Simulation and comparative analysis of waste in concrete slabs

Construction sector generates significant amounts of waste that affects the environment and obstructs a sustainable development. The horizontal structure (slabs and roofs) is one of the building elements, by its functional requirement (geometry and layout) and volume, who uses more raw material for its constitution (potential generators of waste) On the other hand, the choice of the system to use, is typically based on criteria such as the ease of construction, the economy availability or the technological feasibility; so, from a sustainable perspective, the generation of waste has not been considered or evaluated. This work compares and analyzes four different common elements used in slabs and the possible generation of waste produced for the construction and eventual demolition of them, in order to provide a new weighting criterion in the choice.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Simulation and comparative analysis of waste in concrete slabs

Construction sector generates significant amounts of waste that affects the environment and obsturcts a sustainable development. The horizontal structure (slabs and roofs) is one of the building elements, by its functional requirement (geometry and layout) and volume, who uses more raw material for its constitution (potential generators of waste) On the other hand, the choice of the system to use, is typically based on criteria such as the ease of construction, the economy availability or the tecnological feasibility; so, from a sustainable perspective, the generation of waste has not been considered or evaluated. This work compares and analyzes four different common elements used in slabs and the possible generation of waste produced for the construction and eventual demolition of them, in order to provide a new weighiting criterion in the choice.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The sustainability of Suranga irrigation in South Karnataka and northern Kerala, India

This paper reports the preliminary findings from an on-going research project that is exploring the resilience and sustainability of suranga irrigation technology found in the Western Ghats of south Karnataka and northern Kerala, India. The suranga are traditional adit water harvesting systems that tap ground waters. They have been constructed mainly by individual land owners to provide both drinking and irrigation water. This paper compares traditional suranga irrigation technology with that of more modern irrigation technology, first introduced during the green revolution, in terms of their impacts on livelihood strategies and water use efficiency. The paper also describes some of the recent adaptations made by farmers to suranga systems based on response to new crop growing opportunities and the availability of new conveyance and distribution technologies and materials. The paper concludes by exploring the resilience and sustainability of the traditional system from a catchment based perspective as the region faces the duel pressures of population increase and climate change.Submitted Versio

Banking competition, financial dependence and economic growth

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of financial development and banking competition on economic growth using both structural measures of competition (market concentration) and measures based on the new empirical industrial organization perspective (Panzar and Rosse`s test and the Lerner index). The evidence obtained in the period 1993-2003 for a sample of 53 sectors in 21 countries indicates that financial development and the exercise of bank market power promote economic growth. The latter result is consistent with the literature on relationship lending which argues that bank competition can have a negative effect on the availability of finance for companies that are informationally more opaque. The results cast doubt on the use of market concentration measures as indicators of competition.economic growth; financial development; bank competition

A new perspective on word order preferences: the availability of a lexicon triggers the use of SVO word order

Word orders are not distributed equally: SOV and SVO are the most prevalent among the world's languages. While there is a consensus that SOV might be the "default" order in human languages, the factors that trigger the preference for SVO are still a matter of debate. Here we provide a new perspective on word order preferences that emphasizes the role of a lexicon. We propose that while there is a tendency to favor SOV in the case of improvised communication, the exposure to a shared lexicon makes it possible to liberate sufficient cognitive resources to use syntax. Consequently SVO, the more efficient word order to express syntactic relations, emerges. To test this hypothesis, we taught Italian (SVO) and Persian (SOV) speakers a set of gestures and later asked them to describe simple events. Confirming our prediction, results showed that in both groups a consistent use of SVO emerged after acquiring a stable gesture repertoire