Improvement of Ballast Embankment Resting on Soft Clay by Reed and Asphalt Layers

The present paper investigates the possibility of using reed and /or asphalt as stabilizing materials for ballast model embankment overlaying a bed of soft soil. Four model tests were performed consisting of a model embankment 500mm base width 300mm crest width and 75mm high. The embankment was constructed on a bed of saturated soft clay 500mm thick with undrained shear strength 16 kPa. The ballast embankment was gradually loaded up to failure by a model footing 200mm wide and 400mm long placed on the crest with continuous monitoring of the generated settlement. The use reed and/or asphalt along the interface surface between the ballast embankment and the soft soil demonstrated significant improvements in both load carrying capacity and reduction in settlement

Deformation Characteristics of Base and Subbase Layers under Monotonic & Cyclic Loading

Base and Subbase layers are considered as the platform for distributing the different applied stresses in flexible pavements. The two layers must provide sufficient strength to resist any excessive generated deformation to achieve this goal, proper compaction machinery is essential to reach the required degree of compaction. The present paper investigates the influence of degree of compaction of the base and Subbase layers on the generated deformation under the action of both monotonic and cyclic loadings. Model tests were performed by compacting beds of base and Subbase layers to relative densities of 65%,77% and 88%, inside steel container of dimensions 1000mm*750mm*750mm. The final thicknesses of the base and Subbase layers were 150mm and 350mm respectively. A circular model footing of diameter 175mm: equivalent to 24194 mm tire contact area is placed on the base layer and subjected to a series of monotonic and cyclic loadings. The results of monotonic tests revealed an increase of 71% and 107% in the carrying capacity when the relative density increased from 65% to 77% and from 65% to 88% respectively. The cyclic tests revealed a substantial increase in the number of cycles at any stress level as the relative density increases from 65% to 77% and from 65% to 88%

Turbo Détection Multi-utilisateur (DS-CDMA) pour la liaison montante du système UMTS-FDD

- L'utilisation conjointe de la détection multi-utilisateurs et du turbo décodage de canal conduit à bonnes performances pour un système d'accès multiple par répartition de code (AMRC ou CDMA). Dans cet article, nous proposons une nouvelle structure itérative pour le récepteur dans le cas de transmissions multi-trajets. Cette nouvelle structure est basée sur l'association d'un détecteur SIC/RAKE et d'un turbo-décodeur de canal, de façon à implémenter une procédure de turbo-détection/décodage. La complexité est linéaire par rapport au nombre d'utilisateurs. Les performances sont proches de récepteur mono-utilisateur

Water Infiltration Characteristics for Artificial Lake in Bahr Al-Najaf

Al-Najaf is one of the important cities in Iraq due to its high spiritual and religious reputation that attracts Moslems from different parts of the world to visit the holy shrine of Al-Imam Ali (peace be upon him). The city of Al-Najaf and particularly Bahr Al-Najaf area, is expecting a number of large scale construction activities, among these development activities are the planning of a new tourist city called Sayf Thulfiqar city. Sayf Thulfiqar city is planned to be the largest tourist city in Iraq. The area of the proposed tourist city is about 63 hectares, consists of an artificial lake 1000m long surrounded by twelve towers and a number of small dwellings. This lake is considered as a big challenge in planning, construction, and sustainability. The challenging points primarily are the sources of water required to fill the lake, infiltration characteristics of the soil at site, weather conditions, etc.The present paper focuses on investigating the rate of water infiltration through the base and side walls of a pit with dimensions 3m by 3m and 0.5m in depth excavated and filled with water in the location of artificial lake. The process of filling was repeated several times with full observation and continuous field measurements. The results revealed some useful characteristics and correlations regarding the infiltration of water of artificial lake in Bahr Al-Najaf

Ordinary and Encased Stone Columns with Two Different Relative Densities

Stone columns technique is most commonly used in increasing bearing capacity, reduces and controls the compressibility and accelerates the rate of consolidation of soft saturated clay. During the last four decades, the technique has been utilized worldwide and proved successful results. Several modifications have been proposed to increase the efficiency of this technique such as addition of additives, use of special patterns of reinforcements, encasing the stone columns with geonet or geogrid to provide extra confinement that enhances the bearing capacity and reduces the settlement drastically without compromising its effect as a drain. The present paper focuses on the behavior of soft saturated clay reinforced with ordinary and geogrid encased stone columns. The investigation was performed both experimentally through small scale models and through numerical techniques. The influence of relative density of the back fill material and the presence of the encasement are the main parameters investigated. Ordinary stone columns revealed an increase of 20% in the carrying capacity when the relative density of the backfill stone aggregates increased from 23% to 71%, furthermore the efficiency of the encasement was more pronounced at lower relative density

Intelligent Data Mining Techniques for Emergency Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

2nd IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Big Data Computing (CBDCom 2016), Toulouse, France, 18-21 JulyEvent detection is an important part in many Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications such as forest fire and environmental pollution. In this kind of applications, the event must be detected early in order to reduce the threats and damages. In this paper, we propose a new approach for early forest fire detection, which is based on the integration of Data Mining techniques into sensor nodes. The idea is to partition the node set into clusters so that each node can individually detect fires using classification techniques. Once a fire is detected, the corresponding node will send an alert to its cluster-head. This alert will then be routed via gateways and other cluster-heads to the sink in order to inform the firefighters. The approach is validated using the CupCarbon simulator. The results show that our approach can provide a fast reaction to forest fires with efficient energy consumption.French National Research Agency (ANR

Discodermolide interferes with the binding of tau protein to microtubules

AbstractWe investigated whether discodermolide, a novel antimitotic agent, affects the binding to microtubules of tau protein repeat motifs. Like taxol, the new drug reduces the proportion of tau that pellets with microtubules. Despite their differing structures, discodermolide, taxol and tau repeats all bind to a site on β-tubulin that lies within the microtubule lumen and is crucial in controlling microtubule assembly. Low concentrations of tau still bind strongly to the outer surfaces of preformed microtubules when the acidic C-terminal regions of at least six tubulin dimers are available for interaction with each tau molecule; otherwise binding is very weak

The Response of Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia to Overdrive Atrial and Ventricular Pacing:

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75015/1/j.1540-8167.1993.tb01227.x.pd

A Spontaneous Mutation of the Rat Themis Gene Leads to Impaired Function of Regulatory T Cells Linked to Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Spontaneous or chemically induced germline mutations, which lead to Mendelian phenotypes, are powerful tools to discover new genes and their functions. Here, we report an autosomal recessive mutation that occurred spontaneously in a Brown-Norway (BN) rat colony and was identified as causing marked T cell lymphopenia. This mutation was stabilized in a new rat strain, named BNm for “BN mutated.” In BNm rats, we found that the T cell lymphopenia originated in the thymus, was intrinsic to CD4 T lymphocytes, and was associated with the development of an inflammatory bowel disease. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the suppressive activity of both peripheral and thymic CD4+ CD25bright regulatory T cells (Treg) is defective in BNm rats. Complementation of mutant animals with BN Treg decreases disease incidence and severity, thus suggesting that the impaired Treg function is involved in the development of inflammatory bowel disease in BNm rats. Moreover, the cytokine profile of effector CD4 T cells is skewed toward Th2 and Th17 phenotypes in BNm rats. Linkage analysis and genetic dissection of the CD4 T cell lymphopenia in rats issued from BNm×DA crosses allowed the localization of the mutation on chromosome 1, within a 1.5 megabase interval. Gene expression and sequencing studies identified a frameshift mutation caused by a four-nucleotide insertion in the Themis gene, leading to its disruption. This result is the first to link Themis to the suppressive function of Treg and to suggest that, in Themis-deficient animals, defect of this function is involved in intestinal inflammation. Thus, this study highlights the importance of Themis as a new target gene that could participate in the pathogenesis of immune diseases characterized by chronic inflammation resulting from a defect in the Treg compartment