Shear Resistance of Cold-Formed Steel Framing Wall with X-Strap Bracing

This research is concentrated on the study of structural strength and behavior of cold-formed steel frame with strap bracing subjected to horizontal loads. The wall specimens with and without calcium silicate board sheathing were tested to compare the differences of shear resistance. Based on the test data, the ultimate strength, stiffness, ductility ratio, and failure behavior were studied for each specimen, and the wall’s movements were also discussed in this paper. The cold-formed steel framing wall without bracing from previous study was introduced for the comparison purpose. As expected, the ultimate strength was increased for the cold-formed steel wall sheathed with calcium silicate board after installing strap bracing. However, the initial stiffness and ductility ratio of cladded wall specimens with bracing did not show much difference as compared to cladded wall specimens without bracing. It was found that the ultimate strength of cold-formed steel wall frame installed with both sheathing and strap bracing is not the sum of ultimate strengths of cold-formed steel wall frame with sheathing and cold-formed steel wall frame with strap bracing only. A better performance of energy absorption beyond the portion of ultimate strength was found for the wall specimen with both sheathing and bracing. It was also observed that the failure type and location are different for the cladded wall specimens with and without bracing

A Proposed Framework for Influencing Factors of Partnership in E-Taiwan Collaborative Commerce

This paper attempts to integrate concepts of a collaborative commerce and inter-organizational relationship to build a framework for influencing factors of e-Taiwan collaborative commerce partnership and empirically explore it. The importance for five dimensions of the Research Model based on seven top representatives of interviewed six Taiwanese companies engaged in E-Taiwan is summarized. Statistical analysis is used to decide which factors are vital for the success in three phases of partnership in e-Taiwan. Data are collected through a survey of organizations that are actively involved in the planning or operation of E-Taiwan collaborative commerce. The result has been shown the influencing factors are not the same in three phases of partnership in this collaborative commerce. It implies that to manage a collaborative commerce must have different strategies to select, develop, and maintain participants

Community Renewal Strategy from the Perspective of Cultural Planning: A Case Study on Caohuajie Community in Chongqing

This article proposes a community renewal strategy named ‘cultural restored, community repaired\u27. It aims to emphasize the interaction between culture and community, promotes community renewal quality through the use of culture, and promotes the culture development by community renewal. ‘cultural restored\u27 is the core idea, include material culture restored, institutional culture restored, and spiritual culture restored, they can correspond to the methods of ‘community repaired\u27, which are space network repaired, governance network repaired, and social network repaired. In this work, the author chooses Caohuajie community in Chongqing as a case, which already got renewed by using this strategy, to discuss the feasibility and effectiveness of this strategy

Neurochemical characterization of pERK-expressing spinal neurons in histamine-induced itch

Date of Acceptance: 08/07/2015 Acknowledgements This work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2012CB966904, 2011CB51005), National Natural Science Foundation of China (31271182, 81200692, 91232724, 81200933, 81101026), Shanghai Natural Science Foundation (12ZR1434300), Key Specialty Construction Project of Pudong Health Bureau of Shanghai (PWZz2013-17), Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Molecular Biology of Neural Development (ZDSY20120617112838879), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (1500219072) and Sino-UK Higher Education Research Partnership for PhD Studies.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effect of Zaoxiu ointment on wound-healing in experimental second degree burns rats

Purpose: To evaluate the healing efficacy of a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) preparation Zaoxiu Burn Ointment (ZBO) on experimental burns in rats. Methods: The rats were randomly divided into four groups of eight rats each: control group, silver sulfadiazine (SSD)-treated group, moist exposed burn ointment (MEBO)-treated group and ZBO-treated group. ZBO, SSD and MEBO were applied topically twice daily for 7 days. SSD and MEBO were used as reference control. The observation of wound area contraction and histological analysis of wound tissues were performed. The effect of ZBO on MMPs, VEGF and Type-III collagen proteins of wound tissue in rats were determined by Western blot. Results: After 10 days of topical treatment with ZBO, ZBO-treated group showed faster reduction in wound area in comparison with control groups (p < 0.01). MMP-2, MMP-9, VEGF and type-III collagen expression of the wound tissue increased significantly (p < 0.05) in comparison with the control burn wounds in rats. The ZBO had no cytotoxic effect on BHK-21 cell line. Histological results showed an overall early recovery and regeneration in ZBO-treated group when compared with control group. Conclusion: ZBO possesses significant wound-healing activity in full-thickness burn wounds in rats, and can potentially be developed for the treatment of burns patient in future

Application of Extension Theory with Chaotic Signal Synchronization on Detecting Islanding Effect of Photovoltaic Power System

The detection of islanding effect is a highly important topic for photovoltaic (PV) power system. The islanding effect occurs when the distributed power source is disconnected from the main supply while the power is still supplied in partial load area, which may injure the set maintenance personnel or damage the equipment. Combining chaotic synchronization and extension theory, this research is to propose a novel detection method to distinguish the occurrence of islanding effect based on nonautonomous Chua’s circuit. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, this paper applies PSIM to simulate the PV power system. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the proposed method achieves 98% on islanding effect

Cold hardiness of Phauda flammans (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae) larvae

This study aimed to determine the cold hardiness of Phauda flammans (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae) larvae. Supercooling points of the 1st–6th instar larvae of P. flammans ranged from –7.7 to –13.0 °C. The lethal temperatures were –8 °C for 1st, –5 °C for 2nd, and –7 °C for 3rd–6th instars. Lethal times at the instar-specific lethal temperatures were 12 h for 1st, 14 h for 2nd, 15 h for 3rd, 17 h for 4th, and 18 h for 5th–6th instars. The times required for all larvae to die in an incubator at 5 °C were 30 d for 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th instars, and 25 d for 2nd and 6th instars. The findings suggest that P. flammans is a chill-intolerant species, and larvae will die if the air temperature decreases to –5 to –8 °C for 12–18 h or to 5 °C for 25–30 d. Such conditions are, however, unlikely to occur in southern China

Bis{1-[(E)-(2-methyl­phen­yl)diazen­yl]-2-naphtho­lato}palladium(II)

In the title compound, [Pd(C17H13N2O)2], the PdII atom is tetra­coordinated by two N atoms and two O atoms from two bidentate methylphenyl­diazenylnaphtolate ligands, forming a square-planar complex. The two N atoms and two O atoms around the PdII atom are trans to each other (as the PdII atom lies on a crystallographic inversion centre) with O—Pd—N bond angles of 89.60 (11) and 90.40 (11)°. The distances between the PdII atom and the coordinated O and N atoms are 1.966 (3) and 2.009 (3) Å, respectively