OSB and Marine Plywood: Performance Comparison for use with Light Steel Frame Walls in Brazil

The use of light steel frame and wood frame in Brazil is still recent, hence there is little information about the durability of these technologies applied in Brazilian climate conditions. The wood-based boards are used as a part of the light steel or wood frame walls and are designed to contribute to the wall structural behavior (horizontal reinforcement and resistance to suspended loads). Once the information if such boards meet the DL (design life) set in the Brazilian code of residential building performance is still unknown, this paper analyses the technical characteristics of two woodbased boards - OSB and marine plywood - aiming to gather more information concerning durability under liquid water action. Thus, tests were carried out on samples of these two boards to evaluate their behavior against liquid water and after accelerated ageing test. In all cases, OSB showed to be more sensitive to early degradation than plywood

Assessment of Moisture Performance of National Building Code Canada Compliant Wall Assemblies under Climate Change

Due to climate change, higher temperatures and rainfalls are expected to happen in some areas of Canada, which might increase the climate loads on buildings and lead to premature degradation of moisture-sensitive materials in wall assemblies. To investigate potential durability issues in three cities across Canada (Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary), code-compliant wood-frame walls with two types of claddings, stucco and brick, were simulated using Delphin 5.9. Two different climate data sets, historical and future when a global warming of 3.5ºC is expected to be reached were used. The hygrothermal performance in terms of mold growth risk was analysed with respect to cladding types, considering air leakage. All the three cities are similarly warmer in the future. However, wind-driven rain (WDR) is higher in Vancouver than in Ottawa and Calgary. With brick cladding the relative humidity is kept below the threshold for mould development only in Ottawa and Calgary. With stucco in future, while Ottawa shows greater mould indices than historical, Calgary shows opposite behavior. The results suggest that the risk of mould growth due to air leakage may decrease in the future

Agricultural residue gasification for low-cost, low-carbon decentralized power:An empirical case study in Cambodia

Abstract not availableJohn L. Field, Paul Tanger, Simon J. Shackley, Stephan M. Haefel

ICDP workshop on the Lake Tanganyika Scientific Drilling Project: a late Miocene–present record of climate, rifting, and ecosystem evolution from the world's oldest tropical lake

The Neogene and Quaternary are characterized by enormous changes in global climate and environments, including global cooling and the establishment of northern high-latitude glaciers. These changes reshaped global ecosystems, including the emergence of tropical dry forests and savannahs that are found in Africa today, which in turn may have influenced the evolution of humans and their ancestors. However, despite decades of research we lack long, continuous, well-resolved records of tropical climate, ecosystem changes, and surface processes necessary to understand their interactions and influences on evolutionary processes. Lake Tanganyika, Africa, contains the most continuous, long continental climate record from the mid-Miocene (∼10 Ma) to the present anywhere in the tropics and has long been recognized as a top-priority site for scientific drilling. The lake is surrounded by the Miombo woodlands, part of the largest dry tropical biome on Earth. Lake Tanganyika also harbors incredibly diverse endemic biota and an entirely unexplored deep microbial biosphere, and it provides textbook examples of rift segmentation, fault behavior, and associated surface processes. To evaluate the interdisciplinary scientific opportunities that an ICDP drilling program at Lake Tanganyika could offer, more than 70 scientists representing 12 countries and a variety of scientific disciplines met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in June 2019. The team developed key research objectives in basin evolution, source-to-sink sedimentology, organismal evolution, geomicrobiology, paleoclimatology, paleolimnology, terrestrial paleoecology, paleoanthropology, and geochronology to be addressed through scientific drilling on Lake Tanganyika. They also identified drilling targets and strategies, logistical challenges, and education and capacity building programs to be carried out through the project. Participants concluded that a drilling program at Lake Tanganyika would produce the first continuous Miocene–present record from the tropics, transforming our understanding of global environmental change, the environmental context of human origins in Africa, and providing a detailed window into the dynamics, tempo and mode of biological diversification and adaptive radiations.© Author(s) 2020. This open access article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

A Systematic Review of the Prevalence of Schizophrenia

BACKGROUND: Understanding the prevalence of schizophrenia has important implications for both health service planning and risk factor epidemiology. The aims of this review are to systematically identify and collate studies describing the prevalence of schizophrenia, to summarize the findings of these studies, and to explore selected factors that may influence prevalence estimates. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Studies with original data related to the prevalence of schizophrenia (published 1965–2002) were identified via searching electronic databases, reviewing citations, and writing to authors. These studies were divided into “core” studies, “migrant” studies, and studies based on “other special groups.” Between- and within-study filters were applied in order to identify discrete prevalence estimates. Cumulative plots of prevalence estimates were made and the distributions described when the underlying estimates were sorted according to prevalence type (point, period, lifetime, and lifetime morbid risk). Based on combined prevalence estimates, the influence of selected key variables was examined (sex, urbanicity, migrant status, country economic index, and study quality). A total of 1,721 prevalence estimates from 188 studies were identified. These estimates were drawn from 46 countries, and were based on an estimated 154,140 potentially overlapping prevalent cases. We identified 132 core studies, 15 migrant studies, and 41 studies based on other special groups. The median values per 1,000 persons (10%–90% quantiles) for the distributions for point, period, lifetime, and lifetime morbid risk were 4.6 (1.9–10.0), 3.3 (1.3–8.2), 4.0 (1.6–12.1), and 7.2 (3.1–27.1), respectively. Based on combined prevalence estimates, we found no significant difference (a) between males and females, or (b) between urban, rural, and mixed sites. The prevalence of schizophrenia in migrants was higher compared to native-born individuals: the migrant-to-native-born ratio median (10%–90% quantile) was 1.8 (0.9–6.4). When sites were grouped by economic status, prevalence estimates from “least developed” countries were significantly lower than those from both “emerging” and “developed” sites (p = 0.04). Studies that scored higher on a quality score had significantly higher prevalence estimates (p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: There is a wealth of data about the prevalence of schizophrenia. These gradients, and the variability found in prevalence estimate distributions, can provide direction for future hypothesis-driven research

Exploring the emergence of a biojet fuel supply chain in Brazil: An agent‐based modeling approach

© 2019 The Authors. GCB Bioenergy Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The aviation industry accounts for more than 2% of global CO 2 emissions. Biojet fuel is expected to make an essential contribution to the decarbonization of the aviation sector. Brazil is seen as a key player in developing sustainable aviation biofuels owing to its long-standing experience with biofuels. Nevertheless, a clear understanding of what policies may be conducive to the emergence of a biojet fuel supply chain is lacking. We extended a spatially explicit agent-based model to explore the emergence of a biojet fuel supply chain from the existing sugarcane–ethanol supply chain. The model accounts for new policies (feed-in tariff and capital investment subsidy) and new considerations into the decision making about production and investment in processing capacity. We found that in a tax-free gasoline regime, a feed-in tariff above 3 R$/L stimulates the production of biojet fuel. At higher levels of gasoline taxation (i.e., 2.46 R$/L), however, any feed-in tariff is insufficient to ensure the production of biojet fuel. Thus, at these levels of gasoline taxation, it is needed to introduce regulations on the production of biojet fuel to ensure its production. Given the current debate about the future direction of the biofuel policy in Brazil, we recommend further research into the effect of market mechanisms based on greenhouse gas emissions on the emergence of a Brazilian biojet fuel supply chain.status: Published onlin

Low energy muon spin rotation and point contact tunneling applied to niobium films for SRF cavities

Muon spin rotation (muSR) and point contact tunneling (PCT) are used since several years for bulk niobium studies. Here we present studies on niobium thin film samples of different deposition techniques (diode, magnetron and HIPIMS) and compare the results with RF measurements and bulk niobium results. It is consistently found from muSR and RF measurements that HIPIMS can be used to produce thin films of high RRR. Hints for magnetism are especially found on the HIPIMS samples. These could possibly contribute to the field dependent losses of superconducting cavities, which are strongly pronounced on niobium on copper cavities