“Landscape and Heritage of Hydroelectricity in Portugal”

Hydroelectric power plants provided countries with scarcity of coal, such as Portugal, with a vital source of energy for the production of electricity in large quantities. Therefore, since the late 19th century the use of waterfalls as producers of electric power was a topic of study and interest among engineers and the matter was regularly discussed at the Association of Portuguese Civilian Engineers. The great hydroelectric power plants, considered by many as the cathedrals of the second industrial revolution are an important industrial heritage which is important to value and appreciate. Hydroelectricity also gave origin to new landscapes and the problem today regards the management of this new landscape and the construction of new patrimonial values

Asserting the Portuguese Civil Engineering Identity: the Role Played by the École des ponts et chaussées

This paper focuses on the Portuguese engineers who returned to Portugal following a training period at École des Ponts et Chaussées, in Paris between 1831 and 1870. During the 19th century, in spite of the creation of engineering schools, such as the Military Academy (1836), the Polytechnic School of Lisbon (1837), the Polytechnic Academy of Oporto (1837), the number of engineers to ensure the planning and the direction of the public works remained insufficient. Moreover, the education provided by these schools granted almost no room for fieldwork. Like in the other European States, some Portuguese engineers tried to complete their training in foreign countries, in particular by attending schools such as the École des Ponts et Chaussées de Paris. The studies which they carried out as well as the projects and the “missions d’études” enabled them to intervene in various areas, from the construction of bridges and railways to agricultural hydraulics on their return to Portugal. Following their return, these engineers played an important role both in the transfer of knowledge as well as in updating Portuguese engineering. They designed and directed various public works and transmitted to their subordinates the most modern methods of planning and construction of roads, railways and seaports. In addition, they were appointed to political and administrative positions in particular within the Ministério das Obras Públicas, Comércio e Indústria created in 1852, in the context of which they had to evaluate, authorize or reject various engineering projects. Finally, some were appointed professors in Portuguese engineering schools where they taught new theories, methods and practices of civil engineering which they had learnt in Paris or during trips abroad

Filtering the Tau method with Frobenius-Pad\'e Approximants

In this work, we use rational approximation to improve the accuracy of spectral solutions of differential equations. When working in the vicinity of solutions with singularities, spectral methods may fail their propagated spectral rate of convergence and even they may fail their convergence at all. We describe a Pad\'e approximation based method to improve the approximation in the Tau method solution of ordinary differential equations. This process is suitable to build rational approximations to solutions of differential problems when their exact solutions have singularities close to their domain