1,354,136 research outputs found
CLIMATE CHANGE AND URBAN FORM: SIMULATION STUDIES IN TEMPERATE CLIMATES
No full textResearch summary Humanity is facing important challenges in the next years. The United Nations set of Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2014), to be adopted in September 2015, underline that climate (goal 13: take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts) and urban issues (goal 11: make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable) are two of the most important of these challenges. Climate is changing and urban population is growing very fast, leaving many people in exposition to extreme events and making more difficult to build the cities resilience. Climate change adaptation requires the understanding of the urban response to warmer environment and heat weaves. Architectural R(solution) proposed in this paper consist in a parametrical interpretation of simulation studies, searching for more adaptable urban forms, which could respond to future modified climates. Three different temperate locations are tested (Rome, Barcelona and Antofagasta), to obtain results that could be generalized and indicate the importance of design variables like density, buildings' height, urban matrix orientation facing sun and wind, and cities' greening strategies
NiTi Wires for Dampers and Actuators: Fatigue
No full textThe singular properties of Shape Memory Alloys (SMA), which are due to a thermoelastic martensitic transformation, made them attractive for use as actuators or as dampers. The dampers could use preferably the stronger effect of the pseudoelastic window and the hysteresis on transforming- retransforming, but also other processes that are available, as damping in martensite phase (rubber-like effect). The application of SMA to practical uses need well established performance and life. The reliable application in some areas, as dampers in Civil Engineering, needs guaranteed properties. The requirements have to be clearly set to look for applicability of specific alloys, conditioning treatments, and devices. In Civil Engineering, the damping of earthquake effects might need some hundreds or one thousand of working cycles, while the damping of wind-induced vibrations would need to support many millions of cycles without failure to be useful. The required number of cycles will then limit the maximum design stresses and strains on the material to perform without failure, and these will directly influence the dimensioning of the devices.
This work deals with some results on fatigue of NiTi pseudoelastic wires, and points the possibility to apply NiTi as damper material. Fatigue has to be studied for concrete applications, with the correct samples
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Built-form, mass and energy: Urban fabric performance
No full textThe link between urban form and building energy demand is a complex balance of morphological, constructive, utilization and climatic factor. Especially in the European compact city, where existing areas prevail on much more energy-efficient new settlements, it is evident that operative ways to transform efficiently the building stock have to be found. This paper explores the existence of a relation between built mass and energy demand depending on urban form. Focusing on the compact city of Mediterranean climate, tests on different case studies simulations are carried out. Results presented and discussed, point out that mass has strong relevance on energy demand and plays an important role in reducing energy consumptions. This paper is a preliminary report of an ongoing research study about one possible way to comprehend "metabolic rate" scaling law - The relationship between power and mass of a complex system in its process - concerning urban fabric. This knowledge-base could help verify the accordance with this rule on urban scale and give hints to conscious and effective built environment transformations towards more efficient conditions
Fatigue laboratory tests toward the design of SMA portico-braces
No full textA deeper understanding of the effectiveness of adopting devices mounting shape memory alloy (SMA) elements in applications targeted to the mitigation of vibrations is pursued via an experimental approach. During a seismic event, less than 1000 loading-unloading cycles of the alloy are required to mitigate the earthquake effects. However, the aging effects during the time of inactivity prior to the oscillations (several decades characterized by the yearly summer-winter temperature wave) should be considered in order to avoid and/or minimize them. In this paper, the results obtained by carrying out, in different laboratories, fatigue tests on SMA specimens are compared and discussed. Furthermore, the effects of seismic events on a steel structure, with and without SMA dampers, are numerically simulated using ANSYS. Under an earthquake excitation, the SMA devices halve the oscillation amplitudes and show re-centering properties. To confirm this result, an experimental campaign is conducted by actually installing the proposed devices on a physical model of the structure and by evaluating their performance under different excitations induced by an actuator
Variations on the Author
No full text“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Author, publisher and bookseller : a tripartite synergy in Nigerian book industry
No full textThis work is about the roles of Author, Publisher and Bookseller in Book development in
Nigeria. The paper started by delving into the history of Book Publishing in Nigeria after
which it proceeded by defining who an author, a publisher, and a bookseller is and
expatiated on the indispensable roles of these key actors in Nigerian Book Industry and in
the emerging Information Society. Furthermore, the various constraints to book
development were identified while the paper advised on how the Book Industry can be
further promoted in Nigeria. However, the paper concluded and made recommendations
on how the Book sector can help in enhancing scholarship in the country
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