Capillary rising damp in Venetian context : state of the art and numerical simulation

The fragility of Venice and its buildings are linked to the floods, observed since ancient times and emphasized in recent years: the periodic sea level rise, accompanied by rising damp, are the main causes of the alteration. In particular, the rising damp causes a series of complex diseases in the historic buildings, such as physical decay, chemical or biological, with loss of aesthetic and economic value. In addition, greater heat dispersion and reduced thermal comfort can also occur in interior spaces, with consequent risks for human health. This is a sign of “Sick Building Syndrome”. It is very important to develop models for assessing the vulnerability of assets and to manage sustainable plans related to maintenance processes and activities, satisfying the requirements of effectiveness and compatibility.Basing on numerical models performed with the WUFI 2D software, the paper analyses the different behavior of rising damp in relation to materials or masonry structures. In particular, the construction techniques and typical materials used in Venetian buildings were investigated, such as clay brick walls, lime plaster, Marmorino and Cocciopesto, adopted mainly to limit the capillary rise also caused by the phenomenon of “acqua alta”

proposal of a methodology for achieving a leed o m certification in historic buildings

Abstract Nowadays resources are running out quickly, it's necessary to consider how the construction industry influences the environment using different materials and sources during all the building's life cycle. For this reason, in every transformation phases it's necessary to consider concepts as sustainability and green buildings. These are diffused from hundreds kind of green assessment tools, developed to measure sustainability goals in building sector and to compare the project with possible best practices or other green buildings. In this background, the rating system LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) aims to examine and classify buildings according to energetic and environmental requirements. The particular LEED O+M (Building Operations and Maintenance) is developed for existing buildings undergoing improvement work or little to no construction and is based on the operative and management aspects. The certification process results, at a first analysis, hard to follow due to the complexity of internal parameters and the documentation required. The paper consists in a methodology and in an univocal work program of LEED O+M, trying to obtain the minimum requested certification score with optimization of the technical resources and documents. This methodology has application in a case study of historic building: the Ca' Rezzonico Museum, in the center of Venice

The lecture video recording in university: A case study

The latest European statistics show that Italy has the second lowest percentage of university graduates because of different reasons such as the outdated teaching methodologies or the high costs of university tuitions. Hence, Italian universities have launched several projects to improve or innovate the pedagogical strategies, to raise the student recruitment and to increase access to education. In this work, we describe a pilot study about the use of the video recording of the traditional lessons in order to create specific university MOOCs. In particular, the degree course in Computer Science of University of Naples Federico II is involved in this project. The use of the lecture video recording reduces the MOOC costs and facilitates the contents management. In fact, the production of these MOOCs does not require professional operators so it is possible to involve students of university part-time job or Civil Service volunteers. The results show a good satisfaction by students and prove as these MOOCs can support the university teaching

Integration of LCA tools in BIM toward a regenerative design.

In the case of regenerative processes, design can receive significant benefits from information that can be obtained by applying the life cycle assessment methodology. The LCA (life cycle assessment) approach can be implemented both for a single building material and for the whole building. An effective and efficient real application of this methodology requires the integration of LCA databases and analysis routines in commonly used simulation tools such as energy performance simulation and Building Information Modelling (BIM). The integration of LCA tool significantly impacts the design efficacy especially in reducing environmental impact of the construction industry. This paper reviews the integrated LCA tools in simulation software currently available for BIM platforms and will explore the possibilities given to restorative design informed by LCA analysis, through a test on two construction typologies for a case study

Positive Definite Functions on Complex Spheres and their Walks through Dimensions

We provide walks through dimensions for isotropic positive definite functions defined over complex spheres. We show that the analogues of Montée and Descente operators as proposed by Beatson and zu Castell [J. Approx. Theory 221 (2017), 22-37] on the basis of the original Matheron operator [Les variables régionalisées et leur estimation, Masson, Paris, 1965], allow for similar walks through dimensions. We show that the Montée operators also preserve, up to a constant, strict positive definiteness. For the Descente operators, we show that strict positive definiteness is preserved under some additional conditions, but we provide counterexamples showing that this is not true in general. We also provide a list of parametric families of (strictly) positive definite functions over complex spheres, which are important for several applications

Empathy Activators: Teaching Tools for Enhancing Empathy Development in Service-Learning Classes

On February 5, 2016, 25 educators from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and the University of Richmond (UR) gathered in Richmond, Virginia, for an annual service-learning workshop. This year’s workshop featured Robin Everhart, PhD, VCU assistant professor of psychology, as keynote speaker. Jumpstarted by Everhart’s research on student empathy, workshop participants explored the concept of empathy and collaboratively developed strategies for integrating empathy into the service-learning experience. This document grows out of Everhart’s presentation and group discussions during that workshop and represents a collection of ideas generated

Statistical pairwise interaction model of stock market

Financial markets are a classical example of complex systems as they comprise many interacting stocks. As such, we can obtain a surprisingly good description of their structure by making the rough simplification of binary daily returns. Spin glass models have been applied and gave some valuable results but at the price of restrictive assumptions on the market dynamics or others are agent-based models with rules designed in order to recover some empirical behaviours. Here we show that the pairwise model is actually a statistically consistent model with observed first and second moments of the stocks orientation without making such restrictive assumptions. This is done with an approach based only on empirical data of price returns. Our data analysis of six major indices suggests that the actual interaction structure may be thought as an Ising model on a complex network with interaction strengths scaling as the inverse of the system size. This has potentially important implications since many properties of such a model are already known and some techniques of the spin glass theory can be straightforwardly applied. Typical behaviours, as multiple equilibria or metastable states, different characteristic time scales, spatial patterns, order-disorder, could find an explanation in this picture.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

A rádio que “mostra” notícia: uma análise do canal da CBN no YouTube e uma nova categorização do uso de vídeos por emissoras radiofônicas

Video consumption has grown exponentially in digital media and, in parallel, radio has expanded to other platforms seeking diversity of audience and greater circulation of its content. In relation to this occupation of new spaces, this article discusses the use of video on the radio and, more specifically, its availability on YouTube. In order to observe how Rádio CBN makes use of its channel to make videos available, we discussed the strategies for appropriating the audiovisual format used by this station on a digital platform. As a main result, we identified that there are two main purposes of its use: 1) database and 2) circulation enhancer. At the end of the analysis, we present an update of Lopez's (2012) categorization on the use of video by radio stations.O consumo de vídeo tem crescido exponencialmente nos meios digitais e, em paralelo a isso, o rádio tem se expandido para outras plataformas buscando diversidade de audiência e maior circulação de seu conteúdo. Em relação a essa ocupação de novos espaços, esse artigo traz uma discussão sobre o uso do vídeo pelo rádio e, mais especificamente, sua disponibilização no Youtube. Com o objetivo de observar como a Rádio CBN faz uso de seu canal para disponibilizar vídeos, discutimos sobre as estratégias de apropriação do formato audiovisual utilizadas por essa emissora em plataforma digital. Como principal resultado, identificamos que existem duas principais finalidades de seu uso: 1) banco de dados e 2) potencializador de circulação. Ao final da análise, apresentamos uma atualização da categorização de Lopez (2012) sobre o uso de vídeo por emissoras de rádio