Participatory justice and mediation toward a new model of justice

This paper provides a brief description of the model of participatory justice that is emerging in Europe and in North and South American States. Participatory justice promotes new forms of conflict resolution, as does mediation, based on voluntariness and confidentiality, as well as the participation of all parties in the management of conflict. In 2010, Italian legislators introduced mediation as an alternative form of dispute resolution in civil and commercial matters in order to reduce the burden of the Courts. This reform has not been successful so far because Italian lawmakers have introduced mediation into the civil justice system without reforming the framework of its underlying principles.El presente artículo tiene como propósito realizar una breve descripción teórica sobre el modelo de justicia participativa que está surgiendo en Europa y en los Estados del continente americano. La justicia participativa promueve métodos alternativos de resolución de conflictos, como la mediación, caracterizados por la voluntariedad, la confidencialidad y la participación de todas las partes en la gestión de conflictos que las dividen. En 2010 los legisladores italianos introdujeron la mediación en asuntos civiles y mercantiles para reducir la carga de los tribunales. La reforma, sin embargo, no tuvo éxito debido a que los legisladores italianos establecieron la mediación sin armonizar sus principios con los del modelo tradicional de justicia

Life history traits of the American spiny-cheek crayfish in two subalpine lakes

5openInternationalItalian coauthor/editorThe ecology of Faxonius limosus in non-native habitats is poorly understood and needs to be broadened to prevent and control its spread and protect native riverine decapod populations. The aim of this study was to describe some autecological traits of a spiny-cheek crayfish population established in two subalpine Italian lakes. We sampled the littoral zones in May and October 2014 by using hand-nets and baited traps: captured individuals were then sexed, weighed and measured. A population analysis was also performed using the modal progression analysis of length compositions. Our findings underlined the existence of four age classes (with a life expectancy of 3.5/4 years), a lower growth rate compared to other crayfish of the same family, and shift of the reproductive period respect to other studies on F. limosus. Our results suggested that eradication activities ought to be developed based on the situationality, and mitigating projects should be integrated with a continuous and practical monitoring programme to assess eventual changes in the ecological requirements of the investigated species. This becomes increasingly important as reintroduction or restocking of indigenous species could also be considered as a management strategy for F. limosus populations in the study area.openScalici, M.; Cappelletti, C.; Maule, A.; Casellato, S.; Ciutti, F.Scalici, M.; Cappelletti, C.; Maule, A.; Casellato, S.; Ciutti, F

Prediction of preterm birth with and without preeclampsia using mid-pregnancy immune and growth-related molecular factors and maternal characteristics.

OBJECTIVE:To evaluate if mid-pregnancy immune and growth-related molecular factors predict preterm birth (PTB) with and without (±) preeclampsia. STUDY DESIGN:Included were 400 women with singleton deliveries in California in 2009-2010 (200 PTB and 200 term) divided into training and testing samples at a 2:1 ratio. Sixty-three markers were tested in 15-20 serum samples using multiplex technology. Linear discriminate analysis was used to create a discriminate function. Model performance was assessed using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). RESULTS:Twenty-five serum biomarkers along with maternal age <34 years and poverty status identified >80% of women with PTB ± preeclampsia with best performance in women with preterm preeclampsia (AUC = 0.889, 95% confidence interval (0.822-0.959) training; 0.883 (0.804-0.963) testing). CONCLUSION:Together with maternal age and poverty status, mid-pregnancy immune and growth factors reliably identified most women who went on to have a PTB ± preeclampsia

A comparison of European systems of direct access to constitutional judges: exploring advantages for the Italian Constitutional Court

As protection of fundamental rights increasingly becomes a defining feature of modern constitutionalism, some countries debate over the opportunity to introduce systems of direct individual access to constitutional judges to increase protection of constitutional rights. Part I of the article provides a comparative overview of the systems of individual constitutional complaint adopted in Europe, focusing on their functioning, structure and admissibility requirements. Part II addresses possible benefits of the introduction of such a system in Italy. After describing the main features of the Italian system of judicial review, the article details proposals that, since 1947, have been presented to introduce a system of direct individual access to the Italian Constitutional Court. Finally, Part III offers reflections on the potential advantages that adoption of such complaint would bring to the Italian legal system, compared to the currently existing avenues of access to the Court

A generalization of Kantorovich operators for convex compact subsets

In this paper we introduce and study a new sequence of positive linear operators acting on function spaces defined on a convex compact subset. Their construction depends on a given Markov operator, a positive real number and a sequence of probability Borel measures. By considering special cases of these parameters for particular convex compact subsets we obtain the classical Kantorovich operators defined in the one-dimensional and multidimensional setting together with several of their wide-ranging generalizations scattered in the literature. We investigate the approximation properties of these operators by also providing several estimates of the rate of convergence. Finally, the preservation of Lipschitz-continuity as well as of convexity are discussedComment: Research articl