Legal architecture and design for Gulf Cooperation Council economic integration

The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) is generally regarded as a success story for economic integration in Arab countries. The idea of regional integration gained ground when the GCC Charter was signed. The Charter envisioned a closer economic relationship between member states. Although economic integration among GCC member states is an ambitious step in the right direction, there are gaps and challenges ahead. The best way to address the gaps and challenges that exist in formulating integration processes in the GCC is to start with a clear set of rules and put the necessary mechanisms in place. Integration attempts must also exhibit a high level of commitment in order to deflect dynamics of disintegration that have all too often frustrated meaningful integration in Arab countries. At present the rules of GCC regarding governance structure, dispute resolution mechanism, relationship with the WTO, and accession of new members are not detailed. If the GCC can address these issues, it could become an economic powerhouse within Arab countries and even Asia

Predicting System Performance with Uncertainty

The main purpose of this research is to include uncertainty that lies in modeling process and that arises from input values when predicting system performance, and to incorporate uncertainty related to system controls in a computationally inexpensive way. We propose using Gaussian Processes for system performance predictions and explain the types of uncertainties included. As an example, we use a Gaussian Process to predict chilled water use and compare the results with Neural Network. As an initial step of our research, we examine how variation in AHU supply air temperature affects chilled water use in summer time. We briefly discuss the advantages of our proposed method and future research topics in the concluding remarks

Punching Shear Strength Prediction for Reinforced Concrete Flat Slabs without Shear Reinforcement

Failure of flat slabs usually occurs by punching shear mode. Current structural codes provide an experience-based design provision for punching shear strength which is often associated with high bias and variance. This paper investigates the effect of adding a horizontal reinforcement mesh at the top of the slab-column connection zone on punching the shear strength of flat slabs. A new equation considering the effect of adding this mesh was proposed to determine the punching shear strength. The proposed equation is based on the Critical Shear Crack Theory combined with the analysis of results extracted from previous experimental and theoretical studies. Moreover, the equation of load-rotation curves for different steel ratios together with the failure criterion curves were evaluated to get the design points. The investigated parameters were the slab thicknesses and dimensions, concrete strengths, size of the supporting column, and steel ratios. The model was validated using a new set of specimens and the results were also compared with the predictions of different international design codes (ACI318, BS8110, AS3600, and Eurocode 2). Statistical analysis provides that the proposed equation can predict the punching shear strength with a level of high accuracy (Mean Square Error =2.5%, Standard Deviation =0.104, Mean=1.0) and over a wide range of reinforcement ratios and compressive strengths of concrete. Most of the predictions were conservative with an underestimation rate of 12%. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2022-08-01-013 Full Text: PD

SERVICEABILITY BEHAVIOR OF NORMAL AND HIGH-STRENGTH REINFORCED CONCRETE T-BEAMS

Serviceability behavior of Normal Strength Concrete (NSC) and High Strength Concrete (HSC) T-beams was experimentally evaluated. The crack pattern was observed, the effect of flange dimensions (breadth and thickness) on the crack pattern and load-deflection response was evaluated experimentally for 10 beams comprising the two studied groups, NSC and HSC T-beams. The short-term deflections were measured experimentally and predicted empirically under mid-span concentrated loading. It was found that increasing the flange width and thickness resulted in higher loads and lower deflections under service loads to a different extent. Prior to failure, the increment in the maximum loads was up to 22% while the deflection reduced by 31% for NSC and 23% for HSC beams. The available equations for determining the effective moment of inertia (Ie) were reviewed and used in predicting the Ie of the cracked beam. The results were compared with the experimental values (Iexp). The Ie showed a noticeable difference, especially for the HSC T-beams. New equations were proposed in which the tensile reinforcement ratio was considered. Compared with the other available equations, the proposed equations demonstrated a better agreement and repeatability of predicting experimental results studied herein. In addition, the proposed equations were used to predict the Ie for experimentally tested T-beams available in the literature. The proposed models showed a high degree of accuracy

COVID-19: 20 countries’ higher education intra-period digital pedagogy responses

The Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created significant challenges for the global higher education community. Through a desktop analysis leveraging university and government sources where possible, we provide a timely map of the intra-period higher education responses to COVID-19 across 20 countries. We found that the responses by higher education providers have been diverse from having no response through to social isolation strategies on campus and rapid curriculum redevelopment for fully online offerings. We provide in our discussion a typology of the types of responses currently undertaken and assess the agility of higher education in preparing for the pandemic. We believe there are significant opportunities to learn from the pedagogical developments of other universities, in order to strengthen our collective response to COVID-19 now and into the future

Finding Z' bosons coupled preferentially to the third family at CERN LEP and the Fermilab Tevatron

Z' bosons that couple preferentially to the third generation fermions can arise in models with extended weak (SU(2)xSU(2)) or hypercharge (U(1)xU(1)) gauge groups. We show that existing limits on quark-lepton compositeness set by the LEP and Tevatron experiments translate into lower bounds of order a few hundred GeV on the masses of these Z' bosons. Resonances of this mass can be directly produced at the Tevatron. Accordingly, we explore in detail the limits that can be set at Run II using the process p pbar -> Z' -> tau tau -> e mu. We also comment on the possibility of using hadronically-decaying taus to improve the limits.Comment: LaTeX2e, 24 pages (including title page), 13 figures; version 2: corrected typographical errors and bad figure placement; version 3: added references and updated introduction; version 4: changes to compensate for old latex version on arXiv server; version 5: additional references, and embedded fonts in eps files for PRD; version 6: corrected some minor typos to address PRD referee's comment