The main aim of this work was to assess the possibility of using biomass ashes as substitutes for cement and natural aggregates in concretes without compromising their mechanical and chemical properties. Thirteen concrete formulations were prepared with different percentages of bottom and fly ashes produced at a forest biomass power plant. These formulations were submitted to mechanical compressive strength assays, after 28, 60 and 90 days of maturation. The reference formulation F1 that was produced without biomass ashes and one formulation incorporating fly and bottom ashes, F4, were selected for further characterization. After 90 days of maturation, the selected formulations were submitted to the leaching test described in the European Standard EN12457-2 (L/S ratio of 10 L/kg, in a batch extraction cycle of 24h) by using two different leaching agents: a synthetic marine medium (ASPM medium) and a synthetic freshwater medium (ISO 6341 medium). The eluates produced were submitted to chemical characterization which comprised a set of metals (As, Sb, Se, Cu, Zn, Ba, Hg, Cd, Mo, Pb, Ni, Cr, Cr VI, Al, Fe, Mg, Na, K and Ca), pH, SO42-, F-, dissolved organic carbon, chlorides, phenolic compounds and total dissolved solids. The substitution of 10% cement by fly ashes has not promoted the reduction of the compressive strength of concrete. The new formulation F4 has presented emission levels of chemical species similar or even lower to those observed for the reference formulation F1.

A set of methods defining an API (Application Programming Interface) are to be made thread safe; thus running any subset of these methods in parallel should not create races or deadlocks. Originally, the set of methods were not designed to be thread safe, so races and deadlocks are expected when running them in parallel. The number of possible interleavings when running methods from this API in parallel is huge, and this work focuses on the identification of the high level data races introduced by such interleavings. We propose an analysis that avoids the exhaustive exploration of all possible interleavings. For a concurrent program P, the closure of P, clos(P), is defined. Roughly speaking, we can say that the clos(P) is obtained by adding threads to P in such a way that high level data races resulting from running P in parallel to other programs are exposed statically. A set of methods representing the API is then modeled as a set of concurrent programs and their closure is analysed to identify high level data races. These high level data races are then inspected and removed to make the API thread safe. We illustrate the application of this methodology with a simple use case.

{{A series of Ar-BIAN-based copper(I) complexes (where Ar-BIAN = bis(aryl) acenaphthenequinonediimine) were synthesised and characterised by H-1 and C-13 NMR spectroscopies, FT-IR spectroscopy, MALDI-TOF-MS spectrometry, cyclic voltammetry and single crystal X-ray diffraction. The bis-chelated complexes of general formula {[}Cu(Ar-BIAN)(2)]BF4 (where Ar = C6H5 (1), 4-iPrC(6)H(4) (3), 2-iPrC(6)H(4) (4)) were prepared by reaction of {[}Cu(NCMe)(4)]BF4 with two equivalents of the corresponding Ar-BIAN ligands, in dichloromethane, while the mono-chelated complexes of the type {[}Cu(Ar-BIAN)L2]BF4 (where Ar = 2,6-iPr(2)C(6)H(3)

The aim was to investigate the effect of simulated low-temperature degradation (s-LTD) and hydrothermal fatigue on the degradation of three ZrO2-based dental materials. Lava, IPS, and NanoZr discs were randomly assigned to (1) Control-Storage in distilled water at 37°C; (2) Aging at 134°C for 5 h (s-LTD); (3) Thermocycling in saliva for 30,000 cycles (TF). XRD revealed that ZrO 2 m phase was identified in all groups but TF increased the m phase only for Lava. Under the FESEM, Lava showed no alterations under s-LTD, but displayed corrosion areas up to 60 μm wide after TF. We conclude that TF accelerated the degradation of Lava through an increase in the m phase and grain pull-out from the material surface.