We develop the idea of an effective conformal theory describing the low-lying spectrum of the dilatation operator in a CFT. Such an effective theory is useful when the spectrum contains a hierarchy in the dimension of operators, and a small parameter whose role is similar to that of 1/N in a large N gauge theory. These criteria insure that there is a regime where the dilatation operator is modi...

We compute characteristic (quasinormal) frequencies corresponding to decay of a massive charged scalar field in a Reissner-Nordstrom black hole background. It proves that, contrary to the behavior at very late times, at the stage of quasinormal ringing the neutral perturbations will damp slower than the charged ones. In the limit of the extremal black hole the damping rate of charged and neutra...

Nowadays, concrete with strength higher than 50 MPa is utilized due to the ever increasing need for higher strength and prolonged healing properties. Despite the widespread use of high-strength concrete, only a few research projects have been conducted on the punching shear strength of high-strength concrete slabs. Reinforced concrete flat slabs are widely employed in structural systems. The lo...

We propose an effective description of 0-brane black holes, in which the black hole is modeled as a gas of non-interacting quasi-particles in the dual quantum mechanics. This simple model is shown to account for many of the static thermodynamic properties of the black hole. It also accounts for dynamical properties, such as the rate at which energy gets thermalized by the black hole. We use the...

The present study sets out to integrate the performance-based seismic design approach with the connection topology optimization method. Performance-based connection topology optimization concept aims to simultaneously optimize the size of members and the type of connections with respect to the framework of performance-based seismic design. This new optimization concept is carried out for unbrac...