Aguilera Cerni - Vilafamés o la conquista del futuro

Vicente Aguilera Cerni, crítico de arte, escritor y director del que fuera y aún es uno de los más originales proyectos museísticos en España y probablemente de Europa, encontró en la pequeña localidad castellonense de Vilafamés el marco perfecto para desarrollar el proyecto de su vida, estableciéndose así una relación simbiótica entre pueblo y Museo que ayudaría a ambos a conquistar un futuro, que el enamorado de las utopías que fue Aguilera Cerni supo vislumbrar pese a las dificultades de todo orden que encontraría el proyecto. Personaje comprometido y una de las figuras críticas más relevantes del panorama artístico del siglo xx, el fundador del Museo Popular de Arte Contemporáneo de Vilafamés, rebautizado después como Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Vicente Aguilera Cerni, encontraría en este hermoso rincón de la Plana Alta, el lugar definitivo en su vida personal y profesional. Un recorrido por la vida de Aguilera Cerni y por el lugar que amó y un recuerdo a los personajes que hicieron posible esa probabilidad improbable que es el Museo de Vilafamés.Vicente Aguilera Cerni, art critic, writer and director of which was and still is one of the most original museum projects in Spain and probably in Europe found in the small provincial town of Vilafamés the perfect framework to develop the project of his life. Thereby establishing a symbiotic relationship between town and museum that would help both conquer a future that Aguilera Cerni, a lover of utopias, was able to discern despite all types of difficulties that would face the project. A committed character and one of the most relevant critical figures in the artistic panorama of the 20th century, the founder of the popular Museum of Contemporary Art of Vilafamés, renamed later as Museum of Contemporary Art, Vicente Aguilera Cerni, found in this beautiful corner of the Plana Alta, the final station in his personal and professional life. A tour through Aguilera Cerni’s life and the place he loved and a reminder of the persons that made it possible: the unlikely probability that is the Vilafamés Museum

Orthography-induced length contrasts in the second language phonological systems of L2 speakers of English: evidence from minimal pairs

Research shows that the orthographic forms (“spellings”) of second language (L2) words affect speech production in L2 speakers. This study investigated whether English orthographic forms lead L2 speakers to produce English homophonic word pairs as phonological minimal pairs. Targets were 33 orthographic minimal pairs, that is to say homophonic words that would be pronounced as phonological minimal pairs if orthography affects pronunciation. Word pairs contained the same target sound spelled with one letter or two, such as the /n/ in finish and Finnish (both /ˈfɪnɪʃ/ in Standard British English). To test for effects of length and type of L2 exposure, we compared Italian instructed learners of English, Italian-English late bilinguals with lengthy naturalistic exposure, and English natives. A reading-aloud task revealed that Italian speakers of EnglishL2 produce two English homophonic words as a minimal pair distinguished by different consonant or vowel length, for instance producing the target /ˈfɪnɪʃ/ with a short [n] or a long [nː] to reflect the number of consonant letters in the spelling of the words finish and Finnish. Similar effects were found on the pronunciation of vowels, for instance in the orthographic pair scene-seen (both /siːn/). Naturalistic exposure did not reduce orthographic effects, as effects were found both in learners and in late bilinguals living in an English-speaking environment. It appears that the orthographic form of L2 words can result in the establishment of a phonological contrast that does not exist in the target language. Results have implications for models of L2 phonological development

Novel nanocomposite technologies for dynamic monitoring of structures: a comparison between cement-based embeddable and soft elastomeric surface sensors

The authors have recently developed two novel solutions for strain sensing using nanocomposite materials. While they both aim at providing cost-effective solutions for the monitoring of local information on large-scale structures, the technologies are different in their applications and physical principles. One sensor is made of a cementitious material, which could make it suitable for embedding within the core of concrete structures prior to casting, and is a resistor, consisting of a carbon nanotube cement-based transducer. The other sensor can be used to create an external sensing skin and is a capacitor, consisting of a flexible conducting elastomer fabricated from a nanocomposite mix, and deployable in a network setup to cover large structural surfaces. In this paper, we advance the understanding of nanocomposite sensing technologies by investigating the potential of both novel sensors for the dynamic monitoring of civil structures. First, an in-depth dynamic characterization of the sensors using a uniaxial test machine is conducted. Second, their performance at dynamic monitoring of a full-scale concrete beam is assessed, and compared against off-the-shelf accelerometers. Experimental results show that both novel technologies compare well against mature sensors at vibration-based structural health monitoring, showing the promise of nanocomposite technologies for the monitoring of large-scale structural systems

Dynamical connectivity and nonlinearity in a whole-brain computational model

openTra la grande varietà di modelli per l'attività cerebrale su larga scala, gli "effective models" raggiungono un buon compromesso tra accuratezza e complessità del modello e possono essere adattati ai dati di risonanza magnetica funzionale dell'attività dei singoli soggetti. Useremo un modello delle dinamiche del cervello per analizzare i dati dell'attività cerebrale individuale dal Progetto Human Connectome (un grande database di neuroimaging) e affronteremo la relazione tra la non linearità del modello e la "connettività funzionale dinamica" (variazioni temporali nella correlazione tra i segnali di aree diverse). In particolare, ci concentreremo sulla "velocità di connettività funzionale dinamica", un indice scalare che misura la rapidità di variazione nei modelli di connettività, e indagheremo se il modello riproduce la sua distribuzione empirica e se quest'ultima è correlata alla non linearità del modello.Among the large variety of models for large-scale brain activity, effective models achieve a good trade-off between model accuracy and complexity and can be fit to activity data of individual subjects from functional magnetic resonance imaging. We will use an effective model of whole-brain dynamics to fit individual brain activity data from the Human Connectome Project (a large neuroimaging database) and address the relationship between the model nonlinearity and the "dynamic functional connectivity" (temporal variations in the correlation between signals of different areas). In particular, we will focus on the "dynamic functional connectivity speed", a scalar index measuring the rapidity of variation in connectivity patterns, and investigate whether the model reproduces its empirical distribution and whether the latter is related to the model's nonlinearity

The efficacy of grapheme-phoneme correspondence instruction in reducing the effect of orthographic forms on second language phonology

The orthographic forms (spellings) of second language (L2) words and sounds affect the pronunciation and awareness of L2 sounds, even after lengthy naturalistic exposure. This study investigated whether instruction could reduce the effects of English orthographic forms on Italian native speakers' pronunciation and awareness of L2 English sounds. Italians perceive, produce, and judge the same sound as a short sound if it is spelled with one letter and as a long sound if it is spelled with a digraph, due to L1 Italian grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules whereby double consonant letters represent long consonants. Totally, 100 Italian learners of English were allocated to two conditions (final n = 88). The participants in the explicit GPC (EGPC) condition discovered English GPC rules relating to sound length through reflection, explicit teaching, and practice; the participants in the passive exposure condition practiced the same words as the EGPC participants, but with no mention of GPCs. Pre- and postintervention production (delayed word repetition) and phonological awareness (rhyme judgment) tasks revealed no positive effects of the instruction. GPC instruction appears to be ineffective in reducing orthographic effects on L2 phonology. Orthographic effects may be impervious to change, whether by naturalistic exposure or by instruction

The efficacy of grapheme-phoneme correspondence instruction in reducing the effect of orthographic forms on second language phonology

The orthographic forms (spellings) of second language (L2) words and sounds affect the pronunciation and awareness of L2 sounds, even after lengthy naturalistic exposure. This study investigated whether instruction could reduce the effects of English orthographic forms on Italian native speakers’ pronunciation and awareness of L2 English sounds. Italians perceive, produce, and judge the same sound as a short sound if it is spelled with one letter and as a long sound if it is spelled with a digraph, due to L1 Italian grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules whereby double consonant letters represent long consonants. Totally, 100 Italian learners of English were allocated to two conditions (final n = 88). The participants in the explicit GPC (EGPC) condition discovered English GPC rules relating to sound length through reflection, explicit teaching, and practice; the participants in the passive exposure condition practiced the same words as the EGPC participants, but with no mention of GPCs. Pre- and postintervention production (delayed word repetition) and phonological awareness (rhyme judgment) tasks revealed no positive effects of the instruction. GPC instruction appears to be ineffective in reducing orthographic effects on L2 phonology. Orthographic effects may be impervious to change, whether by naturalistic exposure or by instruction

Effects of orthographic forms on the acquisition of novel spoken words in a second language

The orthographic forms of words (spellings) can affect word production in speakers of second languages. This study tested whether presenting orthographic forms during L2 word learning can lead speakers to learn non-nativelike phonological forms of L2 words, as reflected in production and metalinguistic awareness. Italian(L1) learners of English as a Second Language (English(L2)) were exposed to English(L2) novel spoken words (pseudowords) and real words in association with pictures either from auditory input only (Phonology group), or from both auditory and orthographic input (Phonology & Orthography group, both groups n = 24). Pseudowords and words were designed to obtain 30 semi-minimal pairs, each consisting of a word and a pseudoword that contained the same target consonant, spelled with one letter or with double letters. In Italian double consonant letters represent a long consonant, whereas the English language does not contrast short and long consonants. After the learning phase, participants performed a production task (picture naming), a metalinguistic awareness task (rhyme judgment) and a spelling task. Results showed that the Phonology & Orthography group produced the same consonant as longer in double-letter than in single-letter lexical items, while this was not the case for the Phonology group. The former group also rejected spoken rhymes that contained the same consonant spelled with a single letter in one word and double letters in the other, because they considered these as two different phonological categories. Finally, the Phonology & Orthography group learned more novel words than the Phonology group, showing that orthographic input results in more word learning, in line with previous findings from native speakers

Numeracy Gender Gap in STEM Higher Education: The Role of Neuroticism and Math Anxiety

The under-representation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is ubiquitous and understanding the roots of this phenomenon is mandatory to guarantee social equality and economic growth. In the present study, we investigated the contribution of non-cognitive factors that usually show higher levels in females, such as math anxiety (MA) and neuroticism personality trait, to numeracy competence, a core component in STEM studies. A sample of STEM undergraduate students, balanced for gender (N-F = N-M = 70) and Intelligent Quotient (IQ), completed online self-report questionnaires and a numeracy cognitive assessment test. Results show that females scored lower in the numeracy test, and higher in the non-cognitive measures. Moreover, compared to males', females' numeracy scores were more strongly influenced by MA and neuroticism. We also tested whether MA association to numeracy is mediated by neuroticism, and whether this mediation is characterized by gender differences. While we failed to detect a significant mediation of neuroticism in the association between MA and numeracy overall, when gender was added as a moderator in this association, neuroticism turned out to be significant for females only. Our findings revealed that non-cognitive factors differently supported numeracy in females and males in STEM programs