A dramatic increase in railway car axle loads has occurred over the past 50 years. This paper presents the results of an experimental program undertaken at the University of Manitoba to evaluate the structural performance and durability of treated timber bridge ties under different load levels. A portion of a prototype bridge deck, consisting of eight prototype timber ties, was tested under var...

The popularity of theWeb has allowed individuals to communicate and interact with each other on a global scale: people connect both to close friends and acquaintances, creating ties that can bridge otherwise separated groups of people. Recent evidence suggests that spatial distance is still affecting social links established on online platforms, with online ties preferentially connecting closer...

Most of the computational study of election problems has assumed that each voter’s preferences are, or should be extended to, a total order. However in practice voters may have preferences with ties. We study the complexity of manipulative actions on elections where voters can have ties, extending the definitions of the election systems (when necessary) to handle voters with ties. We show that ...

Goldenberg, Libai & Muller (2001) achieved two outcomes: empirical support for a fundamental theory of communications, known as the “strength of weak ties” (Granovetter 1973), and an explication of small-worlds simulations in marketing. Where Goldenberg et al found that weak-ties had as much or more effect on information dissemination than did strong ties, a near-exact replication, reported in ...

BACKGROUND In animal groups such as herds, schools, and flocks, a certain distance is maintained between adjacent individuals, allowing them to move as a cohesive unit. Proximate causations of the cohesive and coordinated movement under dynamic conditions, however, have been poorly understood. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We established a novel and simple behavioral assay using pairs of sma...

Dissociation energies have been determined for Al(n)(+) clusters (n=25-83) using a new experimental approach that takes into account the latent heat of melting. According to the arguments presented here, the cohesive energies of the solidlike clusters are made up of contributions from the dissociation energies of the liquidlike clusters and the latent heats for melting. The size-dependent varia...