Introduction: arguing about the stars on the southern side of the confessional divide.

Arguing about the stars has rarely been more controversial and dangerous than in the early modern period in Europe, especially in Catholic countries, in a time when old and novel conceptions of the heavens, planetary models and theories of celestial motions and influences were intensely debated, revised and scrutinized for philosophical soundness and religious conformity. In the hundred years or so that witnessed the birth and censorship of the Copernican theory; the execution in Rome of the most passionate defender of post-Copernican cosmology, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), and the rise and fall of Galileo Galilei's (1564-1642) fame linked to his novel interpretation of the book of nature, the Catholic Church created some of the most powerful instruments of cultural control and educational conformity ever seen: the Inquisition, the Index of Forbidden Books and the vast network of Jesuit schools that spread from Rome and the Iberian peninsula across the globe.

Cesare Cremonini's non-theological cosmology: a contribution to Padua's secular culture in times of wars of religion.

This essay deals with the cultural-political motivations behind the cosmological conceptions of the Padua Aristotelian Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631). A defender of the interests of the university against Jesuit teachings, and one of the philosophers who was most frequently scrutinized by the Inquisition, he was an important actor in Venetian cultural politics during the years of European religious conflict that culminated in the Thirty Years War. In those years, he was officially titled 'protector' of the multi-confessional German Nation of Artists, one of the largest groups of foreign students at the University of Padua, and had to act as mediator in cases of conflict.

Hydrogeological Knowledge from Below: Water Expertise as a Republican Common in Early-Modern Venice.

This essay looks at early-modern Venice hydroculture as a case of episteme from below. The forms of water knowledge it developed were multilayered and collective in their essence and solidly rested on a social experiential basis that was rooted in labour (especially fishing) and practices (especially water surveying and engineering). In accordance with the city's republican esprit (and correspondent political values), its episteme emerged as the encounter and negotiation between various institutions and groups: the fishermen of San Niccolò in Venice, the practitioners of the water magistrature and political authorities.

On the nomenclatural status of some species of Haplotaxidae (Clitellata) from Guinea.

Our attention was recently drawn to a problem of homonymy with Villiersia d'Orbigny, 1837, a nudibranch genus, posed by Villiersia Omodeo, 1987, an oligochaete genus of the family Haplotaxidae described from the Segea cave near Kindia, Guinea (Omodeo 1987). Examination of this case of homonymy has revived an old nomenclatural issue that dates back to 1958 when several taxa of the family Haplotaxidae were first proposed in a work on the oligochaete fauna of Mount Nimba (West Africa) (Omodeo 1958). A re-examination of the nomenclatural history of these taxa shows that subsequent nomenclatural interpretations made by some were unjustified, leading to a confusing situation.

Down-titration of omalizumab in a patient with chronic spontaneous urticaria.

Omalizumab was demonstrated to be effective in patients with chronic urticaria resistant to antihistamines and is recommended as an add-on, third line treatment for such subjects. This article reports the history of a patient affected by chronic spontaneous urticaria, unresponsive to antihistamines, who received omalizumab, according to a personalized schedule. Prolonged administration of low dosage drug provided a good and long-lasting control of symptoms.