Effects of juice pH and potassium on juice and wine quality, and regulation of potassium in grapevines through rootstocks (Vitis): a short review

In warm irrigated regions of Australia (such as Sunraysia), pH of grape juice often tends to be high (e.g. > 3.8). A high juice pH is undesirable for the production of quality wines as it results in wines of low quality for example, reduced colour stability and poor taste. Such a high juice pH is typically associated with a high concentration of K in the juice, depending on  the scion, rootstock and location. Potassium is an essential nutrient and plant genotypes, including grapevines, differ in the accumulation of K in plant and/or plant parts. This difference in the accumulation of K by genotypes can be exploited to manipulate the concentration and content of K in plants, berries in particular for example, through selection and use of low K accumulating rootstocks to overcome the high pH affects. This paper briefly reviews the effects of juice pH and on juice and wine quality, and the role and effect of rootstocks in the regulation of K in grapevine. This will provide a basic knowledge about the current research and key future research needed for the maintenance of acceptable quality of grape juice and wine through use of rootstocks.

Extension of tabulated design parameters for rectangular columns exposed to fire taking into account second order effects and various fire models

Fire, as one of the most severe load conditions, has an important impact on concrete structures. It does not only affect the material strength, but also the structural stiffness and stability. A concrete column, compared to other structural members, has most often to cope both with vertical forces and bending moments transmitted by slabs and beams. Consequently, it is essential to find a reliable and practical way to establish interaction curves for the overall structural behaviour of concrete columns subjected to fire. In this paper, a cross-section calculation method based on the material models of Eurocode 2 is explained and adopted to calculate interaction curves for a typical rectangular column exposed to the ISO834 standard fire. Subsequently, an iterative approach is introduced to develop interaction curves taking into account second order effects in case of four-side heated fire exposure. The maximum permitted slenderness ratios of columns under different fire durations are obtained and compared with Eurocode 2 provisions. Finally, this method is applied to calculate the maximum permitted slenderness ratios for columns exposed to hydrocarbon fires and natural fires

MEDIATOR FOR INTEGRATION TESTING

The subject technology provides a software infrastructure that makes it easy to write integration tests for applications and related back-end processes that utilize services over a network (e.g., web applications, operating systems, mobile applications, browsers, etc.) to, for example, improve automation coverage and prevent certain security issues. A Mediator component provides a mechanism for connecting disparate infrastructures to allow applications and/or devices under test to utilize and communicate with processes that would not normally be available during integration testing

An approach for evaluating vulnerability of bridges against fire hazard

In recent years, bridge fires are becoming a growing concern, however there is no specific requirements in codes and standards for design of bridge structural members against fire hazard.This paper presents an approach fordeveloping an importance factor for design of bridges against fire hazard.The proposed importance factor takes into account the degreeof vulnerability of a bridge to fire and also the critical nature of a bridge fromtraffic functionality point. The proposed importance factor for fire design, which is similar to the one currently used for evaluating wind, and snow loading in buildings,is validated against previous bridge fire incidents. It is shown through this validation that the proposed method for importance factor can be used as a practical tool for identifying critical bridges from the point of fire hazard and also to develop relevant design strategies for mitigating fire hazard in bridges

Comparative fire performance of high strength concrete columns with different types of fiber reinforcement

Reinforced concrete (RC) columns made of high strength concrete (HSC) experience faster degradation of capacity and spalling when exposed to fire. To mitigate such fire induced spalling and enhance fire resistance, fibers are often added to HSC mix. This paper presents results from fire resistance tests to illustrate the comparative fire performance of HSC columns with different fiber combinations. Four reinforced concrete (RC) columns made of HSC with plain, polypropylene, steel, and hybrid fibers were tested under design fire conditions and data from tests is utilized to evaluate the comparative fire behaviour of these columns. Results from these fire resistance experiments show that hybrid fiber reinforced HSC columns exhibit improved performance as compared to plain, polypropylene, and steel fiber reinforced columns

Development of a creep-free stress-strain law for fire analysis of steel structures

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This paper presents a practical procedure for obtaining creep-free stress-strain laws for steel exposed to fire, on the basis of codified stress-strain laws that consider creep implicitly. The applicability of the proposed procedure has been tested on two commonly used stress-strain laws for steel at elevated temperature, the Eurocode 3 law and a Ramberg-Osgood model, both of which have implicit consideration of creep. The simulation of two published steel coupon experiments on steel of grades S275 and S355 shows that both the Eurocode and Ramberg-Osgood stress-strain laws produce inaccurate predictions of creep in fire at elevated temperatures. The proposed procedure was thereby used to extract the implicit creep according to the heating rates of the transient coupon tests and to derive the creep-free stress-strain laws. It has been shown that, by combining the creep-free stress strain law obtained by the proposed methodology with an explicit creep model, a more realistic prediction of steel behaviour in the selected coupon test studies can be achieved

Fiber beam model for fire response simulation of axially loaded concrete filled tubular columns

This paper presents a fiber beam model for the fire response simulation of concrete filled tubular columns of circular section under concentric axial load. The model consists of two parallel components, one with a circular tubular steel section, and the other with a solid circular concrete section. The components interact with nonlinear longitudinal and transverse links at the end nodes. The element is formulated on a system without rigid body modes and accounts for large displacement geometry through the co-rotational formulation connected both longitudinally and transversely at their nodes by link elements. The model is capable of representing different types of concrete infill of the steel tubes: plain, reinforced and steel fiber reinforced concrete of normal or high strength. It is validated against experimental data from column specimens under fire. The results are also compared against a three-dimensional finite element model characterized by its accuracy of fire response simulation.The authors express their sincere gratitude to Prof. Filip C. Filippou for his comments to the paper. Also to the Spanish "Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion" for the help provided through the Project BIA2009-9411; to the Valencian autonomous community institution "Generalitat Valenciana" for the support given by means of the ACIF/2010/219 Program; and to the European Union for its collaboration through the FEDER funds.Ibáñez Usach, C.; Romero, ML.; Hospitaler Pérez, A. (2013). Fiber beam model for fire response simulation of axially loaded concrete filled tubular columns. Engineering Structures. 56:182-193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2013.05.004S1821935

TRACKING APPLICATION CRASHES

An application testing system can be utilized to track, store, and report application crashes. The application can be a web browser application. The system receives a list of uniform resource locators (URLs) for testing. The system performs a set of actions (a test) at a URL from the list of URLs. The system detects if a crash occurs at the URL. If the crash occurs at the URL, then the system stores the URL and information associated with the crash. The system then performs another set of actions at a next URL from the list of URLs. The system stops the tests if a threshold number of crashes have occurred or each URL in the list of URLs is tested. Finally, the system generates a report for each crash that occurred at a URL for all the tested URLs