The floor beams of steel buildings, cold-formed steel floor joists in particular, often require large web openings, which may affect their shear capacities. A cost effective way to mitigate the detrimental effects of such openings is to weld/fasten reinforcements. A difficulty associated with an experimental investigation to establish suitable reinforcement schemes for openings in shear zone is...

Though the transitive closure of a reflexive and symmetric fuzzy relation R is unique and there are several algorithms to calculate it, there can be many transitive openings (maximal T -indistinguishability operators among the ones smaller than or equal to R). This paper presents a method to calculate transitive openings of a reflexive and symmetric fuzzy relation R. It is worth noticing that a...

Previous studies of occlusal force have provided conflicting results. The purpose of these studies was to determine whether the extent of vertical opening, contralateral occlusal support, or head posture influenced vertical occlusal forces during swallowing, simulated chewing, and maximum biting effort. Three samples of subjects with normal vertical facial proportions--one each of children, ado...

Natural ventilation through windows and other openings in the building envelope is still the most common way to ensure the necessary fresh air supply in buildings. To date, there are few validated models for the calculation of ventilation rates through large openings. In particular, there is a lack of information about natural cross-ventilation. On the basis of an empirical study a mathematical...

We examined structural changes in bovine kidney tubular basement membrane (TBM) following in vitro nonenzymatic glycosylation (NEG). Isolated TBM was incubated for 2 wk at 37 degrees C in the absence of sugar or in the presence of either glucose or ribitol under conditions that minimized degradation and oxidative damage. NEG and crosslink formation in glycated TBM were confirmed by decreased so...