The Crisis and the Changing Face of the State

The contribution analyzes the transformation of the nation state facing the global crisi

The equality case in the substatic Heintze-Karcher inequality

We provide a rigidity statement for the equality case for the Heintze-Karcher inequality in substatic manifolds. We apply such result in the warped product setting to fully remove assumption (H4) in the celebrated Brendle's characterization of constant mean curvature hypersurfaces in warped products.Comment: 19 pages. Comments welcom

A study of autotrophic communities in two Victoria Land lakes (Continental Antarctica) using photosynthetic pigments

The composition of algal pigments and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) was determined in microbial mats from two lakes in Victoria Land (Continental Antarctica) with different lithology and environmental features. The aim was to expand knowledge of benthic autotrophic communities in Antarctic lacustrine ecosystems, providing reference data for future assessment of possible changes in environmental conditions and freshwater communities. The results of chemical analyses were supported by microscopy observations. Pigment profiles showed that filamentous cyanobacteria are dominant in both lakes. Samples from the water body at Edmonson Point had greater biodiversity, fewer pigments and lower EPS ratios than those from the lake at Kar Plateau. Differences in mat composition and in pigment and EPS profile between the two lakes are discussed in terms of local environmental conditions such as lithology, ice-cover and UV radiation. The present study suggests that a chemical approach could be useful in the study of benthic communities in Antarctic lakes and their variations in space and time

Virtù e vizi del concretismo

Concretism is the ontological thesis according to which possibilia (roughly: what renders true our statements about possibility) are concrete entities. The paper first outlines concretism, arguing that its sole founding thesis is that individuals across possible worlds are individuated by similitude. Among other things, this means that there is no need to postulate that there is no overlap among worlds. The main virtues and vices of concretism are then reviewed, and a novel vice is put forward: a failure in the reduction of modality due to the modal character of intrinsicness

Natural Properties, Supervenience, and Mereology

The interpretation of Lewis‘s doctrine of natural properties is difficult and controversial, especially when it comes to the bearers of natural properties. According to the prevailing reading – the minimalist view – perfectly natural properties pertain to the micro-physical realm and are instantiated by entities without proper parts or point-like. This paper argues that there are reasons internal to a broadly Lewisian kind of metaphysics to think that the minimalist view is fundamentally flawed and that a liberal view, according to which natural properties are instantiated at several or even at all levels of reality, should be preferred. Our argument proceeds by reviewing those core principles of Lewis‘s metaphysics that are most likely to constrain the size of the bearers of natural properties: the principle of Humean supervenience, the principle of recombination in modal realism, the hypothesis of gunk, and the thesis of composition as identity

From Obesity to Energy Metabolism: Ontological Perspectives on the Metrics of Human Bodies

In this paper, we aim at rethinking the concept of obesity in a way that better captures the connection between underlying medical aspects, on the one hand, and an individual’s developmental history, on the other. Our proposal rests on the idea that obesity is not to be understood as a phenotypic trait or character; rather, obesity represents one of the many possible states of a more complex phenotypic trait that we call ‘energy metabolism.’ We argue that this apparently simple conceptual shift can help solve important theoretical misconceptions regarding the genetics, epigenetics, and development of obesity. In addition, we show that our proposal can be fruitfully paired with the concept of developmental channeling of a trait, which connects to the study of the plasticity and canalization of complex traits. Finally, we discuss the potential impact of our approach on the assessment, treatment, and social narratives of obesity

Introduction: Lessons from the Scientific Butchery

This introduction aims to survey and present important contemporary trends and issues regarding natural kinds and takes a look at history so that it may fill in the gaps. It begins by illustrating Plato\u2019s metaphor that compares man to animal, stating that, similar to animals, the world comes to us predivided and that our best theories will be those that \u201ccarve nature at its joints.\u201d Although Plato primarily utilized the metaphor as a tool in expressing his view regarding the reality of Forms, its most common contemporary use involves the success of science in identifying distinct kinds of things. Scientists often report the discovery of new kinds of things or uncovering more information about already familiar kinds