Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article analyses the political-intellectual career of the lawyer and journalist Mariano Grondona between the last dictatorship (1976-1983) and the first years of the return of democracy in Argentina. 

This work presents the procedures and analysis that allowed us to contrast the journalistic treatment that the San Luis press carried out during the last dictatorship (1976-1983) on events of political violence that occurred in the province, with corrective journalistic versions prepared from the data contained. in the sentencing of the second trial for crimes against humanity. 

 In recent decades, human rights have been the focus of changes driven by social actors and political contexts, becoming a recurring theme in public discourses, including those in the press. 

This article explores some aspects of the relationship between city and culture in the City of Buenos Aires during the period from 1982 to 1986, from a communication approach focused on the tracing of imaginary plots and ideological formations. 

This work reviews some requirements of seismic design standards in recent decades in Mexico City, from 1957 to date, grouping them before and after the 1985 earthquake. The topics considered are distortion control, ductility, resistance, and structural irregularity. In some cases, the requirements discussed are compared to those specified in some United States standards. The topics of distortion control, ductility, and lateral resistance are studied in accordance with current practice. Simple procedures are used for the nonlinear dynamic analysis of reinforced concrete structures that respond to a typical record of soft soil in Mexico City. These structures are based on frames and structural walls, considering the cases of low and high-ductility structures. The results found for the cases studied indicate that the common practice in Mexico of designing only considering Q=2 must change and that the design of high ductility structures is preferable.Finally, suggestions are made to update some requirements of the current Standard. 

The construction of new public transportation systems, such as the Metrobus (MBus) in Mexico City, and new roadways generates discontent among people due to the noise and vibration they cause. These disturbances are mainly perceived due to the heavy vehicles that travel on these avenues and streets. Following complaints from several people regarding the damage and inconvenience caused by the MBus passing near their homes, sound and environmental vibration tests were conducted on the roads where this transport operates. The objective of these tests was to determine the vibration levels caused by the MBus and to understand the noise levels it generates. The results of the measured signals were compared with those specified by various standards, including Mexican, German, American, British, and ISO standards. These comparisons allow for the evaluation of whether the noise and vibration levels generated by the MBus comply with international and national standards, and if additional measures are necessary to mitigate the negative effects on the residents' quality of life.

The Force Analogy Method, FAM, (Force Analogy Method) is an innovative tool that allows static and dynamic analysis of a structure to be performed considering material non-linearity. The FAM can be used considering time histories applied in the base or in the mass of any system; the FAM is a tool that allows analysis to be performed accurately and quickly, with great computational efficiency. The methodology can be used in systems with passive and active control, in addition to considering bending, axial load, shear models of behavior and non-linear effects due to the geometry of the element. In this article, the FAM is presented in detail, providing its theoretical bases and a guide for its practical implementation. Practical examples are shown ranging from single degree of freedom systems to multi-level structures, considering non-linearity due to bending using the bilinear model. The results are compared with those obtained by traditional analysis methods, obtaining similar results.

Shear walls, integrated into conventional reinforced concrete moment-resisting frame systems, have proven to be effective seismic protection elements by enhancing lateral stability and reducing the structural fragility of buildings. However, the impact of different configurations on seismic response has been insufficiently explored using advanced three-dimensional models. This study adopts a probabilistic approach to analyze the seismic fragility of five eight-story buildings with variations in the in-plane distribution of shear walls using 3D models. To achieve the objectives of this work, the structural capacity of the buildings was first assessed through Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA). Seismic analyses considered representative ground motion records from the soft soils of Mexico City, which were scaled to different intensity levels. Subsequently, fragility curves were developed for all the buildings, taking into account the varying in-plane configurations of the shear walls. The results reveal that a symmetrical arrangement of shear walls along the building's exterior significantly reduces seismic fragility by minimizing torsional effects, particularly in exterior columns. Conversely, placing shear walls at the center of the building, a common practice for accommodating elevators or utility installations, proves less efficient structurally, requiring larger frame sections to achieve comparable fragility levels. Consequently, strategic planning in the design of dual systems is crucial to optimizing seismic performance.

A methodology is presented to determine the optimal value of the maximum interstory drift (dOI) that ensures compliance with the Immediate Occupancy (IO) performance level, a requirement for essential structures (Group A) according to the Complementary Technical Norm for Seismic Design (NTC-DS-2023). The methodology is developed in two stages: in the first, the exceedance rate of the structural response is determined by integrating structural fragility curves with the seismic intensity exceedance rate at the site. In the second stage, the total expected cost during the building's lifecycle is evaluated through numerical simulation, with emphasis on economic losses due to damage corresponding to acceleration-sensitive contents. To perform this evaluation, a cost function for content damage is proposed, which considers the maximum floor acceleration and its variation along the building’s height. This function is first formulated at the inventory level and later at the global level. The methodology is applied to a five-story school building constituted by reinforced concrete moment-resisting frames, located in the transition zone of Mexico City. For the structural design four permissible values of dOI are assumed: 0.005, 0.0075, 0.01, and 0.0125. It is found that the maximum interstory drift corresponding to the minimum expected total cost is 0.01, value that exceeds the limit specified by NTC-DS-2023, which is 0.0075 for reinforced concrete frames.

This paper presents the proposal of a new displacement-based seismic design methodology for reinforced concrete structures, considering as design objectives the control of local displacements and damage distribution. This methodology is based on the hypothesis that the nonlinear response of a multi-degree of freedom system can be approximated by a single-degree of freedom reference system, generally associated with the fundamental mode or the mode with the highest participation factor. The response curve of the reference system is constructed from the results of two eigen analyses, corresponding to the undamaged (elastic) structure and the structure with an assumed damage distribution under design conditions. The inelastic displacement of the reference system is defined as a function of an allowable plastic rotation in the beams of the critical floor where the maximum drift occurs. The application of this design method is illustrated by the design of three reinforced concrete frames of 5, 8 and 12 stories. The results obtained with the method are compared with those obtained from non-linear dynamic analyses using the same data sets records that define the spectrum used for the design. The results show that the method ensures not only the fulfilment of the design objectives, but also the control of the local damage intensity and its global distribution. Finally, the advantages of the proposed method are highlighted, positioning it as a solid basis for resilience-based seismic design approaches.