An analytical investigation into shear wall and slab interconnections between reinforced concrete modules for high -rise buildings utilising modular construction under extreme seismic and wind loading

This research investigates a new structural system utilising modular construction. Five-sided boxes are cast on-site and stacked together to form a building. An analytical model was created of a typical building in each of two different analysis programs utilising the finite element method (Robot Millennium and ETABS). The pros and cons of both Robot Millennium and ETABS are listed at several key stages in the development of an analytical model utilising this structural system. Robot Millennium was initially utilised but created an analytical model too large to be successfully run. The computation requirements were too large for conventional computers. Therefore Robot Millennium was abandoned in favour of ETABS, whose more simplistic algorithms and assumptions permitted running this large computation model. Tips are provided as well as pitfalls signalled throughout the process of modelling such complex buildings of this type. ^ The building under high seismic loading required a new horizontal shear mechanism. This dissertation has proposed to create a secondary floor that ties to the modular box through the use of gunwales, and roughened surfaces with epoxy coatings. In addition, vertical connections necessitated a new type of shear wall. These shear walls consisted of waffled external walls tied through both reinforcement and a secondary concrete pour. ^ This structural system has generated a new building which was found to be very rigid compared to a conventional structure. The proposed modular building exhibited a period of 1.27 seconds, which is about one-fifth of a conventional building. The maximum lateral drift occurs under seismic loading with a magnitude of 6.14 inches which is one-quarter of a conventional building's drift. The deflected shape and pattern of the interstorey drifts are consistent with those of a coupled shear wall building. In conclusion, the computer analysis indicate that this new structure exceeds current code requirements for both hurricane winds and high seismic loads, and concomitantly provides a shortened construction time with reduced funding. ^

Automatons, Robots, and Capitalism in a Very Wrong Twenty-First Century: A Review Essay on Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie

Contrary to prevailing opinions, Neill Blomkamp’s recent feature film Chappie is not a movie about robots or artificial intelligence. It is not Robocop. It is not Short Circuit. It is also not District 9 or Elysium. Chappie is a movie about humanity’s dialectically creative and destructive potential. It is a movie about how it is that humans come to behave how they do through their social and material circumstances, as well as the barbaric results when the two are mixed under the thoroughly undemocratic conditions of neoliberal capitalism.

Ph.D. student Greg Koch describe his research to the 2009 Midterm Review panel at TS/Ph-3

http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/fce_lter_photos/1266/thumbnail.jpg

Reporting behaviour change interventions : do the behaviour change technique taxonomy v1, and training in its use, improve the quality of intervention descriptions?

Acknowledgements This research was funded by the MRC via its Methodology Panel: ‘Strengthening evaluation and implementation by specifying components of behaviour change interventions’ Ref: G0901474/1. We thank the participants who took part in the studies that form this research. We also thank Derek Johnston (Emeritus Professor, University of Aberdeen) for his guidance on statistical analyses.

From Theory-Inspired to Theory-Based Interventions : A Protocol for Developing and Testing a Methodology for Linking Behaviour Change Techniques to Theoretical Mechanisms of Action

This research is funded by UK Medical Research Council grant number MR/L011115/1. We would like to thank the 105 experts in behaviour change who have committed their time and offered their expertise for study 2 of this research. We are also very grateful to all those who sent us peer-reviewed behaviour change intervention descriptions for study 1. Finally, we would like thank Dr. Emma Beard and Dr. Dan Dediu for their statistical input and to all the researchers, particularly Holly Walton, who have assisted in the coding of papers for study 1.

Constraints on community participation in salmon fisheries management in Northwest Russia

Acknowledgements Many parties contributed to making this paper a reality. This research was supported by the European Social and Research Council, grant ESRC ES/K006428/1. The author is particularly grateful to the grant’s holder, Professor David Anderson from the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, for his various support throughout this research. The Barents Center of the Humanities at Kola Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Apatity provided important institutional support. Officials from several fisheries management institutions of Arkhangelsk oblast, including Shiriaev Igor Alekseevich from Dvinsko-Pechorskoe Territorial Management Board, Skovorod’ko Artem Aleksandrovich from the Northern Basin Directorate of Fisheries and Water Biological Resources Conservation (Sevrybvod) and Korotenkov Aleksei Anatol’evich from the Fishing Industry Agency of Arkhangelsk oblast were very supportive and shared their knowledge wherever possible. Scholars Studenov Igor Ivanovich and Stasenkov Vladimir Aleksandrovich at Northern branch of the Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (SevPINRO) in Arkhangelsk provided their invaluable expertise on marine fisheries. Chairmen of several fishing collective farms – Tuchin Sergei Viktorovich, Samoilov Sergei Nikolaevich and Seliverstova Marina Nikolaevna – offered a great administrative support. Local residents of several villages in Mezen region were extremely generous and hospitable, providing places to stay, warm clothes, food, endless cups of tea, and most valuably, sparing their time. Finally, Natalie Wahnsiedler was a regular companion during fieldwork and a great source of inspiration for this research.

Short-term impact of soybean management on ammonia oxidizers in a Brazilian savanna under restoration as revealed by coupling different techniques

Acknowledgments The authors are very grateful to Mr. Fabiano Bielefeld Nardotto, owner of the Tabapuã dos Pireneus farm, for allowing our free movement around the farm and collection of soil samples, as well as providing information about soybean cultivation. The authors also thank Dr. Plínio de Camargo, who performed the isotopic analysis in the CENA laboratory at the University of São Paulo (USP). This work was supported by grants from the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq), Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES), and Foundation for Research Support of Distrito Federal (FAP-DF).

Constraints on community participation in salmon fisheries management in Northwest Russia

Acknowledgements Many parties contributed to making this paper a reality. This research was supported by the European Social and Research Council, grant ESRC ES/K006428/1. The author is particularly grateful to the grant’s holder, Professor David Anderson from the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, for his various support throughout this research. The Barents Center of the Humanities at Kola Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Apatity provided important institutional support. Officials from several fisheries management institutions of Arkhangelsk oblast, including Shiriaev Igor Alekseevich from Dvinsko-Pechorskoe Territorial Management Board, Skovorod’ko Artem Aleksandrovich from the Northern Basin Directorate of Fisheries and Water Biological Resources Conservation (Sevrybvod) and Korotenkov Aleksei Anatol’evich from the Fishing Industry Agency of Arkhangelsk oblast were very supportive and shared their knowledge wherever possible. Scholars Studenov Igor Ivanovich and Stasenkov Vladimir Aleksandrovich at Northern branch of the Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (SevPINRO) in Arkhangelsk provided their invaluable expertise on marine fisheries. Chairmen of several fishing collective farms – Tuchin Sergei Viktorovich, Samoilov Sergei Nikolaevich and Seliverstova Marina Nikolaevna – offered a great administrative support. Local residents of several villages in Mezen region were extremely generous and hospitable, providing places to stay, warm clothes, food, endless cups of tea, and most valuably, sparing their time. Finally, Natalie Wahnsiedler was a regular companion during fieldwork and a great source of inspiration for this research.

Operational expenditure costs for wave energy projects and impacts on financial returns

This paper examines 'availability' and the input metrics of operational expenditure (OPEX) for wave energy projects and reports on a case study which assesses the impact of these inputs on project profit returns. Case study simulations modelled a 75 MW wave energy project at two locations; the west coast of Ireland and the north coast of Portugal. Access and availability with respect to weather windows at both locations are discussed and their impact on energy output and wave farm operations is quantified. The input metrics used to calculate OPEX of wave energy projects are defined as well as the impact of OPEX on project net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). Results indicate that access and resultant availability factors have a significant impact on case study results by reducing energy output and correspondingly financial returns. Furthermore, the technology maturity level designated for a project also impacts on availability factors and consequently energy output and NPV. Case study profits proved to be very sensitive to annual OPEX, especially if overhaul and replacement costs were accounted for. As a result of the impact of 'availability' on project profit returns. Feed-in tariffs will need to be tailored to the location in question as well as the device technology maturity level, with case study simulations indicating that high FIT will be required to support early stage WEC projects. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contrary Voices: Heine, Holderlin, and Goethe in the music of Hanns Eisler

Contrary Voices examines composer Hanns Eisler’s settings of nineteenth-century poetry under changing political pressures from 1925 to 1962. The poets’ ideologically fraught reception histories, both under Nazism and in East Germany, led Eisler to intervene in this reception and voice dissent by radically fragmenting the texts. His musical settings both absorb and disturb the charisma of nineteenth-century sound materials, through formal parody, dissonance, and interruption. Eisler’s montage-like work foregrounds the difficult position of a modernist artist speaking both to and against political demands placed on art. Often the very charisma the composer seeks to expose for its power to sway the body politic exerts a force of its own. At the same time, his text-settings resist ideological rigidity in their polyphonic play. A dialogic approach to musical adaptation shows that, as Eisler seeks to resignify Heine’s problematic status in the Weimar Republic, Hölderlin’s appropriation under Nazism, and Goethe’s status as a nationalist symbol in the nascent German Democratic Republic, his music invests these poetic voices with surprising fragility and multivalence. It also destabilizes received gender tropes, in the masculine vulnerability of Eisler’s Heine choruses from 1925 and in the androgynous voices of his 1940s Hölderlin exile songs and later Goethe settings. Cross-reading the texts after hearing such musical treatment illuminates faultlines and complexities less obvious in text-only analysis. Ultimately Eisler’s music translates canonical material into a form as paradoxically faithful as it is violently fragmented.

Effect of road quality in structural health monitoring under operational conditions

The effect of unevenness in a bridge deck for the purpose of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) under operational conditions is studied in this paper. The moving vehicle is modelled as a single degree of freedom system traversing the damaged beam at a constant speed. The bridge is modelled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam with a breathing crack, simply supported at both ends. The breathing crack is treated as a nonlinear system with bilinear stiffness characteristics related to the opening and closing of crack. The unevenness in the bridge deck considered is modelled using road classification according to ISO 8606:1995(E). Numerical simulations are conducted considering the effects of changing road surface classes from class A - very good to class E - very poor. Cumulant based statistical parameters, based on a new algorithm are computed on stochastic responses of the damaged beam due to passages of the load in order to calibrate the damage. Possibilities of damage detection and calibration under benchmarked and non-benchmarked cases are considered. The findings of this paper are important for establishing the expectations from different types of road roughness on a bridge for damage detection purposes using bridge-vehicle interaction where the bridge does not need to be closed for monitoring.

The Efficacy of San Lazaro and His Manifestations: Divine Mediators of Health Within Miami's Cuban-American Santeria Community.

This study explored the origins, evolution and influence of the tradition of San Lázaro as it currently pertains to the Cuban-American Santeria community in Miami. The main argument of the study is that in the context of the contemporary religious culture of Santeria in Miami, San Lázaro is a hybrid spirit. Many manifestations of healing entities have come to merge in the person of this spirit. Though practitioners identify with specific manifestations of this spirit, the processes of transmigration have blurred the lines of deep-rooted faiths and created a fusion of meanings from disparate traditions, making San Lázaro an ambivalent personality. San Lázaro’s ambivalence is the very quality that makes him such an important Orisha. As a deity whose personalities demonstrates the combination of a diversity of qualities, including those that contradict each other, San Lázaro is deployed in a very broad range of healing context, making him a versatile Orisha. This study clarified the contrasting qualities this deity embodies and traces the socio-historical context in which the deity acquires the layers of meanings it is currently associated with. Drawing on interviews with Lázaranian worshipers [Lázarenos] in Miami and engaging in Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus, the study provided a window into the nature of the tradition of San Lázaro and how its usage is linked with the African heritage of the worshipers.

2015 David Cushing Prize

The prize honors the memory of David Cushing, Founding Editor of Journal of Plankton Research. It is awarded annually for the best paper by an early career stage scientist published in the journal during the previous year. The prize helps foster the interesting and high-quality papers by young scientists that David Cushing so actively supported. The 2015 David Cushing Prize has been awarded to Bingzhang Chen for his paper, “Patterns of thermal limits of phytoplankton” (J. Plankton Res. 37, 285–292) Bingzhang Chen obtained his PhD with a major in Marine Environmental Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Dr Hongbin Liu in 2008. He also worked with Dr Zoe Finkel and Dr Andrew Irwin in Mount Allison University, Canada, from 2009 to 2010. During this time, he started to learn the R language and entered the field of data analysis and programming. This experience has been proved very useful for his later work.

2015 David Cushing Prize

The prize honors the memory of David Cushing, Founding Editor of Journal of Plankton Research. It is awarded annually for the best paper by an early career stage scientist published in the journal during the previous year. The prize helps foster the interesting and high-quality papers by young scientists that David Cushing so actively supported. The 2015 David Cushing Prize has been awarded to Bingzhang Chen for his paper, “Patterns of thermal limits of phytoplankton” (J. Plankton Res. 37, 285–292) Bingzhang Chen obtained his PhD with a major in Marine Environmental Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Dr Hongbin Liu in 2008. He also worked with Dr Zoe Finkel and Dr Andrew Irwin in Mount Allison University, Canada, from 2009 to 2010. During this time, he started to learn the R language and entered the field of data analysis and programming. This experience has been proved very useful for his later work.

"Sub Tiberio quies"? Judaea’s Political Situation under the Prefects (6-41 c.e.), between Reality and Ideology

Deeply conflicting views on the political situation of Judaea under the Roman prefects (6-41 c.e.) have been offered. According to some scholars, this was a period of persistent political unrest and agitation, whilst according to a widespread view it was a quiescent period of political calm (reflected in Tacitus’ phrase sub Tiberio quies). The present article critically examines again the main available sources –particularly Josephus, the canonical Gospels and Tacitus– in order to offer a more reliable historical reconstruction. The conclusions drawn by this survey calls into question some widespread and insufficiently nuanced views on the period. This, in turn, allows a reflection on the non-epistemic factors which might contribute to explain the origin of such views.