Crossing the borderline takes you to heaven: working classes consumption tourism and frontier conurbations in South America

The borderline between Brazil and Uruguay (South America) is punctuated by “twin cities” settlements established for surveillance since late 19th century. Insulated from the denser urban net spreading from Porto Alegre / BRAZIL and from Montevideo / URUGUAY, they became important commercial nodes. Uruguay government created tax free zones in some of these towns from 1985 on, to strengthen the region economy. From 2005 on, Brazilian ever increasing economical stability and favorable exchange rates turned these borderline sleepy towns into overcrowded weekend bazaars. The discussion focuses on the “borderline conurbations” urban structures in consolidating trends and patterns of regional working classes consumption tourism and its impacts on built heritage conservation, land use patterns and centralities. Spatial transformations promoted by the allocation of touristic and shopping infrastructure are analyzed using Space Syntax methodology to describe the importance of spatial structure for tourist’s movement about the conurbations.Peer Reviewe

Crossing the borderline takes you to heaven: working classes consumption tourism and frontier conurbations in South America

The borderline between Brazil and Uruguay (South America) is punctuated by “twin cities” settlements established for surveillance since late 19th century. Insulated from the denser urban net spreading from Porto Alegre / BRAZIL and from Montevideo / URUGUAY, they became important commercial nodes. Uruguay government created tax free zones in some of these towns from 1985 on, to strengthen the region economy. From 2005 on, Brazilian ever increasing economical stability and favorable exchange rates turned these borderline sleepy towns into overcrowded weekend bazaars. The discussion focuses on the “borderline conurbations” urban structures in consolidating trends and patterns of regional working classes consumption tourism and its impacts on built heritage conservation, land use patterns and centralities. Spatial transformations promoted by the allocation of touristic and shopping infrastructure are analyzed using Space Syntax methodology to describe the importance of spatial structure for tourist’s movement about the conurbations.Peer Reviewe

The territory as action : the body in the writing of the city

Este ensaio se inscreve num viés analítico que entende a cidade pelos seus movimentos corpóreos, que a adentram e a transformam desde seu viver e de suas vivências até a sua escritura. São táticas mais do que estratégias que entendemos ser os operadores da experiência da cidade. O objetivo posto neste texto é produzir uma espécie de cartografia histórica que recupera alguns dos principais pensadores ao longo do século XX que compreendiam a cidade a partir de experiências corporais. Iniciamos com a figura do flâneur de Charles Baudelaire que inspira Walter Benjamin nas descrições de Paris e que aqui se anuncia como “corpos agregados”; passamos aos “corpos lentos”, nomenclatura definida para expressar a apreensão do espaço operada pela teoria em Michel de Certeau; entramos com os “corpos suspensos” denotados na teoria dos não-lugares de Marc Augé; e por fim, adentramos pela filosofia da diferença, para introduzirmos os “corpos rizomáticos” deleuzianos.This essay is part of an analytical bias that understands the city through its corporeal movements that form part and transform it from its experiences to its writing. These are tactics more than strategies that we understand that are the operators in experiencing the city. Our goal in this paper is to produce a certain historical cartography through recovering some of the the main 20th century philosophical insights of thinkers who understood the city from corporeal experiences. Starting from the “aggregate bodies” applied from Charles Baudelaire´s flanêur figure, which inspired Walter Benjamin descriptions of Paris to move forward towards the “slow bodies” in order to synthetize Michel de Certeau’s apprehension of space theory; then introduce the “suspended bodies” depicted from Marc Augé’s theory of non-places to finally reach the “rhizomatic bodies” depicted from Deleuze´s philosophy of difference

Twin-cities over the Messina Strait : a discussion on Reggio Calabria and Messina road-networks linkage

The idea of permanent connection and territorial integration between mainland Italy and Sicily across the Messina Strait dates to the 19th century. However, it was not until 1970’s that the area received the first planning regulations. Since then, proposed linkage projects remained limited to economic-based cost analysis and engineering-design feasibility evaluation. Due to the ever-unstable Italian political scenario, public interest on matter decreased in 1990’s and, by then, associated to incipient configurational models and data processing tools, it hindered any further analyses regarding urban agglomerates’ morphological changes deriving from this connection. Strait debates resurfaced in 2020-2021, as territorial integration is on the agenda of Italian economic recovery plans, an ideal scenario to revisit and study existent proposals, drawing from exploratory evaluations on urban morphology and twin-cities dynamics. This paper contributes to this discussion, through the analysis of different proposals for the Messina Strait linkage, using Space Syntax' Integration measures to assess configurational changes connections between the urban agglomerates of Messina and Reggio-Calabria; depicting tendencies for their urban dynamics transformation. Results and discussion contribute towards planning policies, while appointing the potentials to enhance a shared functional centrality for twin-cities

Twin-cities over the Messina Strait: a discussion on Reggio Calabria and Messina road-networks linkage

The idea of permanent connection and territorial integration between mainland Italy and Sicily across the Messina Strait dates to the 19th century. However, it was not until 1970’s that the area received the first planning regulations. Since then, proposed linkage projects remained limited to economic-based cost analysis and engineering-design feasibility evaluation. Due to the ever-unstable Italian political scenario, public interest on matter decreased in 1990’s and, by then, associated to incipient configurational models and data processing tools, it hindered any further analyses regarding urban agglomerates’ morphological changes deriving from this connection. Strait debates resurfaced in 2020-2021, as territorial integration is on the agenda of Italian economic recovery plans, an ideal scenario to revisit and study existent proposals, drawing from exploratory evaluations on urban morphology and twin-cities dynamics. This paper contributes to this discussion, through the analysis of different proposals for the Messina Strait linkage, using Space Syntax' Integration measures to assess configurational changes connections between the urban agglomerates of Messina and Reggio-Calabria; depicting tendencies for their urban dynamics transformation. Results and discussion contribute towards planning policies, while appointing the potentials to enhance a shared functional centrality for twin-cities

Pasta dental com potencial para ser utilizada na hipersensibilidade dentinária

A hipersensibilidade dentinária (HD) é caracterizada por dor de curta duração, bem localizada, exacerbada aos estímulos sensoriais térmicos, químicos, osmóticos e táteis, originada em dentina exposta ao meio bucal, e que não pode ser explicada por nenhuma outra patologia dental. Embora ela seja uma das queixas mais comuns de pacientes em clínicas odontológicas, não existem tratamentos confiáveis para essa condição. O objetivo desse trabalho foi desenvolver uma formulação de creme dental contendo extrato de ginseng brasileiro e de erva doce, e um compósito de vidro bioativo originado da planta Equisetum hyemalle. Esse creme dental, sem flúor, está sendo preparado para ser usado na redução da sensibilidade dentinária. Experimentos iniciais de estabilidade a temperatura ambiente e acelerada (em estufa a 50 ºC) comprovaram a estabilidade físico-química das formulações desenvolvidas. Os extratos de ginseng e erva doce apresentaram atividade antimicrobiana contra o microrganismo S. mutans. Estudo preliminar de eficácia de tratamento da HD utilizando o creme dental preparado nesse trabalho foi feito. Imagens de microscopia eletrônica de varredura feita em dentes incisivos bovinos que apresentavam a dentina aberta, após ser utilizado o creme dental, mostraram resultados satisfatórios no controle fechamento dos túbulos dentinários

XIPE: the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer

X-ray polarimetry, sometimes alone, and sometimes coupled to spectral and temporal variability measurements and to imaging, allows a wealth of physical phenomena in astrophysics to be studied. X-ray polarimetry investigates the acceleration process, for example, including those typical of magnetic reconnection in solar flares, but also emission in the strong magnetic fields of neutron stars and white dwarfs. It detects scattering in asymmetric structures such as accretion disks and columns, and in the so-called molecular torus and ionization cones. In addition, it allows fundamental physics in regimes of gravity and of magnetic field intensity not accessible to experiments on the Earth to be probed. Finally, models that describe fundamental interactions (e.g. quantum gravity and the extension of the Standard Model) can be tested. We describe in this paper the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer (XIPE), proposed in June 2012 to the first ESA call for a small mission with a launch in 2017 but not selected. XIPE is composed of two out of the three existing JET-X telescopes with two Gas Pixel Detectors (GPD) filled with a He-DME mixture at their focus and two additional GPDs filled with pressurized Ar-DME facing the sun. The Minimum Detectable Polarization is 14 % at 1 mCrab in 10E5 s (2-10 keV) and 0.6 % for an X10 class flare. The Half Energy Width, measured at PANTER X-ray test facility (MPE, Germany) with JET-X optics is 24 arcsec. XIPE takes advantage of a low-earth equatorial orbit with Malindi as down-link station and of a Mission Operation Center (MOC) at INPE (Brazil).Comment: 49 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables. Paper published in Experimental Astronomy http://link.springer.com/journal/1068

Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations1,2,3,4,5,6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world’s most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A espacialização de trocas multiculturais em conurbações internacionais da fronteira Brasil-Uruguai

A complexidade espacial das cidades contemporâneas se deve a novas formas de segmentação social que reorganizam as expectativas de interação entre categorias sociais e informam a produção e apropriação do espaço urbano. Estes processos são mediados pela mobilidade através de fronteiras nacionais que tem suas funções atualizadas a partir da integração econômica regional. Cidades-gêmeas em zonas de fronteiras internacionais adquirem novas funções como polos de integração transnacionais, chamando atenção os processos de conurbação transnacionais a que estão sujeitas. A pesquisa geográfica analisa estes processos e tipifica o fenômeno através de classificações baseadas em contiguidade, continuidade e densidade de funções compartilhadas para mensurar integração, subsidiar estratégias de cooperação internacional e estabelecer hierarquias regionais para redes de cidades. Nesta pesquisa buscou-se dialogar com estas noções a partir do campo da Arquitetura, numa abordagem socioespacial dos problemas de Planejamento Urbano de configuração de territórios híbridos que emergem do processo de conurbação entre cidades-gêmeas da fronteira Brasil – Uruguai. A partir de dois estudos de caso Santana do Livramento (BR) - Rivera (UY) e Chuí (BR) - Chuy (UY) descritos e analisados usando-se ferramentas e métodos da Sintaxe Espacial. Verificam-se categorias de semelhança entre conurbações internacionais ponderando o próprio processo de fusão dos sistemas urbanos como variável implicada na transformação da apropriação social do espaço. A hipótese é que estas conurbações não podem ser descritas como configurações sociais e espaciais a partir de suas partes, sem que se arrisque minorar a importância que a estrutura do espaço construído e o próprio processo de conurbação têm na organização das interações entre categorias sociais na vida cotidiana de cidades-gêmeas em zonas de fronteira internacional, transformando integração espacial, social e econômica. O processo de conurbação e a nodificação de redes de comércio popular são analisados a partir de hierarquias de integração-segregação, acessibilidade-conectividade, continuidade - interpenetração e relacionados à produção de categorias sociais moradorestranho e a emergência de centralidades funcionais transfronteiriças enfocando-se a agencia de imigrantes árabe-palestinos sobre a dinâmica urbana.Social and spatial complexity is the most outstanding feature of contemporary cities. Spatial complexity is enhanced by new patterns of urban expansion informed by the restructuring of interactions between social categories which consider more often new forms of social and economic segmentation. These processes are mediated by mobility across national borders which have their functions updated by economic integration within geographical regions such as MERCOSUL. In this context, cities located along international borderlines acquire new functions related to their role as transnational integration hubs. It also calls attention to conurbation processes between twin cities. Geographical research has been particularly keen in investigating these processes addressing a wide range of typical cross border conurbations. Classification is based on interaction patterns and fluxes intensity between its parts, usually targeting cooperative strategies, economic and commuting between cities to evaluate their strength and hierarchical position amidst regional urban nets. These classifications are based on spatial continuity, contiguity and, especially, on shared or complementary functional centralities, since lower level economical activities such as street commerce are forces driving the conurbation process. Here these conurbations are described and analyzed as spatial configurations using Space Syntax theory and methods to verify structural similarities which enable to classify them as a distinguished urban type. The problem focuses on the urban system relational hierarchy of spatial integrationsegregation, accessibility-connectivity allowing the evaluation of these conurbations spatial patterns performance in relation to the emergence of transborder functional centralities, grassroots commercial networks nodes and middlemen minorities agency. Our hypothesis is that those conurbations cannot be described as a social and spatial configuration through its parts without risking obliterating the role material space has on regulating human interactions