Science 2.0

Harvard University is under cultural pressure, even from its own political tent, because its leader couldn't bring herself to condemn anti-Semitism, hate speech, and attacks on Jewish people by Harvard faculty and students. This would have been okay a few years ago, American progressives have long been opposed to Israel, but since Harvard targets microaggressions of all kinds, and 'stands with Ukraine' after the invasion by Russia, it was not just queasy but hypocritical.

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1.     January 6 was a shocking aberration.

2.     Whether due to term limit or a lost election, each US president up through Barak Obama, and each presidential candidate up through Al Gore, gracefully yielded when the time came, because that’s how the American system works.

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An analysis of 2,261 and 1,940 infants ages 12 and 18 months, respectively, found that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy had no impact on infant neurodevelopment. 

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Children who had a successful first 10-14 weeks of kindergarten scored higher than others on tests of academic and social-behavioral skills at the end of the school year, according to a new demography paper. Important parts of the transition – what the scholars called a “big little leap” – included making new friends, learning to work with others and adapting to new academic demands.

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In the past two weeks I visited two schools in Veneto to engage students with the topic of Artificial Intelligence, which is something everybody seems to be happy to hear about these days: on the 10th of January I visited a school in Vicenza, and on the 17th a school in Venice. In both cases there were about 50-60 students, but there was a crucial difference: while the school in Venezia (the "Liceo Marco Foscarini", where I have been giving lectures in the past within the project called "Art and Science") was a classical liceum and the high-schoolers who came to listen to my presentation were between 16 and 18 years old, the one in Vicenza was a middle school, and its attending students were between 11 and 13 years old. 

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