The processing of actions and-action words in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease with prime conse- quences on the motor function and concomitant cognitive changes, most frequently in the domain of executive functions. Moreover, poorer performance with action-verbs versus object-nouns has been reported in ALS patients, raising the hypothesis that the motor dysfunction deteriorates the semantic representation of actions. Using action-verbs and manipulable-object nouns sharing semantic relationship with the same motor represen- tations, the verb-noun difference was assessed in a group of 21 ALS-patients with severely impaired motor behavior, and compared with a normal sample's performance. ALS-group performed better on nouns than verbs, both in production (action and object naming) and comprehension (word-picture matching). This observation implies that the interpretation of the verb-noun difference in ALS cannot be accounted by the relatedness of verbs to motor representations, but has to consider the role of other semantic and/or morpho- phonological dimensions that distinctively define the two grammatical classes. More- over, this difference in the ALS-group was not greater than the noun-verb difference in the normal sample. The mental representation of actions also involves an executive-control component to organize, in logical/temporal order, the individual motor events (or sub- goals) that form a purposeful action. We assessed this ability with action sequencing tasks, requiring participants to re-construct a purposeful action from the scrambled pre- sentation of its constitutive motor events, shown in the form of photographs or short sentences. In those tasks, ALS-group's performance was significantly poorer than controls'. Thus, the executive dysfunction manifested in the sequencing deficit ebut not the selec- tive verb deficite appears as a consistent feature of the cognitive profile associated with LS. We suggest that ALS can offer a valuable model to study the relationship between (frontal) motor centers and the executive-control machinery housed in the frontal brain, and the implications of executive dysfunctions in tasks such as action processing

Sant’Agabio Resiliente: Inclusione e Solidarietà per l’Ambiente Urbano

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">This paper presents the work of the Politecnico di Milano for the “Together It Can Be Done: Sant’Agabio Resiliente” project funded by the Cariplo foundation (2016). Inspired by the principles of the Transition Towns movement, the study intervenes in a multiethnic neighborhood of the Municipality of Novara with innovative actions that enhance the quality of urban environment. The original contribution of the project was the activation of the resilience of a community that is in the process of rehabilitation with goals of solidarity, inclusiveness, participation, and autonomy for the future. The strategies adopted have allowed the involvement of associations in activities relevant to environmental resilience and the facilitation of concrete actions able to generate empathy.</span></p

Recycling of end-of-life tyres in seismic isolation foundation systems

Over 6.3 million waste tyres are produced annually in New Zealand (Tyrewise, 2021), leading to socioeconomic and environmental concerns. The 2010-11 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence inflicted extensive damage to ~6,000 residential buildings, highlighting the need to improve the seismic resilience of the residential housing sector. A cost-effective and sustainable eco-rubber geotechnical seismic isolation (ERGSI) foundation system for new low-rise buildings was developed by the authors. The ERGSI system integrates a horizontal geotechnical seismic isolation (GSI) layer i.e., a deformable seismic energy dissipative filter made of granulated tyre rubber (GTR) and gravel (G) – and a flexible rubberised concrete raft footing. Geotechnical experimental and numerical investigations demonstrated the effectiveness of the ERGSI system in reducing the seismic demand at the foundation level (i.e., reduced peak ground acceleration) (Hernandez et al., 2019; Tasalloti et al., 2021). However, it is essential to ensure that the ERGSI system has minimal leaching attributes and does not result in long-term negative impacts on the environment

Experimental seismic characterisation of gravel-granulated tyre mixtures and design implications

Worldwide, due to the large amount of end-of-life tyre (ELT) stockpiles, reusing and recycling of ELTs in civil engineering applications have become a priority, significantly contributing to lessen environmental and health issues related to the ever-growing ELT disposal. In this context, in Aotearoa New Zealand, ELT-derived granulated tyre rubber has been blended with gravel and concrete to form synthetic materials for use in the development of “eco-rubber geotechnical seismic-isolation (ERGSI) foundation systems” for medium-density low-rise residential buildings. The specific purpose of the study reported in this paper is to quantify the seismic mitigation provided by different percentage of rubber to gravel to create an optimum energy-dissipative layer placed beneath a fibre-reinforced rubberised concrete raft foundation. To do so, a prototype ERGSI foundation system placed on gravel-rubber layers with 0, 10%, 25%, and 40% of rubber (by volume) were tested in the laboratory by means of impact tests. By using the wave propagation theory and cross power spectral density frequency response function, modal parameters such as the natural frequency and damping ratio of the different layers were obtained. It was found that, at the foundation level, the peak acceleration decreased and the natural frequency increased with increasing the rubber content. This corresponds to an increase in both the damping and seismicisolation effects, confirming the effectiveness of ERGSI systems. Considering also strength and compression requirements under static loads, it is proposed that the optimum seismic dissipative gravel-rubber layer for ERGSI foundation systems should have 25-30% rubber conten

New Urban Scenarios: Sustainability Tools and Components for the Not-Growing Cities

Urban environment is a complex system made by buildings, green areas, empty spaces and city users: this mix through human perception becomes rules, proportions, and spaces. Economic crisis and the phenomena of the shrinking cities push us to face new problems: Is it possible to speak about urban composition without buildings? In addition, in the other hand, can we use un-useful buildings like empty box to build new compositions made by green structures, temporary public spaces and low cost function? The paper will present new tools and key examples in the field of architecture and urbanism facing the problem of the land consumption, resilient cities for the climate changes, and technical apparel for smart cities. The aim is to support the discussion of the regeneration of neglect urban tissues, through common management of the resources, not waiting for a new economic boom

EU Programmes and Urban Public Spaces: some Italian Results

We walk, we breath... we run and our heartbeat goes faster. Just like our body, also the body of the European cities in the last decades has trembled following the rhythm of the EU investments programmes as LIFE, URBACT or similar. Because public spaces are the mirror of a society and follow its rules, the new generation of EU urban programmes have been trying to involve citizens more and more in their planning phase. This article will focus on their development in Italy, presenting some examples where participation, public administration and designers well collaborated during the process, creating or renovating urban spaces devoted to the pedestrians

Creep in timber: research overview and comparison between code provisions

The design of timber beams and joists is often governed by serviceability requirements, i.e., meeting deflection limits over the life of the structure. Since timber is a visco-elastic material, it is subjected to creep when permanent loads are applied. The amount of creep depends on several variables, e.g., load-to-grain angle, moisture content of timber and stress level, which therefore strongly affect the design. This paper presents an overview of the creep properties of timber, including conceptual models of the material, constitutive laws, and analytical approaches proposed by current building codes. The purpose is to provide a link between the advances in terms of experimental results and theoretical formulations to common design calculations. Redirections to the most relevant studies are reported for the reader interested in a more comprehensive knowledge of each specific topic. Finally, the long-term deflection of a Radiata Pine LVL beam calculated by four different procedures specifically according to New Zealand Standard 3603, Eurocode 5 (European code), National Design Specifications for Wood Construction (North-American code) and Toratti’s model is reported. The aforementioned models seem providing consistent results, however the uncertainty in the deflection estimation appears growing in case of more extreme environmental conditions. These discrepancies are believed dependent on how each procedure takes into account the mechano-sorption effect