One of the serious damages of tremendous earthquakes is the damage to bridges as the major components in an    arterial road network, as relief operation is interrupted following cutting roads. Regardless of the magnitude and severity of an earthquake, other factors are also important in the strength and seismic performance of concrete bridges. Freezing-thawing cycles are among the factors, whi...

A number of studies have shown that the structure and composition of bacterial nucleoid influences many a processes related to DNA metabolism. The nucleoid-associated proteins modulate not only the DNA conformation but also regulate the DNA metabolic processes such as replication, recombination, repair and transcription. Understanding of how these processes occur in the context of Mycobacterium...

The adoption of postures as a response to threats is often interpreted in terms of predator detection or signalling (e.g. vigilance and defence display). The possibility that an alternative or additional function of anti-predator postures might be to enhance the subsequent escape has been largely unexplored. Here, we use black goby (Gobius niger) to test the hypothesis that a postural curvature...

Background and Aim: Preparation of root canal with rotary nickel-titanium (NiTi) instruments may potentially create microcracks that can lead to vertical root fracture. This study aimed to compare the incidence of crack formation by BioRaCe and Edge Taper Platinum systems in the mesiobuccal canals of extracted first mandibular molars. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, 50 first...

PURPOSE To study the microanatomic edge structures of anterior lens capsule specimens derived from manual and femtosecond laser-assisted capsulotomies. SETTING Department of Ophthalmology, Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany. DESIGN Experimental study. METHODS Of 60 eyes with lens removal and intraocular lens implantation, 30 received a manual capsulotomy and 30 received a femtosecond l...

Using both Monte Carlo and numerical techniques, Taylor dispersion in a curved tube at low Dean numbers has been evaluated and the results are in qualitative agreement with those found by Janssen (1976) : Dn2Sc is the controlling parameter with Dell falling to about 0.2 of its straight-tube value at high values of DnaSc. Agreement with available experimental data is generally good. Further, we ...

Gradient flows for energy functionals have been studied extensively in the past. Well known examples are the heat flow or the mean curvature flow. To make sense of the term gradient an inner product structure is assumed. One works on a Hilbert space, or on the tangent space to a manifold, for example. However, it is possible to do without an inner product. The domain of the energy functionals c...

this paper presents a new bridge management system (j-bms). it is integrated with a concrete bridge rating expert system that can be used to evaluate the serviceability of existing concrete bridges. the proposed j-bms not only evaluates the performance of bridges, but also offers a rehabilitation strategy based on a combination of maintenance cost minimization and quality maximization. in this ...