Seismic Bearing Capacity Failure and Overturning of ‘Terveler’ Building in Adapazari, 1999

The paper investigates some aspects of the rocking response of structures, the foundations of which are allowed to uplift from their base. Observed behaviour of foundations in Adapazari during the 17-8-99 Izmit (Kocaeli) Earthquake is outlined. Settlement, tilting, and complete overturning of numerous buildings during this devastating earthquake are attributed to the interplay between the yielding/liquefying soil and the rocking/uplifting foundation, under large inertial overturning moments generated by the slender buildings. The overturning of Terveler building is studied in detail. The scope of the study is to present the facts of these cases and outline some plausible mechanisms of overturning

Monopoly power of the medical school market and high incomes of U.S. physicians

We expect the incomes of physicians to remain high in the next decades. Using the latest published physician income data (2015) we calculated the weighted median income of U.S. physicians and the net present value (NPV) of an investment in physician education. We estimated the NPV assuming that the physicians training began in 2007 and their practice would commence in 2015. We estimated the NPV of the lifetime earnings of a physician based on the median income of all physicians in the sample to be between $7.1 and$7.3 million. This finding of high NPV’s is consistent with almost all earlier studies of this kind. Physicians continue to experience relatively high incomes and very slow increases in the number of new graduates. We expect an excess demand for positions in medical colleges to continue. Our findings with respect to the incomes of non-primary physicians (surgeons, radiologist and cardiologists), indicate will continue to be much higher than those of primary physicians. There are strong evidence suggesting this is because of blockages in physician residency openings in these non-primary fields of medicine.peer-reviewe

Fulminant Aeromonas hydrophila infection during acute lymphoblastic leukemia treatment

Aeromonas hydrophila septicemia has a fulminant course and it has been usually reported in immunocompromised hosts and rarely among children with leukemia. High morbidity and mortality is associated with A hydrophila infections. We describe the case of a child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia who presented with septicemia due to A hydrophila. The patient presented with fever and skin discoloration during a febrile neutropenia episode, which rapidly evolved into bacteremia and extensive thigh suppuration, fasciitis, and myonecrosis. Apart from antibiotic treatment, surgical debridement to relieve compartment pressure and prevent further lower extremity compromise was promptly performed. Despite long delays in chemotherapy and an extensive tissue gap, primary closure of the involved area was possible with full cosmetic and functional limb recovery, and the patient has remained in clinical remission for more than 7 years

Do High Visibility Enforcement Programs Affect Aggressive Driving Behavior? An Empirical Analysis Using Naturalistic Driving Study Data

This paper investigates the effect of High Visibility Enforcement (HVE) programs on different types of aggressive driving behavior, namely, speeding, tailgating, unsafe lane changes and ‘other’ aggressive driving behavior types (occurrence of not-yielding right-of-way and red light or stop signs violations). For this purpose, the Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) data are used, which include forward-facing videos and time series information with regard to trips conducted at or near the locations of HVE implementation. To capture the intensity and duration of speeding and tailgating, scaled metrics are developed. These metrics can capture varying levels of aggressive driving behavior enabling, thus, a direct comparison of the various behavioral aspects over time and among different drivers. To identify the effect of HVE and other trip, driver, vehicle or environmental factors on speeding and tailgating, while accounting for possible interrelationship among the behavior-specific scaled metrics, Seeming Unrelated Regression Equation (SURE) models were developed. To analyze the likelihood of occurrence of unsafe lane changes and ‘other’ aggressive driving behavior types, a grouped random parameters ordered probit model with heterogeneity in means and a correlated grouped random parameters binary logit model were estimated, respectively. The results showed that drivers’ awareness of HVE implementation has the potential to decrease aggressive driving behavior patterns, especially unsafe lane changes and ‘other’ aggressive driving behaviors

Exophobic Quasi-Realistic Heterotic String Vacua

We demonstrate the existence of heterotic-string vacua that are free of massless exotic fields. The need to break the non-Abelian GUT symmetries in k=1 heterotic-string models by Wilson lines, while preserving the GUT embedding of the weak-hypercharge and the GUT prediction sin^2\theta_w(M(GUT))=3/8, necessarily implies that the models contain states with fractional electric charge. Such states are severely restricted by observations, and must be confined or sufficiently massive and diluted. We construct the first quasi-realistic heterotic-string models in which the exotic states do not appear in the massless spectrum, and only exist, as they must, in the massive spectrum. The SO(10) GUT symmetry is broken to the Pati-Salam subgroup. Our PS heterotic-string models contain adequate Higgs representations to break the GUT and electroweak symmetry, as well as colour Higgs triplets that can be used for the missing partner mechanism. By statistically sampling the space of Pati-Salam vacua we demonstrate the abundance of quasi--realistic three generation models that are completely free of massless exotics, rendering it plausible that obtaining realistic Yukawa couplings may be possible in this space of models.Comment: 14 pages. Standard LaTex. 1 figure. 2 tables. Typos correcte

Applications of Knowledge Discovery in Massive Transportation Data: The Development of a Transportation Research Informatics Platform (TRIP).

Transportation researchers and practitioners have access to unprecedented amounts of data but lack the tools to easily store, manipulate, and analyze these data. The Transportation Research Informatics Platform (TRIP) is an informatics-based system designed to manage massive amounts of transportation data and provide researchers an efficient way to conduct analytics on big data. The objectives of TRIP include creating the ability to handle massive amounts of transportation data; utilize open-source technologies and tools to ingest, store, align, and process data; accept structured, semistructured, and unstructured datasets from any source; provide an efficient way to query data without indepth knowledge of metadata; integrate with open-source and consumer off-the-shelf analytics products; and provide visualization tools to offer greater insights into data. TRIP architecture is flexible and built on opensource state-of-the-art technology developed with big data in mind. Although predominantly developed for transportation safety research, TRIP is domain agnostic and capable of addressing issues pertaining to operations and maintenance given the ingestion of the appropriate datasets

Applications of Knowledge Discovery in Massive Transportation Data: The Development of a Transportation Research Informatics Platform (TRIP).

Transportation researchers and practitioners have access to unprecedented amounts of data but lack the tools to easily store, manipulate, and analyze these data. The Transportation Research Informatics Platform (TRIP) is an informatics-based system designed to manage massive amounts of transportation data and provide researchers an efficient way to conduct analytics on big data. The objectives of TRIP include creating the ability to handle massive amounts of transportation data; utilize open-source technologies and tools to ingest, store, align, and process data; accept structured, semistructured, and unstructured datasets from any source; provide an efficient way to query data without indepth knowledge of metadata; integrate with open-source and consumer off-the-shelf analytics products; and provide visualization tools to offer greater insights into data. TRIP architecture is flexible and built on opensource state-of-the-art technology developed with big data in mind. Although predominantly developed for transportation safety research, TRIP is domain agnostic and capable of addressing issues pertaining to operations and maintenance given the ingestion of the appropriate datasets

Classification of Heterotic Pati-Salam Models

We extend the classification of free fermionic heterotic-string models to vacua in which the SO(10) GUT symmetry is broken at the string level to the Pati-Salam subgroup. Using our classification method we recently presented the first example of a quasi--realistic heterotic-string vacuum that is free of massless exotic states. Within this method we are able to derive algebraic expressions for the generalised GSO projections for all sectors that appear in the models. This facilitates the programming of the entire spectrum analysis in a computer code. The total number of vacua in the class of models that we classify is 2^{51} ~ 10^{15}. We perform a statistical sampling in this space of models and extract 10^{11} distinct configurations with Pati-Salam gauge group. Our results demonstrate that one in every 10^{6} vacua correspond to a three generation exophobic model with the required Higgs states, needed to induce spontaneous breaking to the Standard Model.Comment: 42 pages. 6 figures. Published version. Added acknowledgement

Automated insertion of package dies onto wire and into a textile yarn sheath

Wider adoption of electronic textiles requires integration of small electronic components into textile fabrics, without comprising the textile qualities. A solution is to create a flexible yarn that incorporates electronic components within the fibres of the yarn (E-yarn). The production of these novel E-yarns was initially a craft skill, with the inclusion of package dies within the fibres of the yarn taking about 90 minutes. The research described here demonstrated that it is possible to produce E-yarns on an industrial scale by automating the manufacturing process. This involved adapting printed circuit board manufacturing technology and textile yarn covering machinery. The production process started with re-flow soldering of package dies onto fine multi-strand copper wire. A carrier yarn was then placed in parallel with the copper wire to provide tensile strength. The package die and adjacent carrier yarn were then encapsulated in a polymer micro-pod to provide protection from moisture ingress and from mechanical strain on the die and solder joints. The process was then completed by surrounding the micro-pod and copper interconnects with additional fibres, held tightly together with a knitted fibre-sheath. This prototype, automated production process reduced the time for embedding one micro-device within a yarn to six minutes, thus increasing the production speed, demonstrating that automation of the E-yarn production process is feasible. Prototype garments have been created using E- yarns. Further developments can include automated transfer of the yarn components from one stage of production to the next, enabling greater increases in speed of manufacture of E yarns