El lugar de la mente. Sobre la capilla Sogn Benedetg de Peter Zumthor en Sumvitg/ The place of the mind. On Peter Zumthor’s Sogn Benedetg Chapel in Sumvitg

La Capilla de Sogn Benedetg en Sumvitg, parte de la obra temprana de Peter Zumthor, condensa aspectos de sus ideas, de su forma de proyectar y construir, que aún hoy siguen vigentes en él. Los recuerdos de infancia cimientan su enfoque de la arquitectura, en el que trata de reunir trazas de la vida cotidiana, sensible al lugar y utilizando materiales tratados de un modo preciso que bajo la luz adquieren su presencia. Con un lenguaje táctil y tectónico, desde una aproximación fenomenológica, persigue compartir una experiencia multisensorial, englobando percepciones complementarias que trascienden la geometría visual. Como Kahn, se apoya en el pensamiento de Heidegger, y se inspira en la pequeña cabaña que el filósofo habitaba en la Selva Negra, así como en la arquitectura religiosa de Rudolf Schwarz, cuya huella puede apreciarse tanto en el edificio como en los objetos que se encuentran en él. La tensión que genera entre interior y exterior mantiene despiertos los sentidos del visitante, a la vez que las características de la capilla enlazan con un regionalismo integrador que no se aparta de las formas abstractas contemporáneas. : Sogn Benedetg Chapel in Sumvitg, part of the early work of Peter Zumthor, condenses aspects of his ideas and his way of designing and building, which still remain valid today. Remembrances of childhood lay the foundation for his focus to architecture, which involves the collection of daily life traces, sensitive to the place and using materials treated in a precise manner, acquiring their presence under the light. With a tactile and tectonic language, from a phenomenological approach, he seeks to share a multi-sensory experience, encompassing complementary perceptions that transcend the visual geometry. As Kahn does, he relies on Heidegger?s thinking and is inspired by the little hut that the philosopher inhabited in the Black Forest, as well as by Rudolf Schwarz?s religious architecture, whose imprint can be appreciated in both the building and the objects encountered within it. The tension generated between interior and exterior keeps awake the senses of the visitor, while the characteristics of the chapel connect with an integrative regionalism that does not exclude contemporary abstract forms.

Characterising social media users by gender and place of residence

Characterising users through demographic attributes is a necessary step before conducting opinion surveys from information published by such users in social media. In this paper, we describe, compare and evaluate different techniques for the identification of the attributes "gender"' and "place of residence" by mining the metadata associated to the users, the content published and shared by themselves, and their friendship networks. The results obtained show that the social network is a valuable source of information for obtaining the sociodemographic attributes of single users.

Effects of passage history and sampling bias on phylogenetic reconstruction of human influenza A evolution

In this paper we determine the extent to which host-mediated mutations and a known sampling bias affect evolutionary studies of human influenza A. Previous phylogenetic reconstruction of influenza A (H3N2) evolution using the hemagglutinin gene revealed an excess of nonsilent substitutions assigned to the terminal branches of the tree. We investigate two hypotheses to explain this observation. The first hypothesis is that the excess reflects mutations that were either not present or were at low frequency in the viral sample isolated from its human host, and that these mutations increased in frequency during passage of the virus in embryonated eggs. A set of 22 codons known to undergo such “host-mediated” mutations showed a significant excess of mutations assigned to branches attaching sequences from egg-cultured (as opposed to cell-cultured) isolates to the tree. Our second hypothesis is that the remaining excess results from sampling bias. Influenza surveillance is purposefully biased toward sequencing antigenically dissimilar strains in an effort to identify new variants that may signal the need to update the vaccine. This bias produces an excess of mutations assigned to terminal branches simply because an isolate with no close relatives is by definition attached to the tree by a relatively long branch. Simulations show that the magnitude of excess mutations we observed in the hemagglutinin tree is consistent with expectations based on our sampling protocol. Sampling bias does not affect inferences about evolution drawn from phylogenetic analyses. However, if possible, the excess caused by host-mediated mutations should be removed from studies of the evolution of influenza viruses as they replicate in their human hosts.

The Role of Passage Topic Knowledge in Typical and Poor Comprehenders' Recall

This dissertation examines the role of topic knowledge (TK) in comprehension among typical readers and those with Specifically Poor Comprehension (SPC), i.e., those who demonstrate deficits in understanding what they read despite adequate decoding. Previous studies of poor comprehension have focused on weaknesses in specific skills, such as word decoding and inferencing ability, but this dissertation examined a different factor: whether deficits in availability and use of TK underlie poor comprehension. It is well known that TK tends to facilitate comprehension among typical readers, but its interaction with working memory and word decoding is unclear, particularly among participants with deficits in these skills. Across several passages, we found that SPCs do in fact have less TK to assist their interpretation of a text. However, we found no evidence that deficits in working memory or word decoding ability make it difficult for children to benefit from their TK when they have it. Instead, children across the skill spectrum are able to draw upon TK to assist their interpretation of a passage. Because TK is difficult to assess and studies vary in methodology, another goal of this dissertation was to compare two methods for measuring it. Both approaches score responses to a concept question to assess TK, but in the first, a human rater assigns a score whereas in the second, a computer algorithm, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA; Landauer & Dumais, 1997) assigns a score. We found similar results across both methods of assessing TK, suggesting that a continuous measure is not appreciably more sensitive to variations in knowledge than discrete human ratings. This study contributes to our understanding of how best to measure TK, the factors that moderate its relationship with recall, and its role in poor comprehension. The findings suggest that teaching practices that focus on expanding TK are likely to improve comprehension across readers with a variety of abilities.

The place of DPP-4 inhibitors in the treatment algorithm of diabetes type 2 : a systematic review of cost-effectiveness studies

Tese de mestrado, Epidemiologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Medicina, 2015

The Western Borderlands: The place of eastern Galicia and Volhynia in the Ukrainian State. OSW Study 43/2013

The regions of Ukraine are strongly diversified. These differences are subject to historical conditions and attempts at unification which have been made over the past seventy years have proven that these differences will be impossible to reduce in the foreseeable future and will continue to bear an impact on Ukraine’s domestic policy. Western Ukraine (Eastern Galicia and Volhynia) is a peripheral region in economic, political and cultural terms. Although it accounts for approximately 14% of Ukraine’s territory and 15% of the country’s population live there, the region generates only around 10% of the country’s GDP. Its metropolis, Lviv, Ukraine’s seventh largest city, was traditionally among the key centres in the nation’s history. However, its role in an independent Ukraine has been marginalised partly due to the fact that a significant part of its elite moved to Kyiv. This is also the most ethnically homogeneous region, where Russian speakers make up rather a small part of the population.