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COVID-19 pandemic had a great impact on mental health, both in the general population and psychiatric patients. Little is known about the difference between these two populations in perceiving the pandemic as a traumatic event. The aim of the study was to compare psychiatric patients and healthy controls (HC) in terms of change over time of post-traumatic (PTSD) symptoms. Demographic and clinical variables were collected. Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R) scores were registered at T1 as lockdown period (March–April 2020) and T2 as restarting (May–June 2020). Descriptive analyses and linear regression models were performed. A total of 166 outpatients and 57 HC were recruited. Time (F = 15.76; p < 0.001) and diagnosis (F = 4.94; p < 0.001) had a significant effect on the change of IES-R scores, which resulted T1 > T2 (p < 0.001), except for subjects affected by Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Overall, IES-R scores were < in patients than in HC (p = 0.02), particularly in the schizophrenia (SKZ) subgroup (p < 0.001). IES-R scores of subjects with personality disorders (PDs) resulted to be > HC, although not statistically significant. The lockdown period was perceived as more traumatic than the reopening phase by both groups, with the exception of OCD patients, probably because of the clinical worsening associated with the urge of control against risks of contamination. Overall, HC reported more PTSD symptoms than psychiatric patients did, particularly SKZ ones. PD patients, in contrast, may be more vulnerable to PTSD symptoms probably as a result of poor coping skills. Together with OCD patients, subjects with PDs may need closer monitoring during the different phases of the pandemic. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04694482.

The advent of intra-nasal esketamine (ESK), one of the first so called fast-acting antidepressant, promises to revolutionize the management of treatment resistant depression (TRD). This NMDA receptor antagonist has proven to be rapidly effective in the short- and medium-term course of the illness, revealing its potential in targeting response in TRD. Although many TRD ESK responders are able to achieve remission, a considerable portion of them undergo a metamorphosis of their depression into different clinical presentations, characterized by instable responses and high recurrence rates that can be considered closer to the concept of Difficult to Treat Depression (DTD) than to TRD. The management of these DTD patients usually requires a further complex multidisciplinary approach and can benefit from the valuable contribution of new personalized medicine tools such as therapeutic drug monitoring and pharmacogenetics. Despite this, these patients usually come with long and complex previous treatments history and, often, advanced and sophisticated ongoing pharmacological schemes that can make the finding of new alternative options to face the current recurrences extremely challenging. In this paper, we describe two DTD patients—already receiving intranasal ESK but showing an instable course—who were clinically stabilized by the association with minocycline, a semisynthetic second-generation tetracycline with known and promising antidepressant properties.

Critical thinking is recognized as key in any society. However, the Ugandan system of education is not helping students to become critical thinkers; the education is superficial and uncritically based on rote learning. The main objective of this study was to investigate and document how Ugandan secondary school teachers could be supported in explicitly pursuing the goal of fostering students’ critical thinking. This professional development action research showed that the instructional support coaching system con- tributed to enhancing the teachers’ professional and pedagogical capacity, led them to transform their in- structional planning process, and shifted their beliefs with regard to curricula and learning theories.

SARS-CoV-2 infection causes a pulmonary disease (COVID-19) which spread worldwide generating fear, anxiety, depression in the general population as well as among subjects affected by mental disorders. Little is known about which different psychopathological changes the pandemic caused among individuals affected by different psychiatric disorders, which represents the aim of the present study. Specific psychometric scales were administered at three time points: T0 as outbreak of pandemic, T1 as lockdown period, T2 as reopening. Descriptive analyses and linear regression models were performed. A total of 166 outpatients were included. Overall, psychometric scores showed a significant worsening at T1 with a mild improvement at T2. Only psychopathology in schizophrenia (SKZ) patients and obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms did not significantly improve at T2. Subjects affected by personality disorders (PDs) resulted to be more compromised in terms of general psychopathology than depressed and anxiety/OC ones, and showed more severe anxiety symptoms than SKZ patients. In conclusion, subjects affected by PDs require specific clinical attention during COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the worsening of SKZ and OC symptoms should be strictly monitored by clinicians, as these aspects did not improve with the end of lockdown measures. Further studies on larger samples are needed to confirm our results. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04694482

The history of international thought has been one of the most significant developments within International Relations (IR) during the past twenty years. Scholars have transformed the canonical understanding of the discipline, presenting a much more accurate account of its origins, consolidation and evolution. This essay focuses on a controversial author as Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975). Indeed, he was an heterodox historian who has also offered innovative but eccentric interpretations in the field of IR. This essay examines the tangled up relationship between history and international relations in Toynbee’s works in order to underline his limits and describe his legacy.

During Phase VIII (2009-2013) of the ECPGR Programme, its Brassica Working Group (BWG) decided to focus the attention of all members on the priority actions represented by the development of AEGIS (A European Genebank Integrated System), and to characterize collections both of B. rapa, which could be defined as a multicrop species for its multiple utilization, and of wild Brassica species (n=9) distributed in the Mediterranean basin. The activities planned are being carried out by DISPA-University of Catania (UNICT), the Centre for Genetic Resources (CGN), Wageningen, the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture of Cordoba (CSIC-Spain), and N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR), St Petersburg. The activity plan and first results obtained are presented and discussed.

AFLP markers were used to characterize diversity and asses the genetic structure among 17 accessions of kale landraces, cultivars and wild populations from Europe. The range of average gene diversity in accessions was 0.11–0.27. Several landraces showed higher levels of diversity than the wild populations and one cultivar had the lowest diversity measures. The landraces that were most genetically diverse were from areas where kales are known to be extensively grown, suggesting in situ conservation in these areas as a supplement to storage of seeds in gene banks. An analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed that 62% of the total variation was found within accessions. For most accessions, genetic distance was not related to geographic distance. Similarities among accessions were probably not caused by recent gene flow since they were widely separated geographically; more likely the relationship among them is due to seed dispersal through human interactions. Our results indicate that a kale population found in a natural habitat in Denmark was probably not truly wild but most likely an escape from a cultivated Danish kale that had subsequently become naturalized.

Una delle più importanti novità, apportate con la riforma del diritto societario in Italia (D. Lgs. 6 febbraio 2004 n. 37), è rappresentata dalla possibilità di scegliere, per le società per azioni, tra tre modelli di amministrazione e controllo: il modello tradizionale e due nuove forme mutuate dall’esperienza straniera il modello dualistico (di derivazione tedesca) e il modello monistico (di derivazione anglosassone). Dalla fine degli anni ’90 il legislatore italiano ha operato ammodernando il nostro diritto societario con l’obiettivo di rendere maggiormente competitive, anche a livello internazionale, le nostre aziende. Perseguendo lo stesso obiettivo, nell’ambito dell’organizzazione degli Intermediari Finanziari, la Banca d’Italia, nel 1993, ha aggiornato il Testo Unico Bancario (T.U.B.), a cui è seguita la nascita della legge sulla tutela del risparmio (n. 262 del 2005). Nell’ambito della nostra ricerca ci occuperemo, in primis, dell’analisi del modello Dualistico (o Duale), della sua composizione, analizzandone, principalmente, pregi e difetti. In particolare ci soffermeremo sull’osservazione dei tratti peculiari del sistema dualistico italiano, diversi dalle originarie caratteristiche dell’organizzazione dualistica tedesca. Andremo inoltre ad analizzare tale modello in ambito bancario e vedremo come l’applicazione d’esso abbia riscosso particolare successo nei sistemi di amministrazione e controllo delle grandi S.p.A. bancarie. Per fare qualche esempio: Intesa-San Paolo, Mediobanca, Ubi Banca e Banco Popolare hanno tutte scelto il modello Dualistico di governance. Oltre, dunque, ad analizzare le motivazione di tale scelta da parte di ciascuno degli Istituti succitati (tra i più grandi poli bancari nazionali) analizzeremo i più importanti testi legislativi bancari che si sono occupati di governo societario nonchè i documenti di consultazione e le “disposizioni di vigilanza in materia di organizzazione e governo societario delle banche” illustrate dal