http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-ter ... solde.html
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At ISOLDE, an international collaboration involving scientists from nine countries has been studying the 180Tl isotope. Via radioactive decay, the thallium isotope transforms into the 180 isotope of mercury (180Hg), which subsequently fissions. “According to previous experiments and related theoretical models, we were expecting a symmetric mass distribution of the fission fragments,” says A. N. Andreyev, the principal investigator from the KU Leuven team (presently working at the University of the West of Scotland). “However, we measured an asymmetric mass distribution of the fission fragments. This discrepancy is leading us to rethink our theories on the interplay between the macroscopic liquid-drop model and the microscopic single-particle shell corrections to apply in the description of these nuclei.”
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My limited understanding is that relativistic effects skew the available energy levels, so the observed statistics do not conform to naive predictions of 'classic' drop/shell model.
IMHO, I don't think this has any relevance to BLP or the Italian claims...