Space support in terrestrial military operations : implications for emerging thinking on the future airpower

É intenção deste ensaio fazer um estudo analítico de duas guerras contemporâneas relevantes, a primeira Guerra do Golfo e a Operação Enduring Freedom, onde o apoio do espaço foi decisivo para o estado final desejado. Tendo em consideração este estudo e as teorias e doutrina contemporâneas relativas ao espaço, será confirmado que, apesar da utilidade relativa de trazer à liça a armamentização, todas as escolas de pensamento apresentam sérias limitações em estabelecer uma estratégia para as operações espaciais. De acordo com a perspectiva do autor, o uso militar do espaço apenas como multiplicador do Poder Terrestre não exige uma teoria que reflicta sobre a sua utilização. A criação de uma verdadeira estratégia, política e doutrina espacial, que regulamentarão as operações espaciais poderão resultar de dois factores capitais: a necessidade de proteger os interesses vitais no espaço e a capacidade de produzir efeitos letais e não letais a partir deste meio. Esses factores poderão também desequilibrar a balança a favor da criação de uma Força Espacial como Ramo independente

Oito Casas – Multifamily housing. Braga. Portugal

[EN] The article presents the project for a multifamily housing - Oito Casas – that presents a concrete bearing structure and also a set of pre-fabricated concrete brise soleil in the upper level of the main facade. The specificity of the project led us first to the modification of the allotment plan. A procedure that was then followed by the development of a spatial configuration allowed by a concrete structure and, finally, the introduction of the exposed concrete in the form of concrete brise soleils that provide a particular and changeable identity to the architectural set throughout the day, in a distinctive game of shadows.Teixeira Caldas, J. (2020). Oito Casas – Multifamily housing. Braga. Portugal. En IX Congreso Internacional Arquitectura Blanca. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/CIAB9.2020.10659OC

Design with Climate in Africa. The World of Galleries, Brise–Soleil and Beta Windows

In the twenty–five years after World War II, Angola and Mozambique were fertile territories for the inception of new urban and architectural projects, in keeping with the principles of the Modern Movement. In the earliest works designed by the architects who moved there in the late 1940s, one can already witness a serious concern with the adjustment to the particularities of the hot and humid climate of the tropics. The Modern architectural idiom was particularly well suited to the local climate building requirements such as solar control and provision of adequate ventilation. Moreover, these architectural solutions were underpinned by sustainable procedures that ought to be re–established in the restoration of Modern buildings of the type presented here

A generative design system applied to Sizaís school of architecture at Oporto

A new generative design system based on a genetic algorithm is tested within the framework of Alvaro Siza’s School of Architecture at Oporto, Portugal. The system works over a detailed three-dimensional description of the building and uses natural lighting and overall environmental performance as objective functions to guide the generation of solutions. This paper researches the encoding of architectural design intentions into the system, using constraints derived from Siza’s original design. Experiments using this generative system were performed on three different geographical locations to test the algorithm’s capability to adapt solutions to different climatic characteristics within the same language constraints

Human Operator Tracking System for Safe Industrial Collaborative Robotics

With the advent of the Industry 4.0 paradigm, manufacturing is shifting from mass production towards customisable production lines. While robots excel at reliably executing repeating tasks in a fast and precise manner, they lack the now desired versatility of humans. Human-robot collaboration (HRC) seeks to address this issue by allowing human operators to work together with robots in close proximity, leveraging the strengths of both agents to increase adaptability and productivity. Safety is critical to user acceptance and the success of collaborative robots (cobots) and is thus a focus of research. Typical approaches provide the cobot with information such as operator pose estimates or higher-level motion predictions to facilitate adaptive planning of trajectory or action. Therefore, locating the operator in the shared workspace is a key feature. This dissertation seeks to kickstart the development of a human operator tracking system that provides a three-dimensional pose estimate and, in turn, ensures safety. State-of-the-art methods for human pose estimation in two-dimensional RGB images are tested with a custom dataset and evaluated. The results are then analysed considering real-time capability in the use case of a single operator performing industrial assembly tasks in a collaborative robotic cell equipped with a robotic arm. The resulting observations enable future work like fusion of depth information.With the advent of the Industry 4.0 paradigm, manufacturing is shifting from mass production towards customisable production lines. While robots excel at reliably executing repeating tasks in a fast and precise manner, they lack the now desired versatility of humans. Human-robot collaboration (HRC) seeks to address this issue by allowing human operators to work together with robots in close proximity, leveraging the strengths of both agents to increase adaptability and productivity. Safety is critical to user acceptance and the success of collaborative robots (cobots) and is thus a focus of research. Typical approaches provide the cobot with information such as operator pose estimates or higher-level motion predictions to facilitate adaptive planning of trajectory or action. Therefore, locating the operator in the shared workspace is a key feature. This dissertation seeks to kickstart the development of a human operator tracking system that provides a three-dimensional pose estimate and, in turn, ensures safety. State-of-the-art methods for human pose estimation in two-dimensional RGB images are tested with a custom dataset and evaluated. The results are then analysed considering real-time capability in the use case of a single operator performing industrial assembly tasks in a collaborative robotic cell equipped with a robotic arm. The resulting observations enable future work like fusion of depth information

Design and Production of Complex Architectural Forms with Ceramic Elements

This paper describes a studio experiment developed with the aim of exploring the design and fabrication of complex architectural forms using ceramic elements. History has examples of double-sided curved forms built in ceramics. Such examples would not fulfill contemporary functional and aesthetic principles, neither would they be feasible or cost-effective considering current construction standards. There are recent examples of such forms built in other materials. These examples are difficult to emulate when ceramics is concerned, as they imply the fabrication of unique parts and sophisticated assembly techniques. Creating a double-curved surface in ceramics thus seems a difficult task. There are, however, advantages to such a formulation of design problems. They prompt the questioning of traditional wisdom, the rejection of accepted types, and the raising of interesting questions. What are the design strategies that should be followed when creating ceramic free-forms? What is the design media required to design them? And what are the techniques needed to fabricate and construct them? These are the questions investigated in the design project pursued jointly by students at an American and a Portuguese school, in collaboration with a professional research center and a ceramics factory. The students tested various possibilities, and in the process learned about state-of-art design and production techniques. The final projects are very expressive of their investigations and include a twisted glass tunnel, large-scale ceramic ‘bubbles,’ a rotated-tile wall, and a load-bearing wall

The Douro Region: Wine and Tourism

The Demarcated Douro Region (DDR) dates from 1756, when it was recognized as one of the first demarcated regions in the world. The DDR economic activities fit the terroir model and are based on wine and tourism. Both activities have witnessed deep and structural changes along the last three decades, with influence in the current socio-economic performance of the region. The objective of this paper is to present the recent evolution of the DDR wine filiere and tourism. The Port wine continues to be the star product of DDR, with almost 90% being exported. However, along the last decade the still wines evolved from being almost unknown to a position of a national and international recognition in market niches. The tourism in Douro region is connected to the wine filiere and tends to be structured under two dominant influences: the river and the terroir

The Uber technologies, inc. initial public offering

Concerning its main application, Corporate Finance studies, this case study aims, among others,to showcase historical trends in initial public offerings and IPO underwriting, and deviations, idiosyncratic or structural, from the norm, making use of contemporary, notable examples and contextualizing them within an historical backdrop. To explore overlooked money-making opportunities available to financial institutions (in particular, investment banks), such as the over-allotment option, propose an IPO valuation exercise. To juxtapose IPOvaluation with IPO pricingand explore this conceptual dynamic applied to a concrete, real and prominent event, the Uber Technologies Inc. initial public offering. To prospect the game of incentives underpinning an initial public offer: from the vantage point of the company insiders, the early investors, the IPO buyers, the underwriters, the retail investor –and prompt a discussion on sell-side conflicts of interest, on which clients and actors does the investment bank/underwriter fiduciary responsibility lie with, and how they are bound to inform and shape deals