Stephen Emmott, who works for Microsoft Research, wonders whether to turn the whole approach on its head.

ECONOMIST: Computing and biology: Arresting developments | The

Early on Mr Emmott notes the spooky parallels between now and the early 1990s, when Italy's economic problems first became apparent.

ECONOMIST: How to slay its demons

Emmott points out that things are very different from the days when imperial Germany and Japan started throwing their weight around.

NEWYORKER: After America

Mr Emmott, who was editor-in-chief of this newspaper from 1993 to 2006, has made Italy one of his specialist subjects, inspired partly by libel battles with Mr Monti's predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi.

ECONOMIST: How to slay its demons

Dr Emmott reckons that a biological computer might find it easier to cope with problems that have foxed the traditional, silicon variety for decades such as how to recognise what it is that they see.

ECONOMIST: Computing and biology: Arresting developments | The

But Mr Emmott's division is not this one.

ECONOMIST: How to slay its demons

In his book, Good Italy Bad Italy, Bill Emmott describes how Italian politicians are still paid salaries three times those of their French counterparts and they grant themselves an array of perks including subsidised air travel.

BBC: Eurozone crisis: North versus South

As Bill Emmott points out, the S.C.

NEWYORKER: After America

Some 34 of the world's leading biologists, physicists, chemists, Earth scientists and computer scientists, led by Stephen Emmott, of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Britain, have spent the past eight months trying to understand how future developments in computing science might influence science as a whole.

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"Hopefully this investment signals the start of a gradual culture change in how conflict at work is managed, from one where litigation is frequently the first step, to one where mediation and more informal dispute resolution in general becomes much more commonly used, " said Mike Emmott, CIPD's employee relations adviser.

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