A critical review of seismic design provisions for concentrically braced frames (CBFs) in both European and North American (i.e. US and Canadian) codes is presented in this paper. Indeed, even though those codes are based on capacity design philosophy, different requirements and different approaches are used to guarantee the hierarchy of resistances between dissipative and non-dissipative eleme...

The idea of ‘community’ represents a central notion in the body of knowledge emerging as part of the Digital Ecosystems (DEs) research and philosophy. This chapter draws from two deliverables produced for the DBE in order to highlight two important characteristics of communities and networks of practice, their knowledge and structural embeddedness. Knowledge embeddedness refers to the context s...

The present study extends the Resource Based View by appealing to firm-specific cognitive frames as co-determinants of persistent performance differentials. It is proposed that cognitive frames shared among members of a specific business organization influence financial performance by a causal chain running through information processing and uncertainty. The empirical test supports the proposed...

This article considers the following central ideas underlying Actor Prolog: the classes and worlds, the mechanism of repetitive proof of subgoals, the underdetermined sets. The logical means of Actor Prolog cover the definitional possibilities of structural, dynamic and information aspects of the object-oriented programming. The most interesting idea of Actor Prolog is the repetitive proof of s...

This article explores the antagonism expressed by two different theoretical positions within medical anthropology towards the structural violence position: the culture as central approach and the post-structuralist approach. While medical anthropologists trained in cultural models of illness are disappointed by the lack of culture in the structural violence approach, medical anthropologists tra...

Assessing the Quality of Experience (QoE) for multimedia services transmitted over a network has become a major issue for telecom providers (Telcos), because it can determine the real user satisfaction regarding the service they hire. For this reason, we present the metrics based on the Reduced Reference (RR) methodology called Quality Index Based Frame (IQBF) and New Undecodable Frames Index (...

In this paper we study the response of 2D framed structures made of reinforced concrete to the sudden removal of columns. For comparative reasons, the 2D frames are considered as part of 3D structures with same overall structural mass and external load potential. In particular, we study two sets of 2D frames, with different height-bay ratio λ of the structural cells. Each set counts 3 frames wi...

In most of the designs of rigid structural frames, the analysis is carried out by assuming fixity at base, which means that the building is idealized to rest on hard rock. This paper discusses the importance of considering the effect of soil stiffness on the seismic performance of rigid structural frame system resting on it. Flexibility of soil causes lengthening of lateral natural period of th...

The response of tall buildings has been a major concern in metropolitan cities, especially with the recent surge in extreme activities targeted at structures with viable commercial values. This paper discusses a study carried out on the structural behaviour of a 2D frame, modelled to represent a tall building with ABAQUS. The model frame was subjected to a charge of the equivalent weight of 1 t...

This paper studies the problem of sequence-to-sequence alignment, namely establishing correspondences in time and in space between two di erent video sequences of the same dynamic scene. The sequences are recorded by uncalibrated video cameras, which are either stationary or jointly moving, with xed (but unknown) internal parameters and relative inter-camera external parameters. Temporal variat...