BackgroundHuntington's disease (HD) is a fatal inherited neurodegenerative disease, caused by a

The ISTIMES project, funded by the European Commission in the frame of a joint Call “ICT and Security” of the Seventh Framework Programme, is presented and preliminary research results are discussed. The main objective of the ISTIMES project is to design, assess and promote an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based system, exploiting distributed and local sensors, for non-destructive electromagnetic monitoring of critical transport infrastructures. The integration of electromagnetic technologies with new ICT information and telecommunications systems enables remotely controlled monitoring and surveillance and real time data imaging of the critical transport infrastructures. The project exploits different non-invasive imaging technologies based on electromagnetic sensing (optic fiber sensors, Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite platform based, hyperspectral spectroscopy, Infrared thermography, Ground Penetrating Radar-, low-frequency geophysical techniques, Ground based systems for displacement monitoring). In this paper, we show the preliminary results arising from the GPR and infrared thermographic measurements carried out on the Musmeci bridge in Potenza, located in a highly seismic area of the Apennine chain (Southern Italy) and representing one of the test beds of the project.

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In mountainous areas, freezing is a prominent phenomenon for weathering processes in rock walls. A freezing front penetrates rock crack networks and causes its propagation. To study the evolution of rock mass stability, a suitable model of stress generated by freezing in open rock cracks is needed. This stress evaluated by the simple volume expansion model in a closed crack is too high to be realistic. In this paper, we present an assessment method for this stress and some results. Different experiments on notched limestone specimens submitted to freeze-thaw cycles were performed. Three different tight limestones (Larrys, Chamesson, Pierre de Lens) were tested. Actually, the stress generated by freezing begins to grow at the top of the notch where an ice plug is created and makes it possible for higher stresses to develop in deeper parts of the notch. Consequently, the 1,* 2 1 2 e.Proofing http://eproofing.springer.com/journals/printpage.php?token=g8D1-p4h...

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The shear strength of concrete-rock interface is a key factor to evaluate the stability of gravity dams. The shear strength assessment by achieving tests on small samples gives values different from those estimated by back-analysis on the existing dams. This work aims to study the shear behaviour of concrete-rock interface in the metric scale. Five direct shear tests were performed on bonded meterscale concrete-granite interfaces in the range of normal stresses to which gravity dam foundation is subjected. Specific instrumentation were installed to monitor the failure mechanisms during the tests. The five concrete-rock interfaces have not broken by shearing of materials (concrete, rock) in the shear plane imposed by the test device, but by debonding of the contact between concrete and rock. Considering roughness of the contact surface in the decimeter scale and the results of shear tests carried out in the same scale, the decimeter scale is demonstrated to correspond to the elementary surface for the shear behaviour of the metric concrete-rock interface. According to the level of normal stress, the stiffness of both materials and the main asperities in the decimeter scale, different failure mechanisms occur locally to justify the overall failure in the metric scale.