Flexural behavior of LVL made from Australian radiata pine

As a commonly used engineering wood in modern timber constructions, laminated veneer lumber (LVL), produced from small-diameter wood, short-dimension wood, or fast-growing wood, significantly enhances material properties to meet the mechanical and physical requirements in structural engineering. This study aims to investigate the feasibility of utilizing fast-growing Australian radiata pine to produce structural LVL, providing essential theoretical support for its application in civil engineering. The investigation focuses specifically on Australian radiata pine LVL (RP-LVL) and involves a systematic experimental study to assess the bending performance of RP-LVL under various bending directions and specimen sizes. The findings reveal that the edgewise bending strength of RP-LVL is comparatively lower than its flatwise bending strength. Nevertheless, RP-LVL exhibits superior bending strength compared to conventional glulam and dimensional lumber, rendering it an attractive and suitable building material for achieving enhanced bending performance in flexure members. Moreover, the study identifies significant influences of height and width on the bending strength of RP-LVL. Consequently, prediction method is proposed to calculate the bending strength of RP-LVL, considering these size influences. Importantly, the size influences on bending strength are quantified to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the bending capacity of RP-LVL flexure members

OsPIE1, the Rice Ortholog of Arabidopsis PHOTOPERIOD-INDEPENDENT EARLY FLOWERING1, Is Essential for Embryo Development

orthologs in monocots remains unknown., respectively).Taken together, our results suggest that OsPIE1 is the rice ortholog of Arabidopsis PIE1 and plays an essential role in rice embryo development

An experimental and numerical study on the coupling effect of CLT wall-to-floor angle bracket connections

Abstract Cross-laminated timber (CLT) wall panels are commonly connected to the floor or foundation using metal connections, which play a critical role in determining the seismic performance and energy dissipation of the CLT shear walls. In this study, to comprehend the tension–shear coupling effect of the CLT wall-to-floor angle bracket connections under seismic loads, both monotonic and cyclic shear tests were conducted on the angle brackets that were also simultaneously applied with different levels of prescribed vertical axial tension. The influence of the co-existent axial tension on the horizontal shear performance of the angle brackets was analyzed. Furthermore, a numerical model of the angle brackets was developed and validated with the experimental results, which could predict the tension–shear coupling effect based on the monotonic loading scenario. Based on the numerical model, parametric analysis was conducted, and an analytical tension–shear interaction diagram representing the coupling effect of the angle brackets under seismic loads was established. It is found that with an increase of the axial tension from 0 to 30 kN, the shear resisting capacity of the angle brackets is diminished by 33.29%, and the pinching effect of their hysteretic load–displacement curves is mitigated. When the number of the connection-to-floor screws of the angle brackets was increased from 10 to 14, the shear resisting capacity of the angle brackets can be enhanced by 6.43%, and their shear strength degradation can be relieved by 12.85–56.25%. For the CLT wall-to-floor angle brackets, the analytical interaction diagram can be described using one bilinear function, which consists of the ratio between the shear to the shear resistance and the ratio between the tension to the pull-out resistance

Mechanical Behavior of Dowel-Type Joints Made of Wood Scrimber Composite

As a renewable building material with low embodied energy characteristics, wood has gained more and more attention in the green and sustainable building industry. In terms of material resource and physical properties, scrimber composite not only makes full use of fast-growing wood species, but also has better mechanical performance and less inherent variability than natural wood material. In this study, the mechanical behavior of bolted beam-to-column joints built with a kind of scrimber composite was investigated both experimentally and numerically. Two groups of specimens were tested under monotonic and low frequency cyclic loading protocols. The experimental results showed that the bolted joints built with scrimber composite performed well in initial stiffness, ductility, and energy dissipation. A three-dimensional (3D) non-linear finite element model (FEM) for the bolted beam-to-column joints was then developed and validated by experimental results. The validated model was further used to investigate the failure mechanism of the bolted joints through stress analysis. This study can contribute to the application of the proposed scrimber composite in structural engineering, and the developed FEM can serve as a useful tool to evaluate the mechanical behavior of such bolted beam-to-column joints with different configurations in future research

Comparison of two reliability assessment methods for the seismic performance of timber-steel hybrid structures

The seismic performance of a multistory timber-steel hybrid building system with steel moment resisting frame, timber-steel hybrid diaphragms, and in-fill light frame wood shear walls has been studied. This paper focuses on the seismic reliability of the lateral load resisting system in such hybrid structures. The seismic performance of such hybrid systems has been evaluated using two reliability assessment methods with the consideration of the uncertainties from ground motion, intensity measure and structural resistance. One method was the fragility analysis which calculates the exceeding probability of drift demand from conditional distributions under given seismic intensity levels. Combined with a seismic hazard analysis, the failure probabilities for the timber-steel hybrid systems were obtained. The other method was response surface method (RSM), and polynomial functions were used to represent the seismic response surfaces. Non-performance probabilities were then evaluated by FORM with respect to different performance targets. Results from the two methods were compared showing similar results. However, the reliability indices obtained from RSM were lower than those obtained from fragility analysis. This was mainly due to the additional uncertainties considered in RSM. The associated reliability indices and failure probabilities for the timber-steel hybrid structures were also presented. Both methods may serve as tools for the reliability assessment of timer-steel hybrid structural systems, which supports more of its practical applications.Forestry, Faculty ofWood Science, Department ofNon UBCUnreviewedThis collection contains the proceedings of ICASP12, the 12th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering held in Vancouver, Canada on July 12-15, 2015. Abstracts were peer-reviewed and authors of accepted abstracts were invited to submit full papers. Also full papers were peer reviewed. The editor for this collection is Professor Terje Haukaas, Department of Civil Engineering, UBC Vancouver.Facult

Does Human Capital Homogeneously Improve the Corporate Innovation: Evidence from China’s Higher Education Expansion in the Late 1990s

The effect of human capital on corporate innovation varies with the distribution of human capital intensity among industries. To analyze this heterogenous effect, we utilized the variation of college enrollment expansion across different regions in China as an exogenous human capital shock. Using a sample of Chinese industrial enterprises from 1998 to 2008 and the difference-in-difference strategy, we found that industries with intensive human capital significantly increase the number of patent applications after the expansion policy. The effect is pronounced in invention patents and significantly positive in exporting and capital-intensive corporates. As for the channels, corporates in these industries are apt to adopt new technologies and increase R&D expenditures. Moreover, the agglomeration of new graduates accelerates knowledge spillover, thus promoting innovation in knowledge-intensive industries. In sum, this paper verifies the importance of policy intervention on skilled labor supply towards corporate innovation and supports the talent introduction plan of local government in China

Comparison of Soil Total Nitrogen Content Prediction Models Based on Vis-NIR Spectroscopy

Visible-near-infrared spectrum (Vis-NIR) spectroscopy technology is one of the most important methods for non-destructive and rapid detection of soil total nitrogen (STN) content. In order to find a practical way to build STN content prediction model, three conventional machine learning methods and one deep learning approach are investigated and their predictive performances are compared and analyzed by using a public dataset called LUCAS Soil (19,019 samples). The three conventional machine learning methods include ordinary least square estimation (OLSE), random forest (RF), and extreme learning machine (ELM), while for the deep learning method, three different structures of convolutional neural network (CNN) incorporated Inception module are constructed and investigated. In order to clarify effectiveness of different pre-treatments on predicting STN content, the three conventional machine learning methods are combined with four pre-processing approaches (including baseline correction, smoothing, dimensional reduction, and feature selection) are investigated, compared, and analyzed. The results indicate that the baseline-corrected and smoothed ELM model reaches practical precision (coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.89, root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) = 1.60 g/kg, and residual prediction deviation (RPD) = 2.34). While among three different structured CNN models, the one with more 1 × 1 convolutions preforms better (R2 = 0.93; RMSEP = 0.95 g/kg; and RPD = 3.85 in optimal case). In addition, in order to evaluate the influence of data set characteristics on the model, the LUCAS data set was divided into different data subsets according to dataset size, organic carbon (OC) content and countries, and the results show that the deep learning method is more effective and practical than conventional machine learning methods and, on the premise of enough data samples, it can be used to build a robust STN content prediction model with high accuracy for the same type of soil with similar agricultural treatment

Diagnosis of thoracic outlet syndrome with the lower trunk compression of brachial plexus by high-frequency ultrasonography

Abstract Background Thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) with the lower trunk compression of brachial plexus (BP) is difficult to diagnosis. This study aimed to summarize the features of thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) with the lower trunk compression of brachial plexus observed on high-frequency ultrasonography (HFUS). Methods The ultrasound data of 27 patients who had TOS with the lower trunk compression of brachial plexus were collected and eventually confirmed by surgery. The imaging data were compared, and the pathogenesis of TOS was analyzed on the basis of surgical data. Results TOS occurred predominantly in females (70.4%). Most cases had unilateral involvement (92.6%), mainly on the right side (66.7%). The HFUS features of TOS can be summarized as follows: (1) Lower trunk compression. HFUS revealed focal thinning that reflected compression at the level of the lower trunk; furthermore, the distal part of the nerve was thickened for edema (Affected side: 0.49 ± 0.12 cm vs. Healthy side: 0.38 ± 0.06, P = 0.009), and the cross-sectional area of brachial plexus cords was markedly greater on the injured side than on the healthy side (0.95 ± 0.08 cm² vs. 0.65 ± 0.11 cm², P = 0.004). (2) Hyperechoic fibromuscular bands behind the compressed nerve (mostly the scalenus minimus muscle). (3) Abnormal bony structures: cervical ribs or elongated transverse processes of the 7th cervical vertebra (C7). Surgical results showed that the etiological factors contributing to TOS were (1) muscle hypertrophy and/or fibrosis (100%) and (2) cervical ribs/elongated C7 transverse processes (20.7%). Conclusion TOS with the lower trunk compression of brachial plexus can be diagnosed accurately and reliably by high-frequency ultrasound