New Approach for Estimating the Deflection of Beams Reinforced with FRP Reinforcement

Due to concerns with corrosion, the use of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) as a replacement to conventional steel reinforcement has greatly increased over the last decade. Researchers have identified the distinctive mechanical and bond properties of FRP reinforcement that prevent the use of existing relationships to establish serviceability of concrete structures reinforced with such products. Although studies have modified these empirical relationships to describe the behavior of structures reinforced with FRP reinforcement, this paper will provide a new approach to estimate deflection of concrete beams by considering material properties of the reinforcement and incorporating the effects of tension stiffening. Accuracy and precision of the approach was established by performing a statistical analysis on a database containing 171 FRP-reinforced concrete beams. Results were compared to those from existing proposed relationships and indicate the potential of the method to estimate deflection at various service conditions.     

Quantitative measurement of protein stability from unfolding equilibria monitored with the fluorescence maximum wavelength

The fluorescence of tryptophan is used as a signal to monitor the unfolding of proteins, in particular the intensity of fluorescence and the wavelength of its maximum lambda(max). The law of the signal is linear with respect to the concentrations of the reactants for the intensity but not for lambda(max). Consequently, the stability of a protein and its variation upon mutation cannot be deduced directly from measurements made with lambda(max). Here, we established a rigorous law of the signal for lambda(max). We then compared the stability DeltaG(H(2)O) and coefficient of cooperativity m for a two-state equilibrium of unfolding, monitored with lambda(max), when the rigorous and empirical linear laws of the signal are applied. The corrective terms involve the curvature of the emission spectra at their lambda(max) and can be determined experimentally. The rigorous and empirical values of the cooperativity coefficient m are equal within the experimental error for this parameter. In contrast, the rigorous and empirical values of the stability DeltaG(H(2)O) generally differ. However, they are equal within the experimental error if the curvatures of the spectra for the native and unfolded states are identical. We validated this analysis experimentally using domain 3 of the envelope glycoprotein of the dengue virus and the single-chain variable fragment (scFv) of antibody mAbD1.3, directed against lysozyme.     

Globally Optimal Geodesic Active Contours

An approach to optimal object segmentation in the geodesic active contour framework is presented with application to automated image segmentation. The new segmentation scheme seeks the geodesic active contour of globally minimal energy under the sole restriction that it contains a specified internal point p_int. This internal point selects the object of interest and may be used as the only input parameter to yield a highly automated segmentation scheme. The image to be segmented is represented as a Riemannian space S with an associated metric induced by the image. The metric is an isotropic and decreasing function of the local image gradient at each point in the image, encoding the local homogeneity of image features. Optimal segmentations are then the closed geodesics which partition the object from the background with minimal similarity across the partitioning. An efficient algorithm is presented for the computation of globally optimal segmentations and applied to cell microscopy, x-ray, magnetic resonance and cDNA microarray images.Ben Appleton received degrees in engineering and in science from the University of Queensland in 2001 and was awarded a university medal. In 2002 he began a Ph.D at the University of Queensland in the field of image analysis. He is supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Mathematical and Information Sciences. He has been a teaching assistant in image analysis at the University of Queensland since 2001. He has also contributed 10 research papers to international journals and conferences and was recently awarded the prize for Best Student Paper at Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications. His research interests include image segmentation, stereo vision and algorithms.Hugues Talbot received the engineering degree from École Centrale de Paris in 1989, the D.E.A. (Masters) from University Paris VI in 1990 and the Ph.D from École des Mines de Paris in 1993, under the guidance of Dominique Jeulin and Jean Serra. He has been affiliated with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Mathematical and Information Sciences since 1994. He has worked on numerous applied projects in relation with industry, he has contributed more than 30 research papers in international journals and conferences and he has co-edited two sets of international conference proceedings on image analysis. He now also teaches image processing at the University of Sydney, and his research interest include image segmentation, linear structure analysis, texture analysis and algorithms.     

Meeting Reports

Conference Report

Meeting Reports     

Effect of sulfate and chloride ions on the electrochemical behavior of iron in aqueous phosphate solutions

The electrochemical behavior of iron in aqueous phosphate solutions (0.005–0.1M) of pH8 at room temperature was investigated with an emphasis on the effect of chloride and /or sulfate ions on the initiation of the localized attack. Electrochemical techniques were complemented by SEM microscopy, FTIR, X-ray fluorescence analysis and ICP measurements. It has been shown that phosphate ions are very effective inhibitors against localized attack, and in the presence of sulfate ions still show an effect very similar to that of phosphate ions in the active–passive dissolution peak region.     

On implementing omega in systems with weak reliability and synchrony assumptions

We study the feasibility and cost of implementing Ω—a fundamental failure detector at the core of many algorithms—in systems with weak reliability and synchrony assumptions. Intuitively, Ω allows processes to eventually elect a common leader. We first give an algorithm that implements Ω in a weak system S where (a) except for some unknown timely process s, all processes may be arbitrarily slow or may crash, and (b) only the output links of s are eventually timely (all other links can be arbitrarily slow and lossy). Previously known algorithms for Ω worked only in systems that are strictly stronger than S in terms of reliability or synchrony assumptions.We next show that algorithms that implement Ω in system S are necessarily expensive in terms of communication complexity: all correct processes (except possibly one) must send messages forever; moreover, a quad-ratic number of links must carry messages forever. This result holds even for algorithms that tolerate at most one crash. Finally, we show that with a small additional assumption to system S—the existence of some unknown correct process whose links can be arbitrarily slow and lossy but fair—there is a communication-efficient algorithm for Ω such that eventually only one process (the elected leader) sends messages. Some recent experimental results indicate that two of the algorithms for Ω described in this paper can be used in dynamically-changing systems and work well in practice [Schiper, Toueg in Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, pp. 207–216 (2008)]. This paper was originally invited to the special issue of Distributed Computing based on selected papers presented at the 22nd ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2003). It appears separately due to publication delays. Research supported in part by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.     

Banana Tree Infected with Banana Bunchy Top Virus Attracts Pentalonia nigronervosa Aphids Through Increased Volatile Organic Compounds Emission

Journal of Chemical Ecology - Banana plants are affected by various viral diseases, among which the most devastating is the "bunchy top", caused by the Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) and...