Word: year
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That's the conclusion of a recent report in the journal Science by neuroscientists at Northwestern University, who carried out a small study, with 12 volunteers, to figure out whether specific sounds played during sleep would boost the memory of information learned while awake. (See the year in health...
...heart of Berlusconi's culture is the velina, or showgirl, who is served up to Italians every day, like pasta. Some veline merely stand mute while male presenters talk. Some give on-air lap dances to chat-show guests, as did one earlier this year to Inter Milan coach José Mourinho. Others play the funny little games producers devise, posing as table legs, or braving cold showers in tight dresses. Some simply strip: Mediaset's homepage recently featured a clip of a blonde clad in a black garbage bag, slowly lowering it to reveal her breasts. Degrading? Undoubtedly...
...feverish speculation in the Italian press this summer - knows how the game works. "[I want to be] a showgirl," she told an Italian newspaper. "I am interested in politics, too ... I'd rather be a candidate for the Chamber of Parliament. Papi Silvio would take care of that." Last year, Berlusconi formalized the politics-showgirls link, appointing Mara Carfagna, 32, a former velina and topless model, as his Minister for Equal Opportunities. This summer his party nominated four young starlets as candidates for the European parliamentary elections. "The idea was to make the party younger," says Elisa Alloro...
...violence, she says, and to helping women achieve equal opportunities in the workplace. She has her work cut out for her: Italy has the lowest percentage of working women in Europe. Only 2% of top management positions in Italy are held by women, less than in Kuwait. In last year's Global Gender Gap report from the World Economic Forum, Italy ranked 67th out of 130 countries. Such figures are particularly shocking for women like Elisa Manna, who is old enough to remember Italy's muscular feminist movement of the 1970s. "Back then, young women wanted to become doctors, lawyers...
Will the velinization of Italy continue? There are some signs of a backlash against it - and Berlusconi. Earlier this year, two women parliamentarians argued that he had breached the European Convention of Human Rights for his "repeated statements that offend female dignity." Lorella Zanardo, a management consultant and former Unilever executive, grew so disgusted with the scenes of degradation on Italian television that she made her own video to raise awareness of the problem, splicing together clips from shows. The closing shot, from a show called Joking Apart, shows a woman in a thong hung on a hook...