seismic retrofit of masonry slabs in existing steel or masonry buildings has found special significance in current codes as failure of unstable jack arch slabs has been reported as a major reason for collapsing structures in middle east deadly earthquakes. in this paper, three retrofit schemes are investigated and compared. the proposed rehabilitation techniques consist of a single x strapping,...

Studies on brain stem respiratory neurons suggest that eupnea consists of three phases: inspiration, postinspiration, and expiration. However, it is not well understood how postinspiration is organized in the diaphragm, i.e., whether postinspiration differs in the crural and costal segments of the diaphragm and what the influence is of postinspiratory neurons on diaphragm function during eupnea...

Based on first principles density functional theory calculations we explored energetics of oxygen reduction reaction over pristine and nitrogen-doped graphene with different amounts of nitrogen doping. The process of oxygen reduction requires one more step than the same reaction catalyzed by metals. Results of calculations evidence that for the case of light doped graphene (about 4% of nitrogen...

The adult wing of Drosophila consists of two wing surfaces apposed by their basal membranes which first came into contact following disc eversion at metamorphosis. Veins appear in these surfaces in a dorsal-ventral symmetric pattern, but are 'corrugated' (vein cells are more compacted and more pigmented) in a dorsal-ventral asymmetric pattern. We prevented dorsal-ventral contact apposition duri...

The slip phenomena in thin polymer films confined by either flat or periodically corrugated surfaces are investigated by molecular dynamics and continuum simulations. For atomically flat surfaces and weak wall-fluid interactions, the shear rate dependence of the slip length has a distinct local minimum which is followed by a rapid increase at higher shear rates. For corrugated surfaces with wav...

We investigate the electronic and transport properties of gated bilayer graphene with one corrugated layer, which results in a stacking AB/BA boundary. When a gate voltage is applied to one layer, topologically protected gap states appear at the corrugation, which reveal as robust transport channels along the stacking boundary. With increasing size of the corrugation, more localized, quantum-we...

The noise caused by rail corrugation seriously affects the operation quality of metro vehicles. In this work, corrugation, interior and wheel–rail a line were tested, test results compared with those after two kinds treatments. show that is main cause abnormal noise. in many sections exceeds limit, where clear corrugations from 31.5~63 mm are found. When train passes through section, shows incr...

Abstract Distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs), comprised of periodic refractive index changes, are widely used in optoelectronic devices as resonators, filters and sensors. The heterostructures required for DBRs can be difficult to implement nanostructures due poor compositional control on the nanoscale. In present paper, simulation results presented reflectance spectra from DBR structures that ...

A normal full-contact graphene/substrate interface has been reported to have a thermal conductance in the order of 10(8) Wm(-2)K(-1). The reported work used a sandwiched structure to probe the interface energy coupling, and the phonon behavior in graphene was significantly altered in an undesirable way. Here, we report an intriguing study of energy coupling across unconstrained graphene/substra...

The rigorous coupled-wave approach was used to compute the plane-wave absorptance of a thin-film tandem solar cell with a metallic surface-relief grating as its back reflector. The absorptance is a function of the angle of incidence and the polarization state of incident light; the free-space wavelength; and the period, duty cycle, the corrugation height, and the shape of the unit cell of the s...