MOVE: a fun Playground

“Most people, talking of their happiest childhood experiences, will describe places that were wild, overgrown, mysterious, hidden from adult eyes; trees where they built houses, undergrowth where they created smugglers' passages, dumps where they could find scraps of wood and empty boxes. Rarely if ever will their treasured memories revolve around schoolyards or parks or other formal spaces provided for play.” (Cooper, 1970) The objec/ve of MOVE is to revamp the Sant’Agos/no primary school to meet the needs of the pupils, recognizing that the physical condi/ons of educa/onal buildings significantly influence the effec/veness of educa/on (Al et al., 2012). It is widely acknowledged that during the forma/ve years of children, a diverse range of experiences promotes independent learning and enhances cogni/ve development (Cooper, 1970; Bruni et al., 2018). Therefore, the learning spaces must be designed based on a thorough understanding of children's development to s/mulate interac/on, imagina/on, and diversity (Dudek, 2014). The school's architecture should enable pupils to have the freedom to be crea/ve and take ownership of their development, with minimal interference from adults, but under adequate supervision to ensure safety, known as "freedom within limits" (Cooper, 1970; Plummer, 1987). The proposal is centred on the spaces of movement, specifically the connec/on spaces, which should serve as areas for expanding tradi/onal learning. Our proposal redefines these spaces as not just connec/ons but as interac/ve spaces. The new spa/al configura/on shirs the focus from a frontal learning approach to an explora/ve one, providing every individual with the opportunity to grow based on their own inclina/on. The tradi/onal courtyard is transformed into a square, which serves as a fun playground for the en/re school community. The slides, which connect the two floors of the school via the staircases and courtyard, serve as a visual representa/on of MOVE's principles. Simultaneously, they func/on as machines that place pupils at the focal point of their educa/onal experience. These slides are inspired by Carsten Höller's “Test Site” (2006) installa/on at the Tate Modern in London, which sought to introduce a sense of playfulness into architectural design. Höller's installa/on raised two main ques/ons: “How might a daily dose of sliding affect the way we perceive the world? Can slides become part of our experien/al and architectural life?” (Tate, 2006). According to Höller, the installa/on created “a laboratory of doubt” that challenged spectators and provided them with breath-taking sensa/ons as they tumbled down the slide amidst the exis/ng space. The slides installa/on serves as a space where both users and spectators play a crucial role, with Höller himself sta/ng, "I've come to realize that the real material in my art is the spectators" (Höller et al). As the slides connect different floors, they create a playful moment of sharing, enabling pupils to redesign and re-appropriate the space collabora/vely, placing the experience of the space at the centre of their learning. The classrooms are now openly designed with large and transparent door frames. Through the corridors, interfaces between the inside and outside, classrooms could expand to the outside area fostering innova/ve ac/ons. (Bruni at al., 2018). Classrooms are manifold rather than singular, incomplete rather than cellular, and overlapping rather than serial. (Plummer 1987) The corridors, which once played an ancillary role, have been reimagined as spaces for interac/on. The new layout entails a flexible and mul/faceted playground, which children will remember, and which will have a posi/ve impact on their growth as adults during their crucial developmental years. Given the urban, central loca/on of the Sant'Agos/no primary school, we believe that our proposal will have a significant impact in revitalizing the old Civitanova Alta conserva/on project. As an open space, the school's courtyard will serve as an extension of the town's open spaces system, par/cularly the Piazza della Libertà, Corso Annibal Caro, and Via Guglielmo Oberdan. Likewise, the educa/on building will be situated at the heart of both the pupils' learning experience and the town's social and civic life.Peer reviewe

X Inactivation Lessons from Differentiating Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

X chromosome inactivation (XCI) is the dosage compensation mechanism that evolved in female mammals to correct the genetic imbalance of X-linked genes between sexes. X chromosome inactivation occurs in early development when one of the two X chromosomes of females is nearly-completely silenced. Differentiating Embryonic Stem cells (ESC) are regarded as a useful tool to study XCI, since they recapitulate many events occurring during early development. In this review we aim to summarise the advances in the field and to discuss the close connection between cell differentiation and X chromosome inactivation, with a particular focus on mouse ESCs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12015-015-9597-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Broadband solid-state MAS NMR of paramagnetic systems.

The combination of new magnet and probe technology with increasingly sophisticated pulse sequences has resulted in an increase in the number of applications of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to paramagnetic materials and biomolecules. The interaction between the paramagnetic metal ions and the NMR-active nuclei often yields crucial structural or electronic information about the system. In particular the application of magic-angle spinning (MAS) has been shown to be crucial to obtaining resolution that is sufficiently high for studying complex systems. However such systems are generally extremely difficult to study as the shifts and shift anisotropies resulting from the same paramagnetic interaction broaden the spectrum beyond excitation and detection, and the paramagnetic relaxation enhancement (PRE) shortens the lifetimes of the excited signals considerably. One specific area that has therefore been receiving significant attention in recent years, and for which great improvements have been seen, is the development of broadband NMR sequences. The development of new excitation and inversion sequences for paramagnetic systems under MAS has often made the difference between the spectrum being unobtainable, and a complete NMR study being possible. However the development of the new sequences must explicitly take account of the modulation of the anisotropic shift interactions due to the sample rotation, with the resulting spin dynamics often being complicated considerably. The NMR sequences can either be helped or hindered by MAS, with the efficiency of some pulse schemes being destroyed, and others being greatly enhanced. This review describes the pulse sequences that have recently been proposed for broadband excitation, inversion, and refocussing of the signal components of paramagnetic systems. In doing so we define exactly what is meant by "broadband" under spinning conditions, and what the perfect pulse scheme should deliver. We also give a unified description of the spin dynamics under MAS which highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the various schemes, and which can be used as guidance for future research in this area. All the reviewed pulse schemes are evaluated both with simulations and experimental data obtained on the battery material LiFe(0.5)Mn(0.5)PO(4) which is typical of the complexity of the paramagnetic systems that are currently under study.A.J.P. was supported by the LABEX iMUST (ANR-10-LABX-0064) of the Université de Lyon, within the program Investissements d’Avenir (ANR-11-IDEX-0007) operated by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions Initial Training Networks (ITN)) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013/ under REA grant agreement No. 317127, the “pNMR” project.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079656514000910#

MEASURING RESILIENT COMMUNITIES : An analytical and predictive tool

© 2022 and published by the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA), Hong Kong. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://caadria2022.org/measuring_resilient_communities_an_analytical_and_predictive_tool/This work presents the initial results of an analytical tool designed to quantitatively assess the level of resilience of urban areas. We use Deep Neural Networks to extract features of resilience from a trained model that classifies urban areas using a pre-assigned value range of resilience. The model returns the resilience value for any urban area, indicating the distance between the centre of the selected area and relevant typologies, including green areas, buildings, natural elements and infrastructures. Our tool also indicates the urban morphological characteristics that have a larger impact on the resilience score. In this way we can learn why a neighbourhood is successful (or not) and how to improve its level of resilience. The model employs Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) with Keras on Tensorflow for the computation. The outputs are loaded onto a Node.JS environment and bootstrapped with React.js to generate the online demo.Final Accepted Versio

Accelerated tests on Si and SiC power transistors with thermal, fastand ultra-fast neutrons

Neutron test campaigns on silicon (Si) and silicon carbide (SiC) power MOSFETs and IGBTs were conducted at the TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics) Mark II (Pavia, Italy) nuclear reactor and ChipIr-ISIS Neutron and Muon Source (Didcot, U.K.) facility. About 2000 power transistors made by STMicroelectronics were tested in all the experiments. Tests with thermal and fast neutrons (up to about 10 MeV) at the TRIGA Mark II reactor showed that single-event burnout (SEB) failures only occurred at voltages close to the rated drain-source voltage. Thermal neutrons did not induce SEB, nor degradation in the electrical parameters of the devices. SEB failures during testing at ChipIr with ultra-fast neutrons (1-800 MeV) were evaluated in terms of failure in time (FIT) versus derating voltage curves according to the JEP151 procedure of the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC). These curves, even if scaled with die size and avalanche voltage, were strongly linked to the technological processes of the devices, although a common trend was observed that highlighted commonalities among the failures of different types of MOSFETs. In both experiments, we observed only SEB failures without single-event gate rupture (SEGR) during the tests. None of the power devices that survived the neutron tests were degraded in their electrical performances. A study of the worst-case bias condition (gate and/or drain) during irradiation was performed

Resilient Communities: A Novel Workflow

© 2021 Carta, Pintacuda, Owen and Turchi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This study presents a novel workflow to define how resilient communities can be analysed and improved through the optimisation of sustainable design principles through quantitative methods. Our model analyses successful sustainable communities extracting information about daily routines (commuting, working, use of buildings etc.). From these routines, we infer a set of key successful aspects based on location, density and proximity. We then model a resilient community and analyse it using a combination of clustering techniques to find patterns and correlations in the success of existing communities. The proposed workflow is applied to the city of Copenhagen as a case study. The aim of the proposed model is to suggest to designers and city-level policy makers improvements (with manipulation of variables like density, proximity and location of urban typologies) to help them to achieve different levels of sustainable goals as set out by the United Nations Global Challenges including integration inclusiveness and resilience. By using a clustering technique, patterns of proximity have been identified along with density and initial correlations in the observed urban typologies. Some of these correlations were used to illustrate the potential of this novel workflow.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Authorial Variants and Exclusively Printed Traditions: Some Insights into Cult Epic

Aunque podría resultar sorprendente, en el ámbito de la épica hispánica del Siglo de Oro tradiciones exclusivamente impresas se revelan asaz productivas en lo tocante a las variantes de autor. El artículo ahonda sobre este particular, ofreciendo un repertorio útil de casos significativos, si no emblemáticos, y destacando las preocupaciones textuales de los autores, quienes intervienen en su obra, retocándola y corrigiéndola a última hora, o bien revisándola y modificándola a lo largo de años, con un afán superior al del libro de poesía ‘tradicional’, concebido como colección de diversas rimas.Although it might be surprising, in the field of the Spanish epic poetry of the Golden Age, exclusively printed traditions prove to be productive in terms of author variants. The article delves into this issue, offering a useful repertoire of significant cases, if not emblematic, and highlighting the textual concerns of the authors themselves, who intervene in their work, retouching and correcting it at the last minute, or revising and modifying it over the years, with a zeal superior to that of the ‘traditional’ book of poetry, conceived as a collection of various rhymes

Accelerated Tests on Si and SiC Power Transistors with Thermal, Fast and Ultra-Fast Neutrons

Neutron test campaigns on silicon (Si) and silicon carbide (SiC) power MOSFETs and IGBTs were conducted at the TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics) Mark II (Pavia, Italy) nuclear reactor and ChipIr-ISIS Neutron and Muon Source (Didcot, U.K.) facility. About 2000 power transistors made by STMicroelectronics were tested in all the experiments. Tests with thermal and fast neutrons (up to about 10 MeV) at the TRIGA Mark II reactor showed that single-event burnout (SEB) failures only occurred at voltages close to the rated drain-source voltage. Thermal neutrons did not induce SEB, nor degradation in the electrical parameters of the devices. SEB failures during testing at ChipIr with ultra-fast neutrons (1-800 MeV) were evaluated in terms of failure in time (FIT) versus derating voltage curves according to the JEP151 procedure of the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC). These curves, even if scaled with die size and avalanche voltage, were strongly linked to the technological processes of the devices, although a common trend was observed that highlighted commonalities among the failures of different types of MOSFETs. In both experiments, we observed only SEB failures without single-event gate rupture (SEGR) during the tests. None of the power devices that survived the neutron tests were degraded in their electrical performances. A study of the worst-case bias condition (gate and/or drain) during irradiation was performed