A numerical solution for addressing the overturning phenomena of heritage assets

Historical heritage represent a crucial aspect for societies and therefore it should be preserved from natural disasters such as earthquake. Base isolation systems are widely used to mitigate the horizontal effects of strong ground motions on important buildings and bridges, but there are also interesting applications on statues. However, such systems are characterized by properties that are quite different from the ones that belong to traditional civil structures. For this reason, national and international regulations are not exhaustive and actual dynamics of the system should be studied through numerical and experimental methods. Starting from analytical formulations, the paper investigates the sliding and rocking motion in details, being the typical one of statues under seismic loads. The presented numerical model describes the problem and is an alternative to the analytical formulation to perform several analyses automatically. In addition, it allows running parametric analyses to assess the influence of various parameters, such as eccentricity, stiffness, mass, geometric ratios, etc. Future work is geared to validate the numerical model trough performing experimental tests on shaking table

Smart cities to improve resilience of communities

This paper presents a new approach to predict the potential damage and physical impacts of an earthquake on the built environment. A new methodology to the urbanized systems and large-scale simulations within a seismic scenario is explored, by evaluating multipurpose codes for numerical simulation. A 3-D building shape of a standard virtual city is developed for evaluat-ing the seismic effects at increasing intensities. Four different building sectors that provide essential functions to a community, including housing, education, business, and public ser-vices are considered. Once the buildings are integrated into the city, parallel simulations are applied to compute the system functionality following a disruptive scenario. Tri-linear elasto-plastic backbone curve representative of global shear behavior of each building is estimated considering the dominant modal shapes and building irregularities. Monte Carlo Simulations (MCS) are applied to take into account the epistemic uncertainties associated with geometry and mechanical properties within the range of observations. For each set of buildings’ data, the nonlinear dynamic analysis is performed through SAP2000 Application Programming In-terface (API) in order to assess the dynamic response of the buildings in an organized and au-tomatic fashion. Accordingly, the city is mapped into different zones representative to the possibility of having different levels of damage (complete, extensive, moderate, and slight). This methodology supports decision-makers to explore how their community will respond to a disruptive event, to develop different strategies for monitoring and control the emergency in urbanized areas, and to plan better resilience-building and evacuation strategies

Integrated platform to assess seismic resilience at the community level

Due to the increasing frequency of disastrous events, the challenge of creating large-scale simulation models has become of major significance. Indeed, several simulation strategies and methodologies have been recently developed to explore the response of communities to natural disasters. Such models can support decision-makers during emergency operations allowing to create a global view of the emergency identifying consequences. An integrated platform that implements a community hybrid model with real-time simulation capabilities is presented in this paper. The platform's goal is to assess seismic resilience and vulnerability of critical infrastructures (e.g., built environment, power grid, socio-technical network) at the urban level, taking into account their interdependencies. Finally, different seismic scenarios have been applied to a large-scale virtual city model. The platform proved to be effective to analyze the emergency and could be used to implement countermeasures that improve community response and overall resilience

Effect of shark cartilage derived protein on the NK cells activity

Context: Shark cartilage has been used for its beneficial effects on various diseases. There are evidences, that shark cartilage stimulates cellular and humoral immune responses, which makes it an anti-tumor and immunomodulator candidate. Objective: The immunostimulatory effect of shark cartilage derived proteins on the cytotoxic activity of natural killer (NK) cells from healthy human peripheral blood mononuclear cells was studied. Material and methods: The shark cartilage was extracted and its bioactive proteins were purified using ion-exchange chromatography (DE-52) and sequential fractionation on Amicon ultrafiltration membranes. The effect of each protein fraction on the modulation of cytotoxic activity of NK cells, as effectors, against K562, as target cells, was assayed by enzymatic lactate dehydrogenase test. Results: The most immunostimulatory effect on the cytotoxic activity of NK cells was observed for AR10 fraction, containing proteins with molecular weight of about 14.5kDa on the reducible discontinuous sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Discussion: Among the examined shark cartilage derived proteins, the most immunostimulatory effects on the NK cells cytotoxicity was found for AR10 fraction with molecular weight of about 14kDa. We propose—the direct interactions of shark cartilage derived proteins with NK cells surface receptors may lead to the enhancing in the cytotoxic activity of NK cells. Conclusion: Thus AR10 fraction, proteins of about 14.5kDa, has a novel immunostimulatory effect on the NK cells activity in vitro and if confirmed by in vivo trials, it may lead to its future clinical applications as, immunotherapy of cancer, HIV, and augmentation of host immune system related immunodeficiency disorders. Keywords: Immunostimulation, purification, shark cartilage, K562, NK cel

Potentiation of the anticancer effect of valproic acid, an antiepileptic agent with histone deacetylase inhibitory activity, by the kinase inhibitor Staurosporine or its clinically relevant analogue UCN-01

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACIs) are novel anticancer agents with potent cytotoxicity against a wide range of malignancies. We have previously demonstrated that either Calphostin C (CC) (a protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor) or Parthenolide (an NF-κB inhibitor) abrogates HDACI-induced transcriptional activation of NF-κB and p21, which is associated with profound potentiation of HDACI-mediated induction of apoptosis. Valproic acid (VA), a commonly used antiepileptic agent, has recently been shown to be an HDACI. This study was aimed to evaluate the anticancer property of VA in thoracic cancer cells and the development of clinically relevant strategies to enhance VA-mediated induction of apoptosis using kinase inhibitors Staurosporine (STP) or its analogue UCN-01. Treating cultured thoracic cancer cells with VA (0.62–10.0 mM) resulted in significant cell line- and dose-dependent growth inhibition (IC50 values: 4.1–6.0 mM) and cell cycle arrest at G1/S checkpoint with profound accumulation of cells at G0/G1 phase but little induction of apoptosis. Valproic acid, being an HDACI, caused significant dose-dependent accumulation of hyperacetylated histones, following 24 h of treatment. Valproic acid-mediated 5–20-fold upregulation of transcriptional activity of NF-κB was substantially (50–90%) suppressed by cotreatment with CC, STP or UCN-01. Whereas minimal death (<20%) was observed in cells treated with either VA (1.0 or 5.0 mM) alone or kinase inhibitors alone, 60–90% of cells underwent apoptosis following exposure to combinations of VA+kinase inhibitors. Kinase inhibitor-mediated suppression of NF-κB transcriptional activity played an important role in sensitising cancer cells to VA as direct inhibition of NF-κB by Parthenolide drastically synergised with VA to induce apoptosis (VA+Parthenolide: 60–90% compared to <20% following single-drug treatments). In conclusion, VA, a well-known antiepileptic drug, has mild growth-inhibitory activity on cultured cancer cells. The weak VA-mediated induction of apoptosis of thoracic cancer cells can be profoundly enhanced either by Parthenolide, a pharmacologic inhibitor of NF-κB, or by UCN-01 a kinase inhibitor that has already undergone phase I clinical development. Combinations of VA with either a PKC inhibitor or an NF-κB inhibitor are promising novel molecularly targeted therapeutics for thoracic cancers

Numerical analysis of shipping water impacting a step structure

Shipping water, the flow washing over and impacting the upper decks of ships and offshore structures, occurs frequently during their service life and often causes structural problems. For engineers to design safe floating structures subjected to shipping water it is essential to gain an in-depth understanding of its depth and flow field, and the resulting impact forces. In this work, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is applied to understand the physics of shipping water washing over a stepped platform. We find that the most accurate solutions are obtained with the turbulence closure. The hydrodynamic load generated by the shipping water is found to strongly depends on the kinematic energy of the water hitting the step. It is shown that with smaller values of the freeboard a more dynamic flow ensues, with a stronger vortex and larger velocity gradient resulting in deeper shipping water and a larger impact force

Seismic Damage Assessment of a Virtual Large Scale City Model

Recent social developments and economic transformation have changed the engineering design approach from building design level towards community design level (city, region, country). The latter approach involves modeling of interconnections between different systems (buildings, transportation, water network, etc.) rather than designing the buildings individually. Thus, new analysis tools are expected to be developed to simulate the complex response of a community subsequently to disasters. The need of such rational tools is the object of this research work. Two different numerical approaches to simulate the response of a large-scale built envi-ronment after a seismic scenario are explored by developing multipurpose numerical codes. A district of a vir-tual city is considered as a case study and the level of damage for built environment is estimated. This work could be the first step for further urban loss analysis, e.g. through agent-based models that could be updated online with the proposed simulation

Design & investigation of 10x10 gbit/s MDM over hybrid FSO link under different weather conditions and fiber to the home

In this paper, we design and investigate 10-channels of mode division multiplexer (MDM) over hybrid free-space optics (FSO) link in several weather conditions to achieve the maximum possible medium range and fiber to the home (FTTH) for high bandwidth access networks. System capacity can be effectively increased with the use of MDM over hybrid FSO-FTTH. In this study, a 10-channel MDM over FSO-FTTH system has been analyzed in different weather conditions that operate at 1550 nm wavelength. The simulated system has transmitted 100 Gbit/s up for a distance of 3200 meters FSO in superbly clear weather condition. It also transmitted 100 Gbit/s up for a distance of 650 meters FSO during heavy rain. The validation of this study is measures based on eye diagrams bit-error rates (BER) that have been analyzed

The Green Bank North Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey. IV: Four New Timing Solutions

We present timing solutions for four pulsars discovered in the Green Bank Northern Celestial Cap (GBNCC) survey. All four pulsars are isolated with spin periods between 0.26$\,$s and 1.84$\,$s. PSR J0038$-$2501 has a 0.26$\,$s period and a period derivative of ${7.6} \times {10}^{-19}\,{\rm s\,s}^{-1}$, which is unusually low for isolated pulsars with similar periods. This low period derivative may be simply an extreme value for an isolated pulsar or it could indicate an unusual evolution path for PSR J0038$-$2501, such as a disrupted recycled pulsar (DRP) from a binary system or an orphaned central compact object (CCO). Correcting the observed spin-down rate for the Shklovskii effect suggests that this pulsar may have an unusually low space velocity, which is consistent with expectations for DRPs. There is no X-ray emission detected from PSR J0038$-$2501 in an archival swift observation, which suggests that it is not a young orphaned CCO. The high dispersion measure of PSR J1949+3426 suggests a distance of 12.3$\,$kpc. This distance indicates that PSR J1949+3426 is among the most distant 7% of Galactic field pulsars, and is one of the most luminous pulsars.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Photoluminescence studies of individual and few GaSb/GaAs quantum rings

We present optical studies of individual and few GaSb quantum rings embedded in a GaAs matrix. Contrary to expectation for type-II confinement, we measure rich spectra containing sharp lines. These lines originate from excitonic recombination and are observed to have resolution-limited full-width at half maximum of 200 µeV. The detail provided by these measurements allows the characteristic type-II blueshift, observed with increasing excitation power, to be studied at the level of individual nanostructures. These findings are in agreement with hole-charging being the origin of the observed blueshif