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International audience; Madagascar has one of the highest poverty rates in the world and consequently the long‐term monitoring of groundwater resources is not a priority for the authorities. However, groundwater is often the only sustainable resource that has a satisfactory quality to supply the population. This is especially true in the south‐west of the country, which is a semi‐arid region and a global change hot spot (intense land use and climate changes). In response to the lack of data, the Groundwater Resource Observatory for Southwestern Madagascar (GROSoM) was established to monitor piezometry and meteorology over the longer term as part of a humanitarian response. The first site was setup in 2014 in a catchment located over a carbonate plateau; in 2018, a second site was installed in an alluvial setting within a crystalline basement catchment and a third site will be installed in 2020 to monitor groundwater dynamics in a coastal setting. The three sites, located between Toliara and Taolagnaro cities, are complementary and representative of various hydrogeological systems in Southwestern Madagascar. Each site includes a weather station and between 3 and 6 piezometric probes. The monitoring data indicate a strong inter‐annual variability in precipitation, which induces a strong variability in aquifers recharge. One of the driest years in 2016 seems to be consistent with strong El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) effects observed at the global scale, while years with higher recharge appear to be related to cyclones such as Fundi in 2015 and Eketsang in 2019. Preliminary results of cross‐disciplinary studies demonstrated a link between groundwater and health issues (i.e., admissions to basic health centres). This observatory aims to produce long‐term data and has two objectives: (i) strengthening the early warning system for humanitarian crises in Madagascar; (ii) contributing to a better understanding of the effects of climate change on groundwater resources in this semi‐arid region.

FSG acknowledges the CINECA award under the ISCRA initiative (HP10BJO47B) for the availability of high-performance computing resources and support., The phase transitions between paraelectric (PE) and ferroelectric (FE) isomorph phases of LiNbO3 have been investigated quantum mechanically by using a Gaussian-type basis set, the B3LYP hybrid functional and the CRYSTAL17 code. The structural, electronic and vibrational properties of the two phases are analyzed. The vibrational frequencies evaluated at the Γ point indicate that the paraelectric phase is unstable, with a complex saddle point with four negative eigenvalues. The energy scan of the A2u mode at −215 cm−1 (i215) shows a dumbbell potential with two symmetric minima. The isotopic substitution, performed on the Li and Nb atoms, allows interpretation of the nontrivial mechanism of the phase transition. The ferroelectric phase is more stable than the paraelectric one by 0.32 eV. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.--//-- Published under CC BY 4.0 licence., CINECA HP10BJO47B; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence is supported through the Framework Program for European universities Union Horizon 2020, H2020-WIDESPREAD-01–2016–2017-TeamingPhase2 under Grant Agreement No. 739508, CAMART2 project.

An ageing population raises the question of providing adequate housing that enables older people to age in place without losing autonomy and independence. Except for the issue of accessibility, no framework exists that specifically outlines a standard to achieve and, as a result, interventions on existing or on new buildings may be inconsistent without leading to a desired rise in living standards. This research addresses this issue by presenting a framework for the assessment of the age-appropriateness of housing through a number of metrics that detect and identify physical and non-physical features of a home environment to enable ageing in place. The study combines data from a qualitative systematic literature review of 93 papers and qualitative data from structured interviews with four experts in the field. As a result, 71 metrics were identified, divided into eight main domains, to describe the framework. This paper provides an improved understanding of the housing features that enable ageing in place. The tool categorizes and rates qualitative and quantitative aspects that contribute to the age-friendliness of housing, resulting in an easy to adopt assessment framework. This is a valuable means for stakeholders engaged in improving the current housing stock or in constructing new buildings for older people.

In the Cultural Heritage domain, the introduction of intelligent systems for planning of cultural visit was very appealing. Indeed when people decide to visit museums or archaeological sites, they usually would like to organize and schedule their time in order to fulfill some requirements and to match, as far as possible, their preferences and needs. In this work, we propose a novel methodology integrating recommendation facilities with agent-based planning techniques in order to implement a planner of routes within cultural sites as museums. In particular, the introduced methodology exploits from one hand a user-centered recommendation strategy to suggest the most suitable cultural items with respect to user’s preferences and, from the other one, it leverages multi-agents planning methods to generate the related routes consisting of the sequence of steps necessary to reach precise cultural goals depending on the context, by means of a state space exploration. We present a case of study for the proposed methodology and we describe some experimental results on system efficiency.

Historically, Turkey has adopted a reactive approach to natural hazards which resulted in significant losses. However, following the 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake, a more proactive approach has been adopted. This study aims to explore the way this new approach operates on the ground. A multinational and multidisciplinary team conducted a field investigation following the 2011 Van Earthquake to identify lessons to inform healthcare emergency planning in Turkey and elsewhere. The team interviewed selected stakeholders including, healthcare emergency responders, search and rescue services, ambulance services, and health authority representatives, in addition to conducting a focus group. Data were analysed according to an open coding process and SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat) analysis. The findings suggest that the approach succeeded in developing a single vision by consolidating official efforts in a more structured way, mobilising many governmental and non-governmental organisations, securing significant amounts of resources including physical and human, and increasing the resilience and flexibility of infrastructure to expand its capacity. However, more attention is required to the development of stronger management procedures and acquisition of further resources.

International audience; The vibrational spectrum of Ca3Fe2Si3O12 andradite is calculated at the Γ point by using the periodic ab initio CRYSTAL program that adopts an all-electron Gaussian-type basis set and the B3LYP Hamiltonian. The full set of frequencies (17 IR active, 25 Raman active, and 55 inactive modes) is calculated. The effect of the basis set on the calculated frequencies is discussed. The modes are characterized by direct inspection of the eigenvectors and isotopic substitution. The present calculations permit us to clarify some of the assignment problems raised by experiments. The mean absolute differences of the various modes with respect to the available experimental IR and Raman data are as small as 9 and 5 cm-1, respectively.

The harmonic frequency spectrum of bulk Mg(OH)(2), brucite, has been computed with the CRYSTAL periodic code, using four different hamiltonians, namely Hartree-Fock (HF), local density (LDA), gradient corrected PW91 and hybrid B3LYP. The anharmonicity of the 011 stretching frequency has also been evaluated, as well as the transverse/longitudinal optical (TO/LO) splitting. Comparison with the frequencies of the single layer shows that the bulk OH stretching splitting is due to interlayer interaction. Agreement with experiment is excellent for B3LYP (less than 10 cm(-1) differences), less so for PW91 and much less satisfactory for both LDA and HF. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The OH vibrational frequency of four crystalline compounds ranging from ionic (brucite, Mg(OH)(2), and portlandite, Ca(OH)(2)) to semi-covalent (edingtonite, as representative of free surface OH groups in silica, and acid chabazite, as representative of acid zeolites) has been investigated at quantum mechanical level with the CRYSTAL program using the B3LYP hybrid functional. The OH vibration is calculated in two ways: (i) in the harmonic approximation, by diagonalizing the fully coupled dynamical matrix to yield the harmonic frequency omega(h). (ii) at the anharmonic level, by decoupling the OH stretching mode from the bulk phonons and by numerically solving the one-dimensional Schrodinger equation associated with the OH potential energy to yield the fundamental omega(01) and the first overtone omega(02) frequencies. The harmonic and anharmonic frequencies differ by more than 150 cm(-1). In the cases where direct comparison is possible ( brucite, portlandite and edingtonite), the experimental and calculated frequencies differ by less than 10 cm(-1); the calculated anharmonicity constant, omega(e)x(e) (2 omega(01) - omega(02))/2, is systematically smaller than the experimental value by about 10 cm(-1). The effect of the computational parameters on the computed frequencies is explored, with particular attention to the grid used for the construction of the DFT exchange and correlation contribution to the Hamiltonian and the accuracy in the geometry optimisation

Ab initio periodic calculations have been performed with the CRYSTAL code, which is based on Gaussian basis sets, to investigate the structure and OH vibrational features (both harmonic and anharmonic) of Mg(OH)(2) and beta-Be(OH)(2) crystals, which represent two extreme situations in which the OH group can be involved. In the latter, it participates in H-bonds of intermediate strength, whereas, in the former, it is essentially free. Hartree-Fock (HF), local density (LDA), gradient-corrected (PW91), and hybrid (B3LYP) density functionals have been used and the results compared with experiment. For Mg(OH)(2) the B3LYP OH frequencies are in very good agreement with experiment, whereas, for beta-Be(OM)(2), they are similar to100 cm(-1) too low. LDA grossly underestimates the OH frequency (330 and 800 cm(-1) for Mg(OH)(2) and beta-Be(OH)(2), respectively), and PW91 moderately does (170 and 400 cm(-1), respectively)

Fully hydroxylated surfaces derived from crystalline edingtonite were adopted to model the variety of sites known to exist at the amorphous silica surface, namely isolated, geminal and interacting silanols. Structures, energetics and vibrational features of the surfaces either bare or in contact with water were modelled at DFT level using the B3LYP functional with a GTO basis set of double-zeta polarized quality using the periodic ab-initio CRYSTAL06 code. Simulated infrared spectra of both dry and water wet edingtonite surfaces were in excellent agreement with the experimental ones recorded on amorphous silica. Water interaction energies were compared with microcalorimetric differential heats of adsorption data showing good agreement, albeit computed ones being slightly underestimated due to the lack of dispersive forces in the B3LYP functional.