The tongue plays an important role in oral functions. Reduced tongue strength is often noted among children with mouth-breathing behaviour. The purposes of this study were to measure the tongue pressure in children with mouth-breathing behaviour, to compare these values to those of children with nasal-breathing behaviour and to analyse the relationship between age and tongue pressure in children with a mouth-breathing pattern and in children with a nasal-breathing pattern. In this cross-sectional analytical observational study, we enroled 40 children aged 5-12 years who either exhibited mouth-breathing behaviour (n = 20) or nasal-breathing behaviour (gender- and age-matched [±2 years] controls; n = 20). Tongue pressure was evaluated using the Iowa Oral Performance Instrument; 3 measurements were recorded for each participant, with a 30-seconds rest interval. The average tongue pressure in the mouth-breathing group was lower than that in the nasal-breathing group. There was no difference in tongue pressure between genders. There was a strong and direct correlation between tongue pressure and age in the nasal-breathing group. The breathing pattern impacts tongue pressure development.

The present paper describes the main results of an on-going research aiming to develop standard flood damage data in the form of generic flood-damage curves. This type of curve allows estimating flood damages from the depth of inundation. Although the research project encompasses flood damages on different urban land use activities (residential, commercial, services and industrial land uses), the paper focus on residential flood damage information. The empirical data used on this research was obtained from systematic surveys performed in the city of Itajubá, a town with 85.000 inhabitants located in the Sapucaí river valley in the South-eastern region of Brazil, during the year of 2002. The survey consisted in interviewing residents in the Itajubá flood prone urban area in order to develop a data base characterizing the social class, the building fabric, the contents (inventory items) and the damages caused to dwellings by a reference flood event, the 2000 flood event. During this event, the town had more than 70% of its urban area flooded for three days and, in some densely urbanised areas, the depth of water was superior to three meters. The FDC curves obtained show relatively high damage according to the submersion depth considering the Brazilian context. This issue suggests that inhabitants can rarely recover, in the short time, from all the harm caused by flooding.

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