Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
An unexpected ancient manufacturing strategy may hold the key to designing concrete that lasts for millennia.
The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia. Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome’s famed Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is still intact, and some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome today. Meanwhile, many modern concrete structures have crumbled after a few decades.
Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out the secret of this ultradurable ancient construction material, particularly in structures that endured especially harsh conditions, such as docks, sewers, and seawalls, or those constructed in seismically active locations.
Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities. The findings are published today in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic, former doctoral student Linda Seymour ’14, PhD ’21, and four others.
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horribly short summary of what im trying to accomplish here, but if you were to read a fic featuring character, a soldier honorably discharged and is officially off the battlefield and yet he can’t seem to shake off the war from clinging to his body, and he’s basically a bit of a mess and feels incapable of returning to ordinary life and there’s you, the sweetest thing in the whole world, and he keeps trying to tell you he’s no good and you’re there to help him with everything (and it kills him a bit, to see you wasting your time to help him, and it kills him because he feels like he shouldn’t be the type of person who needs help) and !! just slowburn and falling in love and just read the tags for the vibe ok, who would it be for
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Recycling research finds new process to transform glass fiber-reinforced plastic into silicon carbide
Glass fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP), a strong and durable composite material, is widely used in everything from aircraft parts to windmill blades. Yet the very qualities that make it robust enough to be used in so many different applications make it difficult to dispose of—consequently, most GFRP waste is buried in a landfill once it reaches its end of life.
According to a study published in Nature Sustainability, Rice University researchers and collaborators have developed a new, energy-efficient upcycling method to transform glass fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP) into silicon carbide, widely used in semiconductors, sandpaper, and other products.
"GFRP is used to make very large things, and for the most part, we end up burying the wing structures of airplanes or windmill blades from a wind turbine whole in a landfill," said James Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor and professor of chemistry and of materials science and nanoengineering. "Disposing of GFRP this way is just unsustainable. And until now, there has been no good way to recycle it."
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Mmmmmm talk of the Catholic Church being the reason people don't touch other's daemons is something that never really was clear to me because I haven't read the books since like 2007 and instead was a part of an online daemon community talking to our daemons lmao (I still do). But that's such a fascinating thought. If daemons were real (with some changes as were debated on the forum), how would various religions feel about it? It would always be somewhat intimate, you wouldn't want a stranger running up and touching your daemon but people hug and kiss friends and family, queerplatonic relationships are well heard about now. Would the queer community be more willing to open up and let friends and others touch their daemon because the queer community is so intimate in the right time and place, it's such a fascinating thought. Would former Christian atheists have the same holdings over only partners touching daemons? Would different sects of Christianity have different thoughts? You mentioning theater and the Catholic Church has my mind running wild. Artists with daemons in general is fascinating to think about.
Also, something that's always been on my mind as a wannabe zoologist is zoos and daemons. If we take daemons into our world where there aren't talking polar bears and such, how do wild animals react to them? Do daemons smell like their human? Will a pet cat recognize a mouse daemon or try to eat it? Will a pet dog adore their human but be wary of their human's hyena daemon?
Honestly the hypotheticals of daemons both in Lyra's world and our own are fascinating to think on, and something I still think about to this day as I talk to my daemon, despite leaving that community a long time ago. Sorry for this random rambling but you have opened up something inside me lmao
I don't know about you but if my good friends always had little animals hanging out with them you bet I'd ask to pet them. There are plenty of people in the real world who have been socialized to be afraid of loving platonic touch, and plenty of people who haven't, so it's not that big a leap to imagine that in Pullman's fantasy world, close friends from more relaxed societies might briefly touch each other's daemons.
Also it's been a long time since I've read the books but I do think it's canon that nonhuman animals react to daemons as they would a human; whether the daemon is their same species or a prey animal, animals can somehow sense that daemons are human/dust and not Animal in nature, and are therefore less interested in them. So I think our pets would usually treat our daemons as they would treat the rest of us.
Anyway do keep talking to your daemon because I think it is a cool and fun way to process your thoughts. :)
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