Out of sight out of mind: Perceived physical distance between the observer and someone in pain shapes observer's neural empathic reactions

Social and affective relations may shape empathy to others' affective states. Previous studies also revealed that people tend to form very different mental representations of stimuli on the basis of their physical distance. In this regard, embodied cognition and embodied simulation propose that different physical distances between individuals activate different interpersonal processing modes, such that close physical distance tends to activate the interpersonal processing mode typical of socially and affectively close relationships. In Experiment 1, two groups of participants were administered a pain decision task involving upright and inverted face stimuli painfully or neutrally stimulated, and we monitored their neural empathic reactions by means of event-related potentials (ERPs) technique. Crucially, participants were presented with face stimuli of one of two possible sizes in order to manipulate retinal size and perceived physical distance, roughly corresponding to the close and far portions of social distance. ERPs modulations compatible with an empathic reaction were observed only for the group exposed to face stimuli appearing to be at a close social distance from the participants. This reaction was absent in the group exposed to smaller stimuli corresponding to face stimuli observed from a far social distance. In Experiment 2, one different group of participants was engaged in a match-to-sample task involving the two-size upright face stimuli of Experiment 1 to test whether the modulation of neural empathic reaction observed in Experiment 1 could be ascribable to differences in the ability to identify faces of the two different sizes. Results suggested that face stimuli of the two sizes could be equally identifiable. In line with the Construal Level and Embodied Simulation theoretical frameworks, we conclude that perceived physical distance may shape empathy as well as social and affective distance

Group 4: Instructor training and qualifications

Each professional instructor or check airman used in LOFT training course should complete an FAA approved training course in the appropriate aircraft type. Instructors used in such courses need not be type-rated. If an instructor or check airman who is presently not line-qualified is used as a LOFT instructor, he or she should remain current in line-operational procedures by observing operating procedures from the jump seat on three typical line segments pr 90 days on the appropriate aircraft type. ("Line qualification" means completion as a flight crew member of at least three typical line segments per 90 days on the appropriate aircraft type.) The training should include the requirement of four hours of LOFT training, in lieu of actual aircraft training or line operating experience

Digital manufacturing in fiat group automobiles: virtual simulations for preliminary ergonomics optimization of workcells in the design phase of a new car model

New standards on work organization in the automotive industry, require a new concept of design methods: the human centred process. In Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) the “Digital Manufacturing” (DM) project has started with the goal to create simulation tools and methods to improve the design of new cars’manufacturing processes giving a special attention to manual operations. The DM approach is based on a detailed “virtual plant” where virtual mannequins interact with digital models of car’s components, equipment, containers, etc. in order to simulate and improve working conditions with many benefits on ergonomics, safety, final product quality, work organization and general production costs. The key factor for this approach is that with DM methodologies, designers and engineers have, already in the design phase of a new car’s manufacturing process, a preliminary estimation of the numerical indices used in the plants to check if workcells are compliant to international standards and regional safety laws. In this way the most important ergonomic indices (like Niosh, Snook & Ciriello, EAWS, etc.) become a “design tool” that allow to change/improve project solutions (designing easy and comfortable work tasks, equipment, tools, etc.) and to distribute the work load in an optimal way between workers

On Redundancy Elimination Tolerant Scheduling Rules

In (Ferrucci, Pacini and Sessa, 1995) an extended form of resolution, called Reduced SLD resolution (RSLD), is introduced. In essence, an RSLD derivation is an SLD derivation such that redundancy elimination from resolvents is performed after each rewriting step. It is intuitive that redundancy elimination may have positive effects on derivation process. However, undesiderable effects are also possible. In particular, as shown in this paper, program termination as well as completeness of loop checking mechanisms via a given selection rule may be lost. The study of such effects has led us to an analysis of selection rule basic concepts, so that we have found convenient to move the attention from rules of atom selection to rules of atom scheduling. A priority mechanism for atom scheduling is built, where a priority is assigned to each atom in a resolvent, and primary importance is given to the event of arrival of new atoms from the body of the applied clause at rewriting time. This new computational model proves able to address the study of redundancy elimination effects, giving at the same time interesting insights into general properties of selection rules. As a matter of fact, a class of scheduling rules, namely the specialisation independent ones, is defined in the paper by using not trivial semantic arguments. As a quite surprising result, specialisation independent scheduling rules turn out to coincide with a class of rules which have an immediate structural characterisation (named stack-queue rules). Then we prove that such scheduling rules are tolerant to redundancy elimination, in the sense that neither program termination nor completeness of equality loop check is lost passing from SLD to RSLD.Comment: 53 pages, to appear on TPL

Applications and benefits of digital human models to improve the design of workcells in car’s manufacturing plants according to international standards

During last years, the car’s manufacturing process has deeply changed because of several factors affected the automotive global scenario. As a consequence, design methodologies of the plant’s workcells have changed. In particular, ergonomics for manufacturing system has become a key factor to improve product’s quality, safety and work organization. In this paper, the authors show the approach used in Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) based on simulation tools to analyse ergonomic aspects of work-cells already in design phase. Simulation tools allow a deep postural analysis that is one of the main criticism in the design phase. The principles of Digital Human Modeling have been used to develop an easy internal virtual manikin, the Human Model. The tool, based on ISO standards and on a worldwide anthropometric database, allows designers to simulate the most probable postures engaged by operator during work tasks as well as to validate improvements and corrective actions

Practical Algorithms for Multicast Support in Input Queues Switches

Abstract — This paper deals with multicast flow support in N × N Input Queued switch architectures. A practical approach to support multicast traffic is presented, assuming that O(N) queues are available at each input port. The focus is on dynamic queueing policies, where, at each input port, multicast flows are assigned to one among the available queues when flows become active: flows are assigned to queues according to switch queue status and, possibly, to flow information. We discuss queueing assignments, scheduling algorithms and flow activity definition models. We explain why dynamic queueing disciplines may outperform static policies, and we show that, even in the most favorable conditions for static policies, they provide comparable performance. I

The smart home in the mind and in the practice of digital natives. The case of “Sapienza” University

Smart home e giovani: quale la percezione? La presente indagine pilota, effettuata da un gruppo di studiosi dell’Università Sapienza di Roma mira ad analizzarne i risultati, rappresentando una ricognizione essenziale di quello che è l’universo dei giovani in relazione al mondo smart e alla domotica. L’Ateneo Sapienza sposa appieno la sfida lanciata da Horizon 2020 con il progetto ReStart4Smart, un laboratorio pratico in cui poter conoscere e sperimentare, fare ricerca e innovare, condividere e divulgare, tanto problemi quanto, e più possibile, soluzioni ambientali ed abitative. Chi sono realmente i nativi digitali? E qual è il loro livello di conoscenza della smart home? Quali i valori e quali i comportamenti concreti in relazione all’utilizzo intelligente delle nuove tecnologie

Designing Coalition-Proof Reverse Auctions over Continuous Goods

This paper investigates reverse auctions that involve continuous values of different types of goods, general nonconvex constraints, and second stage costs. We seek to design the payment rules and conditions under which coalitions of participants cannot influence the auction outcome in order to obtain higher collective utility. Under the incentive-compatible Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism, we show that coalition-proof outcomes are achieved if the submitted bids are convex and the constraint sets are of a polymatroid-type. These conditions, however, do not capture the complexity of the general class of reverse auctions under consideration. By relaxing the property of incentive-compatibility, we investigate further payment rules that are coalition-proof without any extra conditions on the submitted bids and the constraint sets. Since calculating the payments directly for these mechanisms is computationally difficult for auctions involving many participants, we present two computationally efficient methods. Our results are verified with several case studies based on electricity market data

Il Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali: un nuovo modello edilizio di Ernesto Basile nel piano di riforma positivista della Città di Palermo

L’immobile progettato da Ernesto Basile nel 1912 per conto delle Assicurazioni Generali di Venezia ha avuto un ruolo nevralgico nella storia della produzione edilizia e delle dinamiche urbane di Palermo nel tardo periodo della Belle Èpoque. Eretta su un’area ad isolato la fabbrica appena ultimata si imponeva per consistenza stereometrica e, al tempo stesso, per equilibrio compositivo sul limitrofo pregevole contesto edilizio della nascente via Roma. Ad angolo fra le strategiche via Roma e via Cavour il fabbricato delle Assicurazioni Generali di Venezia finì per assumere il ruolo di segnale urbano identificabile come “soglia” dell’attraversamento, proprio tramite via Roma, della città storica verso la Stazione Centrale e, al tempo stesso, di smistamento, nel percorso di senso opposto, del flusso che da quest’ultima, dalle borgate suburbane meridionali e dai mandamenti della città andava verso il porto