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Sensitivity analysis applied to Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) as well as to other types of empirical ecological models allows assessing the importance of environmental predictive variables in affecting species distribution or other target variables. However, approaches that only consider values of the environmental variables that are likely to be observed in real-world conditions, given the underlying ecological relationships with other variables, have not yet been proposed. Here, a constrained sensitivity analysis procedure is presented, which evaluates the importance of the environmental variables considering only their plausible changes, thereby exploring only ecological meaningful scenarios. To demonstrate the procedure, we applied it to an ANN model predicting fish species richness, as identifying relationships between environmental variables and fish species occurrence in river ecosystems is a recurring topic in freshwater ecology. Results showed that several environmental variables played a less relevant role in driving the model output when that sensitivity analysis allowed them to vary only within an ecologically meaningful range of values, i.e. avoiding values that the model would never handle in its practical applications. By comparing percent changes in MSE between constrained and unconstrained sensitivity analysis, the relative importance of environmental variables was found to be different, with habitat descriptors and urbanization factors that played a more relevant role according to the constrained procedure. The ecologically constrained procedure can be applied to any sensitivity analysis method for ANNs, but obviously it can also be applied to other types of empirical ecological models.

Gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) production is a highly valued aquaculture industry in Europe. The presence of skeletal deformities in farmed gilthead seabream represents a major bottleneck for the industry leading to economic losses, negative impacts on the consumers’ perception of aquaculture, and animal welfare issues for the fish. Although past work has primarily focused on the hatchery phase to reduce the incidence of skeletal anomalies, this work targets the successive pre-ongrowing phase in which more severe anomalies affecting the external shape often arise. This work aimed to test the effects of: (i) larger and smaller tank volumes, stocked at the same density; and (ii) higher and lower stocking densities maintained in the same water volume, on the skeleton of gilthead seabream fingerlings reared for ~63 days at a pilot scale. Experimental rearing was conducted with gilthead seabream juveniles (~6.7 ± 2.5 g), which were selected as ‘non-deformed’ based on external inspection, stocked at three different densities (Low Density (LD): 5 kg/m3; Medium Density (MD): 10 kg/m3; High Density (HD): 20 kg/m3) in both 500 L and 1000 L tanks. Gilthead seabream were sampled for growth performance and radiographed to assess the skeletal elements at the beginning and end of the experimental trial. Results revealed that (i) LD fish were significantly longer than HD fish, although there were no differences in final weights, regardless of the water volume; (ii) an increase in the prevalence of seabream exhibiting cranial and vertebral axis anomalies was found to be associated with increased density. These results suggest that farmers can significantly reduce the presence of some cranial and axis anomalies affecting pre-ongrown gilthead seabream by reducing the stocking density.

Carlo Antoni belongs to the crowded and well-known rank of Croces followers. While continuing to be grateful to Croce, he starts distancing himself from him in his Commentary to Croce (1955). He thus engages himself in the neo-Natural Law path and forges his own liberal-democratic conception of the society and of the State. Making the curtain between ethics and politics permeable, he tries to draw together, in a dialectical way, these two moments. In this light he reads Rousseau and his concept of \"General Will\". The Geneva philosopher seems to him a strong link in the theoretical chain of \"Ethical state\", starting from Hob- bes and, through Fichte and Hegel, progressing to Gentile. Antoni's position was not deemed noteworthy by the majority of post-gentilian disciples, but also by the large crowd of the intellectuals once faithful to Actualism and, later on, en- thousiast Marxist converts. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Phytoplankton primary production is a key oceanographic process. It has relationships with marine-food-web dynamics, the global carbon cycle and Earth's climate. The study of phytoplankton production on a global scale relies on indirect approaches due to the difficulties of field campaigns. Modeling approaches require in situ data for calibration and validation. In fact, the need for more phytoplankton primary-production data was highlighted several times during the last decades. Most of the available primary-production datasets are scattered in various repositories, reporting heterogeneous information and missing records. We decided to retrieve field measurements of marine phytoplankton production from several sources and create a homogeneous and ready-to-use dataset. We handled missing data and added variables related to primary production which were not present in the original datasets. Subsequently, we performed a general analysis highlighting the relationships between the variables from a numerical and an ecological perspective. Data paucity is one of the main issues hindering the comprehension of complex natural processes. We believe that an updated and improved global dataset, complemented by an analysis of its characteristics, can be of interest to anyone studying marine phytoplankton production and the processes related to it. The dataset described in this work is published in the PANGAEA repository (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932417) (Mattei and Scardi, 2021).

In the last few decades, many tensions have developed around university as an institution. Once a flywheel for climbing the social ladder, the academic enterprise seems to have lost its relevance as a vehicle for social and economic mobility. No reform has succeeded over time in solving those fundamental problems which impede the university to function as a \"transmission belt\", as Louis Althusser would say. Tensions have grown around every aspect of the functions, operations and \"structure\" of the university: the organization, the recruitment of administrative and scholarly personnel, governance, curriculum, teaching practices, and institutional goals and priorities. Everyone calls for a meritocratic higher education system while claiming indignation about the current state of affairs. This article tries to re-construct–etsi Marx non daretur–the plot between the current form of the capital and its superstructural reflexes, particularly in Italy. And it wonders whether the recent rise in the return on capital in today's economy is connected, if at all, with the concomitant social erosion of the university's place in society. Keywords. return on capital, meritocracy, university, reform, ndignation

The Grozio's sentence \"etsi Deus non daretur\" has many interpretations: studying the relationship between faith and reason, between religiosity and laicism, etc., is necessary to question why the occidental culture excludes God from public consciousness. Beyond the indoctrination, the text hopes epistemological analysis - able to master the rules of speech and the logic of language - about the presence of God in the pedagogical discourse. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

For the first Jesuits, the Peruvian Province has been a place of experimentation of educational practices and inculturation. The presence of a culture as complex as that of the Incas posed to the Society some crucial theological and political problems. To solve these problems, some of its members undertook grammatical, anthropological and historical studies that are still essential for understanding the peoples of the Andes. Among these studies, they are to be counted those of José de Acosta (1540-1600), who was provincial of Peru, and Blas Valera (1544- 1597?/1619?), first Jesuit mestizo to be ordained a priest. Both were opposed to the policy of forced conversion of the Indios, but they proposed two different ways to educate the natives to Christianity. This paper aims at investigating the plots of these pathways, understanding them as two pedagogies strategically different, but not in opposition to each other.