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The Corona Virus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has upset the students' daily routine, forcing them at first into a sudden transition to distance learning and then to a return to school modelled on the basis of infection containment measures. The present research involved 157 students from schools in central Italy with a mean age of 13.58 years old to investigate the affective impact of the pandemic on the school experience and its components (recess, oral testing, relationships with classmates, and relationship pupils-teachers). The results show that only a few have experienced school interruption in a traumatic way: they have appreciated neither distance learning, nor the return to school; for these teenagers, the school of the past has died. Other adolescents and pre-adolescents tried to replace the face-to-face mode with distance learning, maintaining certain attention to the school even during the quarantine. However, the online mode did not keep its promise. Those who have invested more in digital innovation find it difficult to return to normality today. For all of them, socialization mediated by school experience is decisive in supporting the return to ordinary life after the pandemic.

In this paper we analyse the role that "food security" has played in the evolution of the food discourse in Italy, a country with a strong and internationally recognized food culture. We identify three phases of this evolution: in the first phase, from the end of the Second World War to the end of the 1980s, the "modernization" frame, with its emphasis on productivity and the industrial organization of production, dominates in a context populated mainly by agricultural actors. A second phase, characterised by the "turn to quality", encourages the development of a "Made in Italy food consensus". In this phase, food security mainly concerns food safety and conservation of national food identity. The third phase is characterised by a response to the pressures generated by the 2006-2008 food crisis and the subsequent recession. In this phase food security becomes a key element of a new consensus frame, which links together pieces of discourse that often existed in separate fields of activity and policy. The analysis is carried out within a conceptual framework that focuses attention on the co-evolution between discourse and discursive coalitions in a progressive overlapping between "public sphere" and "market sphere". (Contains 1 table.)

In 2001 the Italian tertiary education system embarked in a broad process of reform. The main novelty brought by the reform was a reduction of the length of study to get a first level degree together with the introduction of a two-years, second level, master degree. This paper aims at studying the effects of the reform in terms of fairness. To this end, we first define fairness criteria following a well developed theory of equality of opportunity, we then discuss existing inequality measures consistent with these criteria, we show their relationship, and adapt them to the educational framework. We finally employ this set of measures to show the evolution of fairness in the access to university in Italy before and after the reform. Although not all fairness measures we estimated show a higher degree of fairness after the reform, the large majority does, suggesting a positive effect of the reform under a vast range of possible definitions of fairness. (Contains 7 tables and 5 figures.)

One of the key factors for the success of development strategies in rural areas is the setting up of appropriate governance patterns, whose main outcome is a fluid communication between public and private organisations and an effective integration of objectives and policies. Through a "post-rural" approach, this paper aims to analyse an attempt to reconfigure patterns of governance taking place in a well-known rural area, the Chianti (Tuscany, Italy). The Chianti can be considered as a typical example of a post-rural area, characterised by a highly complex civil society, with a large number of organisations representing their constituencies' interests, which strongly characterise the local social and economic processes. In this area wine is the most important industry, both for its weight in terms of added value and employment but also for the multiplier effects that its reputation has on the overall economy, and local wine elites have historically had a strong hold on local society. Along with rural change leading to social and economic diversification and growing administrative complexity, the dominance of wine elites is challenged by a coalition of actors led by the mayors of the local municipalities. The resulting struggle for hegemony is played out through an intense inside/outside interaction, which contributes to continuous attempts to redefine local identities. The paper explores the role that the building of social representations of rurality by local elites plays in the creation of new rural governance patterns in the area.

The growth of localized and sustainable food systems is widely recognized in many Western countries as a response to the increasingly evident crisis of conventional food systems. However, despite the growing consumer demand, the producer capacity to catch up with demand emerges as a critical point. The authors reckon that participation in alternative food chains not only needs a new market opened, but also appropriate farming styles. Adopting new farming styles requires radical changes to knowledge and skills, material assets, organizational patterns, communication practices, etc. To that end, the direct interaction with consumers as well as the co-operation and co-ordination with other farmers become crucial. On the basis of a deep analysis carried out through a case-study - the innovation cycles activated by farmers adhering to Solidarity-based Purchase Groups (GAS) in Tuscany, Italy - the article explores the complex processes linked to transition, and tries to contribute to a theory of alternative food networks by representing changes in the farm as an outcome of interaction within hybrid networks through the definition of new codes, cognitive frames, norms, rules and organizational patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing consensus that organic farming is undergoing critical changes as it is integrated into food chains. A situation of 'deadly embrace' between organic and retail chains can be observed and explained by the appropriation of both the alternative values and the economic benefits associated with the organic food production by the 'dominant' actors within the conventional agro-food arena. The case we have analysed underlines the importance for the organic sector to find innovative organisational patterns in order to meet the challenges entailed with the process of growth and development while preserving the authenticity of the values embedded in a traditional - even not organic - production system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: to estimate Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) incidence and prevalence in three Italian Regions (Lazio, Tuscany, and Umbria), using health administrative databases., Design: retrospective population-based study., Setting and Participants: ALS patients residing in Lazio, Umbria, and Tuscany were identified through an algorithm based on three different administrative databases: hospital discharge records, exemptions from health care co-payment, and emergency departments (study period 2014-2019). Crude, age- and gender-specific prevalence were calculated on 31.12.2019 and incidence rates of ALS were standardised by region, year, and gender between 2014-2019. Using a clinical dataset available in the Lazio Region, the proportion of individuals residing in the region correctly identified as ALS cases by the algorithm were calculated., Main Outcomes Measures: prevalence and incidence rates., Results: a total of 1,031 ALS patients (>=18 years) were identified: 408 cases in Tuscany, 546 in Lazio, and 77 in Umbria. ALS standardised prevalence (per 100,000) was similar among regions: 12.31 in Tuscany, 11.52 in Lazio, and 9.90 in Umbria. The 5-year crude rates were higher in men, and in people aged 65-79 years. Among 310 patients included in the clinical dataset, 263 (84.8%) were correctly identified by the algorithm based on health administrative databases., Conclusions: ALS prevalence and incidence in three Central Italy Regions are rather similar, but slightly higher than those previously reported. This finding is plausible, given that previous results relate to at least ten years ago and evidenced increasing trends. Overall, the results of this paper encourage the use of administrative data to produce occurrence estimates, useful to both epidemiological surveillance and research and healthcare policies.

In order to estimate the present situation concerning bacterial resistance to a group of widely-used antibiotics, the results of several antibiograms, which were carried out from October 1984 to February 1985 on bacterial stocks isolated from urinary cultures sent to the Laboratory of Clinical Chemistry at the Campiglia Marittima Hospital U.S.L. 25 (Livorno) have been collected. The bacterial species most frequently observed are Gram-negative, namely: Escherichia coli (54%), Proteus (19%), Klebsiella (13%) and Pseudomonas (9%). E. coli turned out to be particularly sensitive to cephotaxim, phosphomicin, nalidixic acid but only slightly to gentamycin. Klebsiella was very sensitive to cephotaxim, gentamycin and amikacin, while Proteus reacted positively against cephotaxim, aztreonam and oxolinic acid. Pseudomonas was resistant to nearly every antibiotic examined, except amikacin and aztreonam. Overall analysis reveals that cephotaxim an aztreonam are the most active on E. coli, Proteus and Klebsiella, while gentamycin is only slightly.