Reforço sísmico de estruturas em adobe

A construção em alvenaria de adobe tem um vasto património a nível mundial. É possível encontrar construção em terra no nosso território, sendo que a técnica particular do adobe foi amplamente utilizada na região de Aveiro durante o século XIX até meados do século XX. Devido à tradição e valor patrimonial da construção em alvenaria de adobe, diversos trabalhos têm vindo a ser desenvolvidos no departamento de Engenharia Civil da Universidade de Aveiro, perspetivando um aprofundar de conhecimentos acerca deste tipo de construção. A vulnerabilidade sísmica das construções em alvenaria de adobe fez com que surgissem vários estudos para caracterização sísmica das mesmas, sendo que, recentemente, foi levada a cabo a realização de um ensaio cíclico, simulando os efeitos de um sismo, num modelo de adobe à escala real, construído no laboratório do departamento de Engenharia Civil da Universidade de Aveiro. A presente dissertação tem como objetivo estudar formas de reparação e reforço sísmico de estruturas em adobe. Para isso foi reparado e reforçado o modelo previamente ensaiado, e novamente submetido a um ensaio cíclico, de modo a fazer-se uma análise comparativa com o ensaio prévio e assim retirar conclusões sobre a eficácia da solução de reforço aplicada.

Evaluación de las estructuras óseas involucradas en la técnica quirúrgica de instalación de implantes cigomáticos en cráneos macerados edéntulos

Introducción: El implante cigomático (IC) es una alternativa para pacientes edéntulos o parcialmente dentados que no tienen suficiente hueso maxilar para retener el implante dental convencional y para casos en los cuales el injerto óseo no es adecuado, presentando taza de éxito sobre los 90%. El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar las estructuras óseas involucradas en la instalación del IC, considerando género y grupo étnico. Material y método: Fueron incluidos 96 cráneos de individuos adultos, edéntulos, ambos sexos, leucodermas y melanodermas. Se utilizó un cáliper digital para la realización de las siguientes medidas: 1) RA-CPS: distancia desde el reborde alveolar a nivel del segundo premolar superior, hasta el margen posterosuperior del hueso cigomático; 2) ECPS: Espesor del hueso cigomático a nivel del margen posterosuperior; 3) ECM: Espesor del hueso cigomático en su porción media. Resultados: Los valores promedios obtenidos para RA-CPS, ECPS y ECM en milímetros fueron, respectivamente: mujeres leucodermas 52,09, 2,04 y 4,30; mujeres melanodermas 53,47, 1,99 y 4,93; hombres leucodermas 55,49, 2,28 y 5,33; hombres melanodermas 57,01, 2,22 y 6,01. Discusión: Concluimos que individuos leucodermas, presentan valores promedios menores que individuos melanodermas. Además, las mujeres presentan valores promedios menores que hombres para todas las medidas. Los valores encontrados en este estudio pueden ser utilizados como parámetro para la planificación de la técnica quirúrgica de instalación de IC, evitando riesgos de complicaciones.

Multi-level, Multi-stage and Stochastic Optimization Models for Energy Conservation in Buildings for Federal, State and Local Agencies

Energy Conservation Measure (ECM) project selection is made difficult given real-world constraints, limited resources to implement savings retrofits, various suppliers in the market and project financing alternatives. Many of these energy efficient retrofit projects should be viewed as a series of investments with annual returns for these traditionally risk-averse agencies. Given a list of ECMs available, federal, state and local agencies must determine how to implement projects at lowest costs. The most common methods of implementation planning are suboptimal relative to cost. Federal, state and local agencies can obtain greater returns on their energy conservation investment over traditional methods, regardless of the implementing organization. This dissertation outlines several approaches to improve the traditional energy conservations models. Any public buildings in regions with similar energy conservation goals in the United States or internationally can also benefit greatly from this research. Additionally, many private owners of buildings are under mandates to conserve energy e.g., Local Law 85 of the New York City Energy Conservation Code requires any building, public or private, to meet the most current energy code for any alteration or renovation. Thus, both public and private stakeholders can benefit from this research. The research in this dissertation advances and presents models that decision-makers can use to optimize the selection of ECM projects with respect to the total cost of implementation. A practical application of a two-level mathematical program with equilibrium constraints (MPEC) improves the current best practice for agencies concerned with making the most cost-effective selection leveraging energy services companies or utilities. The two-level model maximizes savings to the agency and profit to the energy services companies (Chapter 2). An additional model presented leverages a single congressional appropriation to implement ECM projects (Chapter 3). Returns from implemented ECM projects are used to fund additional ECM projects. In these cases, fluctuations in energy costs and uncertainty in the estimated savings severely influence ECM project selection and the amount of the appropriation requested. A risk aversion method proposed imposes a minimum on the number of “of projects completed in each stage. A comparative method using Conditional Value at Risk is analyzed. Time consistency was addressed in this chapter. This work demonstrates how a risk-based, stochastic, multi-stage model with binary decision variables at each stage provides a much more accurate estimate for planning than the agency’s traditional approach and deterministic models. Finally, in Chapter 4, a rolling-horizon model allows for subadditivity and superadditivity of the energy savings to simulate interactive effects between ECM projects. The approach makes use of inequalities (McCormick, 1976) to re-express constraints that involve the product of binary variables with an exact linearization (related to the convex hull of those constraints). This model additionally shows the benefits of learning between stages while remaining consistent with the single congressional appropriations framework.

Establishment of a protocol for the cryopreservation of cell sheets of adipose tissue stem cells

Dissertação de Mestrado, Ciências Biomédicas, Departamento de Ciências Biomédicas e Medicina, Universidade do Algarve, 2016

URBSIS: avaliação da vulnerabilidade e gestão do risco sísmico à escala urbana

A qualidade de vida nos núcleos urbanos constitui uma meta dinâmica, fortemente influenciada pelos processos sociais e económicos, pela evolução das suas exigências e expectativas e pela evolução do próprio tecido urbano, do parque edificado e das infraestruturas. Nos núcleos urbanos antigos, são peças fundamentais deste desafio a garantia do conforto e de salubridade, num equilíbrio que se quer, sustentado e sustentável, com a preservação das memórias e da cultura local. Para além da inadequada resistência à ação sísmica, a grande maioria deste edificado encontra-se em avançado estado de degradação, situação que, aliada a outros fenómenos de índole social, tem levado ao abandono massivo destes espaços de elevado valor histórico e patrimonial. De facto, muitos destes edifícios necessitam de intervenções estruturais urgentes, nomeadamente de intervenções de reforço que visem reduzir a sua elevada vulnerabilidade sísmica, particularmente nas zonas do território onde a perigosidade sísmica é mais importante. É nesta base que surge a presente publicação, elaborada no âmbito do projeto de investigação "URBSIS - avaliação da vulnerabilidade e gestão do risco sísmico à escala urbana", e cujo conteúdo vem sublinhar a necessidade de ser elaborado um plano nacional de redução da vulnerabilidade sísmica, particularmente do património histórico e dos núcleos urbanos antigos, para que as situações de risco sejam devidamente identificadas, hierarquizadas e acauteladas.

Fungos ectomicorrízicos em áreas de Mata Atlântica do Nordeste do Brasil

Ectomycorrhizal associations are poorly known from tropical lowlands of South America. Recent field trips to the reserve Parque Estadual das Dunas in Natal, in Rio Grande do Norte state, Brazil, revealed a undocumented community of ectomycorrhizal fungi. This type of Mycorrhizal association is frequently in the north hemisphere in temperate and boreal forests. The aim of this work is to analyze the occurrence of ectotrophic areas in atlantic rainforest. Collections along and around the trails in the reserve revealed six genera of putatively ECM fungi which belong to the basidiomycete, Amanitaceae, Boletaceae, Russulaceae, Entolomataceae, and Sclerodermataceae family which are poorly documented in Brazil. Plants belonging to Myrtaceae, Polygonaceae, Leguminosae/Caesalpinioideae, Erythroxylaceae, Malphigiaceae, Bromeliaceae, Loganiaceae, Sapotaceae e Celastraceae were found living next to the species of fungi analized. Our results suggest that the area studied is an ectotrophic environment which shows high diversity of putatively ECM fungi and some plants probably host ECM. The tropical lands are a potential focus to study reinforced by the new records of Scleroderma in Brazil and Northwest of Brazil

Characterisation of minimalist co-assembled fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl self-assembling peptide systems for presentation of multiple bioactive peptides

The nanofibrillar structures that underpin self-assembling peptide (SAP) hydrogels offer great potential for the development of finely tuned cellular microenvironments suitable for tissue engineering. However, biofunctionalisation without disruption of the assembly remains a key issue. SAPS present the peptide sequence within their structure, and studies to date have typically focused on including a single biological motif, resulting in chemically and biologically homogenous scaffolds. This limits the utility of these systems, as they cannot effectively mimic the complexity of the multicomponent extracellular matrix (ECM). In this work, we demonstrate the first successful co-assembly of two biologically active SAPs to form a coassembled scaffold of distinct two-component nanofibrils, and demonstrate that this approach is more bioactive than either of the individual systems alone. Here, we use two bioinspired SAPs from two key ECM proteins: Fmoc-FRGDF containing the RGD sequence from fibronectin and Fmoc-DIKVAV containing the IKVAV sequence from laminin. Our results demonstrate that these SAPs are able to co-assemble to form stable hybrid nanofibres containing dual epitopes. Comparison of the co-assembled SAP system to the individual SAP hydrogels and to a mixed system (composed of the two hydrogels mixed together post-assembly) demonstrates its superior stable, transparent, shear-thinning hydrogels at biological pH, ideal characteristics for tissue engineering applications. Importantly, we show that only the coassembled hydrogel is able to induce in vitro multinucleate myotube formation with C2C12 cells. This work illustrates the importance of tissue engineering scaffold functionalisation and the need to develop increasingly advanced multicomponent systems for effective ECM mimicry.

STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Successful control of stem cell fate in tissue engineering applications requires the use of sophisticated scaffolds that deliver biological signals to guide growth and differentiation. The complexity of such processes necessitates the presentation of multiple signals in order to effectively mimic the native extracellular matrix (ECM). Here, we establish the use of two biofunctional, minimalist self-assembling peptides (SAPs) to construct the first co-assembled SAP scaffold. Our work characterises this construct, demonstrating that the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the peptides are maintained during the co-assembly process. Importantly, the coassembled system demonstrates superior biological performance relative to the individual SAPs, highlighting the importance of complex ECM mimicry. This work has important implications for future tissue engineering studies.

Los inicios de la Experiencia Cooperativa Mondragón

Este artículo analiza los orígenes y la evolución inicial de la Experiencia Cooperativa Mondragón (ECM). A lo largo de estas tres décadas (1955-1985), se produce el surgimiento y la consolidación de la ECM. Esta Experiencia, radicalmente innovadora en su origen, llegó a tener 19.161 trabajadores en el año 1985; unas ventas por valor de 841,4 millones de euros y un total de 94 cooperativas asociadas a Caja Laboral, distribuidas por toda la geografía vasca. En estos treinta años, las cooperativas conocieron coyunturas económicas muy favorables que supieron aprovechar para crecer, junto con otras más desfavorables en las que desplegaron todo su potencial de intercooperación para resistir y fortalecerse mutuamente. En este periodo, se produjeron cambios significativos en las bases institucionales del Grupo. Los profundos cambios sociales, económicos y políticos acontecidos en la sociedad vasca, fueron acompañados por cambios de tipo cognitivo y normativo en el seno del cooperativismo, mientras que los aspectos reguladores se mantuvieron, siendo estos últimos, los elementos identitarios más vigorosos del cooperativismo.

Cobertura de carteras índice de renta variable con futuros sobre el IBEX 35

Las investigaciones relativas al ratio óptimo de cobertura con futuros de una cartera que replica un índice de renta variable se han llevado a cabo hasta la fecha mediante técnicas econométricas. Los modelos aplicados han ido perfeccionando sus especificaciones, pero todos ellos parten de unos supuestos que se alejan del mundo real, ya que no consideran el pago discreto de dividendos y se basan en una serie del futuro de próximo vencimiento que presenta saltos, al estar compuesta por mini-series encadenadas de futuros de distinto vencimiento. Como consecuencia de estas limitaciones, aunque la eficacia de la cobertura de los modelos econométricos puede considerarse satisfactoria en términos generales, se producen errores significativos en algunos puntos de la serie. La principal aportación de esta tesis a la investigación académica y a la práctica profesional de la gestión de carteras es la definición de un Modelo Algebraico de Cobertura (MAC) que no está basado en técnicas econométricas, es más sencillo de aplicar y superior en resultados104 a los modelos econométricos más utilizados hasta la fecha (MCO, ECM y GARCH) 105. El modelo MAC parte del supuesto de mercado eficiente y de la consideración de un horizonte temporal diario de la cobertura...

Rainfall-runoff modeling using dynamic evolving neural fuzzy inference system with online learning

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.Neuro-Fuzzy Systems (NFS) are computational intelligence tools that have recently been employed in hydrological modeling. In many of the common NFS the learning algorithms used are based on batch learning where all the parameters of the fuzzy system are optimized off-line. Although these models have frequently been used, there is a criticism on such learning process as the number of rules are needed to be predefined by the user. This will reduce the flexibility of the NFS architecture while dealing with different data with different level of complexity. On the other hand, online or local learning evolves through local adjustments in the model as new data is introduced in sequence. In this study, dynamic evolving neural fuzzy inference system (DENFIS) is used in which an evolving, online clustering algorithm called the Evolving Clustering Method (ECM) is implemented. ECM is an online, maximum distance-based clustering method which is able to estimate the number of clusters in a data set and find their current centers in the input space through its fast, one-pass algorithm. The 10-minutes rainfall-runoff time series from a small (23.22 km2) tropical catchment named Sungai Kayu Ara in Selangor, Malaysia, was used in this study. Out of the 40 major events, 12 were used for training and 28 for testing. Results obtained by DENFIS were then compared with the ones obtained by physically-based rainfall-runoff model HEC-HMS and a regression model ARX. It was concluded that DENFIS results were comparable to HEC-HMS and superior to ARX model. This indicates a strong potential for DENFIS to be used in rainfall-runoff modeling.

EVALUACIÓN DEL RIESGO ANTE INCENDIOS FORESTALES EN LA CUENCA DEL RÍO TEMPISQUE, COSTA RICA

Los incendios forestales constituyen problemas que ocasionan grandes daños ambientales sobre los ecosistemas, uno de los mayores impactos en el ambiente son los efectos sobre el cambio climático, situación que acentúa los problemas globales que atentan la vida sobre el planeta. Notoriamente, se reconoce que los incendios son un agente constante de cambios sobre los paisajes naturales y por tanto su estudio reviste importancia, ya que afectan de una manera notable la vegetación, la fauna, el suelo y aumentan el peligro de desertificación, lo que conlleva a los problemas socioeconómicos. Este artículo tiene por objetivo determinar el riesgo ante incendios forestales en la cuenca del Río Tempisque en Costa Rica, a partir de variables explicativas como la proximidad a carreteras, tipos de usos de la tierra, focos de incendios, insolación y altitud sobre el nivel de mar, modeladas con técnicas de Evaluación Multicriterio (ECM) en un Sistema de Información Geográfica (SIG).Dado que el concepto riesgo se refiere a una condición de probabilidad, en este artículo se recrea escenarios en donde podría tener lugar el fuego, los cuales se correlacionan con eventos que se han presentando en años anteriores. Se debe advertir que no se considera la variable viento como factor dispersor del fuego, ya que el objetivo es determinar lugares con condición favorable a incendio sin mediar los factores que contribuyen en su distribución.Palabras claves: incendio forestal, problema ambiental, riesgo, modelaje, sistemas de información geográfica y evaluación multicriterio.AbstractForest fires are problems that cause environmental damage to ecosystems. One of the biggest impacts is on the atmosphere and their effects on climatic change, a situation that exacerbates globalproblems perpetrated on planet life. Historically, fires are recognized as a constant agent of change Julio César Moraga Peralta Evaluación del riesgo ante incendios forestalesen la cuenca del río Tempisque, Costa Rica on the natural landscape. Therefore, fire studies are important because of the significant effect of fire on vegetation, fauna and soils and the increased danger of desertification, leading to socioeconomicproblems.This article has as its objective to determine the risk before forest fires on the Tempisque RiverBasin in Costa Rica from explanatory variables such as proximity to roads, types of land uses, fireoutbreaks, isolation and altitude above sea level, using Multicriteria Evaluation (NDE) modeling techniques in a Geographic Information System.As the term risk refers to a condition of probability, this article recreates scenarios where a fire could occur, which correlate with events that have occurred in previous years. It should be noted that the variable of wind is not considered as a fire-scattering factor since the objective of this study is to identify places with conditions already favorable to fires without a contributing factor in their distribution.Key words: forest fire, environmental problems, risk, geographical information system, multicriteria evaluation modeling, Tempisque River Basin, Costa Rica