Elites, democracy, and parties in the Italian Constituent debates, 1946–1947

Discussions of the role and legitimacy of elites in democratic societies have rarely taken the shape of debates about the internal organization and working of political parties. Except for Michels and Ostrogorski, the party has not received much attention from theorists interested in the elitist dimensions of democratic politics. In this article, I purport to look at the party as a battling ground for competing accounts of the role elites should play in modern democratic societies. However, I will not focus on theoretical analyses of the party. Rather, I will look at how political actors discussed the party in the context of the constituent debates at the Italian Constituent Assembly of 1946–1947. These debates do not explicitly deal with the role elites should play in democratic society. Instead, they center on whether and how the constitution should regulate political parties. Yet while discussing details of legal regulation, the constituents offered contrasting understandings of modern democracy, competing accounts of the role of the masses as well as of the elites, and creative attempts to create stable compromises between the two in a changing society. It is through the reconstruction of these rather practical debates that I aim to uncover how one of the main questions of modern democracy—the relation between elites and masses—has been dealt with politically. This, I suggest, is not only interesting for political or historiographical reasons, but also has theoretical relevance. Not only it directly speaks to recent debates about partisanship and intraparty deliberation, but it is also by looking at political institutions and the reasoning behind their creation that one can recover complex political thinking.1 This, I believe, is made particularly interesting by the fact that it results from long and complicated processes of negotiation of contrasting values as well as from the translation of political ideals into working institutional structures. Reconstructing these processes of negotiation and translation is what I plan to do in this article

Toward the realization of reproducible AFM measurements of elastic modulus in biological samples

partially_open6The validation of the AFM method for elastic modulus E measurement in soft materials (E <5 MPa) is still missing. The interest of measurements in materials with E <5 MPa is mainly biological, including soft tissues and single cells. For the diagnosis of malignant human tumors, a change in cell elasticity, within tissues, has recently been recognized as a marker of metastatic potential. To measure a cell elasticity difference, reproducible E measurements in biological samples are needed. In this work a robust method for a metrological validation of E measurements in the range 500–5000 kPa was developed, based on the realization of thick E standard samples and on the study of the interactions between the measurement process and the sample at micro- and nano-scale. E measurement reproducibility limit of 4% has been reached. This allows designing a very sensitive and reproducible measurement of E in biological samples representing thus a powerful diagnostic tool for cancer detection.partially_openA. Demichelis; C. Divieto; L. Mortati; S. Pavarelli; G. Sassi; M. SassiDemichelis, A.; Divieto, C.; Mortati, L.; Pavarelli, S.; Sassi, G.; Sassi, M

study on the afm force spectroscopy method for elastic modulus measurement of living cells

The cell elasticity gives information about its pathological state and metastatic potential. The aim of this paper is to study the AFM Force Spectroscopy technique with the future goal of realizing a reference method for accurate elastic modulus measurement in the elasticity range of living cells. This biological range has not been yet explored with a metrological approach. Practical hints are given for the realization of a Sylgard elasticity scale. Systematic effects given by the sample curing thickness and nanoindenter geometry have been found with regards of the measured elastic modulus. AFM measurement reproducibility better than 20% is obtained in the entire investigated elastic modulus scale of 101 – 104 kPa

The right to food and food diversity in the Italian Constitution

Il contributo analizza la tutela apprestata dalla Costituzione italiana al diritto al cibo che, pur non essendo espressamente menzionato, viene ricavato attraverso l'analisi di principi ed azioni sottese alla nostra Carta che ne riconoscono il valore: il principio lavorista, la lotta alla povertà, la retribuzione del lavoratore...

Bioreactors as engineering support to treat cardiac muscle and vascular disease

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the Western World. The inability of fully differentiated, load-bearing cardiovascular tissues to in vivo regenerate and the limitations of the current treatment therapies greatly motivate the efforts of cardiovascular tissue engineering to become an effective clinical strategy for injured heart and vessels. For the effective production of organized and functional cardiovascular engineered constructs in vitro, a suitable dynamic environment is essential, and can be achieved and maintained within bioreactors. Bioreactors are technological devices that, while monitoring and controlling the culture environment and stimulating the construct, attempt to mimic the physiological milieu. In this study, a review of the current state of the art of bioreactor solutions for cardiovascular tissue engineering is presented, with emphasis on bioreactors and biophysical stimuli adopted for investigating the mechanisms influencing cardiovascular tissue development, and for eventually generating suitable cardiovascular tissue replacements

The program for biodiversity research in Brazil: The role of regional networks for biodiversity knowledge, dissemination, and conservation

The Program for Biodiversity Research (PPBio) is an innovative program designed to integrate all biodiversity research stakeholders. Operating since 2004, it has installed long-term ecological research sites throughout Brazil and its logic has been applied in some other southern-hemisphere countries. The program supports all aspects of research necessary to understand biodiversity and the processes that affect it. There are presently 161 sampling sites (see some of them at Supplementary Appendix), most of which use a standardized methodology that allows comparisons across biomes and through time. To date, there are about 1200 publications associated with PPBio that cover topics ranging from natural history to genetics and species distributions. Most of the field data and metadata are available through PPBio web sites or DataONE. Metadata is available for researchers that intend to explore the different faces of Brazilian biodiversity spatio-temporal variation, as well as for managers intending to improve conservation strategies. The Program also fostered, directly and indirectly, local technical capacity building, and supported the training of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students. The main challenge is maintaining the long-term funding necessary to understand biodiversity patterns and processes under pressure from global environmental changes

HERBase: a collection of understorey herb vegetation plots from Amazonia.

In this article, we describe the database HERBase, an exhaustive compilation of published and unpublished data on herb inventories in Amazonia

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The program for biodiversity research in Brazil: The role of regional networks for biodiversity knowledge, dissemination, and conservation.

The Program for Biodiversity Research (PPBio) is an innovative program designed to integrate all biodiversity research stakeholders. Operating since 2004, it has installed long-term ecological research sites throughout Brazil and its logic has been applied in some other southern-hemisphere countries. The program supports all aspects of research necessary to understand biodiversity and the processes that affect it. There are presently 161 sampling sites (see some of them at Supplementary Appendix), most of which use a standardized methodology that allows comparisons across biomes and through time. To date, there are about 1200 publications associated with PPBio that cover topics ranging from natural history to genetics and species distributions. Most of the field data and metadata are available through PPBio web sites or DataONE. Metadata is available for researchers that intend to explore the different faces of Brazilian biodiversity spatio-temporal variation, as well as for managers intending to improve conservation strategies. The Program also fostered, directly and indirectly, local technical capacity building, and supported the training of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students. The main challenge is maintaining the long-term funding necessary to understand biodiversity patterns and processes under pressure from global environmental changes