A tribute to a great Scientist
Hello crunchers, after taking part in many challenges and having achieved some good result, the BOINC.italy team decided to issue his first challenge.
We choose to dedicate our first challenge to a great italian woman and winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine Rita Levi-Montalcini.
She was one of the greatest scientist of our time and with her studies she has paved the way for important discoveries, so for us there is not a better person to dedicate our first challenge.
She was also a Senator of the Italian Parliament and with her authority she helped the Italian public life in many ways and people have always shown respect and gratitude for her work.
It's significant the sentence that Rita Levi-Montalcini wrote,100 years old, in her autobiography "The Hourglass of Life: A Nobel Laureate Reflects on Her Life": «Despite my age I don't live in the past, but in the future».
The Project: Rosetta@Home
We chose Rosetta@Home because in our opinion is the project that does research in some of the studies in which she had taken part, like the NGF: Nerve Growth Factor.
In an interview for the italian version of Wired for her 100 birthday she said:" the NGF is more than a simple protein.Is a vital protein.Without her life simply stops.We Established that the administration of NGF on mice block the progress of Alzheimer.The NGF can be helpful in the cure of other diseases like Parkinson and the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)".
At this time Rosetta@home is collaborating with a research group at UCLA that studies Alzheimer's disease.
So the choice was not been difficult, and Rosetta@Home is the official project of the Challenge.
"Despite my age I don't live in the past, but in the future"
1st Rita Levi-Montalcini memorial
The challenge will take place on BoincStats: http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/449
Will start saturday 28 December 2013 at 00:00 UTC and will end saturday 04 January 2014 at 00:00 UTC, so go on BoincStats and join the challenge to remember this great scientist and to help research and Rosetta even more !
Some Information about Rita Levi-Montalcini
She was born on 22 April 1909 in Turin.After graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin Medical School in 1936 she completed a degree of specialization in neurology and psychiatry.Two of her university friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco also received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Due to her Jewish origin she was force to leave Italy in 1938 after the introduction of fascist laws and go to Belgium until 1941.After returning in Turin, in 1943 she moved to Florence where she and her family lived underground to avoid deportazion.After Allied armies freed Florence in 1944, she worked as a medical doctor in an Italian Refugee camp.
In 1947 she accepted an invitation to Washington University in St. Louis and after a semester she was offered a research associate position.She lived between USA and Italy until 1977 and in that time she did her most important work:discovering the Nerve Growth Factor.From 1961 to 1969 she directed the Research Center Of Neurobiology of the CNR in Rome and from 1969 to 1978 the Laboratory of Cellular Biology.
She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize with biochemist Stanley Cohen for their discover of NGF.
After receiving many other Honors, on 2001 she was appointed as Senator for Life by the President of the Italian Republic.
She continued to study until her death in Rome on 30 December 2012.