Assessment of expected damage on buildings subjected to Lorca earthquake through an energy-based seismic index method and nonlinear dynamic response analyses

The city of Lorca (Spain) was hit on May 11th, 2011, by two consecutive earth-quakes of magnitudes 4.6 and 5.2 Mw, causing casualties and important damage in buildings. Many of the damaged structures were reinforced concrete frames with wide beams. This study quantifies the expected level of damage on this structural type in the case of the Lorca earth-quake by means of a seismic index Iv that compares the energy input by the earthquake with the energy absorption/dissipation capacity of the structure. The prototype frames investigated represent structures designed in two time periods (1994–2002 and 2003–2008), in which the applicable codes were different. The influence of the masonry infill walls and the proneness of the frames to concentrate damage in a given story were further investigated through nonlinear dynamic response analyses. It is found that (1) the seismic index method predicts levels of damage that range from moderate/severe to complete collapse; this prediction is consistent with the observed damage; (2) the presence of masonry infill walls makes the structure very prone to damage concentration and reduces the overall seismic capacity of the building; and (3) a proper hierarchy of strength between beams and columns that guarantees the formation of a strong column-weak beam mechanism (as prescribed by seismic codes), as well as the adoption of counter-measures to avoid the negative interaction between non-structural infill walls and the main frame, would have reduced the level of damage from Iv=1 (collapse) to about Iv=0.5 (moderate/severe damage)

Response to chemotherapy is predictive in relation to longer overall survival in an individual patient combined-analysis with pleural mesothelioma

Background: There is currently no early predictive marker of survival for patients receiving chemotherapy for malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). Tumour response may be predictive for overall survival (OS), though this has not been explored. We have thus undertaken a combined-analysis of OS, from a 42 day landmark, of 526 patients receiving systemic therapy for MPM. We also validate published progression-free survival rates (PFSRs) and a progression-free survival (PFS) prognostic-index model. Methods: Analyses included nine MPM clinical trials incorporating six European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) studies. Analysis of OS from landmark (from day 42 post-treatment) was considered regarding tumour response. PFSR analysis data included six non-EORTC MPM clinical trials. Prognostic index validation was performed on one non-EORTC data-set, with available survival data. Results: Median OS, from landmark, of patients with partial response (PR) was 12·8 months, stable disease (SD), 9·4 months and progressive disease (PD), 3·4 months. Both PR and SD were associated with longer OS from landmark compared with disease progression (both p < 0·0001). PFSRs for platinum-based combination therapies were consistent with published significant clinical activity ranges. Effective separation between PFS and OS curves provided a validation of the EORTC prognostic model, based on histology, stage and performance status. Conclusion: Response to chemotherapy is associated with significantly longer OS from landmark in patients with MPM. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quantifying physical activity and the associated barriers for women with ovarian cancer

Objective The purpose of this study was to quantify physical activity levels and determine the barriers to physical activity for women with ovarian cancer. Materials and Methods Women with ovarian cancer from 3 oncology clinics enrolled in the cross-sectional study. Physical activity and barriers to physical activity were measured using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire and Perceived Physical Activity Barriers scale, respectively. Demographic, medical, and anthropometric data were obtained from medical records. Results Ninety-five women (response rate, 41%), with a mean (SD) age of 61 (10.6) years, a body mass index of 26.5 (6.8) kg/m2, and 36.6 (28.2) months since diagnosis, participated in the study. The majority of the participants had stage III (32%) or IV (32%) ovarian cancer, were undergoing chemotherapy (41%), and had a history of chemotherapy (93%). The majority of the participants reduced their physical activity after diagnosis, with 19% meeting recommended physical activity guidelines. The participants undergoing treatment reported lower moderate-vigorous physical activity compared with those not undergoing active treatment (mean [SD], 42 [57] vs 104 [119] min/wk; P < 0.001) and less total physical activity barriers (mean [SD], 49 vs 47; P > 0.4). The greatest barriers to physical activity included fatigue (37.8%), exercise not in routine (34.7%), lack of self-discipline (32.6%), and procrastination (27.4%). Conclusions Women with ovarian cancer have low levels of physical activity. There are disease-specific general barriers to physical activity participation. The majority of the participants reduced their physical activity after diagnosis, with these patients reporting a higher number of total barriers. Behavioral strategies are required to increase physical activity adherence in this population to ensure that recommended guidelines are met to achieve the emerging known benefits of exercise oncology.

Intelligent prediction of the stress-strain response of intact and jointed rocks

An application of Artificial Neural Networks for predicting the stress-strain response of jointed rocks under different confining pressures is presented in this paper. Rocks of different compressive strength with different joint properties (frequency, orientation and strength of joints) are considered in this study. The database for training the neural network is formed from the results of triaxial compression tests on different intact and jointed rocks with different joint properties tested at different confining pressures reported by various researchers in the literature. The network was trained using a three-layered network with the feed-forward back propagation algorithm.About 85% of the data was used for training and the remaining 15% was used for testing the network. Results from the analyses demonstrated that the neural network approach is effective in capturing the stress-strain behaviour of intact rocks and the complex stress-strain behaviour of jointed rocks. A single neural network is demonstrated to be capable of predicting the stress-strain response of different jointed rocks, whose intact strength varies from 11.32 MPa to 123 MPa, spacing of joints varies from 10 cm to 100 cm. and confining pressures range from 0 to 13.8 MPa. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Studies on follicular growth in the immature rat and hamster: Effect of a single injection of gonadotropin or estrogen on the rate of3H-thymidine incorporation into ovarian DNAin vitro

Initiation of follicular growth by specific hormonal stimuli in ovaries of immature rats and hamsters was studied by determining the rate of incorporation of3H-thymidine into ovarian DNAin vitro. Incorporation was considered as an index of DNA synthesis and cell multiplication. A single injection of pregnant mare serum gonadotropin could thus maximally stimulate by 18 hr3H-thymidine incorporation into DNA of the ovary of immature hamsters. Neutralization of pregnant mare serum gonadotropin by an antiserum to ovine follicle stimulating hormone only during the initial 8–10 hr and not later could inhibit the increase in3H-thymidine incorporationin vitro observed at 18 hr, suggesting that the continued presence of gonadotropin stimulus was not necessary for this response. The other indices of follicular growth monitored such as ovarian weight, serum estradiol and uterine weight showed discernible increase at periods only after the above initial event. A single injection of estrogen (diethyl stilbesterol or estradiol-l7β) could similarly cause 18 hr later, a stimulation in the rate of incorporation of3H-thymidine into DNAin vitro in ovaries of immature rats. The presence of endogenous gonadotropins, however, was obligatory for observing this response to estrogen. Evidence in support of the above was two-fold: (i) administration of antiserum to follicle stimulating hormone or luteinizing hormone along with estrogen completely inhibited the increase in3H-thymidine incorporation into ovarian DNAin vitro; (ii) a radioimmunological measurement revealed following estrogen treatment, the presence of a higher concentration of endogenous follicle stimulating hormone in the ovary. Finally, administration of varying doses of ovine follicle stimulating hormone along with a constant dose of estrogen to immature rats produced a dose-dependent increment in the incorporation of3H-thymidine into ovarian DNAin vitro. These observations suggested the potentiality of this system for developing a sensitive bioassay for follicle stimulating hormone.

Epoch extraction based on integrated linear prediction residual using plosion index

Epoch is defined as the instant of significant excitation within a pitch period of voiced speech. Epoch extraction continues to attract the interest of researchers because of its significance in speech analysis. Existing high performance epoch extraction algorithms require either dynamic programming techniques or a priori information of the average pitch period. An algorithm without such requirements is proposed based on integrated linear prediction residual (ILPR) which resembles the voice source signal. Half wave rectified and negated ILPR (or Hilbert transform of ILPR) is used as the pre-processed signal. A new non-linear temporal measure named the plosion index (PI) has been proposed for detecting `transients' in speech signal. An extension of PI, called the dynamic plosion index (DPI) is applied on pre-processed signal to estimate the epochs. The proposed DPI algorithm is validated using six large databases which provide simultaneous EGG recordings. Creaky and singing voice samples are also analyzed. The algorithm has been tested for its robustness in the presence of additive white and babble noise and on simulated telephone quality speech. The performance of the DPI algorithm is found to be comparable or better than five state-of-the-art techniques for the experiments considered.

Role of Vertex Index in Substructure Identification and Activity Prediction: A Study on Antitubercular Activity of a Series of Acid Alkyl Ester Derivatives

Tuberculosis (TB) is a life threatening disease caused due to infection from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). That most of the TB strains have become resistant to various existing drugs, development of effective novel drug candidates to combat this disease is a need of the day. In spite of intensive research world-wide, the success rate of discovering a new anti-TB drug is very poor. Therefore, novel drug discovery methods have to be tried. We have used a rule based computational method that utilizes a vertex index, named `distance exponent index (D-x)' (taken x = -4 here) for predicting anti-TB activity of a series of acid alkyl ester derivatives. The method is meant to identify activity related substructures from a series a compounds and predict activity of a compound on that basis. The high degree of successful prediction in the present study suggests that the said method may be useful in discovering effective anti-TB compound. It is also apparent that substructural approaches may be leveraged for wide purposes in computer-aided drug design.

Tuning the chiro-plasmonic response using high refractive index-dielectric templates

Chiral metamaterials have recently gained attention due to their applicability in developing polarization devices and in the detection of chiral molecules. A common approach towards fabricating plasmonic chiral nanostructures has been decorating metallic nanoparticles on dielectric chiral scaffolds, such as a helix. This resulted in the generation of a large chiro-optical response over a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum. It has been shown previously that the optical tunability of these chiral metamaterials depends on the geometrical aspects of the overall structure, as well as the nature of the plasmonic constituents. In this study, we have investigated the role of the underlying dielectric scaffold with numerical simulations, and experimentally demonstrated that it is possible to enhance and engineer their chiro-plasmonic response significantly by choosing dielectric scaffolds of appropriate materials.

Load-Unload Response Ratio and Accelerating Moment/Energy Release Critical Region Scaling and Earthquake Prediction

The main idea of the Load-Unload Response Ratio (LURR) is that when a system is stable, its response to loading corresponds to its response to unloading, whereas when the system is approaching an unstable state, the response to loading and unloading becomes quite different. High LURR values and observations of Accelerating Moment/Energy Release (AMR/AER) prior to large earthquakes have led different research groups to suggest intermediate-term earthquake prediction is possible and imply that the LURR and AMR/AER observations may have a similar physical origin. To study this possibility, we conducted a retrospective examination of several Australian and Chinese earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 5.0 to 7.9, including Australia's deadly Newcastle earthquake and the devastating Tangshan earthquake. Both LURR values and best-fit power-law time-to-failure functions were computed using data within a range of distances from the epicenter. Like the best-fit power-law fits in AMR/AER, the LURR value was optimal using data within a certain epicentral distance implying a critical region for LURR. Furthermore, LURR critical region size scales with mainshock magnitude and is similar to the AMR/AER critical region size. These results suggest a common physical origin for both the AMR/AER and LURR observations. Further research may provide clues that yield an understanding of this mechanism and help lead to a solid foundation for intermediate-term earthquake prediction.