Rehabilitation of building affected by the Ecuador s earthquake of 16 april 2016 in the ULEAM

After the earthquake of April 16, 2016 in Ecuador, the first building to be rehabilitated was the Faculty of Computer Science Campus of the University Laica Eloy Alfaro of Manabi (ULEAM), which had moderate damage in the walls due They were not straight and severe damage to the walls of the tier. For Reconstruction these walls were replaced that were made of block or brick with plaster walls flexible and lightweight. In this article it is presented the good behavior plaster walls had in contrast to the brick or block walls, detailing also, some constructive aspects on the correct way of installing. Finally, UN Spectral analysis of the structure was performed using the spectrum of the earthquake of April 16, 2016, magnitude 7.8, obtained in Manta. In the studied structure, lateral displacements and floors drifts were found. To associate with the latter value with the nonexistence of structural damage and solo moderate damage in the masonry of the classrooms and offices and Severe in the stands. Subsequently a new seismic analysis was made considering weight reduction by changing the material of the walls, determining the best seismic behavior UN

Reducing Crowding by Weakening Inhibitory Lateral Interactions in the Periphery with Perceptual Learning

We investigated whether lateral masking in the near-periphery, due to inhibitory lateral interactions at an early level of central visual processing, could be weakened by perceptual learning and whether learning transferred to an untrained, higher-level lateral masking known as crowding. The trained task was contrast detection of a Gabor target presented in the near periphery (4°) in the presence of co-oriented and co-aligned high contrast Gabor flankers, which featured different target-to-flankers separations along the vertical axis that varied from 2λ to 8λ. We found both suppressive and facilitatory lateral interactions at target-to-flankers distances (2λ - 4λ and 8λ, respectively) that were larger than those found in the fovea. Training reduces suppression but does not increase facilitation. Most importantly, we found that learning reduces crowding and improves contrast sensitivity, but has no effect on visual acuity (VA). These results suggest a different pattern of connectivity in the periphery with respect to the fovea as well as a different modulation of this connectivity via perceptual learning that not only reduces low-level lateral masking but also reduces crowding. These results have important implications for the rehabilitation of low-vision patients who must use peripheral vision to perform tasks, such as reading and refined figure-ground segmentation, which normal sighted subjects perform in the fovea