Tracking the Trends 2013: 12th Edition

This report contains current and historical demographic and socio-economic data from the Edmonton region. Areas of focus in this report include statistics on education and employment, the cost of living and housing, wages and incomes, poverty, government income supports, social wellbeing, and the demographics of Edmonton

The Physics of the B Factories

This work is on the Physics of the B Factories. Part A of this book contains a brief description of the SLAC and KEK B Factories as well as their detectors, BaBar and Belle, and data taking related issues. Part B discusses tools and methods used by the experiments in order to obtain results. The results themselves can be found in Part C

Design of viscous and friction damper systems for the optimal control of the seismic response of structures

The objective of this study was to propose methods for the optimal design of viscous or friction/hysteretic dampers in structures subjected to seismic and other dynamic loads. The systems investigated to control the dynamic response of the structure included passive linear viscous dampers, constant slip force friction dampers, and semi-active variable slip force friction dampers of the Off-On type. This work was primarily concerned with sizing of the viscous damper damping coefficients or the friction damper slip loads of the dampers at pre-selected locations within the structure. The dampers were considered to act in series with a flexible brace, as brace flexibility is an undesirable and often unavoidable characteristic. Two primary methodologies for the design were developed; one for the design of dampers in single degree of freedom (SDOF) structures using the transfer function concept, and one for the design of dampers in general multi degree of freedom (MDOF) structures based on linear quadratic control theory. It was found that the transfer function based technique proposed for the selection of optimal friction damper slip loads in SDOF structures provided insight into their design. While it was found that SDOF method could be extended to deal with MDOF structures, this process is limited to structures for which the distribution of dampers is known and calibrated to the SDOF design. As a basis for comparison, optimal friction damper slip loads and their distributions in a uniform 4-story structure were studied using an optimization procedure known as level set programming (LSP). The more general design method proposed based on structural control utilised the peak cycle control force and response quantities to estimate the optimal viscous damper damping coefficients approximating that of the fully active control. Then, considering the amount of energy dissipated in this peak cycle, estimates of the corresponding friction damper slip loads were obtained. Response spectral analysis (RSA) procedures, derived in state-space form, were used to incorporate the effects of earthquake excitation, while permitting the rapid evaluation of estimates of the peak cycle response quantities of non-classically damped structures. Reasonable agreement was obtained between the two methods. Three examples were provided to demonstrate the control theory based design method for MDOF structures; a uniform 4-story shear structure, a 2-D regular steel moment frame and 18DOF, 3-D eccentric building structureApplied Science, Faculty ofCivil Engineering, Department ofGraduat

A Coincidence Array Demonstrator ASIC for the RD27 Muon Trigger

this document alone. Denote the input vectors as X and Y. X has n bits, Y has m. The output vector is denoted Z and has

RD-27 Note 30 July 1994 A Coincidence Array Demonstrator ASIC

this document alon

A helminth cathelicidin-like protein suppresses antigen processing and presentation in macrophages via inhibition of lysosomal vATPase

We previously reported the identification of a novel family of immunomodulatory proteins, termed helminth defense molecules (HDMs), that are secreted by medically important trematode parasites. Since HDMs share biochemical, structural, and functional characteristics with mammalian cathelicidin-like host defense peptides (HDPs), we proposed that HDMs modulate the immune response via molecular mimicry of host molecules. In the present study, we report the mechanism by which HDMs influence the function of macrophages. We show that the HDM secreted by Fasciola hepatica (FhHDM-1) binds to macrophage plasma membrane lipid rafts via selective interaction with phospholipids and/or cholesterol before being internalized by endocytosis. Following internalization, FhHDM-1 is rapidly processed by lysosomal cathepsin L to release a short C-terminal peptide (containing a conserved amphipathic helix that is a key to HDM function), which then prevents the acidification of the endolysosomal compartments by inhibiting vacuolar ATPase activity. The resulting endolysosomal alkalization impedes macrophage antigen processing and prevents the transport of peptides to the cell surface in conjunction with MHC class II for presentation to CD4+ T cells. Thus, we have elucidated a novel mechanism by which helminth pathogens alter innate immune cell function to assist their survival in the host