Distribution of schist villages according to water availability in a Portuguese mountain range

Author(s):  
Cássia Mendes

<p><strong>Distribution of schist villages according to water availability in a Portuguese mountain range </strong></p><p>Autor: Cássia Callebaut Mendes</p><p>[email protected]</p><p> </p><p>The Serra da Lousã, together with the Serra do Açor and Serra da Estrela, constitute the most imposing of the mountainous alignments of Portugal: the Central Cordillera. It consists mainly of shales of pre-Cambrian origin, with steep slopes to the northwest, and quite grooved by the water lines.</p><p>In Serra da Lousã we can find villages whose schist-built houses were once shelters from the weather, from wild animals like the wolf, and other threats.</p><p>One of the topics I will address with my students this year is construction and architecture. Thus, it will be pertinent to relate the geological past of the region with the the construction materials used in the villages; get to know the water network and the strategies that residents developed to store and obtain water in the dry months.</p><p>In this working period, students</p><p>- will visit 2 or 3 villages and the nearest streams. We will relate the geological materials available in the region with the housebuilding; correlate the location of the villages with the distance to the watercourses and observe how the management of this resource took place (reservoir / tank construction, levadas, source ...)</p><p>- They will collect water from different points, analyze their mineralogical composition, compare, and draw conclusions.</p><p> </p><p>In the classroom, students will build a model of one of these villages, using shale used as housebuilding materials, and they will represent all the characteristics of this village based on the observations and studies the performed.</p><p> </p><p>On the poster we will include:</p><p>- Summary of the geological past of Serra da Lousã, and its current framing;</p><p>- Map with the distribution of the villages in Serra da Lousã, indicating those we visited (with photos);</p><p>Map of the Serra da Lousã water distribution and its relationship with the location of the schist villages;</p><p>- Stages of the construction of the model made by the students, of a village model, with the houses in schist, water reservoir, waterfall, brook, levadas, and the final photograph.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>, insira seu HTML abstrato aqui.</p>

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. J. Surendra ◽  
B. T. Suresh ◽  
T. D. Ullas ◽  
T. Vinayak ◽  
Vinay P. Hegde

AbstractWater companies and their consumers affected with leakages in water distribution system worldwide. This has attracted many practitioner’s attention as well as researchers over the past years. Selected study area suffers from water losses of about 10 to 15% which accounts to loss of about 9 to 9.75 million liters per month. The present study was under taken to understand, analyze and evaluate the losses and suggest preventive measures of wrapping and repair clamping for control of these losses. The assessment of water losses is done through comparative analysis of data using Microsoft Excel software. Population forecasting is done in context of assessing the amount of water lost that can be prevented in future decades, adjusting to increased water demand and losses. For better efficiency of the suggested methods, experimental analysis was carried out on a reduced scale model of a single stretched pipeline. Cost estimation of the preventive measures was done by obtaining information about the materials used by trading professionals.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 1221-1228
Author(s):  
Naoto Fukuyo ◽  
Yusuke Yokoyama ◽  
Yosuke Miyairi ◽  
Yusuke Igarashi

ABSTRACTWe analyzed rare wooden Komainu found at Akagami Shrine in Akita prefecture, Japan. The formation of historical objects is often thoroughly recorded in documents, although the formation age of this particular Komainu sculpture is still unknown due to its antiquity. Thus, age determination exercises have been conducted using radiocarbon (14C)-wiggle-matching techniques. Although only a limited quantity was available for sampling, we have successfully measured 14C samples in the sculptures along with several sets of tree rings. We interpret the Komainu sculptures age considering the age of the trees and the result obtained from the wooden construction materials used for the Akagami shrine. The results obtained from Komainu show a range from 550 CE to 1020 CE, which is consistent with the dates of the shrine’s formation. Thus, the multiple 14C-wiggle-matching method can determine precise calendar ages of wood, as well as provide some supportive information for the periods when there are no reliable historical documents.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (13) ◽  
pp. 3835
Author(s):  
Robert Dylewski ◽  
Janusz Adamczyk

The energy efficiency of the construction sector should be determined by the cleanliness of the environment and, thus, the health of society. The scientific aim of this article was to develop a methodology for determining the optimum thickness of thermal insulation, taking into account both economic and ecological aspects and considering both heating and cooling costs. The method takes into account the number of degree days of the heating period, as well as the number of degree days of the cooling period. Variants in terms of different types of thermal insulation, various types of construction materials for building walls, climatic zones and heat sources, were taken into consideration. In order to find the optimum thicknesses of thermal insulation, both in economic and ecological terms, a metacriterion was used. The optimum thicknesses of thermal insulation with the use of the metacriterion were obtained in the range of 0.11–0.55 m. It was observed that the values of the optimum heat transfer coefficients for economic and ecological reasons do not depend on the type of construction materials used for vertical walls. The type of applied heat source is of the greatest importance for the size of the economic and ecological benefits. The proposed mathematical model for determining the optimum thickness of thermal insulation with the use of a metacriterion is a kind of generalization of earlier models from the literature.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 276
Author(s):  
Nisar Ali Khan ◽  
Giorgio Monti ◽  
Camillo Nuti ◽  
Marco Vailati

Infilled reinforced concrete (IRC) frames are a very common construction typology, not only in developing countries such as Pakistan but also in southern Europe and Western countries, due to their ease of construction and less technical skills required for the construction. Their performance during past earthquakes has been in some cases satisfactory and in other cases inadequate. Significant effort has been made among researchers to improve such performance, but few have highlighted the influence of construction materials used in the infill walls. In some building codes, infills are still considered as non-structural elements, both in the design of new buildings and, sometimes, in the assessment of existing buildings. This is mainly due to some difficulties in modeling their mechanical behavior and also the large variety of typologies, which are difficult to categorize. Some building codes, for example, Eurocode, already address the influence of infill walls in design, but there is still a lack of homogeneity among different codes. For example, the Pakistan building code (PBC) does not address infills, despite being a common construction technique in the country. Past earthquake survey records show that construction materials and infill types significantly affect the seismic response of buildings, thus highlighting the importance of investigating such parameters. This is the object of this work, where a numerical model for infill walls is introduced, which aims at predicting their failure mode, as a function of some essential parameters, such as the friction coefficient between mortar and brick surface and mortar strength, usually disregarded in previous models. A comprehensive case study is presented of a three-story IRC frame located in the city of Mirpur, Pakistan, hit by an earthquake of magnitude 5.9 on 24 September 2019. The results obtained from the numerical model show good agreement with the damage patterns observed in situ, thus highlighting the importance of correctly modeling the infill walls when seismically designing or assessing Pakistani buildings that make use of this technology.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 942-954 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parul Gulati ◽  
Moushumi Ghosh

Sphingomonas paucimobilis, an oligotroph, is well recognized for its potential for biofilm formation. The present study explored the biofilm forming ability of a strain isolated from municipal drinking water on plumbing materials. The intensity of biofilm formation of this strain on different plumbing materials was examined by using 1 × 1 cm2 pieces of six different pipe materials, i.e. polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), aluminium (Al), copper (Cu) and rubber (R) and observing by staining with the chemical chromophore, Calcofluor. To understand whether biofilm formation occurs under flow through conditions, a laboratory-scale simulated distribution system, comprised of the above materials was fabricated. Biofilm samples were collected from the designed system at different biofilm ages (10, 40 and 90 hours old) and enumerated. The results indicated that the biofilm formation occurred on all plumbing materials with Cu and R as exceptions. The intensity of biofilm formation was found to be maximum on PVC followed by PP and PE. We also demonstrated the chemical chromophore (Calcofluor) successfully for rapid and easy visual detection of biofilms, validated by scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis of the plumbing materials. Chlorination has little effect in preventing biofilm development.


MRS Bulletin ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 454-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bonfield

The environmental sustainability of materials used in construction applications is driving a requirement for the quanti-fcation of performance attributes of such materials. For example, the European Union (EU) Energy Performance in Buildings Directive will give commercial buildings an energy rating when rented or sold. The Code for Sustainable Homes launched by the U.K. Government's Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) in January 2007 sets out the requirement for all new homes to be carbonneutral by 2016. In addition, homes in the United Kingdom will need to signifcantly reduce water consumption from today's average 160 liters (1) per person per day to less than 801 per person per day. Similarly stringent targets are required for waste, materials, and other factors. Such environmental and energy standards are complementing characteristics such as strength, stiffness, durability, impact, cost, and expected life with factors such as “environmental profle,” “ecopoints” (a single unit measurement of environmental impact arising from a product throughout its lifecycle that is used in the United Kingdom), “carbon footprint” (amount of CO2 produced for the lifecycle of the item), “recycled content,” and “chain of custody” (a legal term that refers to the ability to guarantee the identity and integrity of a specimen from collection through to reporting of test results).


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 2007
Author(s):  
Rui Rocha ◽  
Manuela Vaz Velho ◽  
Joana Santos ◽  
Paulo Fernandes

Serra da Estrela PDO cheese is the oldest traditional cheese manufactured in Portugal. In this work, its microbiome as well as the main raw materials used in cheese production, raw ewes’ milk and thistle flowers (Cynara cardunculus L.), were characterized using next generation sequencing. Samples were accordingly retrieved from a local producer over two consecutive production campaigns and at different time periods within each campaign. The bacterial and fungi communities associated with each matrix were accessed through sequencing of V3−V4 and Internal Transcribed Spacer 2 regions of rRNA gene amplicons, respectively. A high microbial diversity was found associated to each matrix, differing significantly (p < 0.05) from each other. Over 500 taxa were identified in each analyzed matrix, ranging from dominant (relative abundance > 1%), sub-dominant (0.01−1%) and rare taxa (<0.01%). Specifically, in cheese, 30 taxa were present in all analyzed samples (core taxa), including species of Leuconostoc spp. and Lactococcus spp. for bacteria and Candida spp., Debaryomyces spp. and Yarrowia spp. for fungi, that were cumulatively the most prevalent genera in Serra da Estrela PDO cheese (average relative abundance ≥10%). Ultimately, this characterization study may contribute to a better understanding of the microbial dynamics of this traditional PDO product, namely the influence of raw materials on cheese microbiome, and could assist producers interested in preserving the identity, quality and safety of Serra da Estrela PDO cheese.


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