Fujian Tulou Rammed Earth Structures: Optimizing Restoration Techniques Through Participatory Design and Collective Practices

Fujian Tulou is a significant part of the international built heritage. Renovation and strengthening of existing Haka Tulou's earth constructions can ensure a better quality of life for their residents, as well as contribute to a long-lasting prominence of China's heritage. Previous studies of Fujian Tulou mainly cover habitation patterns, construction features and architectural details. In this research a layout has been summarized of causes of deterioration, pathology of structure, focused on the buildings' conservation value and restoration, in terms of history, culture and construction technologies. Out of Fujian's more than 3,000 Tulou, only a few dozen have been awarded the status of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Along with that status, the 46 buildings chosen for the award. The buildings which belong to UNESCO's heritage are on list of possible restoration while the rest remain in disintegration and the villages are getting vacant through years. The answer for the restoration could be found through participation and team work of experts and habitants. A Tulou is usually inhabited by one family clan for several generations, and the enclosed structure allows to the members of the community to work together and participate in a common goal.Therefore, it is necessary to find new intervention techniques for these earthen buildings, or to adapt those already existing - and proved - to the specific characteristics of the material. This is the context in which the present research aims at contributing to the development of grouting and stitching the cracks by means of earthen mortar in rammed earth walls, as collective restoration techniques

Resolving conflicting objectives in the management of the Plastiras Lake: Can we quantify beauty?

The possible water management of the Plastiras Lake, an artificial reservoir in central Greece, is examined. The lake and surrounding landscape are aesthetically degraded when the water level drops, and the requirement of maintaining a high quality of the scenery constitutes one of the several conflicting water uses, the other ones being irrigation, water supply, and power production. This environmental water use, and, to a lesser extent, the requirement for adequate water quality, results in constraining the annual release. Thus, the allowed fluctuation of reservoir stage is not defined by the physical and technical characteristics of the reservoir, but by a multi-criteria decision, the three criteria being maximising water release, ensuring adequate water quality, and maintaining a high quality of the natural landscape. Each of these criteria is analyzed separately. The results are then put together in a multicriterion tableau, which helps understand the implications of the possible alternative decisions. Several conflict resolution methods are overviewed, namely willingness to pay, hedonic prices, and multi-criteria decision analysis. All these methods attempt to quantify non-quantifiable qualities, and it is concluded that they don't necessarily offer any advantage over merely making a choice based on understanding

Morphology and Photoluminescence of HfO2Obtained by Microwave-Hydrothermal

In this letter, we report on the obtention of hafnium oxide (HfO2) nanostructures by the microwave-hydrothermal method. These nanostructures were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission gum scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDXS), ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy, and photoluminescence (PL) measurements. XRD patterns confirmed that this material crystallizes in a monoclinic structure. FEG-SEM and TEM micrographs indicated that the rice-like morphologies were formed due to an increase in the effective collisions between the nanoparticles during the MH processing. The EDXS spectrum was used to verify the chemical compositional of this oxide. UV–vis spectrum revealed that this material have an indirect optical band gap. When excited with 488 nm wavelength at room temperature, the HfO2nanostructures exhibited only one broad PL band with a maximum at around 548 nm (green emission)