Housing Design: Furniture or Fixtures? Accommodating Change through Technological and Typological Innovation

The recent global pandemic has sped up architectural research in residential design aimed at rethinking housing layouts, services, and construction methods to accommodate the changing needs of the rapidly evolving contemporary society. New typological and technological design approaches are required to address, on the one hand, the adaptability of the plan as a result of higher flexibility and temporariness in familiar and working patterns, together with a downsizing of the layouts to ensure affordability and quality of life. On the other hand, the issues of sustainability and circular economy require specific attention to interpret the resilience of the building and the reuse/recycle of the fit-out systems. The paper aims at interpreting the notion of integration between fixtures and furnishing in housing design, based on a comprehensive literature review enriched with a case study analysis that shows design concepts and approaches rooted in theories and experiences of 20th-century architecture. Principles, potentials, and barriers to the development of integrated systems are highlighted and the possible implementation of industrialised production components, the potential for modularity, flexibility, and assembly are discussed

Metáforas e Sua Representatividade na Gestão Acadêmica

As organizações sociais são essencialmente orientadas por símbolos, a partir dos quais os agentes organizacionais estão constantemente pensando, refletindo e agindo, tendo como base imagens, discursos, decisões e ações. Dentre os diferentes tipos de símbolos presentes na literatura está a metáfora, que faz parte da natureza e da essência das práticas gerenciais das organizações em geral e, ainda mais, de organizações acadêmicas, um dos tipos de organizações mais complexas da sociedade. Considerando que comportamentos, construções de sentido (sensemaking) e símbolos são construídos e compartilhados por gestores acadêmicos e, portanto, são influenciadores de práticas gerenciais adotadas, este estudo investigou a presença e a influência de características de três principais metáforas nas práticas desenvolvidas: a Metáfora da Máquina, a Metáfora da Arena Política e a Metáfora da Anarquia Organizada. Para tanto, examinou-se como as metáforas influenciam as práticas da gestão acadêmica de uma Instituição de Ensino Superior (IES) nos seus diferentes níveis de atuação (formação Técnica, Graduação e Mestrado). O estudo respalda-se em conceitos de metáforas, sensemaking, gestão acadêmica e complexidade organizacional. Trata-se de um estudo de caso de natureza qualitativa, descritiva e exploratória. Dados foram coletados por meio de entrevistas e documentos, os quais foram analisados por meio da técnica de análise de narrativas e de análise documental. Resultados evidenciaram a presença e coexistência de características das três Metáforas investigadas nas práticas gerenciais adotadas na gestão acadêmica, todavia, com preponderância da Anarquia Organizada e da Arena Política. Tal coexistência da manifestação das metáforas nas práticas ressalta as implicações da complexidade organizacional e da pluralidade de públicos e de interesses envolvidos na gestão acadêmica. Ainda que ressaltada a importância da adoção de soluções de cunho mecanicista na gestão acadêmica, as práticas de cunho político foram destacadas como sendo essenciais para se avançar na implementação de mudanças. Destaca-se, portanto, a importância da habilidade do gestor acadêmico para desempenhar esta função, a qual demanda a conciliação de uma dimensão objetiva e, principalmente, subjetiva envolvendo insights, criatividade, improvisação, feeling e, preponderantemente, experiência

Aerosol effect on climate extremes in Europe under different future scenarios

This study investigates changes in extreme temperature and precipitation events under different future scenarios of anthropogenic aerosol emissions (i.e., SO2 and black and organic carbon) simulated with an aerosol-climate model (ECHAM5-HAM) with focus on Europe. The simulations include a maximum feasible aerosol reduction (MFR) scenario and a current legislation emission (CLEmod) scenario where Europe implements the MFR scenario, but the rest of the world follows the current legislation scenario and a greenhouse gas scenario. The strongest changes relative to the year 2000 are projected for the MFR scenario, in which the global aerosol reduction greatly enforces the general warming effect due to greenhouse gases and results in significant increases of temperature and precipitation extremes in Europe. Regional warming effects can also be identified from aerosol reductions under the CLEmodscenario. This becomes most obvious in the increase of the hottest summer daytime temperatures in Northern Europe. © 2013 American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved

Circumnuclear Star Clusters in the Galaxy Merger NGC 6240, Observed with Keck Adaptive Optics and HST

We discuss images of the central ~10 kpc (in projection) of the galaxy merger NGC 6240 at H and K' bands, taken with the NIRC2 narrow camera on Keck II using natural guide star adaptive optics. We detect 28 star clusters in the NIRC2 images, of which only 7 can be seen in the similar-spatial-resolution, archival WFPC2 Planetary Camera data at either B or I bands. Combining the NIRC2 narrow camera pointings with wider NICMOS NIC2 images taken with the F110W, F160W, and F222M filters, we identify a total of 32 clusters that are detected in at least one of these 5 infrared (lambda > 1 micron) bandpasses. By comparing to instantaneous burst, stellar population synthesis models (Bruzual & Charlot 2003), we estimate that most of the clusters are consistent with being ~15 Myr old and have photometric masses ranging from 7E5 M_sun to 4E7 M_sun. The total contribution to the star formation rate (SFR) from these clusters is approximately 10 M_sun/year, or ~10% of the total SFR in the nuclear region. We use these newly discovered clusters to estimate the extinction toward NGC 6240's double nuclei, and find values of A_V as high as 14 magnitudes along some sightlines, with an average extinction of A_V~7 mag toward sightlines within ~3 arcsec of the double nuclei.Comment: 37 pages, 9 figures; Accepted for publication by Ap

Measurements and optimization of the light yield of a TeO2_2 crystal

Bolometers have proven to be good instruments to search for rare processes because of their excellent energy resolution and their extremely low intrinsic background. In this kind of detectors, the capability of discriminating alpha particles from electrons represents an important aspect for the background reduction. One possibility for obtaining such a discrimination is provided by the detection of the Cherenkov light which, at the low energies of the natural radioactivity, is only emitted by electrons. This paper describes the method developed to evaluate the amount of light produced by a crystal of TeO$_2$ when hit by a 511 keV photon. The experimental measurements and the results of a detailed simulation of the crystal and the readout system are shown and compared. A light yield of about 52 Cherenkov photons per deposited MeV was measured. The effect of wrapping the crystal with a PTFE layer, with the aim of maximizing the light collection, is also presented