Embodied energy as an environmental impact indicator for basement wall construction

Attempts were made to quantify the environmental impacts of the basement walls of two commercial buildings in London. Four different retaining wall options were designed based on steel and concrete systems for each of the sites. It was considered that excavation would take place with the aid of a one or two anchors system. Evaluation of embodied energy (EE) and CO2 emissions for each of the wall designs and anchoring systems were compared. Results show that there are notable differences in EE between different wall designs. Using the averaged set of Embodied Energy Intensity (EEI) values, the use of recycled steel over virgin steel would reduce the EE of the wall significantly. The difference in anchor designs is relatively insignificant, and therefore the practicality of the design for the specific site should be the deciding factor for anchor types. Generally, the scale of environmental impacts due to constructions is large compared to other aspects in life as demonstrated with the comparisons to car emissions and household energy consumption. Copyright ASCE 2008.

Durability study of eleven years old cement-bentonite cut-off wall material

Comprehensive understanding of the long-term performance of cement-bentonite slurry trench cut-off walls is essential as these mixes may degrade when exposed to aggressive environments or when subjected to prolonged drying. A series of wetting-drying and immersion experiments was carried out to evaluate the durability characteristics of laboratory mixed samples and block field samples from 40 days to 11 years of age. For the wetting-drying tests, the samples buried in medium graded sand were subjected to periodical flooding and drying cycles. They were then used for permeability testing and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) testing. For the immersion tests, the samples confined in perforated molds were submerged in magnesium sulfate solution for 16 weeks and their microstructures were then analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. This paper identifies the effects of contaminant exposure on durability of cement-bentonite and the effects of aging by comparing 11 years old samples to younger samples. Test results showed that young or previously contaminated cement-bentonite mixes are more susceptible to sulfate attack than old or less contaminated mixes. Copyright ASCE 2008.

Laminar to turbulent flow transition measurements using an array of SOI-CMOS MEMS wall shear stress sensors

The successful utilization of an array of silicon on insulator complementary metal oxide semiconductor (SOICMOS) micro thermal shear stress sensors for flow measurements at macro-scale is demonstrated. The sensors use CMOS aluminum metallization as the sensing material and are embedded in low thermal conductivity silicon oxide membranes. They have been fabricated using a commercial 1 μm SOI-CMOS process and a post-CMOS DRIE back etch. The sensors with two different sizes were evaluated. The small sensors (18.5 ×18.5 μm2 sensing area on 266 × 266 μm2 oxide membrane) have an ultra low power (100 °C temperature rise at 6mW) and a small time constant of only 5.46 μs which corresponds to a cut-off frequency of 122 kHz. The large sensors (130 × 130 μm2 sensing area on 500 × 500 μm2 membrane) have a time constant of 9.82 μs (cut-off frequency of 67.9 kHz). The sensors' performance has proven to be robust under transonic and supersonic flow conditions. Also, they have successfully identified laminar, separated, transitional and turbulent boundary layers in a low speed flow. © 2008 IEEE.

Broadband ultrafast pulse generation with double wall carbon nanotubes

Materials with nonlinear optical properties are much sought after for ultrafast photonic applications. Mode-locked lasers can generate ultrafast pulses using saturable absorbers[1]. Currently, the dominant technology is based on semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs). However, narrow tuning range (tens of nm), complex fabrication and packaging limit their applications[2]. Single wall nanotubes (SWNTs) and graphene offer simpler and cost-effective solutions[1]. Broadband operation can be achieved in SWNTs using a distribution of tube diameters[1,3], or by using graphene[4-8], due to the gapless linear dispersion of Dirac electrons[8,9]. © 2011 IEEE.

Angular dependence of domain wall resistivity in artificial magnetic domain structures.

We exploit the ability to precisely control the magnetic domain structure of perpendicularly magnetized Pt/Co/Pt trilayers to fabricate artificial domain wall arrays and study their transport properties. The scaling behavior of this model system confirms the intrinsic domain wall origin of the magnetoresistance, and systematic studies using domains patterned at various angles to the current flow are excellently described by an angular-dependent resistivity tensor containing perpendicular and parallel domain wall resistivities. We find that the latter are fully consistent with Levy-Zhang theory, which allows us to estimate the ratio of minority to majority spin carrier resistivities, rho downward arrow/rho upward arrow approximately 5.5, in good agreement with thin film band structure calculations.

Duplication and independent selection of cell-wall invertase genes GIF1 and OsCIN1 during rice evolution and domestication

Background: Various evolutionary models have been proposed to interpret the fate of paralogous duplicates, which provides substrates on which evolution selection could act. In particular, domestication, as a special selection, has played important role in crop cultivation with divergence of many genes controlling important agronomic traits. Recent studies have indicated that a pair of duplicate genes was often sub-functionalized from their ancestral functions held by the parental genes. We previously demonstrated that the rice cell-wall invertase (CWI) gene GIF1 that plays an important role in the grain-filling process was most likely subjected to domestication selection in the promoter region. Here, we report that GIF1 and another CWI gene OsCIN1 constitute a pair of duplicate genes with differentiated expression and function through independent selection. Results: Through synteny analysis, we show that GIF1 and another cell-wall invertase gene OsCIN1 were paralogues derived from a segmental duplication originated during genome duplication of grasses. Results based on analyses of population genetics and gene phylogenetic tree of 25 cultivars and 25 wild rice sequences demonstrated that OsCIN1 was also artificially selected during rice domestication with a fixed mutation in the coding region, in contrast to GIF1 that was selected in the promoter region. GIF1 and OsCIN1 have evolved into different expression patterns and probable different kinetics parameters of enzymatic activity with the latter displaying less enzymatic activity. Overexpression of GIF1 and OsCIN1 also resulted in different phenotypes, suggesting that OsCIN1 might regulate other unrecognized biological process. Conclusion: How gene duplication and divergence contribute to genetic novelty and morphological adaptation has been an interesting issue to geneticists and biologists. Our discovery that the duplicated pair of GIF1 and OsCIN1 has experiencedsub-functionalization implies that selection could act independently on each duplicate towards different functional specificity, which provides a vivid example for evolution of genetic novelties in a model crop. Our results also further support the established hypothesis that gene duplication with sub-functionalization could be one solution for genetic adaptive conflict.

Embodied Energy and Gas Emissions of Retaining Wall Structures

The embodied energy (EE) and gas emissions of four design alternatives for an embankment retaining wall system are analyzed for a hypothetical highway construction project. The airborne emissions considered are carbon dioxide (CO 2), methane (CH 4), nitrous oxide (N 2O), sulphur oxides (SO X), and nitrogen oxides (NO X). The process stages considered in this study are the initial materials production, transportation of construction machineries and materials, machinery operation during installation, and machinery depreciations. The objectives are (1) to determine whether there are statistically significant differences among the structural alternatives; (2) to understand the relative proportions of impacts for the process stages within each design; (3) to contextualize the impacts to other aspects in life by comparing the computed EE values to household energy consumption and car emission values; and (4) to examine the validity of the adopted EE as an environmental impact indicator through comparison with the amount of gas emissions. For the project considered in this study, the calculated results indicate that propped steel sheet pile wall and minipile wall systems have less embodied energy and gas emissions than cantilever steel tubular wall and secant concrete pile wall systems. The difference in CO 2 emission for the retaining wall of 100 m length between the most and least environmentally preferable wall design is equivalent to an average 2.0 L family car being driven for 6.2 million miles (or 62 cars with a mileage of 10,000 miles/year for 10 years). The impacts in construction are generally notable and careful consideration and optimization of designs will reduce such impacts. The use of recycled steel or steel pile as reinforcement bar is effective in reducing the environmental impact. The embodied energy value of a given design is correlated to the amount of gas emissions. © 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.