Earthquakes,grants, and public expenditure: How municipalities respond to natural disasters

We analyze the response of municipalities to the occurrence of natural disasters in terms of spending behavior, use of upper-tier transfers and recovery, using balance sheet data of about 8,000 Italian municipalities for the period 2000–2015, and the universe of earthquakes events. We find evidence of increasing expenditure for about 12 years after the shocks, with asymmetric responses between earthquake-related and unconditional grants, and heterogeneous flypaper effects across the country. While in northern municipalities expenditure tends to regress to pre-earthquake levels, southern municipalities stick to higher expenditure levels when grants drop. This evidence is coupled with a faster recovery of private income and housing prices in northern municipalities.     

衡山景观资源开发

衡山为中华五岳之一,著名宗教名山和旅游胜地。本文阐述衡山自然景观的形成,并从旅游的角度论证衡山具有独特的美学价值、丰富的科学与艺术内容、众多的旅游景目、优越的交通地理位置等优势,建议衡山风光资源开发必须遵循建设与保护相结合、自然景观与人文景观并重、美化和净化同步、社会效益与经济效益兼顾等原则。     

生计与风水:清代湘南地区的矿业开发与生态环境

湘南地区毗邻赣、粤、桂三省,地理位置特殊,是一个复杂的地理单元。及至清代,湘南地区已是湖南省乃至全国铜、铅、银等矿业生产的主要区域。长达数百年的矿产开采与冶炼,促进了地方社会的经济发展,也给当地的生态环境带来深远影响。由此,湘南官绅民各界对矿业开发引发的环境问题亦有因应,“坑冶十害论”和“九嶷山封禁案”即为其集中体现。开矿采砂本为解决贫民生计而采取的措施,但因破坏风水、污染水土等一系列影响环境的后果,以致出现开矿与禁矿之争,使得湘南地区矿业开发一度出现波折。这两例个案亦折射出在“重本抑末”的传统社会中地方官绅士民在生计与风水之间的离合关系。地方社会以保护风水为由严禁矿冶,在一定程度上遏止了生态环境的破坏与恶化,不过,其在环保方面发挥的作用也不宜被高估。     

Southwest Arabia During the Holocene: Recent Archaeological Developments

Recent fieldwork has considerably increased our knowledge of early Holocene settlement in Southwest Arabia. Neolithic settlement occurred within an environmental context of increased monsoonal moisture that continued during the mid-Holocene. A now well-attested Bronze Age exemplified by village- and town-scale settlements occupied by sedentary farmers developed toward the end of the mid-Holocene moist interval. The high plateau of Yemen was an early focus for the development of Bronze Age complex society, the economy of which relied upon terraced rain-fed and runoff agriculture. On the fringes of the Arabian desert, the precursors of the Sabaean literate civilization have been traced back to between 3600 and 2800 B.P., and even earlier, so that a virtually continuous archaeological record can now be described for parts of Yemen. In contrast to the highlands these societies relied upon food production from large-scale irrigation systems dependent upon capricious wadi floods. Bronze Age settlement, while showing some links with the southern Levant, now shows equal or stronger linkages with the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea. Although some regions of Yemen show breaks in occupation, others show continuity into the Sabaean period when a series of major towns grew up in response to the incense trade with the north. It is now clear that these civilizations grew up on the foundations of earlier Bronze Age complex societies.     

The colors of the Fontana di Trevi: an analytical approach

During the last restoration of the Fontana di Trevi -Rome (2014–2015), it has been performed a diagnostic investigation to characterize the materials used to build and obtain the colors of the surfaces of some architectural elements of this fountain. According to the restoration teamwork needs, we focussed our efforts on the dome over the central statue of Oceanus, on the bas-relieves on the sides of the dome, and on the cliff where the water flows. Several samples were collected from these elements and therefore, they were subjected to an analytical approach including infrared spectroscopy, optical and scanning electron microscopy. The achieved results indicated the use of red earth pigments on the dome. The same pigment has been revealed on the bas-relieves, although their colors have an additional contribution due to degraded layers. Samples taken from the cliff showed a complex stratigraphy, although a white scialbo has been identified as original layer, testifying the intentions of the authors in term of color rendering. This information was essential for the restores in order to choose the proper intervention procedure for each investigated surface. The research testified the importance of an integrated diagnostic analysis to preserve the original colours of monuments and building.     

Potential Use of Foamed Mortar (FM) for Thermal Upgrading of Chinese Traditional Hui-Style Residences

The Hui-style residence is an important architectural heritage of China. The hollow wall structures are widely used to build its exterior wall system. However, the thermal performance of the hollow wall is no longer able to meet the new energy-saving and environmental requirement. This article describes a laboratory study of the development of foamed mortar (FM), with the potential for use in thermal upgrading of the Hui-style hollow wall system without dramatically changing its traditional structure. The key early age, physical, mechanical and thermal properties were systematically measured. Two extended models were respectively developed to calculate compressive strength and thermal conductivity, as a function of porosity. Environment chamber test was also employed to investigate the effectiveness of this novel thermal upgrading approach and the results show that filling the voids with FM can effectively improve the overall thermal resistance of the hollow wall system by 44%, which is almost equal to the overall thermal resistance when using the more expensive commercial inorganic stucco system. In addition, the combination of these two methods yielded an overall thermal resistance of 0.701 m²·K/W, which is even higher than 0.67 m²·K/W for the code required in the hot summer/cold winter climate zone.     

Conceptions of place: approaching space,children and physical activity

In this paper, we argue that place mapping is useful for approaching children's conception of place and that this is of relevance when designing physical activity interventions. We contend that socio-material factors influence children's perception and use of places, and are crucial to understand in relation to their use of local neighbourhoods for physical activity. A place mapping of children's understandings and everyday use of their local neighbourhood in suburban Copenhagen was conducted with a fifth grade elementary school class. The mapping and subsequent analysis resulted in three categories of relevance to children's conceptions of place; located social experiences, experiences of the unknown, and children's contested spaces. We argue that such knowledge can provide useful information in the development and evaluation of activities that promote physical activity in urban spaces.     

Characterization of a Historical Cannonball from the Fortress of San Juan De Ulúa Exposed to a Marine Environment

Metallurgical analyses and chemical characterizations were carried out on historical cannonballs from the Fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, Veracruz, México. Cannonballs dating from the 18th and 19th centuries share metallurgical characteristics similar to those of material coming from a shipment of ammunition found in the wreck of a sunken French ship from the battle of Trafalgar. The analyses show that the base material is grey cast iron with a carbon equivalent of 4.94 and a ferritic–perlitic matrix, in which the high phosphorus content has led to the formation of iron phosphide compounds in conjunction with a homogeneous distribution of carbon graphite flakes of Type C. In addition, corrosion products from samples revealed the presence of various crystalline iron compounds (X‐ray diffraction), mostly highly chlorinated iron compounds identified as akaganeite. X‐ray fluorescence identified various characteristics of the corrosion products as a function of the sampling depth. FT–IR spectroscopy revealed that the main difference between the corrosion products (internal and external) is determined by the number of organic species. Differential scanning calorimetry corroborated that these corrosion products are thermally stable compounds at elevated temperatures.