Two different types of ancient bricks (XII-XIVth centuries) collected from historical buildings of Toledo (Spain) were characterized by Optical Microscopy, SEM/EDS, Electron microprobe, XRD, DTA and Fe-Mössbauer spectroscopy. Physical properties such as water absorption and suction, porosity, density and compression strength were also determined. Several minerals found in the brick matrix, such...

The paper studies the effect of additives such as calcite, dolomite and sodium chloride on the mineralogical–textural and physical–mechanical behaviour of solid bricks destined for use as new materials in the restoration of historic buildings. The behavioural differences between specimens with and without carbonates can be explained by the different evolution of texture and mineralogical compos...

ANA is a project that examines legacy-free future networking architectures, with a focus on autonomicity. The programming model used in ANA dispenses with the rigid layers of the OSI model and instead uses bricks that can be combined to build a compartment offering the functionality required by an application. Restrictions such as TCP always being layered on top of IP do not exist, with e.g., a...

Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) was measured on periodic and randomly arranged patterns of Au nano-bricks (rectangular parallelepipeds). Resonant SERS conditions were investigated of a near-IR dye deposited on nanoparticles. Random mixtures of Au nano-bricks with different aspect ratio R showed stronger SERS enhancement as compared to periodic patterns with constant aspect ratio (R var...

This paper is part of an experimental approach aimed to raise a videogames classification. Being inspired by the methodology that Propp used for the classification of Russian fairy tales, we have identified recurrent diagrams within rules of videogames, that we called “Gameplay Bricks”. The combinations of these different bricks should allow us to represent a classification of all videogames in...

Laser scanning is being increasingly applied in the documentation of buildings and archaeological sites. The documentation process sometimes involves making an inventory of bricks in walls. This paper proposes an automatic/semi-automatic segmentation method for detecting bricks in walls, in particular masonry walls. In developing the detection method the problems with detecting bricks in a 3D p...

Stiff ceramic platelets (or bricks) that are aligned and bonded to a second ductile phase with low volume fraction (mortar) are a promising pathway to produce stiff, hightoughness composites. For certain ranges of constituent properties, including those of some synthetic analogs to nacre, one can demonstrate that the deformation is dominated by relative brick motions. This paper describes simul...

Bricks manufactured from dried sludge collected from an industrial wastewater treatment plant were investigated. Results of tests indicated that the sludge proportion and the firing temperature were the two key factors determining the brick quality. Increasing the sludge content results in a decrease of brick shrinkage, water absorption, and compressive strength. Results also showed that the br...

Historic contexts remind us of an era when cities were built based on the needs, goals, and preferences of their inhabitants. In other words, the mental world of both the builders and the inhabitants was closely interrelated. But by ignoring citizens' memories and interests and their mental needs, today's interventions with rapid developments within historic contexts have led to amnesia and the...

This paper presents a novel background model for video surveillance—Spatio-Temporal Patch based Background Modeling (STPBM). We use spatio-temporal patches, called bricks, to characterize both the appearance and motion information. Our method is based on the observation that all the background bricks at a given location under all possible lighting conditions lie in a low dimensional background ...