from all around the world, professors from UniPd and Princeton University!
Exceptional life moments outside the school too in the magnificent layout of Venice!!!
Hope to see again someone of the guys I have known for the next editions of the School! See here next topics! (THESE TOPICS ARE MY RESEARCH TOPICS AND INTERESTS TOO!!! WOW!)

DNAtube.com!!! Scientific Videos!!!

Recently I have discovered a new fantastic scientific website which hosts videos of scientists and researchers of all disciplines and universities around the world!!!
See videos of Roman Stocker, my friend Professor at MIT in Civil and Environmental Engineering!!! He pursued his MSc and PhD like me at the University of Padova, Italy! [PhD at IMAGE Dept. and International Center for Hydrology (Graduate School in CEE Sciences, head my principal advisor Prof. Andrea Rinaldo)] Thanks Roman, hope to work with you in future interacting my research to your exiting one!

* video_1 : "Studies of bacterial chemotaxis using microfluidics"
* video_2 : "Chemotactic response of marine micro-organisms to micro-scale nutrient layers & effect of shear on marine bacteria swimming in a vortex"

* Roman Stocker Environmental Microfluidics Lab

WAITING PRINCETON ...& THE PHD COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION

Hi all!!! This is my first post at my blog created with the intentions to be in contact when I will be at Princeton University for one year starting in January 2008 (on 7) to December 2008, hosted by the J. S. McDonnell Distinguished Prof. Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe!

Non so ancora se scriverò tutto in Inglese o in Italiano, ma una via di mezzo va bene per tutti :)! Decisamente, altrimenti chi "spikka" poco l'inglese... (vedi la mia nonnina e qualche mio friends...) come farebbero ?
Un blog per raccontare pensieri, stati d'animo, avventure reali o immaginarie, un po' il mio lavoro, la mia scienza, foto, etc etc etc..., un modo per tenersi in contatto con tutti voi, magari anche per sopportare un po' la solitudine che alle volte mi verrà :)! Ma nooo, dai :)!

Ovviamente è già tardi, l'una di notte si sta approssimando, io sono ancora qui a Padova, e oltre alla mia beneamata appassionatissima ricerca sto studiando per l'esame comprensivo dei corsi di Dottorato..., i primi di Novembre...? Facciamo anche metà Novembre!!!

Così..., well I have written in Italian because I am still here but time flies away so fast!!!

Ciao alla prossima,

Matteo!

PS: mi raccomando scrivete scrivete scrivete!!!