Integration of multiple methodologies to evaluate effects of Nature Based Solutions on urban climate mitigation and adaptation

Nature Based Solutions contribute both to mitigate and to adapt the cities to the impacts caused by climate change at urban level. Several methods and tools exist for assessing each strategy. However, none of them allow to cover the whole steps included from analyzing climate trends that could affect the cities, to NBS effectiveness. This paper reviews and classifies existing methods according to the relevant steps of climate resilience and NBS effectiveness, and a combination of various of those methods is presented in a practical case study. Bottom-up city energy, economic and environmental modelling have been performed to understand mitigation effects of NBS implementation at building and neighborhood level. Urban hydrodynamics and fluid dynamics have been modelled too, allowing the estimation of the adaptation effectiveness of the NBS scenarios in flooding and temperatures reduction respectively. Moreover, city vulnerability and urban risks, considering IPCC scenarios regarding climate trends, have been assessed to understand the areas of the city more vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Results show that strategies and climate hazards has been worked in a split way and there is a need to connect better mitigation and adaptation information to facilitate the municipalities taking robust decisions regarding the NBS implementation.The work presented in this article is part of an analysis carried within Nature4Cities project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730468

Phase Transformation Characteristics of High-Temperature Shape Memory Alloy under Tension, Compression, and Bending Actuation Cycling

Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) are a unique class of intermetallic alloys that can cyclically sustain large deformations and recover a designed geometry through a solid-to-solid phase transformation. SMAs provide favorable actuation energy density properties, making them suitable for engineering applications requiring a significant, repeated, work output. To facilitate the development and validation of an SMA constitutive model considering the evolving anisotropic material response for High-Temperature SMA (HTSMA), uniaxial and pure bending actuation cycling tests on HTSMA specimens are performed by a custom-built testing frames. The phase transformation characteristics for Ni$_{50.3}$TiHf$_{20}$ HTSMA under uniaxial tension/compression and four-point bending actuation cycles are investigated. The experimental results show that the polycrystalline HTSMAs has a strong tension-compression asymmetry under uniaxial actuation cycling loading conditions. Furthermore, the four-point beam bending test shows that there is an intrinsic phenomenon when HTSMAs are subjected to cyclic actuation bending conditions, i.e., the zero-strain neutral axis shifts as a result of the asymmetric tension-compression phase transformations and the asymmetric generation of TRIP strains on different sides of the beam. The conducted experiments provide invaluable information to develop and improve the SMA constitutive model considering tension-compression asymmetry and TRIP strain generation within a unified modeling effort. As future work, additional experiments on other HTSMA components, such as torque tubes and specimens with notches or cutouts, under actuation cycling would provide more comprehensive validation data and component performance for HTSMA-based actuators

Gentrification and Air Quality in a Large Urban County in the United States

Introduction: Increases in industrialization and manufacturing have led to worsening pollution in some components of air quality. In addition, gentrification is occurring in large cities throughout the world. As these socioeconomic and demographic changes occur, there have been no studies examining the association of gentrification with air quality. To investigate this association, we studied the trends of gentrification, changes in racial distribution and changes in air quality in each zip code of a large urban county over a 40-year period. Methods: We conducted a retrospective longitudinal study over 40 years in Wayne County, Michigan using socioeconomic and demographic data from the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) and air quality data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). To assess gentrification, longitudinal analyses were performed to examine median household income, percentage with a college education, median housing value, median gross rent and employment level. The racial distribution was evaluated in each zip code during the time period. Gentrification was studied in relation to air quality using nonparametric 2-sample Wilcon-Mann-Whitney tests and Binomial Generalized Linear Regression models. Results: Although air quality improved overall over the 40-year period, there was a lesser rate of improvement in gentrified areas. Furthermore, gentrification was strongly associated with racial distribution. The most substantial gentrification occurred from 2010 to 2020, in which a specific cluster of adjacent zip codes in downtown Detroit experienced intense gentrification and a drop in the percentage of African-American residents. Conclusions: Gentrified areas seem to have a less pronounced improvement in air quality over time. This reduction in air quality improvement is likely associated with demolitions and the construction of new buildings, such as sporting arenas and accompanying traffic density. Gentrification is also strongly associated with an increase in non-minority residents in an area. Although previous definitions of gentrification in the literature have not included racial distribution, we suggest that future definitions should include this metric given the strong association. Minority residents who are displaced as a result of gentrification do not experience the improvements in housing quality, accessibility to healthy foods and other associations of gentrification

SOFIAS – Herramienta para el análisis de ciclo de vida y la calificación ambiental de edificios

This paper describes the development process of a new software tool, called SOFIAS (Software for a Sustainable Architecture), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivenes. Following CEN/TC 350 standard on environmental assessment of buildings, the tool aims at assisting building professionals on reducing the life-cycle environmental impact through the design of new buildings and the refurbishment of existing ones. In addition, SOFIAS provides a rating system based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. This paper explains the innovative aspects of this software, the working methodology and the different type of results that can be obtained using SOFIAS.SOFIAS (Ref. number IPT-2011-0948-380000) project co financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

TMVis: Visualizing Webpage Changes Over Time

TMVis is a web service to provide visualizations of how individual webpages have changed over time. We leverage past research on summarizing collections of webpages with thumbnail-sized screenshots and on choosing a small number of representative archived webpages from a large collection. We offer four visualizations: Image Grid, Image Slider, Timeline, and Animated GIF. Embed codes for the Image Grid and Image Slider can be produced to include these visualizations on separate webpages. This tool can be used to allow scholars from various disciplines, as well as the general public, to explore the temporal nature of webpages

Promoting sustainable agriculture in Africa through ecosystem‑based farm management practices: evidence from Ghana

The type of farming practices employed within an agro-ecosystem have some effects on its health and sustainable agricultural production. Thus, it is important to encourage farmers to make use of ecosystem-friendly farming practices if agricultural production is to be sustainable and this requires the identification of the critical success factors. This paper therefore examined the factors to consider in promoting sustainable agriculture production in Africa through ecosystem-based farm management practices (EBFMPs) using Ghana as a case study. The study employed mixed methods—qualitative and quantitative techniques. Data were collected through key informant interviews, focus group discussions and a semi-structured questionnaire administered to 300 households. The Poisson and negative binomial models were employed to determine the factors that influence farmers’ intensity of adoption of EBFMPs. Eight (8) EBFMPs were used in the paper as the dependent variable, which are organic manure application, conservation of vegetation, conservative tillage, mulching, crop rotation, intercropping with legumes, efficient drainage system and soil bunding

Scholarly communication in transition: The use of question marks in the titles of scientific articles in medicine, life sciences and physics 1966–2005

The titles of scientific articles have a special significance. We examined nearly 20 million scientific articles and recorded the development of articles with a question mark at the end of their titles over the last 40 years. Our study was confined to the disciplines of physics, life sciences and medicine, where we found a significant increase from 50% to more than 200% in the number of articles with question-mark titles. We looked at the principle functions and structure of the titles of scientific papers, and we assume that marketing aspects are one of the decisive factors behind the growing usage of question-mark titles in scientific articles

Accounting students' IT applicaton skills over a 10-year period

This paper reports on the changing nature of a range of information technology (IT) application skills that students declare on entering an accounting degree over the period from 1996 to 2006. Accounting educators need to be aware of the IT skills students bring with them to university because of the implications this has for learning and teaching within the discipline and the importance of both general and specific IT skills within the practice and craft of accounting. Additionally, IT skills constitute a significant element within the portfolio of employability skills that are increasingly demanded by employers and emphasized within the overall Higher Education (HE) agenda. The analysis of students' reported IT application skills on entry to university, across a range of the most relevant areas of IT use in accounting, suggest that their skills have continued to improve over time. However, there are significant differential patterns of change through the years and within cohorts. The paper addresses the generalizability of these findings and discusses the implications of these factors for accounting educators, including the importance of recognising the differences that are potentially masked by the general increase in skills; the need for further research into the changing nature, and implications, of the gender gap in entrants' IT application skills; and the low levels of entrants' spreadsheet and database skills that are a cause for concern