SCIENCE
Cities are in danger: climate change undermines their foundations
Scientific research has been able, for the first time, to quantify the effects of the climate change we are witnessing in recent years on soil, city foundations and modern infrastructure.
The study was conducted by Northwestern University and published in Communications Engineering, a journal of the Nature group. The group also developed a forecasting model up to 2050, taking the US city of Chicago as an example of other modern megacities.
What emerged from this research is that the effects of climate change on the soil, especially of so-called 'subterranean heat bubbles', are serious and incisive, but could also represent an asset, if technology is able to store and reuse all the heat that propagates underground in cities.
Di Terabass - Opera propria, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11848631
Climate change endangers the foundations of cities
Scientific research has been able, for the first time, to quantify the effects of the climate change we are witnessing in recent years on soil, city foundations and modern infrastructure.
The study
The study was conducted by Northwestern University and published in Communications Engineering, a journal of the Nature Group. The group also developed a forecasting model up to 2050, taking the US city of Chicago as an example of other modern megacities.
Di Sea Cow - Opera propria, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124625428
What the scholars revealed
As the ground heats up, it deforms. This phenomenon causes the foundations of surrounding buildings to shift excessively, and also encourages the creation of cracks, which affects the long-term operational performance and durability of structures. Scholars have also realised that these phenomena are caused by global warming, and therefore warn that it is not a problem that will solve itself, but rather one that will worsen.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Azabudai_Hills_from_Skydeck,_May_2023.jpg#/media/File:Azabud
Because it could be an opportunity
If a way could be found to capture the waste heat that is emitted underground from underground transport systems and also from the sun heating the ground, from car parks and underground structures, urban planners would be able to mitigate the effects of climate change underground and, above all, a way could be found to reuse this heat as a source of heat energy that has never before been exploited. A solution that would therefore go precisely in the direction of the 'green' that has been sought in recent years.
The words of Alessandro Rotta Loria
Alessandro Rotta Loria of Northwestern, who led this groundbreaking study, said: 'Underground climate change is a silent danger. The ground is deforming due to temperature variations and no existing structure or civil infrastructure is designed to withstand these variations; although this phenomenon is not necessarily dangerous to people's safety, it will affect the normal day-to-day functioning of foundation systems and civil infrastructure in general'.
Di Lol19 - Opera propria, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12225530
The case of Chicago
Recently, Rotta Loria and his team placed a wireless network of more than 150 temperature sensors throughout the Chicago Loop, both above and below ground. The sensors were placed in places such as building basements, underground tunnels, underground car parks and underground streets such as Lower Wacker Drive. Once enough temperature data had been collected for three years, the researchers built a 3D computer model to simulate the evolution of ground temperatures from 1951, the year Chicago completed the underground tunnels, to the present day and found values consistent with those measured in the field. They then used this data to build a predictive model up to 2050.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Jay_Pritzker_Pavilion,_Chicago,_Illinois,_Estado
The underground of Chicago
Loria again talks about how the subsoil of Chicago, the city that was sampled in the study, is set: ''Chicago's clay can contract when heated, like many other fine-grained soils. As a result of rising temperatures in the subsoil, many foundations in the city centre are undergoing undesirable, slow but continuous settlement; in other words, you don't have to live in Venice to live in a city that is sinking, even though the causes of these phenomena are completely different'.
Di Mark Fischer - Bangkok Expressway, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=
Why cities are warmer
The answer is actually quite simple. Speaking in general terms, cities are warmer than rural areas because building materials periodically trap heat from human activity and solar radiation and then release it into the atmosphere.
Nature
22/09/2023
Climate change is presenting us with greater and different challenges than ever before. In fact, the lack of rainfall and snowfall is pushing the world towards water shortages. Of course, we are not only talking about drinking water, which is used to quench our thirst, but also the water needed for energy plants and agriculture.
Some of our behaviors in fact, still linked to the old habits of abundance of our parents, are totally detrimental to the environment, as well as useless for practical purposes. Of course, there is a lack of proper environmental culture in schools in the first place, and that is where we step in.
In this little guide, we want to give you 10 quick tips on how to save water in everyday life.
science
20/09/2023
It often happens, especially during adolescence, that one realizes that one is more gifted in languages than in mathematics, or vice versa. Or that one's thought processes are different from those of a friend or classmate. This aspect depends not only on personal interests, but also on the way our brains work.
In fact, the way to process information is different from person to person, but it can be grouped into some predefined categories. Some are more predisposed to creative work, others to relationships with other people, and still others can hear and understand music in a way unthinkable for others.
According to a study carried out since the 1980s by the American psychologist Howard Gardner, we have as many as nine different types of intelligence, to which the tenth would be added. These intelligences could also theoretically be linked to certain types of jobs.
Art galleries private collections
19/09/2023
Food has undoubtedly been of paramount importance in the development of our modern civilization. Food in particular made our bodies stronger and helped extend the average lifespan of early humans by many decades.
The ability to create particular foods and dishes, in short, to process food, is still valued today, and, interestingly, many of the things that are the basis of our meals go back to ideas far into the past. Bread, wine, beer, oil, cheese, so many things go back even thousands of years.
In this short article, we will take you along with us to discover the origins of our most common foods.
Tablet computers and tech gadgets
science
17/09/2023
The Six Degrees of Separation Theory, which assumes that each person can be connected to any other in the world through a chain of knowledge with no more than five intermediaries, is one of the most popular and suggestive social theories ever created, and may still be valid today in the age of social networking.
It was in the mid-1960s when a Harvard professor sent a letter to an unknown farmer in Nebraska, hoping that, through a completely random network of contacts, the letter would reach its true recipient in Boston.
Today, a study co-ordinated by the Institute of Complex Systems of the National Research Council in Florence (CNR-Isc) - signed by researchers from Spain, Israel, Russia, Slovenia and Chile - has shown that connections on social networks resemble those found by Milgram in the 1960s.
Art galleries private collections