The Substrate and Urban Transformation. Rome: The Formative Process of the Pompeo Theater Area

The city is an organism that has been transformed through continuous modifications of its form. In these transformations, we can find traces that remain and organize the successive urban aggregates over time. The case that will be proposed is one of the urban fabric formed in the area of Pompeo’s theatre, in the Renaissance district of Rome. Through Saverio Muratori’s studies on the urban history of Rome and the new archaeological discoveries, the formation of a residential building on the remains of the ancient building until its specialization was analyzed. The role of the substratum, evident in this case study, shows how spontaneous architecture attests to the great forms of the past, and reuses them in every era, transforming and reinterpreting them. In this way, the city is so eternal reuse of its forms, its paths and its materials

Is humanitarianism recent?

Although there is the need for textbooks in this field, the literary style of Broom’s Sentience and Animal Welfare detracts from the readability of the book. The author attempts with mixed success to define the field and differing opinions regarding the definitions of “sentience” and “animal welfare,” but makes a number of questionable assumptions concerning the history of the subject area

Effects of floaters on the free surface profiles of river flows

The presence of floaters should be taken into account when dealing with hydraulic analyses, e.g. when boats are moored along the river banks or large wood is expected to be conveyed by the river flow during floods. Many approaches have been proposed so far in order to consider the effects of floaters upon the flow features. Usually, they rely on the numerical resolution of the governing equation for both the fluid and the solid phases. Hence, their computational cost can be inadequate at the early stage of hydraulic studies or when large scale analyses have to be performed. A simplified method to compute the value of the resistance coefficient able to reproduce the effects of floaters upon the flow levels is proposed herein. The method is intended to provide the hydraulic parameters to be used within standard hydraulic simulations for which the effects of floaters must be accounted for; this is obtained by means of a modified resistance coefficient

Community Boating, Inc. (Images of America)

Book cover of Community Boating, Inc. (Images of America).Community Boating, Inc. (CBI), now in its seventh decade as a public community sailing program in Boston, has taught several generations of the city's youth how to sail on the Charles River Basin. At the start of the program, it was Joseph Lee Jr., a lifelong proponent of outdoor recreation and public service, who espoused the idea that all children, rich and poor, should know how to handle a sailboat not just for their own enjoyment but also for the attainment of useful life skills, like learning to cooperate with others on and off the water and taking responsibility for their work. This book offers a glimpse at how Community Boating, Inc., is achieving its mission of "Sailing for All."Published versio

Ambient noise tomography reveals basalt and sub-basalt velocity structure beneath the Faroe Islands, North Atlantic

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Ambient noise tomography is applied to seismic data recorded by a portable array of seismographs deployed throughout the Faroe Islands in an effort to illuminate basalt sequences of the North Atlantic Igneous Province, as well as underlying sedimentary layers and Precambrian basement. Rayleigh wave empirical Green's functions between all station pairs are extracted from the data via cross-correlation of long-term recordings, with phase weighted stacking implemented to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Dispersion analysis is applied to extract inter-station group travel-times in the period range 0.5–15 s, followed by inversion for period-dependent group velocity maps. Subsequent inversion for 3-D shear wave velocity reveals the presence of significant lateral heterogeneity (up to 25%) in the crust. Main features of the final model include: (i) a near-surface low velocity layer, interpreted to be the Malinstindur Formation, which comprises subaerial compound lava flows with a weathered upper surface; (ii) a sharp velocity increase at the base of the Malinstindur Formation, which may mark a transition to the underlying Beinisvørð Formation, a thick laterally extensive layer of subaerial basalt sheet lobes; (iii) a low velocity layer at 2.5–7.0 km depth beneath the Beinisvørð Formation, which is consistent with hyaloclastites of the Lopra Formation; (iv) an upper basement layer between depths of 5–9 km and characterized by S wave velocities of approximately 3.2 km/s, consistent with low-grade metamorphosed sedimentary rocks; (v) a high velocity basement, with S wave velocities in excess of 3.6 km/s. This likely reflects the presence of a crystalline mid-lower crust of Archaean continental origin. Compared to previous interpretations of the geological structure beneath the Faroe Islands, our new results point to a more structurally complex and laterally heterogeneous crust, and provide constraints which may help to understand how continental fragments are rifted from the margins of newly forming ocean basins

Coral Settlement on Oil/Gas Platforms in the Northern Gulf of Mexico: Preliminary Evidence of Rarity

In recent decades, there have been two areas of shallow hard substrate available for zooxanthellate coral colonization in the North Gulf of Mexico: the Flower Garden Banks (FGB) and oil and gas platforms. We assessed coral recruitment on platforms possessing adult corals around the FGB. In this preliminary experiment, we used terra cotta plates mounted on racks, deployed on six platforms at depths of 15–27 m for a duration of ≤1 yr in two consecutive years. Data on coral spat taxonomic identification, distribution, and densities were collected. Platform spat densities on plates averaged \u3c1/450 cm2, a low value when compared with the East-FGB (E-FGB; data from earlier similar experiment), other Caribbean sites, or the Great Barrier Reef. Spat density was not significantly different between platforms, suggesting that distance between the platforms and the E-FGB, a potential larval source, was large enough (\u3e0.6–1.2 km) to permit extensive larval diffusion. Total spat density also did not vary significantly between settlement racks, indicating that settlement at the spatial scale of meters was relatively homogeneous. Only three species of spat were found—Tubastraea coccinea, Madracis decactis, and Montastraea sp.; the taxonomic composition of coral spat varied from those observed earlier on the E-FGB—Agaricia and Porites. The dominant recruits matched the dominant adults on the platforms— an unusual situation. Tubastraea and Madracis spat densities, respectively, did not vary significantly between platforms or between racks. Because of low recruitment levels, these artificial reef communities may be considered fragile in comparison to many natural ones because of the time required for recovery in the event of a mass coral mortality. These low recruitment levels, however, when integrated over ~30 yr, can result in the successful establishment of adult coral communities on the platforms

The influence of landslide shape and continental shelf on landslide generated tsunamis along a plane beach

This work proposes an advancement in analytical modelling of landslide tsunamis propagating along a plane beach. It is divided into two parts. In the first one, the analytical two-horizontal-dimension model of Sammarco and Renzi (2008) for tsunamis generated by a Gaussian-shaped landslide on a plane beach is revised and extended to realistic landslide shapes. The influence of finiteness and shape of the slide on the propagating waves is investigated and discussed. In the second part, a new model of landslide tsunamis propagating along a semi-plane beach is devised to analyse the role of the continental platform in attenuating the wave amplitude along the shoreline. With these parameters taken into account, the fit with available experimental data is enhanced and the model completed

Thrombosed external haemorrhoids: A clinician’s dilemma

Haemorrhoids are highly vascular submucosal cushions that underlie the distal rectal mucosa and contribute approximately 15-20% of the resting anal pressure, ensuring complete closure of the anal cana