Smart management of waste from construction sites: mobile application technology in the city Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

Construction and demolition waste (CDW) can be defined as a mixture of surplus materials generated from construction, renovation and demolition activities, including site cleaning, road works and demolition (Shen et al., 2004). Inadequate management of CDW, affects the environment, the economy and society (Jin et al. 2019). Besides increasing construction costs and real estate prices, CDW can have major negative impacts on the environment (Borja et al., 2019), namely the contamination of soil and watercourses with heavy metals that can cause diseases in the population and wild animals. These negative impacts are of major importance in sensitive natural environments, justifying the relevance of this research in the city of Manaus, in the central Amazon, Brazil. A previous study involved the quantification of CDW produced at 4 construction sites in the city of Manaus, and the costs involved in its management and disposal (Oliveira et al., 2019). The results showed that high quantities of wood and paper waste are produced, with considerable disposal costs, in spite of the high potential to recycle and re-use these types of waste. Metal waste was found to be the only CDW that was being adequately recycled in the construction sites under study, showing the importance of the implementation of an organized system to collect and recycle CDW in the city of Manaus (Oliveira et al., 2019). A similar case study conducted in the city of Santiago, capital of Chile, led to a quantification of the CDW volume for further management improvement proposals (Bravo et al., 2019). According to this study, in Santiago the generated volume of CDW per building area is 0.186 m3/m2, with a management cost of 75.47 US$/m3 (Bravo et al., 2019). These values are of the same magnitude as the ones found in the research study conducted in Manaus (Oliveira et al., 2019). Ogunmakinde et al. (2019) describe CDW management in Nigeria, highlighting the existing corruption and unethical practices of large companies who prefer to dig and bury the CDW in clandestine landfills, refusing to comply with environmental laws to avoid loss of profits. This lack of social and environmental responsibility in construction companies is unfortunately also a reality in Brazil. However, surveillance and monitoring of CDW production and disposal may not be the solution to combat clandestine landfill, as demonstrated in the study of Tsiliyannis et al. (2019), conducted in Athens, Greece. Environmental education and good practice are the best weapons we have in environmental management, and adequate CDW management requires a change in the behavior and attitude of each citizen (Mak et al., 2019). The studies conducted in the present investigation sought to define the current model of CDW management in the construction sites of the city of Manaus, its advantages and disadvantages, in order to verify the possibility of implementing a Circular Economy system (Farooque et al., 2019). This system could result in cost savings in civil construction and in the reduction of negative environmental impacts caused by the illegal disposal in clandestine landfills, which harms the lives of the citizens of the city of Manaus and the surrounding environment, the Amazon rainforest itself. Circular Economy CDW management systems have already been implemented in European cities (Fratini et al., 2019; Kravchenko et al., 2019), so why not extend this practice to cities in Latin America, which are also affected by the environmental and financial impacts of inadequate waste management on urban construction sites. In order to implement a Circular Economy model, construction companies must be adequately involved in this system, for example through the promotion of sharing and renting equipment, customers access and involvement, or the redesign of a product in order to make it more durable and easier to reassemble if repair is needed (Kravchenko et al., 2019). Scientific initiatives to develop new materials using CDW raw materials are very important for the sustainability of CDW management, such as ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) which uses a fraction of waste together with natural sand (Wang et al., 2019). Technological developments are of the utmost importance in the process of improving environmental management in a Circular Economy model: digital networks and robotics are increasingly inserted in the context of environmental management, accompanying the development of the new “Industry 4.0” in the manufacturing sector (Sarc et al., 2019). Although the Circular Economy model is not yet implemented in Brazil, good practice initiatives are encouraged, as the one described in this paper regarding CDW waste management in constructions sites in the city of Manaus through the use of start-up technologies like mobile applications. These have an exponentially growing market worldwide, demonstrated by the increasing use of mobile applications running on smartphones, tablets, laptops and other mobile devices (Kaur & Kaur, 2019). The main objective of this research is to enhance adequate environmental management in construction sites through the development of a mobile application for CDW management. This tool can be used by construction companies, waste disposal companies, and even urban citizens who need to dispose construction waste.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Emergy analysis of a silvo-pastoral system, a case study in southern Portugal

The Mediterranean silvo-pastoral system known as Montado, in Portugal, is a complex land use system composed of an open tree stratum in various densities and an herbaceous layer, used for livestock grazing. Livestock also profit from the acorns, and the grazing contributes to avoid shrub encroachment. In the last 20 years, subsidies from the European Union have greatly promoted cattle rearing in this system and the introduction of heavy breeds, at the expense of sheep, goats or the native cattle breeds. The balance of the traditional system is thus threatened, and a precise assessment of the balance between the different components of the system, therefore is highly needed. The goal of this study was to gain a better understanding of a Montado farm system with cattle rearing as the major economic activity by applying the emergy evaluation method to calculate indices of yield, investment, environmental loading and sustainability. By integrating different ecosystem components, the emergy evaluation method allows a comprehensive evaluation of this complex and multifunctional system at the scale of an individual farm. This method provides a set of indices that can help us understand the system and design management strategies that maximize emergy flow in the farm. In this paper, we apply the emergy evaluation method to a Montado farm with cattle rearing, as a way to gain a better understanding of this system at the farm scale. The value for the transformity of veal (2.66E+06 sej J−1) is slightly higher, when compared to other systems producing protein. That means that the investment of nature and man in this product was higher and it requires a premium price on the market. The renewability for Holm Oaks Farm (49 %), lower than for other similar systems, supports the assumption that this is a farm in which, comparing with others, the number of purchased inputs in relation to renewable inputs provided by nature, is higher. The Emergy Investment Ratio is 0.91 for cattle rearing compared to a value of 0.49 for cork and 0.43 for firewood harvesting, making it clear that cattle rearing is a more labor demanding activity comparing with extractive activities as cork and firewood harvesting

Photo and electroluminescence behavior of Tb(ACAC)3phen complex used as emissive layer on organic light emitting diodes

This work shows the luminescence properties of a rare-earth organic complex, the Tb(ACAC)3phen. The results show the 5D4 -> 7F3,4,5,6 transitions with no influence of any ligand emission. The photoluminescence excitation spectrum is tentatively interpreted by the ligands absorption. An OLED was made by thermal evaporation (total thickness of 1200 Å) using TPD and Alq3 as hole and electron transport layers, respectively. The light emission reproduces the photoluminescence spectrum of the terbium complex at room temperature, with CIE (x,y) color coordinates of (0.28, 0.55). No presence of any bands from the ligands was observed. The potential use of this compound in efficient devices is discussed

Jornadas Ibéricas da Figueira-da-índia “Opuntia ficus-indica uma oportunidade para a região” : livro de resumos

Contém o resumo das comunicações apresentadas durante as jornadas

Human red blood cells have an enhancing effect on the relative expansion of CD8+ T lymphocytes in vitro

Cell Prolif. 2001 Dec;34(6):359-67. Human red blood cells have an enhancing effect on the relative expansion of CD8+ T lymphocytes in vitro. Porto B, Fonseca AM, Godinho I, Arosa FA, Porto G. Laboratory of Cytogenetics, Abel Salazar Institute for the Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS), Porto, Portugal. [email protected] Abstract The present study was designed to analyse the effect of red blood cells on T-cell proliferation and expansion. A comparative study was done in peripheral blood cell cultures stimulated with phytohemagglutinin, with or without red blood cells. The presence of red blood cells had a consistent enhancing effect on T lymphocyte proliferation, as determined by an increase in both the mitotic index and thymidine uptake. Phenotypic characterization of T cell blasts by flow cytometry revealed that, in the presence of red blood cells, expanding cells were preferentially CD8+ cells. Accordingly, proliferation of CD8+ lymphocytes from two patients with CD8+ hyperlymphocytosis was dependent on the presence of red blood cells. In contrast, proliferation of CD4+ lymphocytes from two patients with CD4+ hyperlymphocytosis was strongly inhibited by the presence of red blood cells. This is the first reported evidence that human red blood cells have an enhancing effect on the expansion of CD8+ lymphocytes in vitro. PMID: 11737000 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

Dietary fibre and fatty acids in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease risk and progression: a systematic review.

Dietary intake attracts increasing interest in the risk for and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In particular, dietary fatty acids have drawn specific attention for their immunomodulating The study aimed to review the current evidence on the potential roles of fibre or fatty acid intake in the risk and progression of COPD. Pubmed, Cochrane Collaboration Database and conference databases for original adults addressing the association between fibre or fatty acid intake and terms of risk, lung function and respiratory symptoms were searched. articles were included of which four reported on dietary fibre and five acids. Data of studies could not be pooled because of methodological Greater intake of dietary fibre has been consistently associated with COPD risk, better lung function and reduced respiratory symptoms. associations between fatty acids and COPD are inconsistent. Dietary deserves further attention in developing COPD prevention and managemen

Kink Confinement and Supersymmetry

We analyze non-integrable deformations of two-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric quantum field theories with kink excitations. As example, we consider the multi-frequency Super Sine Gordon model. At weak coupling, this model is robust with respect to kink confinement phenomena, in contrast to the purely bosonic case. If we vary the coupling, the model presents a sequence of phase transitions, where pairs of kinks disappear from the spectrum. The phase transitions fall into two classes: the first presents the critical behaviors of the Tricritical Ising model, the second instead those of the gaussian model. In the first case, close to the critical point, the model has metastable vacua, with a spontaneously supersymmetry breaking. When the life-time of the metastable vacua is sufficiently long, the role of goldstino is given by the massless Majorana fermion of the Ising model. On the contrary, supersymmetry remains exact in the phase transition of the second type.Comment: 29 pages, 12 figure

Do the international athletes of the national youth teams are the same in the Senior National team? A study focused on the Portuguese handball throughout more than two decades

El presente estudio pretendió comprender en qué medida los/ las balonmanistas convocados/as para las selecciones nacionales de balonmano en las etapas iniciales de su formación vuelven a representar la selección nacional cuando sénior. La muestra fue constituida por 502 atletas - 287 hombres (M) y 215 mujeres F) - nacidos entre 1970 y 1985, que participaron por lo menos una vez en las competiciones de las selecciones nacionales entre las épocas deportivas de 1986/1987 y 2010/2011. De los principales resultados se destaca que apenas un tercio de los atletas (M:33%) y menos de un cuarto de las atletas (F:23%) que participaron en las selecciones jóvenes fueron convocados/as para la selección senior. Cuando considerados los resultados en función de la categoría de convocatoria se observa que la mayoría de los atletas (M:68%; F:82%), que participaron en la categoría Sub17 volvieron a ser convocados para la selección Sub19 y, además, que cerca de mitad de los atletas y casi dos tercios de las atletas convocadas para la categoría Sub21 no participaron una única vez en la categoría senior. Siendo así, este estudio parece apoyar la idea de que existen varios caminos para alcanzar el alto rendimiento en los deportes colectivos. Las oportunidades de desarrollo de los/ las atletas jóvenes deben ser ofrecidas por los clubs, asociaciones y federaciones, y los progresos de éstos monitorizados continuamente, antes de cualquier proceso de selección o eliminación.This study aimed to understand if the athletes called for national handball teams in the initial stages of their development return to represent the national team as senior. The sample comprised 502 athletes - 287 men and 215 women - born between 1970 and 1985, all of whom competed at least once on national teams during the 1986/87 and 2010/11 seasons. Results highlight that only a third of the male athletes (M: 33%) and less than a quarter of the female athletes (F: 23%) that participated in the youth teams were recalled for the senior national team. When taking into consideration the results according to the category, it was observed that most athletes (M: 68%; F: 82%) who participated in the Under17 category were recalled to the Under19 category. Also approximately half of the male athletes and almost two thirds of the girls called for the Under 21 category did not participate once in the senior national team. Therefore this study seems to support the idea that there are different paths to achieve high performance in team sports. The development of opportunities for young athletes should be offered by the clubs, associations and federations, and their progress should be monitored continuously, before any process of selection or refusal.O presente estudo pretendeu compreender em que medida os/as andebolistas convocados/as para as seleções nacionais de andebol nas etapas iniciais da sua formação voltam a representar a seleção nacional quando seniores. A amostra foi constituída por 502 atletas (total de 287 homens [M] e 215 mulheres [F]), nascidos entre 1970 e 1985, que participaram pelo menos uma vez nas competições das seleções nacionais entre as épocas desportivas de 1986/1987 e 2010/2011. Dos principais resultados destaca-se que apenas um terço dos atletas (M:33%) e menos de um quarto das atletas (F:23%) que participaram nas seleções jovens foram convocados/as para a seleção sénior. Quando considerados os resultados em função da categoria, observa-se que a maioria dos atletas (M:68%; F:82%), que participaram na categoria Sub17 voltaram a ser convocados para a seleção Sub19 e, ainda que cerca de metade dos atletas e quase dois terços das atletas convocadas para a categoria Sub21 não participaram uma única vez na categoria sénior. Assim sendo este estudo parece suportar a ideia de que existem diversos caminhos para alcançar o alto rendimento nos desportos coletivos. As oportunidades de desenvolvimento dos/das atletas jovens devem ser oferecidas pelos clubes, associações e federações, e os progressos destes monitorizados continuamente, antes de qualquer processo de seleção ou eliminação.peerReviewe

Homocysteine levels in pediatric renal transplant recipients.

Transplant Proc. 2003 May;35(3):1093-5. Homocysteine levels in pediatric renal transplant recipients. Mota C, Fonseca I, Santos MJ, Costa T, Faria MS, Henriques AC, Sarmento AM, Pereira E, Pereira M. Department of Paediatric Nephrology, Maria Pia Children's Hospital, R. da Boavista, 827, 4050-111, Porto, Portugal. [email protected] PMID: 12947872 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLIN