Theoretical study on effect of confinement on flexural ductility of normal and high-strength concrete beams

Compared with normal concrete, high-strength concrete has higher strength but is generally more brittle. Its use in a reinforced concrete structure, if not properly controlled, could lead to an unsustainable reduction in ductility. However, confinement could be provided to improve the ductility of the structure. In this study, the effects of concrete strength and confinement on the flexural ductility of reinforced concrete beams have been evaluated by means of complete moment-curvature analysis of beam sections cast in different concretes and provided with different confinements. The results reveal that the use of high-strength concrete at a constant tension steel ratio would increase the flexural ductility, but at a constant tension to balanced steel ratio would decrease the flexural ductility. In contrast, the provision of confinement would always increase the flexural ductility. It does this in two ways: first, it increases the balanced steel ratio so that, at the same tension steel ratio, the tension to balanced steel ratio is decreased; and second, it increases the residual strength and ductility of the concrete so that, at the same tension to balanced steel ratio, the flexural ductility of the beam section is increased.published_or_final_versio

Nunalleq, Stories from the Village of Our Ancestors:Co-designing a multivocal educational resource based on an archaeological excavation

This work was funded by the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council through grants (AH/K006029/1) and (AH/R014523/1), a University of Aberdeen IKEC Award with additional support for travel and subsistence from the University of Dundee, DJCAD Research Committee RS2 project funding. Thank you to the many people who contributed their support, knowledge, feedback, voices and faces throughout the project, this list includes members of the local community, colleagues, specialists, students, and volunteers. If we have missed out any names we apologize but know that your help was appreciated. Jimmy Anaver, John Anderson, Alice Bailey, Kieran Baxter, Pauline Beebe, Ellinor Berggren, Dawn Biddison, Joshua Branstetter, Brendan Body, Lise Bos, Michael Broderick, Sarah Brown, Crystal Carter, Joseph Carter, Lucy Carter, Sally Carter, Ben Charles, Mary Church, Willard Church, Daniele Clementi, Annie Cleveland, Emily Cleveland, Joshua Cleveland, Aron Crowell, Neil Curtis, Angie Demma, Annie Don, Julia Farley, Veronique Forbes, Patti Fredericks, Tricia Gillam, Sean Gleason, Sven Haakanson, Cheryl Heitman, Grace Hill, Diana Hunter, Joel Isaak, Warren Jones, Stephan Jones, Ana Jorge, Solveig Junglas, Melia Knecht, Rick Knecht, Erika Larsen, Paul Ledger, Jonathan Lim Soon, Amber Lincoln, Steve Luke, Francis Lukezic, Eva Malvich, Pauline Matthews, Roy Mark, Edouard Masson-MacLean, Julie Masson-MacLean, Mhairi Maxwell, Chuna Mcintyre, Drew Michael, Amanda Mina, Anna Mossolova, Carl Nicolai Jr, Chris Niskanen, Molly Odell, Tom Paxton, Lauren Phillips, Lucy Qin, Charlie Roberts, Chris Rowe, Rufus Rowe,Chris Rowland, John Rundall, Melissa Shaginoff, Monica Shah, Anna Sloan, Darryl Small Jr, John Smith, Mike Smith, Joey Sparaga, Hannah Strehlau, Dora Strunk, Larissa Strunk, Lonny Strunk, Larry Strunk, Robbie Strunk, Sandra Toloczko, Richard Vanderhoek, the Qanirtuuq Incorporated Board, the Quinhagak Dance Group and the staff at Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat. We also extend our thanks to three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on our paper.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Honouring Ancestry, Celebrating Presence : the Grand Opening of the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center

Acknowledgements Firstly, we want to acknowledge the contribution by Stephan Jones, first Director of the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center and Director of QHI, who is sadly no longer with us. Stephan was one of the organisers behind the cultural workshops and celebration, and had fate wanted differently, his name would be found among the authors of this paper. Thank you to Crystal Carter and Carl Nicholai for reporting on the culture workshops, and for the kind permission to use your beautiful pictures. We are grateful to all the artists who made the workshops possible, and to all the workshop participants who made them so successful and enjoyable. We also extend our thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on our paper. Thanks to everyone in Quinhagak who contributed to the Potluck and celebration, and special thanks to the Quinhagak dancers for your performance. We cannot leave without mentioning all the researchers and volunteers who have dedicated their time to Nunalleq over the years. Finally, we are extremely grateful to the people of Quinhagak for their constant support—without you none of this could have happened. Funding The stakeholder workshop was founded by AHRC workshop grant AH/R01423/1. The culture workshops were arranged with the support of grants from The CIRI Foundation and Alaska State Council on the Arts.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Laminin motifs inserted into a recombinant spider drag-line silk protein increase the proliferation of human dermal fibroblasts

Spider silk is a promising biomaterial. It is highly biocompatible, non-toxic, most likely naturally degraded by the host organism over time and strong and resilient. Importantly, it consists of proteins and new motifs can relatively easily be added. While native spider silk is not possible to produce in available systems, a shorter segment of the protein, 4repCt, coding for 4 repetive alanine blocks and the C-terminal, can be inserted in vector and expressed in E-coli. Three laminin-motifs were added to 4repCt; RGD, IKVAV and YIGSR, in order to test how this affects cell proliferation of dermal fibroblasts. The results, although not confirmed with statistical certainty, strongly suggests that dermal fibroblast proliferation increase when grown on fibers with said motifs inserted compared to unmodified fiber. Fibers made with 4repCt are not as strong as native spider silk fibers. Therefore, cysteine was inserted into 4repCt, which allows production of potentially stronger fibers that can be subjected to tensile strength tests and disulphide brigde formation tests

Inflammatory parameters after pleurodesis in recurrent malignant pleural effusions and their predictive value

AbstractRecurrent pleural malignant effusion is a common problem which can be treated by inducing symphysis of the pleural sheets. Many different drugs administered into the pleural space can be used to achieve this. The drugs cause an inflammatory response, which in turn is believed to cause the symphysis. Comparatively little has been published on the degree of pleural inflammation and the systemic response and whether this will affect the outcome.The aim of this study was to describe the systemic inflammatory reaction following instillation of a chemical agent into the pleura and to investigate whether this had any predictive value for the outcome (i.e. the pleurodesis). The markers investigated were simple ones: erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, and leukocyte count from venous blood samples, and the fever reaction.Eighty-nine prospective patients with malignant pleural effusion who underwent pleurodesis with either talc (48 patients) or quinacrine (41 patients) were included in the study. Symphysis was achieved in 82 patients (92 per cent) and all had a prominent transitional elevation of the inflammatory parameters. The unsuccessful attempts caused negligible or very small elevations, but due to the small numbers only the degree of fever after 8 and 48h showed a statistically significant difference.In conclusion, pleurodesis causes a systemic inflammation and there is a tendency to a correlation between the success of pleurodesis and the degree of inflammation. High fever and high inflammatory parameters including CRP are due to this inflammatory response and do not indicate infection

In vitro testing of drug sensitivity in tumor cells from effusion

Malignant mesothelioma has a mean overall survival of around 1 year and lung adenocarcinoma with pleural spread has a mean overall survival of around 5 months. Both diseases cause fluid accumulation in the pleura, which is drained to alleviate associated symptoms such as shortness of breath. This fluid oft contains exfoliated tumor cells. All chemotherapy regiments in use against malignant mesothelioma and lung adenocarcinoma with pleural spread have an objective response rate of 30-40%, and they all increase mean overall survival with a mere 3 months. The choice of drug combinations in the chemotherapy regiments are determined based on the statistically best drug combination. However, due to tumor heterogeneity, it is unclear whether some patients would respond better to an alternative treatment rather than the gold standard. To test this hypothesis, tumor cells were isolated from the effusions and cultured together with cytostatic drugs. After 48 or 72 h, the toxicity was measured using an automated live / dead assay, a colorimetric assay or a flow cytometer based assay and compared to an untreated control. The obtained data was then compared with patient journals, either overall survival or effect of drug treatment. Such drug exposure assays have been performed for long, however, no drug exposure assay have seen clinical use outside of smaller studies. The work described in this thesis attempted a number of methods of improving these assays, most prominently by attempting to make the measurements tumor specific, as there is often a substantial admixture of benign inflammatory cells. Also other refinements were tested, such as increasing the concentrations of the tested drugs to above what is found in the blood of patients in order to elicit meaningful response during in vitro short drug exposure times. The thesis concludes with a promising study, using the flowcytometer to make the readouts tumor cell specific and to show high variation. Initial data suggests this tumor specific assay indeed is able to predict patient response to given drugs

The impact of pleurodesis in malignant effusion on respiratory function

AbstractPleurodesis of malignant pleural effusion provides for a substantially better quality of life compared to onging exudation with the need for repeated evacuation of fluid. Successful pleurodesis leads to permanent cessation of fluid production as a result of the formation of fibrous adhesion between the lung and costal pleura which in theory, however, might restrict lung mobility. In patients with poor lung function, or with need for bilateral pleurodesis, the apprehension of further impairment of lung function often arises. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of pleurodesis on lung function. Therefore 10 patients with malignant pleurisy with very limited tumour were investigated. They were without radiological signs of tumour infiltration in the lung parenchyma, without visible tumour growth in the pleural space during thoracoscopy and had undergone a successful one-sided pleurodesis. Respiratory function tests were performed at different times, 1–102 months after pleurodesis. The assessment consisted of: static and dynamic spirometry, exercise testing with blood gas determination and radiospirometry.Spirometric values were slightly low, but in general within the reference limits. Blood gas determination showed no signs of alveolar hypoventilation. Radiospirometry showed a slight attenuation of activity in the treated lung but similar turnover of gas of the treated vs. the untreated side. The study showed that pleurodesis in malignant pleurisy has only minor impact on respiratory function

Three Generations Under One Roof? Bayesian Modeling of Radiocarbon Data from Nunalleq, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska

Acknowledgments. This research was funded through an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant (AH/K006029/1) awarded to Drs. Rick Knecht, Charlotta Hillerdal, and Kate Britton, and two NERC Radiocarbon Facility grants (NF/2015/1/6 and NF/2015/2/3) awarded to Drs. Rick Knecht and Paul Ledger. Véronique Forbes received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement number 703322. Excavations at Nunalleq have also benefited from the support of the local community who have made us all feel at home in Quinhagak. In particular, we wish to thank Qanirtuuq Incorporated and Warren Jones for logistical support and their consistently warm hospitality. Thanks also to Philip Ashlock who took the aerial image presented in Figure 3. We also wish to acknowledge the contribution of all of the students and researchers who have excavated at Nunalleq between 2009 and 2015. Without their hard work and dedication, in sometimes challenging conditions, this article would not have been possible. Finally, we wish to thank three anonymous reviewers and Robert Kelly for constructive criticism that has helped improved this manuscript. Permission for excavations at Nunalleq was granted by Qanirtuuq Incorporated.Peer reviewedPublisher PD