Portugal’s resistance to decolonization and the “White Redoubt” (1950–1974)

Portugal’s resistance to decolonization lasted from the mid-1950s until the fall of the regime in April 1974, and it helps to explain why Portugal fought thirteen years of war in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea. Contrary to other colonial powers, the Portuguese rulers were not willing to accept the winds of change nor to meet the demands for the self-determination of its overseas territories that had swept Africa and Asia from the early 1950s. Several factors can explain the inflexibility of Lisbon to accept them, ranging from the ideological nature of the New State; from the strategic context of the Cold War due to the importance of the Azores islands for the United States and NATO; or from Portugal’s alliance with Great Britain. When the war broke out in Angola, and the Indian Union seized the “Portuguese India” territories in 1961, prime-minister Salazar did not receive the political support he expected from Washington and London as traditional allies. In early 1962, Salazar decided to strengthen relations with South Africa and Rhodesia in an attempt to maintain white rule in its overseas territories amidst a drive for independence by African nationalists, so-called “white redoubt,” that was the terminology used by the Kennedy administration to refer to the set of African countries and territories dominated by white minority governments: Angola, Mozambique, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. Strengthened ties would aid his strategy to keep the war effort in Africa by taking advantage of the importance of Angola and Mozambique to the security of South Africa. In 1964, Salazar encouraged Ian Smith to unilaterally declare independence from Great Britain to link Angola and Mozambique to the Southern Africa Security Complex led by South Africa, despite widespread criticism of the apartheid in the United Nations (UN). Concurrently, Lisbon tried to seduce Hastings Banda and Kenneth Kaunda in expelling the liberation movements from Malawi and Zambia in exchange for granting transit facilities to ease the international pressure with regards to its colonial policy. Following several years of military collaboration, in October 1970, Portugal, South Africa, and Rhodesia established a military alliance codenamed “Exercise ALCORA,” which aimed to coordinate the global efforts against the insurgency in Southern Africa. Portugal used the ALCORA to obtain substantial aid in the form of military equipment and financial support, which Portugal needed to keep the war effort in the three African territories. In early 1974, Caetano channeled the South African loan to prevent a significant setback in Guinea, because if it were lost, Mozambique and Angola would follow, and consequently the regime.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Digital Humanities in Praxis: Contextualizing the Brazilian Electronic Literature Collection

In the following essay, Luciana Gattass discusses the formation of a Brazilian Electronic Literature Collection via analysis of works identified in the ELMCIP Knowledge Base. Positioned between the existence of geographical data and the question of a national literature, Gattass considers the role of the human critic in the age of big data.published_or_final_versio

Determinação da aderência entre resinas epoxídicas e argamassas hidráulicas

A determinação da aderência entre polímeros e argamassas coloca alguns problemas. A utilização de ensaios tradicionais como tracção directa, flexão ou corte, normalmente não permite a determinação do valor numérico da aderência. Quando o ligante é bom e a colagem é bem executada, a rotura ocorre na argamassa. Este tipo de roturas permite concluir que a aderência é superior ao valor da tensão de rotura obtida, não sendo possível dizer qual o valor numérico da aderência. Utilizando um ensaio baseado na mecânica da fractura é mais fácil a determinação da aderência. Os provetes com entalhe permitem a concentração de tensões na junta polímero/argamassa. Assim, as roturas adesivas são mais frequentes, permitindo a determinação do valor numérico da aderência. O provete escolhido para este estudo foi o DCB (“double cantilever beam”). Os materiais utilizados foram uma resina epoxídica e uma argamassa normal. Os ensaios de tracção directa das colagens entre estes dois materiais conduziram a roturas na argamassa. No entanto, nos ensaios com provetes DCB obtiveram-se sempre roturas mistas. Para a determinação da energia de fractura (Gf) é necessário conhecer o comprimento da fissura. Este parâmetro altera-se durante o ensaio, não sendo fácil a sua determinação em cada instante. Para esta determinação, utilizaram-se três métodos: emissão acústica, colocação de um deflectómetro no meio do caminho de fissura e complacência. O método da complacência revelou-se mais adequado. Outro problema é o desvio das fissuras para fora do seu caminho esperado. Para evitar estes desvios, reforçaram-se os provetes exteriormente, colando placas de aço. Assim, conseguiu-se que as roturas seguissem o caminho de propagação esperado. Por último, para evitar o reforço exterior, utilizaram-se provetes DCB com secção variável. Estes provetes comportaram-se bem durante os ensaios

Aderência entre betão húmido e resinas epoxídicas

As resinas epoxídicas têm actualmente muita aplicação na reparação e na colagem de elementos de betão. A justificação para essa crescente utilização tem a ver com a excelente aderência que apresentam nas ligações betão endurecido-betão endurecido, betão endurecido-betão fresco e betão endurecido-materiais metálicos. No entanto, a aderência decresce quando o substrato está húmido. A incorporação de uma carga mineral no sistema epoxídico permite a obtenção de uma boa aderência, mesmo quando o betão está húmido no momento da colagem. Neste estudo, a aderência foi determinada com ensaios de tracção directa. Os resultados permitem avaliar a influência do tipo, granulometria e quantidade de carga mineral no comportamento de colagens betão endurecido-betão endurecido. A influência da espessura da junta foi igualmente avaliada. A apresentação dos resultados efectuase de acordo com um método de optimização quadrática que tem em conta a tensão e o modo de rotura

Debates in the Digital Humanities Formerly Known as Humanities Computing

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Legislative aspects

This chapter contains a lot of information on the new European approach to regulate natural radioactivity in building materials. The main Directive that deals with natural radioactivity in building materials is the Euratom- Basic Safety Standards Directive (EU-BSS) and its approach to regulate building materials is described in Section 4.3. Some additional information on the link with the Construction Products Regulation (CPR) is provided in Section 4.3.1. For the reader who wants to explore the history of the EU-BSS and several important earlier documents in greater depth we refer to Section 4.2. For the reader who wonders how the Euratom drinking water Directive might impact on building materials we refer to Section 4.4. In Sections 4.5 and 4.6 current national legislations on natural radioactivity in building materials are considered in more detail. Several tools are described for the screening of the radiological properties of building materials. These tools are discussed in Section 4.7.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Top quark loop corrections to the decay H+→h0W+H^+ \to h^0 W^+ in the Two Higgs Doublet Model

We calculate the decay width for the process $H^+ \to h^0 W^+$ up to order $g^4$ in the framework of the Two Higgs Doublet Model. We argue that for some reasonable choice of the free parameters the contribution from the one-loop graphs can be as large as 40%.Comment: 9 pages (in a4wide), tex with figures attached, uuencoded tared gzip file Postscript file also available at http://thep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~brueche

The Offline Software Framework of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory is designed to unveil the nature and the origins of the highest energy cosmic rays. The large and geographically dispersed collaboration of physicists and the wide-ranging collection of simulation and reconstruction tasks pose some special challenges for the offline analysis software. We have designed and implemented a general purpose framework which allows collaborators to contribute algorithms and sequencing instructions to build up the variety of applications they require. The framework includes machinery to manage these user codes, to organize the abundance of user-contributed configuration files, to facilitate multi-format file handling, and to provide access to event and time-dependent detector information which can reside in various data sources. A number of utilities are also provided, including a novel geometry package which allows manipulation of abstract geometrical objects independent of coordinate system choice. The framework is implemented in C++, and takes advantage of object oriented design and common open source tools, while keeping the user side simple enough for C++ novices to learn in a reasonable time. The distribution system incorporates unit and acceptance testing in order to support rapid development of both the core framework and contributed user code.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, presented at IEEE NSS/MIC, 23-29 October 2005, Puerto Ric