Public’s concern about poor animal welfare provided by intensive farming systems has increased over the last decades. This study reviewed the interest of the scientific research on the pain issue in pig production to assess if the societal instances may be a driving force for the research activity. A literature search protocol was set up to identify the peer-reviewed papers published between 1970 and 2017 that covered the topic of ‘pain in pigs’ using Scopus®, database of Elsevier©. One hundred and (...) thirty papers were selected and they were mainly focused on the practice of castration followed by tail docking. The scientific community first focused on these painful practices as a way to improve production efficiency and quality issues while more recently, due to the increased pressure by the public opinion, turned its interest towards the search of alternative solutions. A text mining analysis on the abstract of the selected papers clearly indicated the effort of the research to explore solutions to alleviate pain. Evocative words of this target were the selected terms ‘pharmacological analgesic’ and ‘anaesthetic treatments’. The text mining highlighted vocalizations as the main pain indicators in pigs as this term was frequently associated to ‘acute stress’. Ethical issues were a minor research topic in the scientific literature on pig breeding but in the short run, they are supposed to become a major subject to justify the acceptance of the modern production systems at the eyes of the consumers. (shrink)

Normative-based distributional comparisons across countries and over time build upon the assumption that individuals are selfish. However, there is a consolidated evidence that individuals also care about what others have. In this paper, we propose a framework for comparing and ranking distributions that includes non-individualistic possibilities. Specifically, we consider ranking criteria that account, in one case, for the feeling of compassion and, in the other case, for the feeling of envy. These feelings are generated respectively by those having lower resources (...) and those having higher resources. We illustrate our framework using CNEF data for Australia, Korea, Germany, Switzerland, and the US and show that accounting for the presence of compassion and envy might lead to different welfare rankings. (shrink)

A distinguishing feature of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is its “whole-of-society” approach, which includes states, but also engages a “broad multi-stakeholder” partnership to address global migration “in all its dimensions”. As one of the stakeholders that participated in the shaping and implementation of this new global normative instrument, we suggest that a spirit of international solidarity can be located in the cooperative and consensual processes and platforms that make up its architecture. Drawing on the English (...) school’s conception of international society, we argue that the GCM has advanced international solidarity in the acceptance by stakeholders of agreed core principles relating to migration governance and in the creation of spaces and platforms for whole-of-society dialogue. It is within these emergent spaces of the GCM that the possibility of concrete and meaningful improvement in the lives of migrants and other people on the move can be made. (shrink)

The absence of an English translation of Gonzaga's writings, both as a whole and separately, , inspired me to undertake it with the aim of making it more accessible to the public. If I were to talk briefly about the outline, the first original French version of the text appears as an anonymous author's work. In that first version signed by Sir Thomas Witth whom nothing is known about, Gonzaga doesn’t appear. His name hadn’t been appearing in the first booklet (...) for seven years until it appeared as translator in the 1807 version. Researchers concur that this was actually a trick which Gonzaga has been hiding behind because he probably never had the courage to introduce himself as the author. It is claimed that it has been conducted a lot of research in order to recover the text of Sir Thomas Witth or other possible authors with a similar name but any satisfactory solution to the riddle has not yet been given. Regarding historical data carried out during my research, I would like to offer my opinion that there is the Scottish philosophy of Common Sense hidden behind this pseudonym which deserves attention. (shrink)

The objective of Working Group 4 of the COST Action NET4Age-Friendly is to examine existing policies, advocacy, and funding opportunities and to build up relations with policy makers and funding organisations. Also, to synthesize and improve existing knowledge and models to develop from effective business and evaluation models, as well as to guarantee quality and education, proper dissemination and ensure the future of the Action. The Working Group further aims to enable capacity building to improve interdisciplinary participation, to promote knowledge (...) exchange and to foster a cross-European interdisciplinary research capacity, to improve cooperation and co-creation with cross-sectors stakeholders and to introduce and educate students SHAFE implementation and sustainability. To enable the achievement of the objectives of Working Group 4, the Leader of the Working Group, the Chair and Vice-Chair, in close cooperation with the Science Communication Coordinator, developed a template to map the current state of SHAFE policies, funding opportunities and networking in the COST member countries of the Action. On invitation, the Working Group lead received contributions from 37 countries, in a total of 85 Action members. The contributions provide an overview of the diversity of SHAFE policies and opportunities in Europe and beyond. These were not edited or revised and are a result of the main areas of expertise and knowledge of the contributors; thus, gaps in areas or content are possible and these shall be further explored in the following works and reports of this WG. But this preliminary mapping is of huge importance to proceed with the WG activities. In the following chapters, an introduction on the need of SHAFE policies is presented, followed by a summary of the main approaches to be pursued for the next period of work. The deliverable finishes with the opportunities of capacity building, networking and funding that will be relevant to undertake within the frame of Working Group 4 and the total COST Action. The total of country contributions is presented in the annex of this deliverable. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Flavius Josephus and Flavian RomeErich S. GruenJonathan Edmondson, Steve Mason, and James Rives, eds. Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xvi + 400 pp. 8 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $135.Josephus is now coming into his own. Previously scorned as tendentious time-server and panderer to the powerful, he has received increasingly serious attention in recent years. Indeed, a veritable Josephus industry has emerged, with regular international (...) colloquia, a burgeoning number of publications, and major commentaries on individual works (and parts of works) in the course of publication though collaborative projects in both German and English. And properly so. Josephus for too long remained the province primarily of scholars in Jewish studies. Classicists, for the most part, marginalized or ignored him. That neglect seems quite myopic in view of the unusually large corpus and the importance of Josephus not only for Jewish history but also for classical literature and historiography, for the perceptions of imperial power by subordinate peoples, and for the place of "alien wisdom" in the intellectual and cultural world of the Roman empire. The shift toward fuller and closer scrutiny of Josephus' work by classical scholars is now well underway—and most welcome.The essays in this volume laudably promote that enterprise. They grow out of a stimulating conference held at York University in Toronto in 2001. The editors deserve credit for focusing on a critical but largely overlooked subject: the relationship of Josephus' work to the social, political, and cultural setting in which he wrote, namely that of Rome in the Flavian era. Unlike most conference volumes, the quality of the papers is uniformly high, and the collection as a whole unusually coherent. The volume is a model example of its genre.The Jewish war culminated in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 c.e. The consequences for Jewish history, of course, were momentous, a familiar and frequently explored topic. Much less studied but indispensable for an understanding of Josephus' work are the reverberations in Rome. The Flavian emperors exploited their victory to publicize, justify, and entrench a new imperial dynasty. Fergus Millar valuably surveys the monuments of Rome instituted to commemorate the conquest of Judaea: the arches erected for Titus, the Colosseum built with the spoils of the Jewish war (as Alföldy stunningly demonstrated a few years ago), and the Temple of Peace where the most celebrated objects [End Page 615] captured in Jerusalem were deposited. The Flavian public-relations spin not only celebrated military prowess but also made a pointed contrast with the age of Nero and underscored the arrival of a pax Flaviana. Advertisement of triumph over Judaea could hardly make the Jews of Rome comfortable, as Martin Goodman argues. He adds that imposition of the fiscus Iudaicus under Vespasian and malicious accusations under Domitian against those who lived like Jews but did not acknowledge their Judaism must have produced an oppressive atmosphere in the Flavian years. James Rives goes beyond this, arguing that the destruction of the Temple and the depositing of sacred objects represented a genuine effort to stamp out the Temple cult which, in Roman eyes, constituted a civic cult and a threat to imperial stability. Daniel Schwartz's paper, with different objectives, extends this theme still further. He points to the ostensibly anomalous decision to resume the administration of the Jewish state as a Roman province instead of bestowing it upon the Roman supporter Agrippa II as an enlarged kingdom. For Schwartz, this amounted to a decision to eliminate Judaea as a territorial entity, a decision reflected in the fact that the term Ioudaioi tended to lose its geographical connotation thereafter and became a designation for "Jews" rather than "Judaeans." The scene after 70, in short, was grim indeed. One might question some of the more speculative ideas expressed in these essays, such as Goodman's suggestion that "Judaizing" indicated opposition to the Flavian regime or Rives' notion that Rome regarded Jerusalem as a rival focus of loyalty in the empire. Nonetheless, the climate in Rome for a Jewish intellectual like Josephus, after the fall of Jerusalem, would not seem to have been the most hospitable and... (shrink)

Nell'estate del 1886 Nietzche cura a proprie spese, da Sils-Maria, in Engadina, la pubblicazione di Al di là del bene e del male. Tra le recensioni che più entusiasmarono il filosofo tedesco vi fu quella di Joseph Widmann, pubblicata su 'Der Bund' di Berna, il quale paragonò il libro a quei carri che, inalberando bandiera nera come segno di pericolo, trasportavano la dinamite attraverso le quiete valli svizzere passando per il tunnel del San Gottardo. Nietzsche comincia la sua guerra, (...) dopo una guerriglia condotta a colpi di aforismi, contro tutti i pregiudizi morali e filosofici, contro l'illusionismo magico di parole e concetti. Un attacco che diventa più organico e sistematico, e che con la stessa intensità poetica segue il dionisiaco abbraccio alla vita selvaggia dell Zarathustra. (shrink)