From Communal to State Finance: a New Fiscal Pact in the Early Modern Papal States

State building and state competition during the 16th century triggered a creative moment in the history of public finance. Recent scholarship has clearly identified the Papal States and their communities as active participants both in the state building process and the reorganization of public finance. Banking on a wealth of fiscal records, it is argued that Papal authority succeeded in forging a new fiscal pact – which lasted over two centuries - between central and local authorities. Blending conservatism and innovation the papacy promoted a contractual approach: local powers were granted a large degree of autonomy in selecting fiscal instruments, the types of wealth to be taxed and the means of collecting resources, while the Apostolic Chamber secured both the control of a growing portion of the provinces’ fiscal income as well as access to a pool of financial resources at a rapidly declining cost

Tra economia e diritto. Le società in accomandita nella Bologna d’antico regime

The limited partnership emerged as a key societal innovation during the early modern age. It allowed an effective separation between partners – those acting and those conferring capital – and it granted limited liability to partners in case of insolvency. The diffusion of limited partnership – between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries - came at a crucial crossroad in the economic history of early modern Italian cities. Banking on new archival sources this paper will argue that in Bologna the diffusion of this new societal form was closely associated to a fundamental renewal of the city economic landscape. On the one hand the rise of the limited partnership came as a response to the international banking crisis of the last quarter of the Sixteenth century, the string of financial bankruptcies and the ensuing dramatic credit squeeze that affected the city. The limited partnership offered investors a new (and less risky) outlet for capital, and eased the credit crunch businesses were reeling from. On the other hand its diffusion was not business neutral, as a matter of fact it was closely related to the expansion of the silk manufacturing sector, that emerged as the forward sector of the city economy

Sulle “tracce” della corporeità nella pedagogia speciale

There are educational dimensions which, significantly, qualify and contribute to define the different realities of help and care, and among them emerges the culture of the body. In fact, the experience of the body cannot be simply implemented as subsidiary or integrative dimension of educational care and of the development of learnings. The “actors” involved in the educational relationship must renew their understanding of the “instructional” environment as a stimulus and as a resource towards full realization of bodily and gestural identity. This must lead to a deeper debate within the current pedagogical reflection in regards of the processes of inclusion. In this perspective, the corporeality plays a key role in the organization that emerges in terms of sensory, perceptual and cognitive awareness. The development of inclusive education is, therefore, confronted with specialeducational needs through the notion of expressiveness, especially because it offers the people who find themselves in situation of disability the possibility to express their voice and be heard.Then, to the extent that there are metatheories that allow to establish the conceptual framework of a disembodied mind, there are theoretical models which can form the basis of an understanding of embodiment where the lived body and the physical body are seen in complementary sense as inseparable. Finally, the added value of corporeality in the practices of inclusive education allows to see the person in the complex uniqueness of his existence and to know how to grasp the potentialof inter-individual and intrapersonal learning

A multi-sensor approach for volcanic ash cloud retrieval and eruption characterization: the 23 November 2013 Etna lava fountain

Volcanic activity is observed worldwide with a variety of ground and space-based remote sensing instruments, each with advantages and drawbacks. No single system can give a comprehensive description of eruptive activity, and so, a multi-sensor approach is required. This work integrates infrared and microwave volcanic ash retrievals obtained from the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG)-Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI), the polar-orbiting Aqua-MODIS and ground-based weather radar. The expected outcomes are improvements in satellite volcanic ash cloud retrieval (altitude, mass, aerosol optical depth and effective radius), the generation of new satellite products (ash concentration and particle number density in the thermal infrared) and better characterization of volcanic eruptions (plume altitude, total ash mass erupted and particle number density from thermal infrared to microwave). This approach is the core of the multi-platform volcanic ash cloud estimation procedure being developed within the European FP7-APhoRISM project. The Mt. Etna (Sicily, Italy) volcano lava fountaining event of 23 November 2013 was considered as a test case. The results of the integration show the presence of two volcanic cloud layers at different altitudes. The improvement of the volcanic ash cloud altitude leads to a mean difference between the SEVIRI ash mass estimations, before and after the integration, of about the 30%. Moreover, the percentage of the airborne “fine” ash retrieved from the satellite is estimated to be about 1%–2% of the total ash emitted during the eruption. Finally, all of the estimated parameters (volcanic ash cloud altitude, thickness and total mass) were also validated with ground-based visible camera measurements, HYSPLIT forward trajectories, Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) satellite data and tephra deposits

Exploring mobility in Italian Neolithic and Copper Age communities

As a means for investigating human mobility during late the Neolithic to the Copper Age in central and southern Italy, this study presents a novel dataset of enamel oxygen and carbon isotope values (δ18Oca and δ13Cca) from the carbonate fraction of biogenic apatite for one hundred and twenty-six individual teeth coming from two Neolithic and eight Copper Age communities. The measured δ18Oca values suggest a significant role of local sources in the water inputs to the body water, whereas δ13Cca values indicate food resources, principally based on C3 plants. Both δ13Cca and δ18Oca ranges vary substantially when samples are broken down into local populations. Statistically defined thresholds, accounting for intra-site variability, allow the identification of only a few outliers in the eight Copper Age communities, suggesting that sedentary lifestyle rather than extensive mobility characterized the investigated populations. This seems to be also typical of the two studied Neolithic communities. Overall, this research shows that the investigated periods in peninsular Italy differed in mobility pattern from the following Bronze Age communities from more northern areas

Intercultural Education through Religious Studies (IERS): COMENIUS Multilateral project

[EN] Religious and cultural diversity are today more than ever a critical and political challenge as the recent emergencies related to geo-political and economical global transformations clearly show. European countries are concerned by a big immigration flow that demands an educational effort in order to foster the mutual understanding and integration. According to Toledo guiding principles, IERS project meets the needs of an innovative approach in teaching about religions and beliefs at school by providing teachers of humanistic disciplines with new tools that help teachers and pupils to plunge deeper into religions and cultures of non-european countries, as well as raising the knowledge of the religious traditions that contributed to the common European cultural Identity, promoting it in the best way suited for encourage intra -and extra- European cultural dialogue attitudes. The Project aims to support the development of social, civic and intercultural transversal key competences by educating towards a positive understanding of cultural and religious differences, a readiness to engage in dialogue and to avoid or manage conflicts. By encouraging teachers and pupils to expose themselves to the differences and commonalities of religious topics, it promotes also the values of democracy, equality and human rights as it deals with social and civic dimensions of both intercultural and interreligious dialogue. The project will involve high school in-service teachers by developing a complete set of didactical tools and training experiences. The results will be: 1. A baseline study which analyzes the actual situation of teaching about religions throughout Europe; 2. New innovative didactic tools such as Multimedia Digital Modules to be used in classroom activities, accompanied by a Handbook with didactical guidelines for teachers. 3. Teacher support activities (virtual community, training activities, developing of didactical projects to apply in classroom)

Consensus statement of the Italian society of pediatric allergy and immunology for the pragmatic management of children and adolescents with allergic or immunological diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has surprised the entire population. The world has had to face an unprecedented pandemic. Only, Spanish flu had similar disastrous consequences. As a result, drastic measures (lockdown) have been adopted worldwide. Healthcare service has been overwhelmed by the extraordinary influx of patients, often requiring high intensity of care. Mortality has been associated with severe comorbidities, including chronic diseases. Patients with frailty were, therefore, the victim of the SARS-COV-2 infection. Allergy and asthma are the most prevalent chronic disorders in children and adolescents, so they need careful attention and, if necessary, an adaptation of their regular treatment plans. Fortunately, at present, young people are less suffering from COVID-19, both as incidence and severity. However, any age, including infancy, could be affected by the pandemic. Based on this background, the Italian Society of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology has felt it necessary to provide a Consensus Statement. This expert panel consensus document offers a rationale to help guide decision-making in the management of children and adolescents with allergic or immunologic diseases