Limestone is a highly successful and widely used building material, found in many important historic buildings and new monuments around the world. Whilst its success reflects its durability under a wide range of environmental conditions, there are still important questions surrounding the selection, use and conservation of build-ing limestones. In order to make best use of new limestone today, and to conserve old limestone most effectively, we need to bring modern research methods to bear on understanding the characteris-tics of different limestones, what mortars to use, and how key lime-stones have responded to polluted atmospheres. This volume brings together recent inter-disciplinary research on these issues, illustrating the diversity of innovative techniques that are now be-ing applied to furthering our understanding of building limestones.

Viruses, Bacteria and Fungi in the Built Environment: Designing Healthy Indoor Environments opens with a brief introduction to viruses, bacteria and fungi in the built environment and discusses their impact on human health. Sections discuss the microbiology of building materials, the airborne transmission of viruses and bacteria in the built environment, and plumbing-associated microbiome. As the first book on this important area to be written in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, this work will be a valuable reference resource for researchers, civil engineers, architects, postgraduate students, contractors and other professionals working and interested in the field of the built environment. Elements of building design, including choice of materials, ventilation and plumbing can have important implications for the microbiology of a building, and consequently, the health of the building's occupants. This important new reference work explains the microbiology of buildings and disease control in the built environment to those who design and implement new construction and renovate. Provides an essential guide on the microbiology of buildings, covering bacteria, fungi and viruses on surfaces, in air and in water Comprehensively examines how humidity influences fungal growth in several building materials Includes important information about the airborne transmission of infectious agents Addresses ventilation design to improve human health Presents the first book on disease control in buildings since the COVID-19 pandemic

The readers of the first two editions of Stone: Properties, Durabi lity in Man's Environment, were mostly architects, restoration architects of buildings and monuments in natural stone, profes sionals who sought basic technical information for non-geologists. The increasing awareness of rapidly decaying monuments and their rescue from loss to future generations have urged this writer to update the 1973 and 1975 editions, now unavailable and out of print. Due to the 20-year-Iong interval, extensive updating was necessary to produce this new book. The present edition concentrates on the natural material stone, as building stone, dimension stone, architectural stone, and decorative field stones. Recently, the use of stone for thin curtain walls on buildings has become fashionable. The thin slabs exposed to anew, unknown complexity of stresses, resulting in bowing of crystalline marble, has attracted much negative pUblicity. The costs of replacing white slabs of marble on entire buildings with its legal implications have led construction com panies into bankruptcy. We blame many environmental problems on acid rain. Does acid rain really accelerate stone decay that much? Stone preservation is being attempted with an ever-increasing number of chemicals applied by as many specialists to save crumbling stone. Chemists filled this need during a time of temporary job scarcity, while the general geologist missed this opportunity; he was too deeply involved in the search for fossil fuels and metals.

This volume brings together outstanding contributions to the Gulf Conference on Sustainable Built Environment, held at the Marina Hotel Kuwait, near Kuwait City. The Proceedings collects 29 papers on a range of engineering and materials challenges, and best practices, addressing development of new sustainable building materials, performance improvement of structures and tall buildings, developing monitoring and analysis techniques and frameworks for existing infrastructure under environmental effects, development of long-term sustainability plans for building stock, and development of energy efficient buildings in the gulf region. The Conference was organized by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, and Kuwait University.

There is considerable academic and practical interest in stone and stone buildings, as exemplified by the wide range of high-quality and innovative work being conducted in the pursuit of the effective preservation and restoration of historic buildings. This is reflected in the numerous publications on stone and stone buildings that regularly find their way into the public domain. Not least amongst these are a number of Geological Society Special Publications, which have appeared in recent years. This current volume seeks to bring to the attention of the various professionals in the field (geologists, architects, engineers, conservators and conservation scientists) recent work centred on the characterization and performance of this important resource and its use in historic buildings. The volume has wider relevance, including to those interested in the heritage of stone.