In the context of inspection and maintenance actions for beach walkways in North Portugal, some samples wood used their construction were collected – <em>Pinus</em> <em>sylvestris</em> wood, widely applied country. The sustainability over natural coastal areas is very dependent on material durability. One main problems timber to build those structures its behavior under ...

After nuclear accident in 2011, incineration residue contaminated by radioactive cesium had been produced. Government decided in 2011 that incineration residue with less than 8000 Bq/kg of radioactivity could be disposed of into conventional MSW landfill. Since radioactivity of bottom ash was reported to be low compared with fly ash, it had been disposed of MSW landfill based on the government ...

Tillage operations disrupt surface layers of agricultural soils, creating a loosened structure with a substantial proportion of interaggregate porosity that enhances liquid and gaseous exchange properties favorable for plant growth. Unfortunately, such desirable soil tilth is structurally unstable and is susceptible to change by subsequent wetting and drying processes and other mechanical stres...

Rice is one of the most important food crops contributing over 39% of the total food grain production in China. Out of 113 million hectares of area sown under food crops 28% is covered by rice. The traditional irrigation regime for rice, termed as “continuous deep flooding irrigation” was applied in China before 1970s. A tremendous amount of water was used for the rice growing and only a low yi...

Assessing the uncertainties and understanding the deficiencies of climate models are fundamental to developing adaptation strategies. The objective of this study is to understand how well Coupled Model Intercomparison-Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate model simulations replicate ground-based observations of continental drought areas and their trends. The CMIP5 multimodel ensemble encompasses the Climatic...

Although common in biological systems, synthetic self-assembly routes to complex 3D photonic structures with tailored degrees of disorder remain elusive. Here we show how liquids can be used to finely control disorder in porous 3D photonic crystals, leading to complex and hierarchical geometries. In these optofluidic crystals, dynamically tunable disorder is superimposed onto the periodic optic...

Keywords: Rockfill creep Particle mechanics method Water weakening Wetting–drying cycles Particle breakage Abrasion a b s t r a c t Rockfill is an important construction material for infrastructure engineering, such as dams, railways and airport foundations, which display a long-term post-construction settlement. However, the main mechanisms for rockfill creep and weathering influence still rem...