374 research outputs found
Sequenze didattiche. Presentazione di Roberta Albiero
No full textDefinire il ruolo dell’attività didattica nell’attuale sistema universitario è un compito arduo, denso, al contempo, di semplicistiche vedute e programmatiche visioni da parte degli
stessi addetti ai lavori. L’epocale momento di passaggio vede il lento diradarsi di una nebbia dettata da un repentino cambio di temperatura associato ad un appannamento
nell’atmosfera culturale italiana. Secondo le recenti riforme universitarie sembra chiara la richiesta formulata ai docenti per un impegno variegato su più fronti dei quali, sicuramente,
la capacità di recepire fondi sembra essere l’unica apprezzata. Ne conseguono, in alcuni punti di vista, disimpegnati segnali di disinteresse verso l’insegnamento
didattico con un’apparente inutilità delle tematiche impresse. Si aggiunge la mancata considerazione, normata ormai per legge, verso quelle pubblicazioni che, come questa,
raccolgono nei singoli progetti degli studenti i dati di una ricerca sul metodo che caratterizza il percorso di studio e l’attualità di una scuola d’insegnamento. Nel “paese della
politica” (così usa definire l’Italia il personaggio principale di L’eleganza è frigida, racconto di Goffredo Parise edito, per la prima volta, nel 1982) la classe docente universitaria
sembra, suo malgrado, subire il dominio dei numeri, affannata alla rincorsa di nuovi e sempre cangianti strumenti per la misurazione di un suo discutibile e aleatorio parametro
di efficienza. Eppure, da parte degli studenti e anche di chi nell’università continua a riversare, a sue spese, le principali energie, l’impegno didattico viene osservato e valutato
con attenzione demandando legittimamente al docente il suo ruolo di ricercatore in grado di far rifluire, proprio nell’attività didattica, i dubbi e le conquiste della sua ricerca.
Alla luce di tali considerazioni mi preme ringraziare, in particolare, gli studenti che in questi anni hanno seguito con partecipazione le mie lezioni, testimoniando,
a me stesso, che, aldilà di ogni problematica ed ogni incidente di percorso, il ruolo primario dell’Architettura rimane quello di migliorare la vita sulla Terra.
Un ringraziamento particolare va ai miei collaboratori che si sono susseguiti e alternati nel corso dell’ultimo triennio, Maria Carmela Perri, che ha impaginato questo testo e
mi ha validamente coadiuvato nel seguire tutti i progetti in esso contenuti, Tiziana Prescimone, Mauro Scarcella Perino e Caterina Torre. Senza il loro indispensabile apporto
nessuna delle ipotesi da me formulate, compreso questo volume, si sarebbe potuta realizzare.
Una specifica dedica va rivolta a Laura Thermes, instancabile maestra della mia scuola di formazione e riferimento culturale costante della mia vita intorno ai temi dell’architettura,
e non solo. Le tematiche affrontate in questo testo sono, nella sua totalità, a lei ascrivibili. Senza i suoi insegnamenti, infatti, non avrei potuto immaginare queste pagine
Supplemental_materials - A Lack of Practice Effects on Memory Tasks Predicts Conversion to Alzheimer Disease in Patients With Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment
No full textSupplemental_materials for A Lack of Practice Effects on Memory Tasks Predicts Conversion to Alzheimer Disease in Patients With Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment by Maria Stefania De Simone, Roberta Perri, Marta Rodini, Lucia Fadda, Massimo De Tollis, Carlo Caltagirone and Giovanni Augusto Carlesimo in Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology</p
Selective deficit of spatial short-term memory: Role of storage and rehearsal mechanisms
No full textWe report the neuropsychological and MRI investigation of a patient (GP) who developed a selective impairment of spatial short-term memory (STM) following damage to the dorso-mesial areas of the right frontal lobe. We assessed in this patient spatial STM with an experimental procedure that evaluated immediate and 5-20 s delayed recall of verbal, visual and spatial stimuli. The patient scored significantly worse than normal controls on tests that required delayed recall of spatial data. This could not be ascribed to a deficit of spatial episodic long-term memory because amnesic patients performed normally on these tests. Conversely, the patient scored in the normal range on tests of immediate recall of verbal, visual and spatial data and tests of delayed recall of verbal and visual data. Comparison with a previously described patient who had a selective deficit in immediate spatial recall and an ischemic lesion that affected frontal and parietal dorso-mesial areas in the right hemisphere (Carlesimo GA, Perri R, Turriziani P, Tomaiuolo F, Caltagirone C. Remembering what but not where: independence of spatial and visual working memory in the human brain. Cortex. 2001 Sep; 37(4):519-34) suggests that the right parietal areas are involved in the short-term storage of spatial information and that the dorso-mesial regions of the right frontal underlie mechanisms for the delayed maintenance of the same data
Associative agreement as a predictor of naming ability in Alzheimer’s disease: a case for the semantic nature of associative links
No full textWe aimed to address the long-standing issue of the nature of the relationships that link a cue word to words associated with it. In keeping with a recently proposed neuropsychological model of semantic memory (Zannino et al., 2015), we provide support for the hypothesis that associative links are semantic in nature and not lexical. In support of this hypothesis, we demonstrate a relationship in healthy subjects between the probability of producing word X in response to cue word Y in a free association task and the probability of using word X to describe the meaning of word Y. Furthermore, we provide evidence that associative measures are altered in people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and predict their level of performance in a picture-naming task. We provide a parsimonious account of the experimental data gathered form these different sources of evidence according to the hypothesis that the links between a cue word and its associates can be viewed as binding a concept (the cue) to pieces of information regarding its meaning (the associates)
Arg-tuProlog: A tuProlog-based argumentation framework
No full textOver the last decades, argumentation has become increasingly central as a frontier research within artificial intelligence (AI), especially around the notions of interpretability and explainability, which are more and more required within AI applications. In this paper we present the first prototype of Arg-tuProlog, a logic-based argumentation tool built on top of the tuProlog system. In particular, Arg-tuProlog enables defeasible reasoning and argumentation, and deals with priorities over rules. It also includes a formal method for dealing with burden of proof (burden of persuasion). Being lightweight and compliant to the requirements for micro-intelligence, Arg-tuProlog is perfectly suited for injecting argumentation into distributed pervasive systems
J Environ Health
No full textThe National Environmental Health Association strives to provide up-to-date and relevant information on environmental health and to build partnerships in the profession. In pursuit of these goals, we feature this column on environmental health services from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in every issue of the |. In these columns, authors from CDC's Water, Food, and Environmental Health Services Branch, as well as guest authors, will share tools, resources, and guidance for environmental health practitioners. The conclusions in these columns are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position of CDC. Dr. Tanya Telfair LeBlanc is a senior health scientist/epidemiologist. Dr. Perri Ruckart is a health scientist and team lead. Shannon Omisore serves as a health communication specialist. All work in the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Environmental Health Tracking Branch at CDC.CC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States
Altered parietal-motor connections in Alzheimer's disease patients
No full textAlzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by altered functional cortico-cortical connectivity likely due to loss of afferent and efferent connections between different cortical areas. Here we explored parieto-frontal functional connectivity in 15 AD patients and 12 healthy control subjects by means of bifocal transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Conditioning stimuli were applied over the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) at different intensities (90% and 110% of resting motor threshold, RMT). Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were then recorded from the ipsilateral primary motor cortex at different interstimulus intervals (ISIs) ranging between 2 and 15 ms. Results showed that in healthy subjects, a conditioning TMS pulse applied over the ipsilateral PPC at 90%, but not at 110%, of RMT intensity was able to increase the excitability of the right M1. This functional interaction peaked at ISI = 6 ms. Conversely, in AD patients the facilitatory pattern of parieto-motor connections was evident only when TMS was delivered at an intensity of 110% of RMT with a peak at ISI = 8 ms. Moreover in AD patients, treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors did not induce any significant modification in the strength of the connection. In subsequent analyses, we found that, in AD patients, the effects induced by PPC conditioning at 110% RMT correlated with neuropsychological measures of episodic memory and executive functions, implying that patients with better cognitive performance had less impaired connectivity. Our findings reveal that parieto-frontal cortico-cortical functional connectivity is altered in AD patients, providing further evidence for a disconnection-based interpretation of AD symptoms
Subjective clustering in patients with fronto-temporal dementia
No full textIn the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) memory deficits have been traditionally considered as due to difficulties in encoding/retrieval frontal strategies. However, the frontal origin of memory deficits in bvFTD has been questioned and hippocampal dysfunction has been also proposed. Here we analyzed bvFTD patients' proficiency in subjectively organizing memories without an external criterion. Twenty bvFTD patients and 20 healthy individuals were assessed with memory and executive tasks. The ability to subjectively organize memories in the immediate recall of a 15 unrelated word list was measured by calculating the index of subjective clustering (ISC) based on the constancies in response order across the five consecutive free recall trials. Results revealed reduced ISC in bvFTD patients with respect to normal controls. In the bvFTD group, the ISC score correlated with the Corsi span backward score and the number of categories achieved on the Modified Card Sorting Test. The bvFTD patients' reduced ISC and its correlation with executive performance suggest that executive deficits underlie their defective strategic organization of memories. However, as ISC did not predict memory accuracy in these patients, the memory deficit may not be the mere expression of their executive difficulties
Copynorms: Norme Sociali e Diritto d’Autore = Copynorms: Social Norms and Copyright
No full textIl presente studio prende le mosse dalla constatazione che la legge non è l’unico strumento capace di regolare il comportamento delle persone. Le condotte individuali, infatti, sono molto più frequentemente influenzate da una serie di regole informali e da regolarità comportamentali – le norme sociali – che con la legge interagiscono continuamente e che sono in grado di determinare una serie di dinamiche di moderazione o di contrasto del controllo esclusivo derivante dalla legge sulla proprietà intellettuale.
L’obiettivo principale di questo elaborato è quello di indagare il ruolo ricoperto dalle norme sociali nel contesto generale della proprietà intellettuale. Particolare attenzione è rivolta nei confronti di quelle regole sociali che distinguono i comportamenti accettabili da quelli non tollerati in materia di copia, distribuzione ed utilizzo delle opere dell’ingegno – le c.d. copynorms – con l’ulteriore obiettivo di analizzare l’effetto che tali norme esplicano nei confronti del contesto particolare del diritto d’autore.
Un terzo obiettivo consta nell’esame approfondito di una delle ipotesi in cui la discrepanza tra il dettato legislativo e quanto considerato socialmente e moralmente accettabile è maggiore: si tratta del file-sharing illegale, cioè lo scambio non autorizzato attraverso la rete internet di materiale protetto da copyright. La legge sul diritto d’autore proibisce tale pratica sociale di copia e distribuzione, mentre le copynorms la sostengono ed autorizzano, rendendo difficile convincere le persone a comportarsi in maniera conforme alla legge. Stante l’inefficacia delle tradizionali strategie deterrenti, sono prospettate alcune possibili soluzioni di tipo adattivo e persuasivo, volte a modificare le attuali copynorms in una direzione maggiormente a sostegno del diritto d’autore. Solo in questo modo pare possibile riallineare il contenuto legislativo con quello normativo e quindi sperare in un contenimento effettivo del fenomeno del file-sharing non autorizzato.
Il perseguimento di tali obiettivi, attraverso la chiave di lettura delle norme sociali e del progresso tecnologico, rende necessario il ricorso ad un approccio interdisciplinare, capace di avvalersi del sapere di scienze quali il diritto, la sociologia, la psicologia comportamentale, l’analisi economica del diritto e l’informatica.
Human behavior is not shaped by law alone. People are often far more influenced by informal rules and behavioral regularities – collectively mentioned as social norms – that interacts with the legal rules in many important ways, supporting, undermining, or substituting for law.
The main purpose of this essay was to investigate the role played by social norms in the general context of intellectual property. The focus was placed on those norms about the copying, distribution and use of expressive works (“copynorms” for short), in order to analyze their effects on copyright law. A further goal was to survey one of the worst cases of copyright law/copynorms divergence, represented by illegal file-sharing, the unauthorized share and distribution of digitally stored expressive works covered by copyright. Copyright law condemn this widespread practice, where copynorms support and authorize it, making difficult persuading people to comply with the law.
Thus far, efforts to change file-sharer’s behavior have focused on using increased enforement and sanctions to deter file-sharers. These deterrence strategies have had limited success, and because of this ineffectiveness this work examines the efficacy of normative strategies, that tries to persuade people that compliance with copyright law is the right thing to do, shaping actual pro-file sharing norms in more copyright-supportive norms, in order to make people more likely to cooperate with copyright owners and on the other hand to comply with copyright law.
The multiple goals of this essay necessitated an interdisciplinary approach, which brought togheter a wide variety of scientific disciplines such as legal science, sociology, behavioral psychology, economic analisys of law and computer science.
Questo paper Copyright © Luglio 2012 Thomas Perri è pubblicato con Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia License. Maggiori informazioni circa la licenza all’URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/it
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