This study updates Pereira and Pereira by revisiting the macroeconomic and budgetary effects of infrastructure investment in Portugal using a dataset from the Portuguese Ministry of the Economy covering 1980–2019, thereby capturing a period of austerity and decreased investment in the 2010s. A vector-autoregressive approach re-estimates the elasticity and marginal product of twelve infrastructure types on private investment, employment, and output. The most significant long-term accumulated effects on output accrue from investments in airports, ports, health, highways, water, and railroads. In contrast, those in municipal roads, electricity and gas, and refineries are statistically insignificant. All statistically significant infrastructure investments pay for themselves over time through additional tax revenues. Compared to the previous study, highways, water, and ports have more than doubled their estimated marginal products due to a significant increase in relative scarcity over the last decade. In addition, our analysis reveals an important shift in the impacts of infrastructure investment, now producing more substantial immediate effects but weaker long-term impacts. This change offers policymakers a powerful tool for short-term economic stimulus and is particularly useful in addressing immediate economic challenges.

Transportation projects are crucial for the overall success of major urban, metropolitan, regional, and national development according to their capacity by bringing significant changes in socio-economic and territorial aspects. In this context, sustaining and developing economic and social activities depend on having sufficient Water Resources Management. This research helps to manage transport project planning and construction phases to analyze the surface water flow, high-level streams, and wetland sites for the development of transportation infrastructure planning, implementation, maintenance, monitoring, and long-term evaluations to better face the challenges and solutions associated with effective management and enhancement to deal with Low, Medium, High levels of impact. A case study was carried out using the Arc Hydro extension within ArcGIS for processing and presenting the spatially referenced Stream Model. Geographical information systems have the potential to improve water resource planning and management. The study framework would be useful for solving water resource problems by enabling decision makers to collect qualitative data more effectively and gather it into the water management process through a systematic framework.

Four alloys based on niobium and containing about 33wt.%Cr, 0.4wt.C and, in atomic content equivalent to the carbon one, Ta, Ti, Hf or Zr, were elaborated by classical foundry under inert atmosphere. Their as-cast microstructures were characterized by X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, energy dispersion spectrometry and while their room temperature hardness was specified by Vickers indentation. The microstructures are in the four cases composed of a dendritic Nb-based solid solution and of an interdendritic NbCr₂ Laves phase. Despite the MC-former behavior of Ta, Ti, Hf and Zr usually observed in nickel or cobalt-based alloys, none of the four alloys contain MC carbides. Carbon is essentially visible as graphite flakes. These alloys are brittle at room temperature and hard to machine. Indentation shows that the Vickers hardness is very high, close to 1000HV_10kg. Indentation lead to crack propagation through the niobium phase and the Laves areas. Obviously no niobium-based alloys microstructurally similar to high performance MC-strengthened nickel-based and cobalt-based can be expected. However the high temperature mechanical and chemical properties of these alloys remain to be investigated.

With the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, rural wisdom pension gradually becomes an important direction for the development of rural society. The purpose of this paper is to study the optimization path of rural smart pension in the context of rural revitalization. By analyzing the definition, development status and dilemma of rural wisdom pension, key factors for optimizing rural wisdom pension are proposed, and the paths for enhancing rural wisdom pension are discussed. The research results show that strengthening infrastructure construction, improving service quality, and promoting information technology application are the key paths to realize rural smart aging. This study provides theoretical guidance and policy recommendations for the implementation of rural smart aging.

The authors’ decision to “read” and semiotically analyse the city’s text based on travelogues stems from their aesthetic, historical and informational value, the possibility of incorporating them “into the network” of other texts about Padua, thus shaping city image. The authors’ research on Slovak literature and culture also determined the choice. As a time frame, the nineteenth century is not accidental; the Slovak cultural environment (the territory of present-day Slovakia) witnessed the development of the travelogue genre and journeys to Italy. By interpreting and semiotic analysis of the selected authors’ travelogues and works, the paper draws attention to the uniqueness of Padua, the ways of its representation and the grasping of the urban space, which until now despite its importance in education, sciences and art has remained unnoticed in literary studies. Considering that only four Slovak travellers included Padua in their writings during the studied period, all of their works were reviewed to uncover their texts’ semantic potential. Interpretive immersions thus reflect the experiential reception of the author’s city image and perceiving its architectural structure. Through this, the authors develop a network of texts about Padua and support the typological classification according to its specific function or image. This paper articulates a variant of the Slovak phenomenon of Italian travel and a view of the meanings associated with urban spaces and places. It reflects the importance of travel writing for understanding the (literary) cityscape and its transformations and opens space for further research on the subject.