Australia,the International Geophysical Year and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

Australia's experience of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in Antarctica (1957–8) tempers the dominant narrative of the IGY as a transformative event in Antarctic affairs. This article argues that the IGY was not a great rupture in Australia's relationship with Antarctica. Rather, because of a long cultural attachment to and continuing relationship with Antarctica based in concepts of national security and development, Australian government policy stubbornly adhered to the idea of territorial sovereignty. Recognising this continuity in Australia's relationship with Antarctica is important for reconfiguring our understanding of how the Antarctic Treaty took the form it did.     

Poverty,Ideology and Terrorism: The STAM Bond

This article focuses on the role of ideology in the decision of people who are not from societies’ worst-off socioeconomic groups to join a left-wing terrorist organization. Taking up the sociological perspective of Max Weber, Clifford Geertz, and Raymond Boudon, the author introduces the concept of the “terrorist of the first hour” and considers ideology as a type of social bond. The concept of ideology is here broken down into four dimensions: Social, Temporal, Affective, and Moral (STAM bond). This article also presents data on the ages, sex, educational level, and occupation of the Italian people arrested (2,730) or convicted (528) for crimes of terrorism from 1970 to 2011. Data on Italian terrorists were provided by the General Department of Prisoners of the Ministry of Justice. ¹ 1. The research was conducted between February and July 2011. The author wishes to sincerely thank Sebastiano Ardita—the Director of the General Department of Prisoners of the Ministry of Justice—who gave authorization to collect data on Italian people arrested or convicted of terrorism of which only the Ministry of Justice is in possession. This article considered only data regarding terrorists working to subvert internal order. The articles of the Italian Penal Code regarding “internal” terrorism are articles 270, 270 bis, and 306, and since 2001 further articles have been introduced in order to combat international terrorism.      

Annual report. Activities in 1980 and program for 1981

Promoting regional cooperation has been one of the EU priorities in South Eastern Europe since the mid-1990s. However, the EU's regional approach has often been weakened by the prevailing bilateral dimension of its policies towards SEE countries, and not adequately supported by stringent conditionality. Nevertheless, recent progress has been achieved in several specific areas of regional cooperation, such as trade, energy and parliamentary cooperation, and countries of the region are increasingly assuming responsibility on cooperation processes, as the transition from the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe to the regionally owned and led Regional Cooperation Council seems to prove.     

Constraining political corruption: an empirical analysis of the impact of democracy

The present article addresses the relationship between democracy and political corruption. Extending past studies, this article introduces important refinements that respond to theoretical and methodological concerns. The theoretical framework proposed here is developed based on an electoral conception of democracy, which makes it possible to avoid the potential endogeneity problems associated with substantial definitions of democracy. I argue that despite the influence of other important aspects of democracy, elections and inter-party competition per se help to constrain political corruption. The article examines two analytical dimensions of democracy, the current level of democracy and its degree of consolidation over time. Unlike previous studies, a cross-national empirical analysis of a sample of more than 100 countries reveals that when tested together, the level of democracy and its degree of longitudinal variation are both significantly related to the control of corruption. The level of democracy affects corruption in a non-linear way. Hybrid regimes that are more autocratic than democratic show a lower level of corruption control than democracies, near-democracies, and closed dictatorships. The analysis also confirms that, despite having adopted different measures, more consolidated democracies are more powerful in constraining corruption.     

The effects of cognitive distance in university-industry collaborations: some evidence from Italian universities

Universities have long been involved in knowledge transfer activities and are increasing their efforts to collaborate with industry. However, universities vary enormously in the extent to which they promote, and succeed in commercializing, academic research. In this paper, we focus on the concept of cognitive distance, intended as differences in the sets of basic values, norms and mental models in universities and firms. We assess the impact of cognitive distance on university-industry collaborations. Based on original data from interviews with 197 university departments in Italy, our analysis determines whether cognitive distance is perceived as a barrier to university-industry interactions, and estimates its effects on the frequency of their collaborations. Our results confirm that cognitive, albeit not affecting the probability of departments to collaborate with firms, significantly hinders the frequency of interactions.     

A Very Unusual Accidental Mechanical Asphyxia of Choking with a Whole Solea Solea

The case here reported involves a schizophrenic 19‐year‐old girl under treatment with clotiapine, which was well tolerated except for a moderate dry mouth. The woman ingested a whole sole (Solea solea), which caused a very rapid death by choking. A complete autopsy was performed 24 h later, as well as histological and toxicological analysis. At autopsy, the sole was wedged in the esophagus causing a choking ab extrinseco. The fish had a length of 18 cm and a maximum width of 6 cm, weighing 188.7 g. Toxicological analysis detected 0.57 mg/L of clotiapine in blood, which falls within the therapeutic range. The peculiarity of this case is represented by two factors: one is the choking by fish and the second was the adverse affect caused by clotiapine, which induced a condition of dry mouth making the act of swallowing even more difficult, thereby contributing to a very rapid mechanical asphyxia and the death of the young woman.     

Patent oppositions and opposition outcomes: evidence from domestic appliance companies

European Journal of Law and Economics - This paper examines the extent and determinants of patent oppositions and opposition outcomes between the main competitors in the European market of large...     

On Some Difficulties of Putting in Dialogue Animal Rights with Anthropological Debates: A Historical View in Three Episodes

In this paper, I try to identify the reasons why the dialogue between sociocultural anthropology and animal rights theories and movements continues to be difficult and scarce. At first sight this weakness of communication is surprising, if one looks at the amount of anthropological studies on human/animal relationships, in most cases pointing to how animals are considered in many cultures as non-human subjects or persons. For understanding the roots of this state of affairs, I compare the ways anthropologists and animal rights theorists and activists have engaged with the issue of the differences and commonalities between human beings and nonhuman animals. For this aim, I contrast the search, among philosophers and activists, for a universal rational ethical foundation of animal rights, to which natural sciences’ findings can give support, with sociocultural anthropologists’ focus on the embeddedness of human/animal relationships in symbolic systems and in political relationships. In spite of the paradigmatic shifts intervened in a century and half of sociocultural anthropology, I show, through a critical review of the recent works of Ingold, Descola, Viveiros de Castro and Kohn, that even today this difference in approach is far to be overcome.