A review of progressive collapse research and regulations

History has demonstrated that buildings designed to conventional design codes can lack the robustness necessary to withstand localised damage, partial or even complete collapse. This variable performance has led governmental organisations to seek ways of ensuring all buildings of significant size possess a minimum level of robustness. The research community has responded by advancing understanding of how structures behave when subjected to localised damage. Regulations and design recommendations have been developed to help ensure more consistent resilience in all framed buildings of significant size, and rigorous design approaches have been specified for buildings deemed potentially vulnerable to extreme loading events. This paper summarises some of the more important progressive collapse events, to identify key attributes that lead to vulnerability to collapse. Current procedures and guidelines for ensuring a minimum level of performance are reviewed and modelling methods for structures subjected to localised damage are described. These include increasingly sophisticated progressive collapse analysis procedures, including linear static and non-linear static analysis, as well as non-linear static pushover and linear dynamic methods. Finally, fully non-linear dynamic methods are considered. Building connections potentially represent the most vulnerable structural elements in steel-framed buildings; their failure can lead to progressive collapses. Steel connections also present difficulties with respect to frame modelling and this paper highlights benefits and drawbacks of some modelling procedures with respect to their treatment of connections

A Literary Newton: A Suggestion for a Critical Appraisal of Fritz Leiber

Deplores the dearth of serious critical attention to the writings of Leiber and speculates about the reasons for this. Gives an overview of his career that suggests avenues for future critical analysis

Sister Picture of Dorian Grey : The Image of the Female in Fritz Leiber\u27s \u3ci\u3eConjure Wife\u3c/i\u3e

Analyzes Leiber’s Conjure Wife in terms of its significance in his development as a writer. Focuses on rationality in magic and gender roles, and their relationship to Jungian concepts of conscious and unconscious

The Imposition of Structure: Archetypes in the Fafhrd and Mouser Series

Analyzes the development of stories in Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series, under the influence of Jung’s and Campbell’s theories of archetypes, anima, and monomyth. Notes a maturation of he characters and more significant women characters

Technology and Change: The Incorporation of Synthetic Dye Techniques in Abeokuta, Southwestern Nigeria

In the oriki (appellations) of an 18th-century oba (king) in Okuku, references to cloth and indigo were included in the verses that attested to the oba\u27s wealth and greatness, Abioye, my father, Olugbola, one who takes the image and all its children to dance The beauty of cloth dyed in indigo does not fade Adewale, the indigo is what gives the cloth its worth The references suggestively point to the aesthetic as well as commercial value of indigo in Yoruba society. Scholars and travelers have long noted the importance of indigo dyed cloth in Yoruba society, and Yoruba women, the principal dyers in Yoruba society, are considered among the premier indigo dyers in West Africa. They are particularly renowned for their indigo resist dyed cloth, adire. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers have described in detail the process women used to derive what Robert Campbell called the beautiful blue from the indigo plant indigenous to western Nigeria. Yet, Claire Polakoff noted in her 1981 volume, African Textiles and Dyeing Techniques, Regrettably, today . . . synthetic indigo has largely replaced the natural. While some dyers continue to use natural indigo, Polakoff\u27s assessment is nevertheless accurate. Since the 1930s, Yoruba dyers began incorporating synthetic dyes, and most dyeing today in the major dyeing centers of Abeokuta, Lagos, and Ibadan is done with synthetic dyes. Few authors have sought to explore why this change occurred even though it reflected a significant development within the dyeing industry. Dyers had to learn and perfect a new line of ingredients with different qualities. In Abeokuta, the Yoruba town on which this paper focuses, the shift to synthetic dyes occurred rather quickly, within a ten-year period between the 1920s and 1930s. This paper highlights one of the factors that contributed to this shift away from natural to synthetic indigo, specifically the shortage of natural indigo

The Secret Queen: Two Views of the Heroine in Diana Paxson\u27s \u3ci\u3eThe White Raven\u3c/i\u3e

Contrasts Esseilte, who typifies the Campbellian role of the female in her symbolic relationship to the male, with Branwen—who challenges this pattern “by pursuing her own enlightenment in much the same way that a male hero does.

Examining the relationship between music training and early reading skills in children

Past research has found a unique relationship between musical perceptual abilities and reading skills. The literature is highly inconclusive as to why that relationship may exist, with many researchers reporting contradictory results. There are two main theories of thought that overarch the research in this area. One is that the relationship is of a domain specific nature, the other, that it is more domain general. There is evidence to support each of the previously mentioned hypotheses, which has created a very contradictory and confusing explanation of the relationship. However, the inconsistent findings may be due to a lack of clearly defined musical perception measures. The present study attempts to clarify some of the inconsistencies in past research by using real musical stimuli and age appropriate tasks for children, elements that have at times been overlooked in previous studies. The children completed a standardized musical perception task and an abridged version of the Mini Profile of Music Perception Skills (Mini-PROMS). This task assesses perceptual ability to detect changes in speed, tuning, accent and melody. Participants were also tested using the Beat Alignment Task and asked to identify drummers who are on versus off the beat. Musical perception scores were then compared to reading scores on standardized tests. We hypothesize that by examining musical perception and reading in this way, we will find evidence of a domain general relationship between music perceptual abilities and amount of training and reading.   Discipline: Psychology (Honours) Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kathleen Corrigal

Application of clustering techniques to multispectral optical data over the ocean

MERIS, on Envisat, provides high-resolution radiometric data at nine discrete channels in the visible band. This paper looks at the potential of an unsupervised classification technique for utilizing these multi-spectral data to provide better discrimination between water masses according to their optical properties, and in particular whether phytoplankton groups can be distinguished. Although the majority of data do show a spectral peak associated with chlorophyll's red fluorescence line, clustering using only the red bands was found to separate out coastal waters according to their sediment content. Red-end classification also appeared to identify sub-pixel cloud, and demonstrate that the smile correction had not removed all the striping from the data. Classification using bands from the blue-green end showed a response to changes in chlorophyll concentration, but also indicated other variations. However, without in situ data no firm conclusions can be drawn on which phytoplankton groupings are present

Evolution of repetitive DNA in angiosperms: examples from Nicotiana allopolyploids

PhDAllopolyploidy, interspecific hybridisation coupled with genome multiplication, is a prevailing force in the evolution of angiosperms. This thesis examines the consequences of allopolyploidy at the genomic level. The genus Nicotiana is an ideal model system for such studies as it includes allopolyploids formed over widely different time frames (recent to millions of years). The global genome composition of several diploid and allopolyploid species was analysed using a graph-based clustering approach, grouping next generation sequencing reads into clusters (families) of repetitive DNA. Such analysis enables examination of genome size change and diploidisation processes postallopolyploidy. I compared the abundance of >14,000 repeats in the young allopolyploid N. tabacum (less than 0.2 million years old) with relatives of the diploid progenitors, N. tomentosiformis (paternal genome donor) and N. sylvestris (maternal genome donor). Repetitive DNA from the paternal genome tends to be eliminated, whereas DNA from the maternal line remains largely unchanged. A newly described tandem repeat (NicCL3) paternally inherited in N. tabacum, is a striking example. Despite a predicted abundance of ~1% NicCL3 now accounts for only 0.1% of the genome in the allopolyploid, a loss repeated in some synthetic lines of N. tabacum after only four generations. Nicotiana section Repandae formed from a single hybridisation event between relatives of N. sylvestris and N. obtusifolia c 5 million years ago. Subsequent 6 diversification has produced four species where genome size varies by 33%; N. repanda showing genome upsizing and N. nudicaulis showing genome downsizing compared with the expected genome size. There was evidence for the erosion of low copy-number repetitive DNA in both allopolyploids. However in N. repanda genome downsizing has been counteracted by the expansion of a few repeat types. Notably these processes are concurrent with the failure to distinguish progenitor chromosome sets, which I argue is part of the diploidisation process