Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
David Egan
Keyword(s):  
The Earth ◽  
The City

And all the earth was one language, one set of words. And it happened as they journeyed from the east that they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to each other, ‘Come, let us bake bricks and burn them hard’. And the brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. And they said, ‘Come, let us build us a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, that we may make us a name, lest we be scattered over all the earth’. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the human creatures had built. And the LORD said, ‘As one people with one language for all, if this is what they have begun to do, nothing they plot will elude them. Come, let us go down and baffle their language there so that they will not understand each other’s language’. And the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth and they left off building the city. Therefore it is called Babel, for there the LORD made the language of all the earth babble. And from there the LORD scattered them over all the earth....

Forecasting the fl ood situation using space images in the city of Tavda Sverdlovsk region

2018 ◽  
Vol 934 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
A.S. Bruskova ◽  
T.I. Levitskaya ◽  
D.M. Haydukova
Keyword(s):  
Water Levels ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Geoinformation System ◽  
Space Images ◽  
Geoinformation Systems ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Maximum Water ◽  
The City

Flooding is a dangerous phenomenon, causing emergency situations and causing material damage, capable of damaging health, and even death of people. To reduce the risk and economic damage from flooding, it is necessary to forecast flooding areas. An effective method of forecasting emergency situations due to flooding is the method of remote sensing of the Earth with integration into geoinformation systems. With the help of satellite imagery, a model of flooding was determined based on the example of Tavda, the Sverdlovsk Region. Space images are loaded into the geoinformation system and on their basis a series of thematic layers is created, which contains information about the zones of possible flooding at given water level marks. The determination of the area of flooding is based on the calculation of the availability of maximum water levels at hydrological stations. According to the calculated security data, for each hydrological post, flood zones are constructed by interpolation between pre-calculated flood zones of standard security. The results of the work can be used by the Main Directorate of the Ministry for Emergency Situations of Russia for the Sverdlovsk Region.

scholarly journals Effects of the COVID-19 Lockdown on Urban Light Emissions: Ground and Satellite Comparison

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 258
Author(s):  
Máximo Bustamante-Calabria ◽  
Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel ◽  
Susana Martín-Ruiz ◽  
Jose-Luis Ortiz ◽  
José M. Vílchez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Clear Correlation ◽  
Light Pollution ◽  
Nocturnal Activity ◽  
Empirical Expression ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosol ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Sky Brightness ◽  
The City

‘Lockdown’ periods in response to COVID-19 have provided a unique opportunity to study the impacts of economic activity on environmental pollution (e.g., NO2, aerosols, noise, light). The effects on NO2 and aerosols have been very noticeable and readily demonstrated, but that on light pollution has proven challenging to determine. The main reason for this difficulty is that the primary source of nighttime satellite imagery of the earth is the SNPP-VIIRS/DNB instrument, which acquires data late at night after most human nocturnal activity has already occurred and much associated lighting has been turned off. Here, to analyze the effect of lockdown on urban light emissions, we use ground and satellite data for Granada, Spain, during the COVID-19 induced confinement of the city’s population from 14 March until 31 May 2020. We find a clear decrease in light pollution due both to a decrease in light emissions from the city and to a decrease in anthropogenic aerosol content in the atmosphere which resulted in less light being scattered. A clear correlation between the abundance of PM10 particles and sky brightness is observed, such that the more polluted the atmosphere the brighter the urban night sky. An empirical expression is determined that relates PM10 particle abundance and sky brightness at three different wavelength bands.

Wandering Abroad: Ethnographic Journeys in the City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Kiddey
Keyword(s):  
Short Distance ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Post Office ◽  
Local Police ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Church Volunteers ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

I agreed to meet Punk Paul on Stokes Croft at around 8 a.m. Paul was exactly where he said he would be—behind the bin next to The Big Issue office. In his early forties, Punk Paul was everything a punk should be—a devout follower of punk bands across the UK, he sported a blue Mohican (when bathroom facilities and soap rations permitted), army issue boots and a battered leather jacket covered in ‘anti-fa’ (anti-fascist) symbols. Paul fashioned the rest of his clothes from whatever he was given by church volunteers and picked up along the way. His distain of authority was firm but friendly. ‘Evening officer,’ he could often be heard saying, with a wink, to local police who regularly busted him for drinking in ‘no drinking zones’. ‘Could you spare a few shekels for an old sea dog? I’m trying to get together a pirate ship to sail off the end of the earth!’ ‘I have to pay Abdul £10.03,’ Paul said, as I approached. Abdul, Stokes Croft’s kindly but long-suffering newsagent, let some homeless people, including Paul, have beer on tick. We walked the short distance from the post office to Abdul’s shop and I waited outside with my dogs while Paul paid his debt. He was holding a can of Tennant’s lager when he reappeared. ‘It’s sort of a constant debt that I have with Abdul!’ He grinned before leading the way down City Road, Brighton Road, and onto Wilder Street. ‘You have to see this place! If you want to see what homelessness is really like in this country . . . this city could be any city, if you ask me. You have to see this place!’ We continued down Wilder Street until we reached a semi-derelict building. Through peeling paint it was possible to read ‘Bristol Transmissions’ above the long-ago boarded-up shop window. ‘It’s known as “The Black House”,’ Paul said, pushing the door. A padlock had been smashed off. Inside, there were two downstairs rooms, both hugely decayed with missing floorboards.

Songs and Whispers

Sacred Sea ◽  
2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Lake Baikal ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Eastern Shore ◽  
Crack Open ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Northern Edge ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

Acrumpled and broken strand of asphalt rises at the northern edge of Ulan-Ude, wanders through the dark woods of the Khamar-Daban Mountains, and finally settles into a band of fertile bottom land in a narrow stretch of coastal plain approaching the eastern shore of Lake Baikal. A rattly old Toyota van skitters along the road, passing lonely farms and tiny villages that gather up out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, domed churches that seem miles from any worshipers, and an occasional solitary babushka by the side of the road selling whatever she’s been able to squeeze from the earth or gather in the woods. There are seven of us riding this highway on this raw morning in October of 2000, crammed into the van and bobbing like buoys to its irregular rhythms—James and me from Boston, our guide Andrei Suknev, his colleague Igor and our driver Kim, all from the city of Ulan-Ude, and two young women who have also signed on with Andrei for a few days—Elisa, from France, and Chanda, from Canada. We’re all eating pine nuts that we bought from one of those women at a wide spot in the road—they’re called orekhi here—and washing them down with lemon soda from a huge plastic bottle. Andrei is showing us how to crack open the nuts’ hard shells with our front teeth and excavate their soft and pungent meat with our tongues. At an austere restaurant in a tiny village that Andrei tells us is called “Noisy Place,” we eat a lunch of rice and some sort of meat, dry bread, and a peculiar variation on borshch, and we pee in an outhouse across the road. We get back in the van and rumble on. We’re heading for a remote national park on Baikal’s eastern shore, but at the moment I’m not quite sure where we’re going. I’d asked Andrei to take us hiking and camping on the lakeshore, to introduce us to local residents, communities, and culture. He’s promised to do that, but he hasn’t provided much beyond the barest details, and none of us has been asking for more.

Improving Climatic Comfort of Citizens by Adjusting the Orientation and Extension of Physics of City Squares: Case Study of Yazd

2017 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 1750012
Author(s):  
Fouad KHEIRABADI ◽  
Hooshmand ALIZADEH ◽  
Hossein NOURMOHAMMADZAD
Keyword(s):  
Solar Radiation ◽  
Correlation Method ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The City ◽  
High Building ◽  
Software Measures

The heat of the earth is provided by solar radiation. A change in the angle of solar radiation and the surface of the earth causes changes in the ambient temperature. Sometimes, these changes reduce climatic comfort of human beings. Climatic comfort is established when there is a balance between excreted and absorbed temperatures of the skin of the body. Orientation and extension rates of physics of squares relative to the geographical north influence the amount of received direct sunlight in different months. Relevant studies show that the squares of the city of Yazd reduce the climatic comfort of its citizens; moreover, the physics of Yazd's squares apply various extension rates, which led to high building costs to citizens and relevant organizations. This study, by using the correlation method and R software, measures different orientation and extension rates of physics of squares in Yazd. It analyzes two models with orientation and physical extension as variables and evaluates the shade and sunlight in the space. The results reveal significant differences between desirable and undesirable options. Considering the climatic comfort of space users and residents at the same time, a rectangle with an extension ratio of one to several and the north-south orientation, making the lowest facade face the south, is the most appropriate physic for city squares.

scholarly journals Temperature monitoring of surface layers of the earth in Perm

2019 ◽  
Vol 265 ◽  
pp. 04004
Author(s):  
Andrey Ponomaryov ◽  
Aleksandr Zakharov
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Temperature Change ◽  
Temperature Fluctuations ◽  
Temperature Monitoring ◽  
Clay Soils ◽  
Seasonal Temperature ◽  
Surface Layers ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Geological Conditions ◽  
The City

The article presents the results of monitoring the temperature of the surface layers of the earth. Monitoring was carried out at two sites with engineering-geological conditions typical for Perm. The geological conditions of the first site are clay soils, the second site is sandy. The first site is located in a dense urban development, the second in an unfinished part of the city of Perm. The depth of the soil massif on which the temperature was monitored was: for the first site - 19 m, for the second site - 37 m. Based on monitoring results, a picture of the temperature change in the soil massif in time for both sites was obtained. In the article, the average monthly temperatures of the soil massif are plotted on both sites. The zone of fluctuations in the temperature of the soil massif is revealed depending on the temperature of the outside air. The depth of the zone of seasonal temperature fluctuations was 10m. Monitoring determined that the temperature of the ground mass is below 10m: for the first site + 12 ° C with a decrease in temperature to 10°C to a depth of 19m, for the second site - a constant + 6-7°C to a depth of 37m.

scholarly journals XIX.—The City of Cumæ, and the recent Excavations there

Archaeologia ◽  
1858 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Ashpitel
Keyword(s):  
The Earth ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Poet ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

There is scarcely a district in the world endowed with such singular beauty, and possessing such deep points of interest, as that extending about ten or twelve miles westward from Naples. A sky of such brilliancy as only Italy can shew; a sea of colours like the transparent hues of the sapphire and emerald; mountains on land and mountainous islands rising from the sea twice and thrice the height of those in Wales, and crowned with snow for a third of the year. The air of extraordinary clearness and purity, and redolent with the odours of the myrtle, orange, and citron. The earth covered with rich crops of maize, the vine hanging in a cordage of festoons from tree to tree, huge groves of figs and olives twisted in every fantastic form, and interspersed with the feathery palm, forests of pine, leccio, and cypress, all form a scene of beauty difficult to describe. But how is the interest heightened when we reflect on the history of the spot! We are in the scene so exquisitely described by Virgil in the Æneid. Here are the Isles of the Sirens and of Circe, the Tomb of Misenus, the Grotto of the Sibyl, the mysterious River Cocytus, the Lake Avernus, and the Elysian Fields. Here, too, the great poet is supposed to have been interred. The heights are crowned with the remains of sumptuous villas, where Caesar, Crassus, Pompey, Lucullus, and Augustus feasted, and where Cicero penned his best philosophical works.

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