The Neglected Remains of the Royal Citadel of Messina, Sicily: A Proposal for a Suitable Conservation and Re-Use Project

Neglected and abandoned heritage sites are a complex research topic, which always requires a thorough understanding of the site’s past and current condition. This article examines how research on history, architecture, and participation can contribute to creating a suitable re-use project for such heritage sites, focusing on a single case study: the Royal Citadel of Messina, Italy. Within the field of history, the city and fortification’s past underscores the importance of the site’s architectural and historical value. An urban analysis and documentation campaign were carried out during the field architecture. The urban analysis focused on the site as a remarkable natural landscape with industrial surroundings. The digital documentation, concentrating on the so-called cistern, emphasized the site’s values. Within a revalorization process, community participation is vital and is, therefore, one of the suggestions to consider in further developments. The last applied method is a comparative case study, namely, the submarine base at Saint-Nazaire, France. Considering the complexity and fragilities of the site, a framework is designed that provides suggestions for the conservation, revalorization, and re-use of the site of the Royal Citadel

Batch Adsorber based PSA Model for Rapid and Efficient Screening of Adsorbents in Post-Combustion CO2 Capture

The adsorption-based CO capture has shown promising potential overcoming the limitations posed by commercialised solvent amine-based systems. The choice of an adsorbent is critical to the design of pressure swing adsorption (PSA) processes. Since adsorption processes are cyclic, their design and optimization are computationally challenging. Hence, simple models that capture the essential process characteristics are required for rapid screening of adsorbents. The objective of this work is to come up with a simplified process design model for PSA process which could reliably screen the adsorbents at a faster rate. The model considers only a batch adsorber thereby significantly reducing the complexity, allowing for rapid computation. The model is used to estimate CO purity, recovery and energy consumption. The model results are compared with detailed process optimizations to develop a classification metric to identify adsorbents that satisfy U. S. Department of Energy’s requirement for CO capture processes. The model is then used to screen favourable adsorbents from a set of 100+ real and hypothetical adsorbents. The results indicate that the batch adsorber model can be used for screening a large database of adsorbents in a fast and efficient manner.Fil: Subramanian Balashankar, V.. University of Alberta; CanadáFil: De Pauw, R.. University of Alberta; CanadáFil: Rajagopalan, A. K.. University of Alberta; CanadáFil: Avila, Adolfo María. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Instituto de Química del Noroeste. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Bioquímica, Química y Farmacia. Instituto de Química del Noroeste; ArgentinaFil: Rajendran, A.. University of Alberta; CanadáXXIX Interamerican Congress of Chemical EngineeringTorontoCanadáCanadian Society for Chemical Engineerin

Interactive dance choreography assistance

Creative support for the performing arts is prevalent in many fields, however, for the art of dance, automated tools supporting creativity have been scarce. In this research, we describe ongoing research into (semi)automatic automated creative choreography support. Based on state-of-the-art and a survey among 54 choreographers we establish functionalities and requirements for a choreography assistance tool, including the semantic levels at which it should operate and communicate with the end-users. We describe a user study with a prototype tool which presents choreography alternatives using various simple strategies in three dance styles. The results show that the needs for such a tool vary based on the dance discipline. In a second user study, we investigate various methods of presenting choreography variations. Here, we evaluate four presentation methods: textual descriptions, 2D animations, 3D animations and auditory instructions in two different dance styles. The outcome of the expert survey shows that the tool is effective in communicating the variations to the experts and that they express a preference for 3D animations. Based on these results, we propose a design for an interactive dance choreography assistant tool

Accent attribution in speakers with Foreign Accent Syndrome

Purpose: The main aim of this experiment was to establish the extent to which the impression of foreignness in speakers with Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) is in any way comparable to the impression of foreignness in speakers with a real foreign accent. Method: Three groups of listeners attributed accents to conversational speech samples of 5 FAS speakers which were embedded amongst those of 5 speakers with a real foreign accent and 5 native speaker controls. The listener groups differed in their familiarity with foreign accented speech and speech pathology. Results: The findings indicate that listeners’ perceptual reactions to the three groups of speakers are essentially different at all levels of analysis. The native speaker controls are unequivocally considered as native speakers of Dutch while the speakers with a real foreign accent are very reliably assessed as non-native speakers. The speakers with Foreign Accent Syndrome, however, are in some sense perceived as foreign and in some sense as native by listeners, but not as foreign as speakers with a real foreign accent nor as native as real native speakers. This result may be accounted for in terms of the trigger support model of foreign accent perception. Conclusions: The findings of the experiment is consistent with the idea that the very nature of the foreign accent in different in both groups of speakers, although it cannot be fully excluded that the perceived foreignness in the two groups is one of degree

No differential susceptibility or diathesis stress to parenting in early adolescence : personality facets predicting behaviour problems

This multi-sample study investigated the main and interactive effects of parenting (responsiveness, over-reactivity) and young adolescents' personality traits (negative-affectivity: irritability and anxiety; and orienting-sensitivity) on behaviour problems during adolescence. Data from two samples (N1 = 222; girls 45.5%; Mean age = 11.54 years; N2 = 252; girls 50.4%; Mean age = 10.85 years) were analysed using a multivariate approach. Parenting and young adolescents' personality traits were assessed at Time-1 and behaviour problems were assessed 2 to 3 years later. Mothers rated their overreactive parenting practices with the Parenting-Scale (both samples); parental responsiveness was measured with the Louvain-Adolescent-Perceived-Parenting-Scale (sample-1) and the Parenting-Practices-Questionnaire (sample-2). Adolescents reported on their behaviour problems with the overlapping items of the Brief-Problem-Monitor (sample-1) and the Youth-Self-Report (sample-2). Young adolescents' personality traits were measured with the Hierarchical-Personality-Inventory-for-Children rated by mothers in sample-1 and by fathers in sample-2. No evidence supporting diathesis stress or differential susceptibility was found. Analyses revealed one interaction suggesting that adolescents with high irritability (>= 1.4 SD; 9%) with more overreactive mothers presented less internalizing behaviour, when their mothers used less overreactive parenting they showed more internalizing behaviour. High-anxiety predicted internalizing behaviour. High-irritability and low-anxiety predicted externalizing behaviour. High-irritability and orienting sensitivity predicted attention problems. No main effects of parenting on behaviour problems were observed

Enhancement of tumorigenicity of human breast adenocarcinoma cells in nude mice by matrigel and fibroblasts.

The failure of MCF7 cells to induce the formation of tumours after sub-cutaneous inoculation into athymic nude mice can be obviated by the simultaneous injection of an extract of basement membrane proteins (matrigel). Tumour growth is promoted and the latency period is low (2 to 4 weeks). In the absence of matrigel, the simultaneous inoculation of fibroblasts and MCF7 cells also resulted in the development of tumours, but with a longer latency period (about 2 months). The tumorigenic synergy between matrigel and fibroblasts was evidenced by co-inoculating MCF7 cells MDA-MB 231 cells with fibroblasts and matrigel. This co-inoculation decreased the delay of appearance of the tumours and/or accelerated the tumour growth, depending upon the number of fibroblasts injected. Repeated injections of fibroblasts conditioned medium, at the site of inoculum of tumour cells also enhanced tumour growth, suggesting the involvement of soluble factors secreted by fibroblasts. Histologically, tumours induced by co-inoculation of tumour cells and fibroblasts contained more stromal structures including vimentin-positive cells, fibronectin and interstitial collagens. These data suggest that human tumours may be reconstituted and grown in athymic nude mice using basement membrane components and fibroblasts as inductors

Aging effects on prefrontal cortex oxygenation in a posture-cognition dual-task: an fNIRS pilot study

The aging process alters upright posture and locomotion control from an automatically processed to a more cortically controlled one. The present study investigated a postural-cognitive dual-task paradigm in young and older adults using functional Near- Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS).Methods: Twenty healthy participants (10 older adults 72 ± 3 y, 10 young adults 23 ± 3 y) performed a cognitive (serial subtractions) and a postural task (tandem stance) as single-tasks (ST) and concurrently as a dual-task (DT) while the oxygenation levels of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) were measured.Results: In the cognitive task, young adults performed better than older adults in both conditions (ST and DT) and could further increase the number of correct answers from ST to DT (all ps ≤ 0.027) while no change was found for older adults. No significant effects were found for the postural performance. Cerebral oxygenation values (O2Hb) increased significantly from baseline to the postural ST (p = 0.033), and from baseline to the DT (p = 0.031) whereas no changes were found in deoxygenated hemoglobin (HHb). Finally, the perceived exertion differed between all conditions (p ≤  0.003) except for the postural ST and the DT (p = 0.204).Conclusions: There was a general lack of age-related changes except the better cognitive performance under motor-cognitive conditions in young compared to older adults. However, the current results point out that DLPFC is influenced more strongly by postural than cognitive load. Future studies should assess the different modalities of cognitive as well as postural load