The precursor of the North Atlantic existed between the North American and Iberian blocks from the earliest Jurassic Hettangian and has been ever expanding since. By the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian, when much of the Morrison Fm rocks were deposited, the proto-Atlantic was more than 300 km wide at 27° paleolatitude between North America and Iberia. Macrovertebrate paleontology reveals a unique story to the isolation of Iberia and instead suggest a paleogeographic land connection between North American and Iberia. Torvosaurus, Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Stegosaurus, Supersaurus and others have a distribution restricted to Morrison Formation in North America and Lourinhã Formation in Portugal. A novel paleogeographic model is here suggested: (1) around the Middle–Late Jurassic transition there is a major palaeoceanographic and palaeoclimatic reorganization, coincidental to a major eustatic sea-level drop and uplift associated with the Callovian– Oxfordian Atlantic Regressive Event; (2) creating an ephemeral land bridge presenting a temporary opportunity for terrestrial gateways likely across the Flemish Cap and Galician Bank land masses, allowing large dinosaurian taxa to cross the northern proto-Atlantic in both directions; (3) finally, a Callovian–Oxfordian faunal exchange around the 163 Ma, through latest Kimmeridgian at 152 Ma (the age of equivalent genera in both Morrison and Portugal), is was an interval that allowed speciation, but retaining generic similarity of vertebrates. This model is consistent with the chronology and taxonomy required for speciation of the Iberian and American forms, exemplified by the coeval sister-taxa pairs Torvosaurus tanneri and T. gurneyi, Allosaurus fragilis and A. europaeus, or Supersaurus vivianae and S. lourinhanensis. While some of the smaller animals in the fauna show Morrison/Portugal affinities, most from Iberia have European or even Asian affinities. The larger-bodied fauna are more closely related to Morrison than to mainland Europe (except for dacentrurine stegosaurs). The body size differences and affinities of taxa across paleogeography is comparable to what is observed today across the Wallace Line. Migration may have also occurred in both directions. The closest relative of Torvosaurus is likely the European Bathonian Megalosaurus, thus the presence of the genus in North America represents a European migration. On other hand, Allosaurus and Supersaurus origins are consistent with a North American origin, representing an westto-east migration.

Abstract Due to the introduction of distributed renewable energy technologies with variable resource availability, the need of flexible electrical systems is evident. In general, flexibility is achieved from the supply side and often using carbon intensive energy generators. Therefore, improving the flexibility of the electrical system by taking advantage of renewable energy generation capacities and demand response measures in buildings is of major importance for a sustainable development. Control systems to implement these demand response measures need to quantify the flexibility of the respective buildings. Having this into consideration, this paper aims at presenting a literature review on methodologies to quantify the energy flexibility of buildings.

This study focuses on the assessment of the degradation processes occurring in three sandstone infills of fossilized Late Jurassic ornithopod tridactyl footprints, found in 2001 in a coastline cliff in Porto das Barcas (Lourinhã, Portugal) and exhibited in a museum display since 2004. These dinosaur footprints present nowadays severe decay phenomena compromising their physical integrity and are leading gradually to their loss of value. The deterioration patterns were recorded, a map of their distribution was prepared and several samples were collected both in the dinosaur footprints and in the coastline cliff. Different analytical procedures were applied such as XRD, FTIR, FESEM and Ion Chromatography. A microclimatic survey was also performed and air temperature and relative humidity was measured during eight months both indoor and also outdoor. The decay patterns observed are a combination intrinsic and extrinsic factors the stone material, namely swelling of clay minerals in the rock matrix (smectite and chlorite-smectite mixed-layer), presence of salts (mainly chlorides), application of past conservation treatments (poly(vinyl) acetate and epoxy resins) and with the museum’s indoor thermohygrometric conditions (mainly non-stable hygrometric conditions). This scientific knowledge is therefore essential to the sustainable preservation of this paleontological heritage.

In this paper we consider the semi-parametric estimation of extreme quantiles of a right heavy-tail model. We propose a new Probability Weighted Moment estimator for extreme quantiles, which is obtained from the estimators of the shape and scale parameters of the tail. Under a second-order regular variation condition on the tail, of the underlying distribution function, we deduce the non degenerate asymptotic behaviour of the estimators under study and present an asymptotic comparison at their optimal levels. In addition, the performance of the estimators is illustrated through an application to real data.In this paper we consider the semi-parametric estimation of extreme quantiles of a right heavy-tail model. We propose a new Probability Weighted Moment estimator for extreme quantiles, which is obtained from the estimators of the shape and scale parameters of the tail. Under a second-order regular variation condition on the tail, of the underlying distribution function, we deduce the non degenerate asymptotic behaviour of the estimators under study and present an asymptotic comparison at their optimal levels. In addition, the performance of the estimators is illustrated through an application to real data.

Este artículo describe una actividad de robótica educativa llevada a cabo en una escuela en Hortolandia, São Paulo, Brasil, como parte de un taller de capacitación docente sobre robótica educativa en contexto inclusivo. Los participantes

Here, a simple, nontoxic, and inexpensive "water-inducement" technique for the fabrication of oxide thin films at low annealing temperatures is reported. For water-induced (WI) precursor solution, the solvent is composed of water without additional organic additives and catalysts. The thermogravimetric analysis indicates that the annealing temperature can be lowered by prolonging the annealing time. A systematic study is carried out to reveal the annealing condition dependence on the performance of the thin-film transistors (TFTs). The WI indium-zinc oxide (IZO) TFT integrated on SiO2 dielectric, annealed at 300 °C for 2 h, exhibits a saturation mobility of 3.35 cm2 V-1 s-1 and an on-to-off current ratio of ≈108. Interestingly, through prolonging the annealing time to 4 h, the electrical parameters of IZO TFTs annealed at 230 °C are comparable with the TFTs annealed at 300 °C. Finally, fully WI IZO TFT based on YOx dielectric is integrated and investigated. This TFT device can be regarded as "green electronics" in a true sense, because no organic-related additives are used during the whole device fabrication process. The as-fabricated IZO/YOx TFT exhibits excellent electron transport characteristics with low operating voltage (≈1.5 V), small subthreshold swing voltage of 65 mV dec-1 and the mobility in excess of 25 cm2 V-1 s-1. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

This paper deals with the evaluation of the performances of InZnO thin-film transistor (TFT) using as dielectric an ultra-thin solution-processed ZrOx layer. The ZrOx thin film was formed using ultraviolet (UV) photo-annealing method and shows a low leakage-current density of 4 nA/cm2 at 3.8 MV/cm and a large areal-capacitance of 775 nF/cm2 at 50 Hz. The InZnO TFT incorporating the UV-treated ZrOx dielectric exhibits high stable and enhanced characteristics, an on/off current ratio of 10