CONSOLIDATION AND RESTORATION OF HISTORICAL HERITAGE: THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATER IN ROME

Abstract. The recovery and retrofitting techniques adopted for historical structures and archaeological sites face an apparent dichotomy between conservation of constructions and the safety of users. Literatures show several examples where the current day structural safety of historical constructions, gets defined by the nature of past interventions, the compatibility of materials and elements used in retrofitting. The adopted interventions were, in their time, considered innovative, but over the years their compatibility and reversibility leave the historic constructions structurally vulnerable. For these reasons, a careful understanding of the structural systems is fundamental for the implementation of appropriate retrofitting solutions. Especially for monuments and Archaeological sites the objective to be achieved has to be clear, avoiding destructive investigation tests. In this work the instabilities caused by a consolidation intervention on some travertine columns in a sector of the Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as "Colosseum" in Rome, are critically analysed. The current consolidation operations are compared to the previous one. The restoration activity involves in-depth diagnosis process: the historical analysis of the failures and restorations of that area of the Colosseum, a survey of the crack pattern and an indirect investigation on the travertine of the columns. Subsequently the various data coming from the knowledge phase are elaborated, in order to have a correct interpretation of the causes triggering the failure and guide the choice of the most correct retrofitting techniques

SEISMIC VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT OF HISTORICAL URBAN CENTRES: THE CASE STUDY OF CAMPI ALTO DI NORCIA, ITALY

Abstract. Seismic damage assessment is a valuable opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of vulnerability and risk methodologies applied to historic masonry buildings, giving the possibility of enhancing and optimizing mitigation and retrofit strategies. Vulnerability index methodologies are flexible and powerful tools for the seismic assessment at urban scale, able to provide a first screening of the critical issues present in masonry structural aggregates. The different structural features of the buildings, directly and indirectly influencing their structural behaviour, are measured through different weights and scores finally achieving a vulnerability indicator. In the present paper, four different vulnerability index methodologies are applied to the medieval city of Campi Alto di Norcia in Valnerina, Umbria, recently stroke by the 2016 Central Italy earthquakes. The accuracy of the adopted Iv methods is assessed based on the real damages' analysis performed in the surrounding area, comparing results achieved from the application of considered methodologies to direct in-situ observations. Data collected during the 2016 post-earthquake damage surveys and usability assessment, together with the external visual inspections carried out and with the information coming from retrofitting design interventions performed between 1979 and 1997, are used

Seismic vulnerability assessment of historical urban centres: The case study of campi alto di norcia, Italy

Seismic damage assessment is a valuable opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of vulnerability and risk methodologies applied to historic masonry buildings, giving the possibility of enhancing and optimizing mitigation and retrofit strategies. Vulnerability index methodologies are flexible and powerful tools for the seismic assessment at urban scale, able to provide a first screening of the critical issues present in masonry structural aggregates. The different structural features of the buildings, directly and indirectly influencing their structural behaviour, are measured through different weights and scores finally achieving a vulnerability indicator. In the present paper, four different vulnerability index methodologies are applied to the medieval city of Campi Alto di Norcia in Valnerina, Umbria, recently stroke by the 2016 Central Italy earthquakes. The accuracy of the adopted Iv methods is assessed based on the real damages' analysis performed in the surrounding area, comparing results achieved from the application of considered methodologies to direct in-situ observations. Data collected during the 2016 post-earthquake damage surveys and usability assessment, together with the external visual inspections carried out and with the information coming from retrofitting design interventions performed between 1979 and 1997, are used

Penile cancer: prognostic and predictive factors in clinical decision-making

: Penile cancer (PC) is a typical tumor of non-industrialized countries. The incidence is 20-30 times higher in Africa and South America, considering the elevated prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases. Histologically, PC includes squamous cell carcinoma (SCPC), the most frequent, and nonsquamous carcinoma (NSCPC). Early diagnosis is the goal, whereas later diagnosis relates to poor functional outcomes and worse prognosis. The 5-year survival rate is 85% for patients with histologically regional negative lymph nodes, compared to 29%-40% for those with histologically regional positive lymph nodes. To date no new drugs are approved, and there are few new data about molecular mechanisms underlying tumorigenesis. The SCPC remains a rare tumor and the current therapeutic algorithm is based principally on retrospective analysis and less on prospective trials. In this review article, biomarkers of prognosis and efficacy of current treatments are summarized with a focus on those that have the potential to affect treatment decision-making in SCPC

The Promise and Perils of Private Voluntary Regulation: Labor Standards and Work Organization in Two Mexican Garment Factories

This paper is part of a larger project on globalization and labor standards organized by Professor Richard Locke of M.I.T.. In addition to the results presented in this paper (some of which appear as well in Monica Romis, "Beneath Corporate Codes of Conduct: What Drives Compliance in Two Mexican Garment Factories," (Masters Thesis, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, M.I.T., 2005)), the project entailed field research in China, Turkey, Europe and the United States as well as systematic analysis of Nike’s factory audits of working conditions in over 800 factories in 51 countries.What role can private voluntary regulation play in improving labor standards and working conditions in global supply chain factories? How does this system relate to and interact with other systems of labor regulation and work organization? This paper seeks to address these questions through a structured comparison of two factories supplying Nike, the world’s largest athletic footwear and apparel company. These two factories have many similarities - both are in Mexico, both are in the apparel industry, both produce more or less the same products for Nike (and other brands) and both are subject to the same code of conduct. On the surface, both factories appear to have similar employment (i.e., recruitment, training, remuneration) practices and they receive comparable scores when audited by Nike’s compliance staff. However, underlying (and somewhat obscured by) these apparent similarities, significant differences in actual labor conditions exist between these two factories. What drives these differences in working conditions? What does this imply for traditional systems of monitoring and codes of conduct? Field research conducted at these two factories reveals that beneath the code of conduct and various monitoring efforts aimed at enforcing it, workplace conditions and labor standards are shaped by very different patterns of work organization and human resource management policies

Shake-table testing of a stone masonry building aggregate: overview of blind prediction study

City centres of Europe are often composed of unreinforced masonry structural aggregates, whose seismic response is challenging to predict. To advance the state of the art on the seismic response of these aggregates, the Adjacent Interacting Masonry Structures (AIMS) subproject from Horizon 2020 project Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe (SERA) provides shake-table test data of a two-unit, double-leaf stone masonry aggregate subjected to two horizontal components of dynamic excitation. A blind prediction was organized with participants from academia and industry to test modelling approaches and assumptions and to learn about the extent of uncertainty in modelling for such masonry aggregates. The participants were provided with the full set of material and geometrical data, construction details and original seismic input and asked to predict prior to the test the expected seismic response in terms of damage mechanisms, base-shear forces, and roof displacements. The modelling approaches used differ significantly in the level of detail and the modelling assumptions. This paper provides an overview of the adopted modelling approaches and their subsequent predictions. It further discusses the range of assumptions made when modelling masonry walls, floors and connections, and aims at discovering how the common solutions regarding modelling masonry in general, and masonry aggregates in particular, affect the results. The results are evaluated both in terms of damage mechanisms, base shear forces, displacements and interface openings in both directions, and then compared with the experimental results. The modelling approaches featuring Discrete Element Method (DEM) led to the best predictions in terms of displacements, while a submission using rigid block limit analysis led to the best prediction in terms of damage mechanisms. Large coefficients of variation of predicted displacements and general underestimation of displacements in comparison with experimental results, except for DEM models, highlight the need for further consensus building on suitable modelling assumptions for such masonry aggregates

Experimental Assessment of the Cyclic Behaviour of RC-DP Beam to Column Joints

Corrosion represents one of the most important problems affecting the global behaviour of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings; in presence of aggressive environmental conditions reinforcing steel bars, as well as concrete, suffer from relevant modifications of the mechanical performance. Steel rebars show a high decrease of the deformation capacity, with reduction of the elongation to maximum load up to the 50% in case of TempCore® grades. This can cause unexpected brittle failures related to the premature achievement of ultimate rotation or, even worst, shear capacity of structural elements. To mitigate these problems, actual European standards for constructions foresee the adoption of specific precautions such as the increase of concrete strength class, of the concrete cover, of higher diameter; these tools allow to reduce the effects of corrosion without deleting the origin of the matter. During the last years, otherwise, another typology of reinforcing steel–characterized by a typical Dual-Phase (DP) microstructure–was developed with the aim of directly preventing corrosion initiation. Due to their microstructure, in which martensite is embedded in the ferrite matrix, Dual-Phase steels are less exposed to corrosion; on the other hand, being characterized by a not-defined yielding stress-strain plateau, specific rules need to be elaborated for their employment in civil applications. In the present paper, the experimental test campaign performed on reinforced concrete internal and external joints with Dual-Phase steel rebars is deeply described together with results’ critical discussion. The paper is preparatory for the elaboration of technical models to be used in the design of RC-DP structures

A 4 N-QAM ADAPTIVE DECISION DEVICE TO MITIGATE I/Q IMBALANCE AND IMPAIRMENTS CAUSED BY TIME-VARYING FLAT FADING CHANNELS

Abstract. In this work, we propose an adaptive decision device based on a Kohonen network that can automatically generate the classes associated with each symbol of a 4 n-QAM in the presence of nonlinearities caused by the I/Q imbalance and additive Gaussian white noise, being also capable of compensating phase and gain variations produced by a time-varying flat-fading channel. Our proposal can achieve optimality in the maximum-likelihood sense with a small computational cost. Furthermore, due to the tracking ability inherent to the devised scheme, there is no need for an automatic gain controller or a phase-locked loop

An improved seismic vulnerability assessment approach for historical urban centres: The case study of campi alto di norcia, Italy

Seismic damage assessment is an extraordinary opportunity to evaluate the reliability of vulnerability and risk methodologies applied to historic masonry buildings, giving the possibility of enhancing and optimising mitigation and retrofit strategies. Vulnerability index methodologies are flexible and powerful tools for assessing seismic vulnerability on the urban scale, providing a first screening of the critical issues present in masonry buildings and a possible priority list for the following retrofit operations. Such approaches account for the buildings’ different structural characteristics, directly or indirectly influencing their seismic behaviour and measured through different weights and classes finally providing a vulnerability index. In this paper, we show the application of three well-known methodologies to Campi Alto di Norcia’s medieval city in Valnerina (Italy) stroke by the earthquakes of 24 August and 30 October 2016. The methodologies’ reliability is assessed, based on the observation of real seismic consequences and damages on the masonry buildings, and an optimised methodology is then proposed for the considered case study