USE OF X-RAYS AND QGIS® SOFTWARE TO EVALUATE DETERIORATED WOOD IN MARINE ENVIRONMENTS

The objective of this work was to propose a nondestructive method to identify and quantify the damage caused by marine borers in wood structures. First, a test specimen was submerged in an estuarine environment for 120 days. Radiography was then applied to detect and evaluate the attack by marine borers. Two methods of evaluation were performed with the images to compare them. The first assessment was carried out using the QGIS® geoprocessing program for the treatment of images as a tool, which made it possible to identify and quantify the damage (in cm²). The second evaluation followed the method indicated in EN 275 (1992), which suggests a visual assessment, based on X-ray images, classified according to a template provided in the standard. Although the method using the image treatment by QGIS® is an estimate, it has the advantage of providing a numerical result, in contrast to the visual analysis, which is not as accurate due to its subjectivity. Besides this, the treatment of the images allowed good visualization of the damage to the specimen. The findings indicated that QGIS® can be used as a complement to the method proposed by EN 275 (1992)

Monitoring steel fibre orientation in self-compacting cementitious composite slabs during pouring with dynamic X-ray radiography

This paper presents a new technique based on dynamic X-ray radiography that can be used to assess fibre orientation during pouring of steel fibre reinforced cementitious composites. Synthetic examples were used to assess the suitability and robustness of the technique, which was shown to provide reliable measurements of fibre orientation even when the signal-to-noise ratio is relatively high. A study was then carried out on the effect of formwork aspect ratio, time/duration of pouring, and rebar placement on the fibre orientation while pouring self-compacting cementitious composite slabs. Results demonstrated the ability of the technique in monitoring the movements of fibres while pouring, and the strong effect of the flow in inducing preferential fibre alignment within the slabs. Fibre orientation was found to vary progressively over time and could take about half of the duration of pouring to fully stabilise.University of Sydney - Sydney Research Accelerator (SOAR) programm

Attachment styles and personal growth following romantic breakups: The mediating roles of distress, rumination, and tendency to rebound

© 2013 Marshall et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The purpose of this research was to examine the associations of attachment anxiety and avoidance with personal growth following relationship dissolution, and to test breakup distress, rumination, and tendency to rebound with new partners as mediators of these associations. Study 1 (N = 411) and Study 2 (N = 465) measured attachment style, breakup distress, and personal growth; Study 2 additionally measured ruminative reflection, brooding, and proclivity to rebound with new partners. Structural equation modelling revealed in both studies that anxiety was indirectly associated with greater personal growth through heightened breakup distress, whereas avoidance was indirectly associated with lower personal growth through inhibited breakup distress. Study 2 further showed that the positive association of breakup distress with personal growth was accounted for by enhanced reflection and brooding, and that anxious individuals’ greater personal growth was also explained by their proclivity to rebound. These findings suggest that anxious individuals’ hyperactivated breakup distress may act as a catalyst for personal growth by promoting the cognitive processing of breakup-related thoughts and emotions, whereas avoidant individuals’ deactivated distress may inhibit personal growth by suppressing this cognitive work

PROMOÇÃO DA SAÚDE SEXUAL E REPRODUTIVA DE ADOLESCENTES: EDUCAÇÃO POR PARES

O objetivo do estudo foi descrever o processo de educação por pares, desenvolvido por jovens católicos como promotores da saúde sexual e reprodutiva na adolescência. Trata-se de um estudo qualitativo, realizado com 17 participantes que foram capacitados para desenvolver o processo de educação por pares com outros adolescentes durante o período de um mês, em espaços de convivência escolhidos pelos próprios participantes. Os dados foram registrados em diário de campo e categorizados para análise. Foi realizado educação por pares com 54 amigos e parentes, os temas mais abordados foram sexualidade e IST, os espaços de maior abordagem foram domicílio, escola e rua. A estratégia foi considerada positiva, destacando-se o empenho dos jovens católicos em atuar como educadores. Descritores: Sexualidade, Adolescente, Saúde sexual, Saúde reprodutiva.

Quantifying the Universality of the Stellar Initial Mass Function in Old Star Clusters

We present a new technique to quantify cluster-to-cluster variations in the observed present-day stellar mass functions of a large sample of star clusters. Our method quantifies these differences as a function of both the stellar mass and the total cluster mass, and offers the advantage that it is insensitive to the precise functional form of the mass function. We applied our technique to data taken from the ACS Survey for Globular Clusters, from which we obtained completeness-corrected stellar mass functions in the mass range 0.25-0.75 M$_{\odot}$ for a sample of 27 clusters. The results of our observational analysis were then compared to Monte Carlo simulations for globular cluster evolution spanning a range of initial mass functions, total numbers of stars, concentrations, and virial radii. We show that the present-day mass functions of the clusters in our sample can be reproduced by assuming an universal initial mass function for all clusters, and that the cluster-to-cluster differences are consistent with what is expected from two-body relaxation. A more complete exploration of the initial cluster conditions will be needed in future studies to better constrain the precise functional form of the initial mass function. This study is a first step toward using our technique to constrain the dynamical histories of a large sample of old Galactic star clusters and, by extension, star formation in the early Universe.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS, proof corrections made in updated versio