POWER OF CANTILEVER DESIGN IN THE CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

Cantilever is a structural form that extends horizontally and is supported by one end and free on the other while the load is distributed equally, initiated by the use of bridges and balconies in the buildings. The power of Cantilevers with its different designs is spreading throughout the world via various perspectives since it increases the ability of design creativity and gives proper solutions. However, from that point forward, a research gap that has been found missing relating the structural challenges and how it affects the design and the decisions taken by the clients/ owners paying budgets on such type of structural additions that may not achieve the 100% building safety. Lack of knowing the proper building technologies may lead to reduce limits of innovation, that resulted in building repetitive traditional prototype without remarkable decisions. This paper therefore aims to detect the new building technologies that enable architects to design a cantilever in their projects, helping the design and the load carrying problems and highlight the exceptional designs that challenges the attractive force and establish a flying structure. In order to achieve the mentioned aim, the paper will start presenting a literature review based on a desk research theories and methods of construction were used to clearly explains our topic “the power of cantilevers in contemporary arch.” Supported with diverse analysis of Frank Lloyd Wright, Zaha Hadid, and Knight Architects

Advanced aerosol optical tweezers chamber design to facilitate phase-separation and equilibration timescale experiments on complex droplets

<p>The phase-separation of mixed aerosol particles and the resulting morphology plays an important role in determining the interactions of liquid aerosols with their gas-phase environment. We present the application of a new aerosol optical tweezers chamber for delivering a uniformly mixed aerosol flow to the trapped droplet's position for performing experiments that determine the phase-separation and resulting properties of complex mixed droplets. This facilitates stable trapping when adding additional phases through aerosol coagulation, and reproducible measurements of the droplet's equilibration timescale. We demonstrate the trapping of pure organic carbon droplets, which allows us to study the morphology of droplets containing pure hydrocarbon phases to which a second phase is added by coagulation. A series of experiments using simple compounds are presented to establish our ability to use the cavity enhanced Raman spectra to distinguish between homogeneous single-phase, and phase-separated core–shell or partially engulfed morphologies. The core–shell morphology is distinguished by the pattern of the whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in the Raman spectra where the WGMs are influenced by refraction through both phases. A core–shell optimization algorithm was developed to provide a more accurate and detailed analysis of the WGMs than is possible using the homogeneous Mie scattering solution. The unique analytical capabilities of the aerosol optical tweezers provide a new approach for advancing our understanding of the chemical and physical evolution of complex atmospheric particulate matter, and the important environmental impacts of aerosols on atmospheric chemistry, air quality, human health, and climate change.</p> <p>Copyright © 2016 American Association for Aerosol Research</p

Homocysteine, hyperhomocysteinemia and vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID).

Homocysteine is produced physiologically in all cells, and is present in plasma of healthy individuals (plasma [HCy]: 3-10μM). While rare genetic mutations (CBS, MTHFR) cause severe hyperhomocysteinemia ([HCy]: 100-200μM), mild-moderate hyperhomocysteinemia ([HCy]: 10-100μM) is common in older people, and is an independent risk factor for stroke and cognitive impairment. As B-vitamin supplementation (B6, B12 and folate) has well-validated homocysteine-lowering efficacy, this may be a readily-modifiable risk factor in vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID). Here we review the biochemical and cellular actions of HCy related to VCID. Neuronal actions of HCy were at concentrations above the clinically-relevant range. Effects of HCy <100μM were primarily vascular, including myocyte proliferation, vessel wall fibrosis, impaired nitric oxide signalling, superoxide generation and pro-coagulant actions. HCy-lowering clinical trials relevant to VCID are discussed. Extensive clinical and preclinical data support HCy as a mediator for VCID. In our view further trials of combined B-vitamin supplementation are called for, incorporating lessons from previous trials and from recent experimental work. To maximise likelihood of treatment effect, a future trial should: supply a high-dose, combination supplement (B6, B12 and folate); target the at-risk age range; and target cohorts with low baseline B-vitamin status. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia edited by M. Paul Murphy, Roderick A. Corriveau and Donna M. Wilcock

Advances in Heterogeneous Ice Nucleation Research: Theoretical Modeling and Measurements

<p>In the atmosphere, cloud droplets can remain in a supercooled liquid phase at temperatures as low as -40 °C. Above this temperature, cloud droplets freeze via heterogeneous ice nucleation whereby a rare and poorly understood subset of atmospheric particles catalyze the ice phase transition. As the phase state of clouds is critical in determining their radiative properties and lifetime, deficiencies in our understanding of heterogeneous ice nucleation poses a large uncertainty on our efforts to predict human induced global climate change. Experimental challenges in properly simulating particle-induced freezing processes under atmospherically relevant conditions have largely contributed to the absence of a well-established model and parameterizations that accurately predict heterogeneous ice nucleation. Conversely, the sparsity of reliable measurement techniques available struggle to be interpreted by a single consistent theoretical or empirical framework, which results in layers of uncertainty when attempting to extrapolate useful information regarding ice nucleation for use in atmospheric cloud models. In this dissertation a new framework for describing heterogeneous ice nucleation is developed. Starting from classical nucleation theory, the surface of an ice nucleating particle is treated as a continuum of heterogeneous ice nucleating activity and a particle specific distribution of this activity g is derived. It is hypothesized that an individual particle species exhibits a critical surface area. Above this critical area the ice nucleating activity of a particle species can be described by one g distribution, , while below it expresses itself expresses externally resulting in particle to particle variability in ice nucleating activity. The framework is supported by cold plate droplet freezing measurements for dust and biological particles in which the total surface area of particle material available is varied. Freezing spectra above a certain surface area are shown to be successfully fitted with while a process of random sampling from can predict the freezing behavior below the identified critical surface area threshold. The framework is then extended to account for droplets composed of multiple particle species and successfully applied to predict the freezing spectra of a mixed proxy for an atmospheric dust-biological particle system. The contact freezing mode of ice nucleation, whereby a particle induces freezing upon collision with a droplet, is thought to be more efficient than particle initiated immersion freezing from within the droplet bulk. However, it has been a decades’ long challenge to accurately measure this ice nucleation mode, since it necessitates reliably measuring the rate at which particles hit a droplet surface combined with direct determination of freezing onset. In an effort to remedy this longstanding deficiency a temperature controlled chilled aerosol optical tweezers capable of stably isolating water droplets in air at subzero temperatures has been designed and implemented. The new temperature controlled system retains the powerful capabilities of traditional aerosol optical tweezers: retrieval of a cavity enhanced Raman spectrum which could be used to accurately determine the size and refractive index of a trapped droplet. With these capabilities, it is estimated that the design can achieve ice supersaturation conditions at the droplet surface. It was also found that a KCl aqueous droplet simultaneously cooling and evaporating exhibited a significantly higher measured refractive index at its surface than when it was held at a steady state temperature. This implies the potential of a “salting out” process. Sensitivity of the cavity enhanced Raman spectrum as well as the visual image of a trapped droplet to dust particle collisions is shown, an important step in measuring collision frequencies of dust particles with a trapped droplet. These results may pave the way for future experiments of the exceptionally poorly understood contact freezing mode of ice nucleation.</p

A New Multicomponent Heterogeneous Ice Nucleation Model and its Application to Snomax Bacterial Particles and a Snomax–illite Mineral Particle Mixture

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Calibri; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #575757; background-color: #ffffff} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Calibri; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #575757; background-color: #ffffff; min-height: 15.0px} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Some biological particles, such as Snomax, are very active ice nucleating particles, inducing heterogeneous freezing in supercooled water at temperatures above −15 and up to −2°C. Despite their exceptional freezing abilities, large uncertainties remain regarding the atmospheric abundance of biological ice nucleating particles, and their contribution to atmospheric ice nucleation. It has been suggested that small biological ice nucleating macromolecules or fragments can be carried on the surfaces of dust and other atmospheric particles. This could combine the atmospheric abundance of dust particles with the ice nucleating strength of biological material to create strongly enhanced and abundant ice nucleating surfaces in the atmosphere, with significant implications for the budget and distribution of atmospheric ice nucleating particles, and their consequent effects on cloud microphysics and mixed-phase clouds. The new critical surface area “g” framework that was developed by Beydoun et al. (2016) is extended to produce a heterogeneous ice nucleation mixing model that can predict the freezing behavior of multicomponent particle surfaces immersed in droplets. The model successfully predicts the immersion freezing properties of droplets containing Snomax bacterial particles across a mass concentration range of 7 orders of magnitude, by treating Snomax as comprised of two distinct distributions of heterogeneous ice nucleating activity. Furthermore, the model successfully predicts the immersion freezing behavior of a low-concentration mixture of Snomax and illite mineral particles, a proxy for the biological material–dust (bio-dust) mixtures observed in atmospheric aerosols. It is shown that even at very low Snomax concentrations in the mixture, droplet freezing at higher temperatures is still determined solely by the second less active and more abundant distribution of heterogeneous ice nucleating activity of Snomax, while freezing at lower temperatures is determined solely by the heterogeneous ice nucleating activity of pure illite. This demonstrates that in this proxy system, biological ice nucleating particles do not compromise their ice nucleating activity upon mixing with dust and no new range of intermediary freezing temperatures associated with the mixture of ice nucleating particles of differing activities is produced. The study is the first to directly examine the freezing behavior of a mixture of Snomax and illite and presents the first multicomponent ice nucleation model experimentally evaluated using a wide range of ice nucleating particle concentration mixtures in droplets.</p

Tracing the Rain Formation Pathways in Numerical Simulations of Deep Convection

Abstract Quantifying the microphysical process contributions to surface precipitation in numerical simulations can be challenging. This is due to the fact that many microphysical processes contribute to the formation and depletion of rain drops and there is almost always a spatial/temporal mismatch between where/when rain is formed and where/when it strikes the surface. In this work, we develop a tracing method that tracks the sources and sinks of raindrop mass and number as they are advected by the Weather Research and Forecasting model. Applying the method to an idealized squall line confirms that convective precipitation is dominated by warm rain processes (autoconversion and accretion) while stratiform precipitation is dominated by the melting of rimed and unrimed ice crystals. Sensitivity experiments in which the prescribed cloud drop number concentration is increased confirm the conventional wisdom that weakened autoconversion increases the fraction of raindrops originating from cold rain processes. The method also reveals that when applied to deep convection the Khairoutdinov and Kogan autoconversion scheme produces an excessive number of raindrops which are subsequently clipped in P3 microphysics to keep the rain size distribution within prescribed limits. This problem can mostly be mitigated by increasing the assumed radius for raindrops created by autoconversion

Seizure Semiology and Neuroimaging Findings in Patients with Midline Spikes

 Purpose: Midline epileptiform discharges are rare compared with discharges at other scalp locations. Neuroimaging results and semiologic seizure characteristics of patients with midline spikes are not adequately described. The aim of this study was to describe the neuroimaging findings and detailed seizure semiologies in patients with midline spikes. Methods: We reviewed the EEG database of the University of Michigan Medical Center and identified 35 patients with midline spikes. Information about seizure types and neuroimaging results was obtained from a review of medical records. The seizures were classified according to the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) criteria and semiologic classification. Results: Twenty-nine (83%) patients had a history of seizures. Complex partial seizures and simple partial seizures were the most common seizure types, experienced by 66% of patients. The age at seizure onset was within the first 10 years in 90% of patients. According to the semiologic seizure classification, automotor seizures and tonic seizures were the most common seizure types. Neuroimaging studies were abnormal in 45% of patients. When focal abnormalities were detected, they were lateralized to one of the frontal lobes in all cases. Conclusions: Our results indicate that in the majority of patients, midline spikes represent focal epileptiform activity rather than fragments of generalized discharges, and are most commonly associated with seizures of partial onset. Automotor seizures and tonic seizures are the most common semiologies. Focal radiologic abnormalities tend to be lateralized to one of the frontal lobes.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65417/1/j.1528-1157.2001.16401.x.pd

Mineralocorticoid Receptor Antagonism in the Treatment of Chronic Central Serous Chorioretinopathy : A Pilot Study.

PURPOSE:: Based on experimental data showing that central serous chorioretinopathy could result from overactivation of mineralocorticoid receptor pathway in choroid vessels, the authors studied eplerenone, a mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, as a potential treatment for chronic central serous chorioretinopathy. METHODS:: This nonrandomized pilot study included 13 patients with central serous chorioretinopathy of at least 4-month duration, treated with 25 mg/day of oral eplerenone for a week followed by 50 mg/day for 1 or 3 months. The primary outcome measure was the changes in central macular thickness recorded by optical coherence tomography, and the secondary outcomes included changes in foveal subretinal fluid (SRF) measured by OCT, in best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and the percentage of eyes achieving complete resolution of subretinal fluid during the treatment period. RESULTS:: Central macular thickness decreased significantly from 352 ± 139 μm at baseline to 246 ± 113 μm and 189 ± 99 μm at 1 and 3 months under eplerenone treatment (P &lt; 0.05 and P &lt; 0.01, respectively). At 3 months, the subretinal fluid significantly decreased compared with baseline subretinal fluid (P &lt; 0.01) and best-corrected visual acuity significantly improved compared with baseline best-corrected visual acuity (P &lt; 0.001). CONCLUSION:: Eplerenone treatment was associated with a significant reduction in central macular thickness, subretinal fluid level, and an improvement in visual acuity. Randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm these encouraging results

The hypertensive potential of estrogen: An untold story

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The implication of estrogen in this disease has been extensively studied. While the vast majority of published research argue for a cardioprotective role of estrogen in vascular inflammation such as in atherosclerosis, the role of estrogen in hypertension remains far from being resolved. The vasorelaxant effect of estrogen has already been well-established. However, emerging evidence supports a vasoconstrictive potential of this hormone. It has been proposed that the microenvironment dictates the effect of estrogen-induced type 1 nitric oxide synthase-1 (nNOS) on vasotone. Indeed, depending on nNOS product, nitric oxide or superoxide, estrogen can induce vasodilation or vasoconstriction, respectively. In this review, we discuss the evidence supporting the vasorelaxant effects of estrogen, and the molecular players involved. Furthermore, we shed light on recent reports revealing a vasoconstrictive role of estrogen, and speculate on the underlying signaling pathways. In addition, we identify certain factors that can account for the discrepant estrogenic effects. This review emphasizes a yin-yang role of estrogen in regulating blood pressure. 2019This publication was made possible by an MPP Fund (#320133) from the American University of Beirut-Faculty of Medicine to Ali Eid and The National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) to Manal Fardoun.Scopu