Qualidade do ar interior e conforto térmico : um estudo em espaços de estacionamento em Natal/RN

The recent tendency to utilize parking lots for other purposes has demonstrated that more time has been spent by visitors, mainly in great cities. Therefore, this paper investigates the thermal comfort and the air quality indoors in areas specifically used as parking lots by analyzing the direct relation between such environments and vehicular pollution. The thermal comfort and the quality of air indoors in parking lots with different architectonic typology (ground-floor and underground) are also studied, aiming to contribute to the proposition of suitable new areas designated to human usage. Field research was done, in two distinct periods within different weather conditions (January and July) in, two naturally cooled, parking lots located in Natal - RN. The internal environment agents were measured by using tools for air temperature, humidity, speed and direction; interviews with employees and visitors and chemical analysis through appropriate tools to analyze specific material, carbon monoxide and ozone. The results showed that chemical agents densely concentrate mostly in the closed parking space, aggravated by weather conditions, which dissatisfied the visitors. Still, it was shown that architectonic typology, alongside topographical aspects compromise internal environmental conditions, which increases the retention of pollution, leading to dissatisfactory thermal comfort levels and becoming less suitable for usage by visitors considering air and thermal comfort aspects. Consequently, they are not suitable for human stay due to the poor quality of the indoor air

Estudo da oxidação do metabissulfito de sódio contido no efluente da carcinicultura

The shrimp farming is a process of creation of shrimp that has been growing rapidly in the country, occupying a meaningful space in the Brazilian exporting. In 2003, this activity presented a volume of 60 millions of tons and 220 millions of dollars, being the main generator of employment and income of the primary sector of the northeast economy. However, it is a new activity with c.a. five years in the Rio Grande do Norte State and therefore needs investment in the technological area. Among the wastewaters of this activity, the sulphite solution is being usually applied in the process of fishing, i.e. retrieval of the shrimps from the farming. The aim of this work is to present the oxidation experimental results of the sulphite that may be and to determine what it s the most efficient method, trough laboratory experiments. The measurements were carried out in a mixing reactor inserting air and with hydrogen peroxide addition with and without UV light. The solutions were prepared synthetically with concentrations found in the wastewater of fishing and also collected in locu. The oxidation process using air was monitorated by iodometric analysis for the sulphite and the oxidation using hydrogen peroxide was evaluated with turbidimetric analysis for sulphate, by spectrophotometer. The sulphite was totally oxidized in both processes. The experimental results permit to conclude that the oxidation by hydrogen peroxide is more efficient and allowed to determine the optimum operational conditions in terms of concentration and time of treatment

Maus ares e malária: entre os pântanos de Natal e o feroz mosquito africano (1892-1932)

The development of epidemiological practices in the last years of the nineteenth and early twentieth century was characterized by both an influence of medical geography and the emergence of microbes and vectors of diseases. Both theories were used to explain outbreaks in Rio Grande do Norte specially in Natal. In this process were organized new institutions linked to public health, unhealthy spaces and prescribed hygiene measures. The redefinitions of the spaces were linked to updated elements of Hippocratic medicine such as aerism and emphasis on medical topography. How the physicians of the town were organized in the face of new meanings and fields of expertise in the demarcation of diseases and regulation of their own practices against the illegal medical practitioners? Likewise, the very occurrence of epidemics mobilized people, urban institutions and apparatuses. But how the Hippocratic legacy that leads to the idea of bad air originated by swamps from the eighteenth and nineteenth century has been linked to new microbial assumptions and disease vectors in the early twentieth century? How an invader from Africa, (the mosquito A. gambiae) mobilized transnational efforts to combat malaria and redefined the epidemiological practices? The aim of this work is to understand how epidemiological practices redefine the way we define spaces, practices and disease from both an approach influenced by a relational history of spaces and a theoretical synergy which includes topics in Science Studies, Post Structuralist Geography and some elements of Feminist Studies. Documentary research were surveyed in the reports of the provincial presidents, government posts to the Provincial Assembly, specialized medical articles and theses, and documents from the Rockefeller Foundation and national and international journals. In this regard shall be given to both material and discursive aspects of space-related practical epidemiological that Natal as much (in general) Rio Grande do Norte between bad air and malaria.