Low visuospatial abilities and symptoms of depression

Nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) seem to be associated to depression and emotional distress. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between low visuospatial performance (highly related to NLD) and the depressive symptoms in middle and high school children. Two visuospatial questionnaires (SVS and QDS) and the CDI were administered to 202 children (95 males and 107 females) ranging from 6 th to 8 th grade. The results showed a significant, although not particularly high, relationship between low visuospatial ability and the presence of depressive symptoms. In particular, participants with low visuospatial abilities seemed to have more depressive symptoms

Luoghi di affezione

Economic literature devotes very little space to the final stages of the production/distribution/consumption cycle. Even schools of accounting and business administration do not pay much attention to small-scale distribution, local retailers and various forms of trade in public areas. The author of this paper analyses the relations of proximity established in this type of transactions, where ethical motivations are coupled with aesthetic needs

Luoghi di affezione

Economic literature devotes very little space to the final stages of the production/distribution/consumption cycle. Even schools of accounting and business administration do not pay much attention to small-scale distribution, local retailers and various forms of trade in public areas. The author of this paper analyses the relations of proximity established in this type of transactions, where ethical motivations are coupled with aesthetic needs

A framework for comfort assessment in buildings and districts retrofit process

The retrofit design of buildings and districts cannot exclude the occupants’ perspective if comfortable and healthy conditions have to be obtained. For this reason, the NewTREND1 project developed a collaborative platform for the energy efficient buildings and districts retrofit that includes the users’ perspective. Three modules have been developed for thermal comfort, acoustic comfort and behavioural assessment. These modules are integrated into a Simulation and Design Hub that, after gathering data from on-site measurements, builds a simulation model of the district, calculates yearly results and exposes them to the design team through a dedicated District Information Model server and user interfaces. These modules perform deep investigations on the occupants’ sensation and behaviour, based on both measured and simulated datasets and provide comparisons of comfort performances, considering different retrofit scenarios and related uncertainties. In details, the thermal comfort module performs analysis according to both predictive and adaptive models, evaluates the variability around the design conditions together with sensitivity analysis that highlights which parameters are the most critical for the retrofit design. The acoustic module provides a complete tool to predict and assess the indoor acoustic comfort, taking into account the performance of building envelope and the impact of district noise. Finally, the behavioural module empowers the building energy simulation with co-simulation capabilities that reproduces the real occupants’ behaviours in relation to comfort conditions. The final goal of the framework is to support the decision-making process in selecting the optimal retrofit option that achieves the targeted energy efficiency without infringing the occupant’s expectation in terms of comfort and well-being

Solution Structure of CopC

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Structural characterization of intrinsically disordered proteins by NMR spectroscopy.

Recent advances in NMR methodology and techniques allow the structural investigation of biomolecules of increasing size with atomic resolution. NMR spectroscopy is especially well-suited for the study of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) which are in general highly flexible and do not have a well-defined secondary or tertiary structure under functional conditions. In the last decade, the important role of IDPs in many essential cellular processes has become more evident as the lack of a stable tertiary structure of many protagonists in signal transduction, transcription regulation and cell-cycle regulation has been discovered. The growing demand for structural data of IDPs required the development and adaption of methods such as 13C-direct detected experiments, paramagnetic relaxation enhancements (PREs) or residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) for the study of 'unstructured' molecules in vitro and in-cell. The information obtained by NMR can be processed with novel computational tools to generate conformational ensembles that visualize the conformations IDPs sample under functional conditions. Here, we address NMR experiments and strategies that enable the generation of detailed structural models of IDPs

Neutrino Mixing and Oscillations in Quantum Field Theory

We show that the generator of field mixing transformations in Quantum Field Theory induces a non trivial structure in the vacuum which turns out to be a coherent state, both for bosons and for fermions, although with a different condensate structure. The Fock space for mixed fields is unitarily inequivalent to the Fock space of the massive (free) fields in the infinite volume limit. As a practical application we study neutrino mixing and oscillations. A new oscillation formula is found where the oscillation amplitude is depressed, with respect to the usual one, by a factor which is momentum and mass dependent. In the relativistic limit, the usual formula is recovered. We finally discuss in some detail phenomenological features of the modified oscillation formula.Comment: 13 pages, LaTex + 1 figure. Talk given at the XIXth International Conference on Particle Physics and Astrophysics in the Standard Model and Beyond, Bystra, Poland, September 19-26, 199

Measuring Occupants' Behaviour for Buildings' Dynamic Cosimulation

Measuring and identifying human behaviours are key aspects to support the simulation processes that have a significant role in buildings' (and cities') design and management. In fact, layout assessments and control strategies are deeply influenced by the prediction of building performance. However, the missing inclusion of the human component within the building-related processes leads to large discrepancies between actual and simulated outcomes. This paper presents a methodology for measuring specific human behaviours in buildings and developing human-in-the-loop design applied to retrofit and renovation interventions. The framework concerns the detailed building monitoring and the development of stochastic and data-driven behavioural models and their coupling within energy simulation software using a cosimulation approach. The methodology has been applied to a real case study to illustrate its applicability. A one-year monitoring has been carried out through a dedicated sensor network for the data recording and to identify the triggers of users' actions. Then, two stochastic behavioural models (i.e., one for predicting light switching and one for window opening) have been developed (using the measured data) and coupled within the IESVE simulation software. A simplified energy model of the case study has been created to test the behavioural approach. The outcomes highlight that the behavioural approach provides more accurate results than a standard one when compared to real profiles. The adoption of behavioural profiles leads to a reduction of the discrepancy with respect to real profiles up to 58% and 26% when simulating light switching and ventilation, respectively, in comparison to standard profiles. Using data-driven techniques to include the human component in the simulation processes would lead to better predictions both in terms of energy use and occupants' comfort sensations. These aspects can be also included in building control processes (e.g., building management systems) to enhance the environmental and system management

Physical Chemistry of Chloroquine Permeation through the Cell Membrane with Atomistic Detail

We provide a molecular-level description of the thermodynamics and mechanistic aspects of drug permeation through the cell membrane. As a case study, we considered the antimalaria FDA approved drug chloroquine. Molecular dynamics simulations of the molecule (in its neutral and protonated form) were performed in the presence of different lipid bilayers, with the aim of uncovering key aspects of the permeation process, a fundamental step for the drug’s action. Free energy values obtained by well-tempered metadynamics simulations suggest that the neutral form is the only permeating protomer, consistent with experimental data. H-bond interactions of the drug with water molecules and membrane headgroups play a crucial role for permeation. The presence of the transmembrane potential, investigated here for the first time in a drug permeation study, does not qualitatively affect these conclusions

Il Grigoriu del manoscritto Vat. Gr. 2252. Saggio di edizione di un importante testo salentino del Trecento

EnIn this paper, a chapter of an Old Salentino medieval text is edited and analyzed, for the first time, as a source of linguistic information. The so-colled Grigoriu is an anonymous vernacular translation of the Tetrastichae Sententiae, a 4th century Greek poetic work by Gregory of Nazianzus. The Old Salentino translation, written in the Greek alphabet, survives in a unique manuscript, the codex Vaticano Greco 2252, copied in Terra d'Otranto around the 1330s. The Sententiae are here translated along with the commentary on the text by Nicola / Nilo Dossapatre, written in the 12th century. A linguistic analysis shows the importance of the data provided by the Vatican manuscript for the reconstruction of the historical grammar of the Salentino dialects.ItSi fornisce per la prima volta un significativo saggio di edizione del cosiddetto Grigoriu, anonimo volgarizzamento salentino delle Tetrastichae Sententiae di Gregorio Nazianzeno e del relativo commento di Nicola/Nilo Dossapatre. Il testo, scritto in caratteri greci, è trasmesso unicamente dal manoscritto Vaticano Greco 2252, copiato in Terra d'Otranto intorno agli anni '30 del Trecento. L'analisi linguistica del saggio di edizione punta a mettere in luce la centralità dei dati forniti da questo testo per la ricostruzione della grammatica storica dei dialetti salentini