A urbanização é uma das ações antrópicas que mais crescem no mundo atual. Por este motivo pesquisas ecológicas são realizadas nas cidades com o objetivo de reconhecer seus impactos, e as aves são utilizadas como uma das ferramentas para diagnóstico ambiental. Assim, o presente estudo avaliou o método de levantamento de aves por ponto fixo, método amplamente utilizado em estudos com aves em diversos ambientes. Foram analisados três pontos que podem influenciar a amostragem de aves através deste método: 1) o habitat onde o levantamento é realizado, observando a composição dos elementos urbanos existentes na cidade; 2) o intervalo de tempo adotado em cada ponto fixo para a coleta de dados; 3) os fatores potencialmente prejudiciais a observação de aves, tais como o ruído sonoro urbano e a presença de conversas causadas por pessoas curiosas. Com a área de estudo estratificada a partir da quantidade de cobertura arbórea existente nos bairros abrangidos, 90 unidades amostrais foram selecionadas. Nestes, foram quantificados os elementos urbanos presentes, a riqueza, o número de contato de aves, os ruídos sonoros e a presença de conversas. Os resultados demonstraram que a reunião de um número maior de espécies e contatos pode ser favorecida pelas áreas de cobertura arbórea, enquanto áreas construídas e pisos impermeáveis podem prejudicar o número de espécies, sendo o número de contato prejudicado apenas pelas áreas de pisos impermeáveis. O número de espécies observadas não foi significativamente diferente após nove minutos de coleta de dados, entretanto o número de contatos continuou crescendo, demonstrando haver recontagens de indivíduos após este intervalo. A riqueza de espécies foi significativamente diferente entre os dados coletados no período seco e no período chuvoso. Conforme houve a maior presença do ruído sonoro urbano menor foi o número de espécies e contatos obtidos nos pontos. A incidência de conversas ocasionadas por pessoas curiosas foi baixa não prejudicando as coletas de dados. Os resultados encontrados sugerem que: o levantamento de aves no meio urbano através do ponto fixo deve considerar a composição do ambiente, já que a riqueza e o número de contato podem variar de acordo com a presença dos diferentes elementos; sejam adotados intervalos de tempo por ponto não superiores a nove minutos; quando possível diferentes épocas do ano devem ser utilizadas para as coletas de dados, visto que podem ser encontradas diferenças entre as estações; sejam escolhidos locais e momentos para as coletas de dados com baixo ruído sonoro. Por fim, o método de ponto fixo foi considerado eficaz para amostragem de aves urbanas, desde que tais cuidados sejam considerados. / The urbanization is one of the anthropic activities with the highest growth rate in the world. Due to this reason, ecological research are conducted in the cities with the goal of recognizing its impacts, using birds as one of the tools to assess the environmental diagnosis. Therefore, the present study assessed the samples by point counts method, which is broadly used for bird census in many environments. Three issues that might affect the sampling of the birds by using this method were analyzed: 1) the habitat where the sampling is performed, observing the urban elements presented in the city; 2) the period of point count duration spent in each sample; 3) the potential factors which disturb the birds detectability, as urban noise and presence of curious citizens who can talk to the researcher in the point count. The research area was stratified from the amount of tree canopies in the selected suburbs, where 90 sample units were selected. In these units, the presence of urban elements, the richness, the number of birds contacts, the noise and the presence of conversations were quantified. The results showed that the number of species and contacts can be benefited from the tree canopy area, while build up areas and impermeable grounds may harm the number of species, although the contact number is harmed only by the impermeable grounds. The number of observed species did not differ significantly after nine minutes of sample period, however the number of contacts kept increasing, demonstrating a repeated counting birds after this interval. The species richness was significantly different between the samples collected in dry and wet seasons. As the urban noise increased, a lower number of species and birds contacts was acknowledged. The incidence of conversation performed by curious people was low, not being able to harm the sample collection. The results suggest that: the bird survey inside the cities by point counts should consider the composition of environment, since the richness and the number of birds contacts can vary according to the presence of different elements; the time of interval should not exceed nine minutes; when possible, different annual seasons should be used for sampling, since differences may be found among them; places and moments for the sampling should be chosen with a low noise. Finally, the point counts method was considered efficient for the sampling of urban birds, provided that such care are considered.

Modal analysis for strongly stratified lakes was extended to obtain a better understanding of the dynamics of the basin-scale motions. By viewing the basin-scale motions as a superposition of modes, that have distinct periods and three-dimensional structures, the method provides a conceptual understanding for the excitation, evolution, and damping of the basin-scale motions. Once the motion has been decomposed into modes, their evolution and energetics may be extracted from hydrodynamic simulation results and field data. The method was applied to Lake Biwa, Japan, and Lake Kinneret, Israel, and used for a theoretical study. The real lake applications showed that winds excited basin-scale motions that had a surface layer velocity structure similar to the wind stress pattern. Three-dimensional hydrodynamics simulations of Lake Biwa indicated that most of the energy input from winds was partitioned into the internal waves that decayed within a few days. The gyres, on the other hand, received much less energy but dominated the dynamics during calm periods due to their slow damping. Analyses of field data from Lake Kinneret suggested that the internal waves, excited by the strong winds every afternoon, were damped over a few days primarily due to bottom friction. Theoretical investigations of damping mechanisms of internal waves revealed that bottom friction induced a velocity anomaly at the top of the boundary layer that drained energy from the nearly inviscid interior by a combination of internal wave cancelling and spin-down. These results indicate that gyres induce long-term horizontal transport near the surface and internal waves transfer energy from winds to near-bottom mixing. Modal structure of dominant basin-scale internal waves can induce large heterogeneity of nearbottom mass transfer processes. The method presented here provides a tool to determine how basin-scale motions impact on biogeochemical processes in stratified lakes.

The onset of summer stratification in temperate lakes and reservoirs forces a decoupling of the hypolimnion from the epilimnion that is sustained by strong density gradients in the metalimnion. These strong gradients act as a barrier to the vertical transport of mass and scalars leading to bottom anoxia and subsequent nutrient release from the sediments. The stratification is intermittently overcome by turbulent mixing events that redistribute mass, heat, dissolved parameters and particulates in the vertical. The redistribution of ecological parameters then exerts some control over the ecological response of the lake. This dissertation is focused on the physics of deep vertical mixing that occurs beneath the well-mixed surface layer in stratified lakes and reservoirs. The overall aim is to improve the ability of numerical models to reproduce deep vertical mixing, thus providing better tools for water quality prediction and management. In the first part of this research the framework of a one-dimensional mixed-layer hydrodynamic model was used to construct a pseudo two-dimensional model that computes vertical fluxes generated by deep mixing processes. The parameterisations developed for the model were based on the relationship found between lake-wide vertical buoyancy flux and the first-order internal wave response of the lake to surface wind forcing. The ability of the model to reproduce the observed thermal structure in a range of lakes and reservoirs was greatly improved by incorporating an explicit turbulent benthic boundary layer routine. Although laterally-integrated models reproduce the net effect of turbulent mixing in a vertical sense, they fail to resolve the transient distribution of turbulent mixing events triggered by local flow properties defined at far smaller scales. Importantly, the distribution of events may promote tertiary motions and ecological niches. In the second part of the study a large body of microstructure data collected in Lake Kinneret, Israel, was used to show that the nature of turbulent mixing events varied considerably between the epilimnion, metalimnion, hypolimnion and benthic boundary layer, yet the turbulent scales of the events and the buoyancy flux they produced collapsed into functions of the local gradient Richardson number. It was found that the most intense events in the metalimnion were triggered by high-frequency waves generated near the surface that grew and imparted a strain on the metalimnion density field, which led to secondary instabilities with low gradient Richardson numbers. The microstructure observations suggest that the local gradient Richardson number could be used to parameterise vertical mixing in coarse-grid numerical models of lakes and reservoirs. However, any effort to incorporate such parameterisations becomes meaningless without measures to reduce numerical diffusion, which often dominates over parameterised physical mixing. As a third part of the research, an explicit filtering tool was developed to negate numerical diffusion in a threedimensional hydrodynamic model. The adaptive filter ensured that temperature gradients in the metalimnion remained within bounds of the measured values and so the computation preserved the spectrum of internal wave motions that trigger diapycnal mixing events in the deeper reaches of a lake. The results showed that the ratio of physical to numerical diffusion is dictated by the character of the dominant internal wave motions.

The barotropic tide dissipates a well established estimate of 2.5 TW of energy at the M2 frequency. Bottom topography is responsible for part of this dissipation, and the generation of the internal tide is also partly responsible. The fate of this energy is largely described by a cascade from large scales to small scales by non-linear wave-wave interactions where it gets dissipated. This thesis aims to investigate how the presence of mesoscale eddies (vortices) in the ocean affect the internal tide. Previous work has looked at the interaction of the barotropic tide with eddies. Krauss (1999) found that the interaction can produce a modulated internal tide, however a scaling analysis suggests that the effect may not be as strong as reported. The MITgcm is used to simulate internal wave generation by barotropic flow over topography and comparisons are made with Dr. Lamb's IGW model. Baroclinic eddies are analytically prescribed and then geostrophically adjusted also using the MITgcm. Finally, the two are combined, and the internal tide field is analysed with and without the presence of eddies of various magnitude and length scales. The results of this investigation do not find a strong transfer of energy between modes; the modal distribution of energy in the internal tide remains the same when an eddy is added. However, focusing and shadow beams of internal waves are produced in the wake of an eddy as the internal waves pass through it. The beams show very strong variations in intensity, vertically integrated energy flux can reduce almost to zero in the shadow regions and increase more than double in the focusing regions. Modal decomposition of the horizontal flow field reveals that mode 2 and 3 waves are most strongly affected by the eddies and contribute strongly to the formation of the beams. Mode 1 appears to be less affected by the eddy. The larger wavelength and faster group velocity of mode 1 supports the notion that the eddy interacts with it less.

The barotropic tide dissipates a well established estimate of 2.5 TW of energy at the M2 frequency. Bottom topography is responsible for part of this dissipation, and the generation of the internal tide is also partly responsible. The fate of this energy is largely described by a cascade from large scales to small scales by non-linear wave-wave interactions where it gets dissipated. This thesis aims to investigate how the presence of mesoscale eddies (vortices) in the ocean affect the internal tide. Previous work has looked at the interaction of the barotropic tide with eddies. Krauss (1999) found that the interaction can produce a modulated internal tide, however a scaling analysis suggests that the effect may not be as strong as reported. The MITgcm is used to simulate internal wave generation by barotropic flow over topography and comparisons are made with Dr. Lamb's IGW model. Baroclinic eddies are analytically prescribed and then geostrophically adjusted also using the MITgcm. Finally, the two are combined, and the internal tide field is analysed with and without the presence of eddies of various magnitude and length scales. The results of this investigation do not find a strong transfer of energy between modes; the modal distribution of energy in the internal tide remains the same when an eddy is added. However, focusing and shadow beams of internal waves are produced in the wake of an eddy as the internal waves pass through it. The beams show very strong variations in intensity, vertically integrated energy flux can reduce almost to zero in the shadow regions and increase more than double in the focusing regions. Modal decomposition of the horizontal flow field reveals that mode 2 and 3 waves are most strongly affected by the eddies and contribute strongly to the formation of the beams. Mode 1 appears to be less affected by the eddy. The larger wavelength and faster group velocity of mode 1 supports the notion that the eddy interacts with it less.

Based on the load survey study, a stratified sampling method is proposed to select the proper size of customers so that the load patterns derived can represent the load behavior of whole customer population. In this study there are 1315 customers out of Taipower customers over various service classes are selected for the installation of intelligent meters in the field to measure the power consumption within every 15 minutes. The bad data detection is performed to identify the abnormal power consumption by executing the Chi-square test. The standardized daily load pattern of each customer class has been derived with the mean per-unit method of customer load. The billing data are retrieved from the customer information system and applied to derive the customer daily load pattern by considering the customer load patterns. According to the total power consumption by all customers within the same class and considering the corresponding daily load pattern, the daily load profile of the customer class is then determined. By aggregating the load profiles of all customer classes, the daily load composition and load model of each service district can therefore be solved. By the same manner, the daily load pattern of whole Taipower system can be derived and it can be used to support the proper design of tariff structure according to the respective contribution of system power demand by each customer class. To investigate the overloading of distribution main transformers during the summer season, the correlations analysis of customer power consumption and temperature is performed. The effect of temperature change to the power consumption of each customer class is solved by multiple regression analysis with 95% confidential level. Based on the temperature sensitivity and the corresponding load composition, the load change due to temperature rise for various customer classes can be estimated. To demonstrate the impact of temperature change to distribution system operation, considering the temperature sensitivity of power consumption and load composition solves the power demand at each load bus. By updating the bus load demand due to temperature change, the feeder loading and power loss is therefore derived. To resolve the over loading problem of distribution feeders and main transformers during the summer season, a temperature adaptive switching operation has been proposed to perform the proper load transfer among the feeders/main transformers. In this dissertation, the effect of temperature change to the time varying characteristics of load buses and power transmission in Taipower is investigated. The dc circuit model of Taipower system and the temperature effect of customer power consumption are considered in the stochastic load flow analysis. With the temperature rise, the power demand of northern buses is increased dramatically and more power has to be transmitted from the southern region. The large voltage angle difference is significantly various between system buses during the summer peak period. It is suggested that the safety margin assessment of system operation has to be executed by considering the temperature effect to the bus loading of power systems.

The mixing zone developed at freshwater-seawater interface is one of the most important features in complex coastal hydrogeologic systems, which controls subsurface flow and reactive transport dynamics. Freshwater-seawater mixing-zone development is influenced by many physical and chemical processes, such as characteristics of geologic formation, hydrodynamic fluctuations of groundwater and seawater levels, fluid-rock interactions, and others. Wide mixing zones have been found in many coastal aquifers all over the world. However, the mechanisms responsible for wide mixing zones are not well understood. In this thesis, two hypotheses were proposed to explain wide mixing zones in coastal aquifers: (1) kinetic mass transfer coupled with transient conditions, which create the movement of the mixing zone, may widen mixing zones; and (2) aquifer stratification may widen the mixing zone. The hypotheses were tested by both multiscale numerical simulations and laboratory experiments. Numerical simulations were based on a variable-density groundwater model by varying mass transfer parameters, including immobile porosity, mobile porosity, and mass transfer coefficient, and the hydraulic conductivity contrast between aquifer layers. Laboratory experiments were conducted in a quasi-two-dimensional tank, where real beach sands were installed and foodstuff dyes were used to visualize the development of freshwater-seawater mixing zone. Major conclusions included (1) the mixing zone can be significantly widened when the mass transfer timescale and the period of transient boundary is comparable due to the nonequilibrium mass transfer effects; and (2) a thick mixing zone occurs in low-permeability layer when it overlays upon a fast flow layer. These results not only improve the understanding of the dynamics of mixing-zone development and its associated geochemical processes in coastal aquifers, but also identify hydrogeologic conditions for the model of sharp-interface approximation to be valid. In addition to better understanding the mechanisms and dynamics of mixing zone, this thesis also investigates cost-effective management of coastal groundwater resources. To protect and conserve limited water recourses in coastal regions, interest in aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) has been growing in recent years. ASR is a promising strategy for water resources management and has been widely used in many contaminated and saline aquifers. However, its performance may be significantly constrained by mass transfer effects due to the mobilization of solutes initially residing in immobile domains. Better understanding of kinetic mass transfer effects on ASR is needed in order to aid the decision-making process. A numerical model is developed to simulate ASR performance by combining the convergent and divergent dispersion models with a first-order mass transfer model. By analyzing the concentration history at the pumping well, we obtain simple and effective relationships for investigating ASR efficiency under various mass transfer parameters, including capacity ratio and mass transfer timescales, and operational parameters. Based on such relationships, one can conveniently determine whether a site with mass transfer limitations is appropriate or not for ASR and how many ASR cycles are required for achieving a positive recovery efficiency (RE).

Un système intégrable semi-torique sur une variété symplectique de dimension 2n est un système intégrable dont le flot de n − 1 composantes de l'application moment est 2 -périodique. On obtient donc une action hamiltonienne du tore Tn−1. En outre, on demande que tous les points critiques du système soient non-dégénérés et sans composante hyperbolique. En dimension 4, San V˜u Ngo.c et Álvaro Pelayo ont étendu à ces systèmes semi-toriques les résultats célèbres d'Atiyah, Guillemin, Sternberg et Delzant concernant la classification des systèmes toriques. Dans cette thèse nous proposons une extension de ces résultats en dimension quelconque, à commencer par la dimension 6. Les techniques utilisées relèvent de l'analyse comme de la géométrie symplectique, ainsi que de la théorie de Morse dans des espaces différentiels stratifiés. Nous donnons d'abord une description de l'image de l'application moment d'un point de vue local, en étudiant les asymptotiques des coordonnées actionangle au voisinage d'une singularité foyer-foyer, avec le phénomène de monodromie du feuilletage qui en résulte. Nous passons ensuite à une description plus globale dans la veine des polytopes d'Atiyah, Guillemin et Sternberg. Ces résultats sont basés sur une étude systématique de la stratification donnée par les fibres de l'application moment. Avec ces résultats, nous établissons la connexité des fibres des systèmes intégrables semi-toriques de dimension 6 et indiquons comment nous comptons démontrer ce résultat en dimension quelconque.

Surrogacy is an arrangement whereby a woman conceives in order to give birth to child or children for another individual or couple to raise. This thesis explores how commercial gestational surrogacy is culturally framed and socially organised in Russia and investigates the roles of the key actors. In particular it explores the experiences of surrogacy workers, including those who migrate or commute long distances within and to Russia for surrogacy work and the significance of their origin, citizenship, ethnicity and religion in shaping their experience. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in St Petersburg between August 2014 and May 2015 and involved semi-structured interviews, (participant) observations, informal conversations and ethnographic fieldnotes with 33 surrogacy workers, 7 client parents, 15 agency staff and 11 medical staff in medical and surrogacy agency facilities. Data were analysed using inductive ethnographic principles. A reflexive account, which includes a consideration of the utility of making one’s own emotional responses a research tool, is also included. Drawing on and expanding on Colen’s (1995) conceptual framework of stratified reproduction and Crenshaw’s (1989) analytical framework of intersectionality, this research shows that surrogacy in Russia is culturally framed and therefore socially organised as an economic exchange, which gives rise to and reinforces different forms of intersecting reproductive stratifications. These stratifications include biological, social, geographic, geo-political and ethnic dimensions. Of particular novelty is the extension of Colen’s framework to address geographic and geo political stratifications. This was based on the finding that some women (temporarily) migrate or commute (over long distances) to work as gestational carriers. The thesis also demonstrates how an economic framing of surrogacy induced surrogacy workers to understand surrogacy gestation as work, which influenced their relationships with client parents. Given the rapid global increase in the use of surrogacy and its increasingly internationalised nature, this research into the social organisation of commercial gestational surrogacy in Russia is timely and has implications for users, medical practitioners and regulators, as well as researchers concerned with (cross-border) surrogacy and reproductive justice.

[pt] Muitos problemas da engenharia geotécnica podem ser resolvidos pela superposição de soluções singulares fundamentais das equações diferenciais governantes. Nesta dissertação, é investigado o comportamento mecânico de uma fundação flexível, em termos de tensões e distribuições de recalque, considerando algumas soluções fundamentais básicas publicadas na literatura. Estas soluções referem-se ao campo de tensões e deslocamentos gerados em um semi-espaço linearmente elástico, homogêneo e isotrópico, por uma força vertical aplicada na superfície (Problema de Boussinesq (1885)), uma força horizontal aplicada na superfície (Problema de Cerruti (1882)), uma força aplicada dentro de um semi-espaço (Problema de Mindlin (1936)) ou dentro de uma camada finita (Problema de Burmister (1945)). No caso de depósitos de solo estratificados, são poucas as soluções disponíveis, em rela ção à ocorrência comum deste tipo de solo na natureza. Uma dessas soluções foi proposta por Hisada (1995), a qual permite que a resposta da aplicação de cargas dinâmicas ou estáticas em qualquer ponto de um semi-espaço estratificado, seja numericamente avaliada. No desenvolvimento matemático, a aplicação do teorema de Green permite fazer facilmente a superposição das soluções fundamentais, transformando as integrais de área em integrais de linha ao longo dos contornos que definem a geometria de uma única fundação ou de um grupo, formado por um número qualquer de fundações superficiais. Alguns exemplos apresentados neste trabalho discutem o potencial da aplicação dessa técnica em problemas da engenharia geotécnica, com ênfase especial para aqueles da engenharia de fundações. / [en] Many problems of geotechnical engineering can be solved by superposition of the fundamental singular solutions to the governing differential equations. In the dissertation, the mechanical behavior of a flexible footing is investigated, in terms of stress and settlement distributions, considered some basic fundamental solutions published in literature. These solutions refer to the stress and displacement fields in an isotropic, homogeneous, linearly elastic half-space generated by a vertical force applied on the surface (Boussinesq´s problem (1885)), a horizontal force on the surface (Cerruti´s problem (1882)), a force within the half- space (Mindlin (1936)) or within a stratum of finite thickness (Burmister´s problem (1945)). For the case of horizontal stratified soil deposits there are very few solutions available, in spite the common occurrence of this kind of soils in nature. One of such solutions has been proposed by Hisada (1995), which permits the response of a stratified half-space to dynamic or static forces, applied at any given point of the elastic medium, to be numerically computed. In the mathematical development, the application of the Green`s theorem allows the superposition of fundamental solutions to be more easily done by transforming area integrals into line integrals along the boundaries that define the geometry of either a single footing or a group formed by any number of shallow foundations. Some examples are herein presented in order to indicate the potential use of this approach to geotechnical engineering problems, in general, but with special emphasis to those of the foundation engineering. / [es] Muchos problemas de la Ingeniería geotécnica pueden ser resueltos por la superposición de soluciones singulares fundamentales de las ecuaciones diferenciales governantes. En esta disertación, se investiga el comportamiento mecánico de una fundación flexible, en términos de tensiones y distribuciones de recalco, considerando algunas soluciones fundamentales básicas publicadas en la literatura. Estas soluciones se refieren al campo de tensiones y al deslizamiento generados en un semi-espacio linealmente elástico, homogéneo e isotrópico, por una fuerza vertical aplicada en la superfície (Problema de Bousinesq (1885)), una fuerza horizontal aplicada en la superfície (Problema de Cerruti (1882)), una fuerza aplicada dentro de un semi-espacio (Problema de Mindlin (1936)) o dentro de una camada finita (Problema de Burmister (1945)). En el caso de depósitos de suelo estratificados, son pocas las soluciones disponibles, comparados con la gran existencia de este tipo de suelo en la naturaleza. Una de esas soluciones fue propuesta por Hisada (1995) y permite que la respuesta de la aplicación de cargas dinámicas o estáticas en cualquier punto de un semi-espacio estratificado, sea evaluada numéricamente. En el desarrollo matemático, la aplicación del teorema de Green permite llegar facilmente a la superposición de las soluciones fundamentales, transformando las integrales de área en integrales de línea a lo largo de los contornos que definen la geometría de una única fundación o de un grupo, formado por un número cualquier de fundaciones superficiales. Algunos ejemplos que se presentan en este trabajo discuten el potencial de la aplicación de esa técnica en problemas de la Ingeniería geotécnica, con énfasis especial para aquellos de la Ingeniería de fundaciones.