Seismic behaviour of portuguese rammed earth buildings

Rammed earth is one of the oldest building materials in the world and is present in the Portugal with a particular focus in the South of the country. The mechanical properties and the structural behaviour of rammed earth constructions have been the subject of study of many researchers in the recent years. This study is part of a broader research on vernacular seismic culture in Portugal. Numerical analyses were carried out on a rammed earth masonry construction representative of the vernacular heritage of Alentejo region. Variations in the geometry, constructive characteristics and material properties were implemented and the main conclusions of the non-linear static and modal analysis are presented. Analysing the damage framework allowed interpreting the weaknesses of this type of constructions and consider the most appropriate reinforcement methodologies.

Refinement and variability techniques in model transformation of software requirements

Tese de Doutoramento em Tecnologias e Sistemas de Informação

Perceções de docentes do ensino básico e secundário sobre o papel da supervisão pedagógica enquanto contexto de desenvolvimento profissional: um estudo com professores de geografia

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Educação (área de especialização em Supervisão Pedagógica)

Close relationship between diameters at 30cm height and at breast height (DBH)

This paper proposes the establishment of a second diameter measuring standard at 30cm shoot extension ('diam30') as input variable for allometric biomass estimation of small and mid-sized plant shoots. This diameter standard is better suited than the diameter at breast height (DBH, i.e. diameter at 1.30m shoot extension) for adequate characterization of plant dimensions in low bushy vegetation or in primary forest undergrowth. The relationships between both diameter standards are established based on a dataset of 8645 tree, liana and palm shoots in secondary and primary forests of central Amazonia (ranging from 1-150mm dbh). Dbh can be predicted from the diam(30) with high precision, the error introduced by diameter transformation is only 2-3% for trees and palms, and 5% for lianas. This is well acceptable for most field study purposes. Relationships deviate slightly from linearity and differ between growth forms. Relationships were markedly similar for different vegetation types (low secondary regrowth vs. primary forests), soils, and selected genera or species. This points to a general validity and applicability of diameter transformations for other field studies. This study provides researchers with a tool for the allometric estimation of biomass in low or structurally heterogeneous vegetation. Rather than applying a uniform diameter standard, the measuring position which best represents the respective plant can be decided on shoot-by-shoot. Plant diameters measured at 30cm height can be transformed to dbh for subsequent allometric biomass estimation. We recommend the use of these diameter transformations only for plants extending well beyond the theoretical minimum shoot length (i.e., >2m height). This study also prepares the ground for the comparability and compatability of future allometric equations specifically developed for small- to mid-sized vegetation components (i.e., bushes, undergrowth) which are based on the diam(30) measuring standard.

Changes in the relationship between society and nature in the Mezzo-region of Southeastern Pará, Amazon, Brazil

With this work, the authors wish to show some of the alterations in the pattern of relations between society and nature, which have taken place throughout the 20th century in the Parauapebas and Itacaiúnas river valleys, as well as in parts of the Tocantins River valley, in southeastern Pará. This is accomplished through descriptions based on Coudreau's first-hand accounts (1889), transcribed in "Voyage a Itaboca et a L'Itacayuna", published in 1897, which depicts an area almost totally covered by forest. This is followed by a counter view made possible through the LandSat 5 satellite sensors, with images of those valleys in 2001, showing the consequences of society transformations and pressure on natural resources, and above all the dramatic decrease in the size of the forest, reduced to 52 percent of the 63,000 square kilometers analyzed herein.

The group inverse of a product

In this paper, we characterize the existence and give an expression of the group inverse of a product of two regular elements by means of a ring unit.

Brazil's global aspirations and their implications for the relationship with Argentina in the framework of MERCOSUR

Dissertação de mestrado em Relações Internacionais

Arquitetura Flutuante: projetar uma habitação-tipo para um ambiente em transformação

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Arquitectura

O Sinclinal de ferro de Torre de Moncorvo: um recurso mineral como catalisador de um Tempolntermitente

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Arquitectura

Interação multimodal de dispositivos robóticos em ambiente simulado

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia e Gestão de Sistemas de Informação

Pró-fármacos fotoativáveis do péptido AAPV: síntese e avaliação da libertação controlada por luz

Dissertação de mestrado em Bioquímica Aplicada (área de especialização em Biomedicina)

Processo de intervenção no espaço urbano de Braga: Espaço coletivo como novo estrato de relações

Dissertação de mestrado - Área de especialização Arquitetura Cidade e Território

Escritas da utopia na literatura contemporânea – da utopia à distopia

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Literatura (Especialidade em Literatura Comparada)

A radiodifusão no Brasil e em Portugal e a invasão dos brasucas: uma nova linguagem

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Comunicação (área de especialização em Sociologia da Comunicação e da Informação).

Modelling and verifying smell-free architectures with the Archery language

Architectural (bad) smells are design decisions found in software architectures that degrade the ability of systems to evolve. This paper presents an approach to verify that a software architecture is smellfree using the Archery architectural description language. The language provides a core for modelling software architectures and an extension for specifying constraints. The approach consists in precisely specifying architectural smells as constraints, and then verifying that software architectures do not satisfy any of them. The constraint language is based on a propositional modal logic with recursion that includes: a converse operator for relations among architectural concepts, graded modalities for describing the cardinality in such relations, and nominals referencing architectural elements. Four architectural smells illustrate the approach.