Engineering systems must be designed to withstand the actual and probable loads that may be imposed on them. Hence the wall of a dam must be of adequate strength to hold out mainly the reservoir water pressure but also to withstand other loads, such as seismic occasional shocks, thermal expansions/contractions, and many others. A tennis racket is designed to take dynamic and impact loads imposed by a fast-moving flying tennis ball. It must also be adequately designed to withstand impact loads when incidentally hitting a hard ground. An oil drilling equipment must be designed to suitably and adequately drill through different types of rock materials, but at the same time ensuring that its imposing loads would not cause rock formation integrity affecting the stability of the drilled well. <...>

The petroleum geology of Mexico remains relatively unknown to the international geoscience community because of the limited number of articles published in international forums by geoscientists from Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) and the Mexican Petroleum Institute. Sensitive Pemex data have traditionally been treated with strict confidentiality.

Uma das maiores dificuldades encontradas pelos autores no ensino de disciplinas relacionadas à Petro-logia ígnea e áreas afins nos níveis de Graduação e Pós-Graduação é representada pela falta de textos em português. Entre a tradução de um livro texto já existente e a preparação de um texto novo, os autores optaram, em 1979, pela segunda alternativa, uma vez que os textos já disponíveis se encontraram algo desatualizados e, muito raramente, tocam em assuntos de grande importância para o Geólogo brasileiro.

This field trip will focus on the petrology and structure of basementcored anticlines in the central Appalachian Piedmont, near Baltimore, Maryland (Figure 1). These structures have long been interpreted as mantled gneiss domes in the sense of Eskola (1949). However, recent work suggests that they are recumbent nappes, arched by later folding about steeply dipping axial planes. <...>