Beppe Grillo’s success is not a rejection of austerity, but a protest against the corruption and inefficiency of the Italian political system

The success of Beppe Grillo’s ‘5 Stars Movement’ in Italy’s elections on the 24-25 February has been regarded by some commentators as a rejection of austerity by the Italian electorate. Marco Simoni argues that rather than rejecting austerity, Italian voters were primarily protesting against decades of economic stagnation, and a political system which is prone to corruption and clientelism. He concludes that unless mainstream politics can reorganise around a credible reform agenda, populist movements will continue to play a key role in the country

The Medical Toxicologist in an Albanian Court: Ethical and Legal Issues

Recent developments in the field of forensic medicine and the judicial practice are both factors influencing considerably toward an increasing role of toxicologists in court hearings and litigation processes. The role of forensic toxicologist has been until a few decennia before a prerogative of the medico-legal specialists, but meanwhile a subspecialty of the general toxicology seems to have been created. Vis-à-vis the increasing presence of toxicologists in penal procedures of poisoning and intoxications, Albanian courts have created their own precedents and bylaws, regulating the presence, the opinion taking, and the relative importance such an expert opinion will have on the final sentence. Due to a multiplicity of factors, legal terminology with regard to drugs of abuse needs to be revised and parallel to such a revision a better defining of the role of expert toxicologist as a collector and interpreter of the scientific proofs seems necessary. Overlapping competencies with judicial bodies and confusing legislative measures will do nothing else but complicate issues that should be and can be easily resolved, through simple and appropriate interventions at different levels

Feshbach resonances and weakly bound molecular states of boson-boson and boson-fermion NaK pairs

We study theoretically magnetically induced Feshbach resonances and near-threshold bound states in isotopic NaK pairs. Our calculations accurately reproduce Feshbach spectroscopy data on Na$^{40}$K and explain the origin of the observed multiplets in the p-wave [Phys. Rev. A 85, 051602(R) (2012)]. We apply the model to predict scattering and bound state threshold properties of the boson-boson Na$^{39}$K and Na$^{41}$K systems. We find that the Na$^{39}$K isotopic pair presents broad magnetic Feshbach resonances and favorable ground-state features for producing non-reactive polar molecules by two-photon association. Broad s-wave resonances are also predicted for Na$^{41}$K collisions.Comment: 39 pages, 15 figures. Phys. Rev. A in pres

Conscientious Objection in Israel between Civil Society and State: An Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the history of conscientious objection to military service in Israel from just before the foundation of the State (1948) to the present. One of its aims is to reintroduce this subject in a historical narrative where it has been marginalized. Conscientious objection is seen here not only as an individual process, but also as a collective experience; it is considered as a phenomenon marked by historical continuity, rather than as a series of responses to one or the other contingency. In this chapter, conscientious objection is considered in the framework of the relations between state and civil society, where the latter should be understood as a network of national and international agencies and associations negotiating with the state on this subject with different intensity and frequency in different historical moments. The primary sources for this study come from the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam, NL) and from oral history interviews

Gaussian processes and Bayesian moment estimation

Given a set of moment restrictions (MRs) that overidentify a parameter $\theta$, we investigate a semiparametric Bayesian approach for inference on $\theta$ that does not restrict the data distribution $F$ apart from the MRs. As main contribution, we construct a degenerate Gaussian process prior that, conditionally on $\theta$, restricts the $F$ generated by this prior to satisfy the MRs with probability one. Our prior works even in the more involved case where the number of MRs is larger than the dimension of $\theta$. We demonstrate that the corresponding posterior for $\theta$ is computationally convenient. Moreover, we show that there exists a link between our procedure, the Generalized Empirical Likelihood with quadratic criterion and the limited information likelihood-based procedures. We provide a frequentist validation of our procedure by showing consistency and asymptotic normality of the posterior distribution of $\theta$. The finite sample properties of our method are illustrated through Monte Carlo experiments and we provide an application to demand estimation in the airline market

Market-Driven Management as Entrepreneurial Approach

Entrepreneurship is traditionally considered as an 'outward-looking' phenomenon. Entrepreneurs initiate change by identifying and starting new trading opportunities, related to improved versions of existing commodities or new product or service concepts, which have been until then unknown to other agents. Market-driven management is not posited to be an alternative to entrepreneurial management, a surrogate or even a better substitute to entrepreneurship. They are, rather, two different theoretical constructs that can be fully integrated. Value creation and appropriation within the market is the node of the relationship between entrepreneurship and market-driven management.Globalisation; Market-Driven Management; Entrepreneurial Management; Theories of the Firm; Market-Driven Intensity; Market-Space Competition; Competitive Customer Value; Value Creation

Adenomegalia em crianças: avaliação e conduta em 19 casos.

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências da Saúde, Departamento de Pediatria, Curso de Medicina, Florianópolis, 198

Parental involvement in education politics : the case of disabled children

This paper explores Greek-Cypriot parents’ role in influencing developments regarding the education of disabled children in Cyprus. It mainly comments upon parents’ conceptualisations of disabled children’s rights which guided their responses to educational, social and political issues related to disability. The historical and interpretative nature of this paper is achieved by building arguments through interpreting qualitative data covering the period 1970-2007. Four periods associated with important developments were identified to facilitate understanding of parental involvement in politics: (i) early forms of parental mobilisation; (ii) parent groups acting as ‘non-pressure’ groups; (iii) parental power through networking; and (iv) resolving issues of identity and power between parent pressure groups. The paper ends with a critical discussion of parental involvement in education politics in relation to the nature of parent associations which constitute this evolving pressure group.peer-reviewe