MAT-756: INVESTIGATION OF THE IMPACT OF RAP GRADATION ON THE EFFECTIVE BINDER CONTENT IN HOT MIX ASPHALT

Nowadays, it is common to add a little amount of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) in asphalt mixes without changing too much properties such as modulus and low temperature cracking resistance. Not only will those mixes be able to make roads last longer, but they will be a greener alternative to usual mixes. In order to make a flexible pavement design, the mixture behavior is usually characterized with the complex modulus. To have a high modulus mix, you need to control the gradation precisely even when RAP is added. When performing a mix design to incorporate RAP, it is desirable to know the RAP binder characteristics and content and its gradation. In the literature, there is no clear vision of the RAP gradation impacts on the mixture properties and field performance. The objective of this study, performed at the Pavements and Bituminous Materials Laboratory (LCMB), is to evaluate the impact of RAP gradation on Hot Mix Asphalt. This is needed to understand how much binder can be transferred during mix from RAP to virgin aggregate. In this study, a single source of RAP was separated into different sizes and mixed with a specific group of virgin aggregates. Then, according to their size, the mixes were separated again into the RAP group and virgin aggregate. While these were mixed, active RAP binder transferred to virgin aggregate. Then ignition test (ASTM D6307) was adapted to separate RAP binder from virgin aggregate. With this procedure, it was possible to see that, for a given temperature and mixing time, activated binder amount of coarse RAP particles and fine RAP particles. The Ignition test result showed that coarse RAP particles have more active binder in mix but ITS test indicated that fine RAP particles have higher strength

Hyperandrogenism and Metabolic Syndrome Are Associated With Changes in Serum-Derived microRNAs in Women With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) remains one of the most common endocrine disorder in premenopausal women with an unfavorable metabolic risk profile. Here, we investigate whether biochemical hyperandrogenism, represented by elevated serum free testosterone, resulted in an aberrant circulating microRNA (miRNAs) expression profile and whether miRNAs can identify those PCOS women with metabolic syndrome (MetS). Accordingly, we measured serum levels of miRNAs as well as biochemical markers related to MetS in a case-control study of 42 PCOS patients and 20 Controls. Patients were diagnosed based on the Rotterdam consensus criteria and stratified based on serum free testosterone levels (≥0.034 nmol/l) into either a normoandrogenic (n = 23) or hyperandrogenic (n = 19) PCOS group. Overall, hyperandrogenic PCOS women were more insulin resistant compared to normoandrogenic PCOS women and had a higher prevalence of MetS. A total of 750 different miRNAs were analyzed using TaqMan Low-Density Arrays. Altered levels of seven miRNAs (miR-485-3p, -1290, -21-3p, -139-3p, -361-5p, -572, and -143-3p) were observed in PCOS patients when compared with healthy Controls. Stratification of PCOS women revealed that 20 miRNAs were differentially expressed between the three groups. Elevated serum free testosterone levels, adjusted for age and BMI, were significantly associated with five miRNAs (miR-1290, -20a-5p, -139-3p, -433-3p, and -361-5p). Using binary logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC), a combination panel of three miRNAs (miR-361-5p, -1225-3p, and -34-3p) could correctly identify all of the MetS cases within the PCOS group. This study is the first to report comprehensive miRNA profiling in different subgroups of PCOS women with respect to MetS and suggests that circulating miRNAs might be useful as diagnostic biomarkers of MetS for a different subset of PCOS

Parseval frames built up from generalized shift invariant systems.

Wavelet systems, and many of its generalizations such as wavelet packets, shearlets, and composite dilation wavelets are generalized shift invariant systems (GSI) in the sense of the work by Ron and Shen. It is well known that a wavelet system is never $\mathbf{Z}$-shift invariant (SI). Nevertheless, one can modify it and construct a $\mathbf{Z}$-SI system, called a {\it quasi-affine system}, which shares most of the frame properties of the wavelet system. The analogue of a quasi-affine system for a GSI system is called an oblique oversampling: it is shift invariant with respect to a fixed lattice. Assumptions on a GSI system $X$ were given by Ron and Shen to ensure that any oblique oversampling is a Parseval frame for $L^2(\mathbb{R}^n)$ whenever $X$ is. We show that these assumptions are not satisfied for some of the wavelet generalizations mentioned above and that elements implicit in their work provide other sufficient conditions on the system under which any oblique oversampling is a Parseval frame for $L^2(\mathbb{R}^n)$ (shift invariant with respect to a fixed lattice). Moreover, in the orthonormal setting it is shown that completeness yields a shift invariant Parseval frame for suitable proper subspaces of $L^2(\mathbb{R}^n)$, too

Measures associated to wavelet packets

We study the properties of the continuous measures m_k , induced by the wavelet packet algorithm on the Borel sets of [01), in the case of Lemarié–Meyer wavelet. It is still an open problem to determine if these measures are absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure. This problem was formulated by Coifman, Meyer and Wickerhauser in [2]. In order to understand if these measures are absolutely continuous or not, it is important to know their Fourier coefficients. We achieve this goal in two steps. First we provide explicit formulas for the values of m_k in dyadic intervals in terms of the wavelet packets, then we show that each m_k is the weak limit of certain probability measures whose Fourier coefficients are easy to calculate

Subband coding for sigmoidal nonlinear operations

A theory of wavelet packets is developed for nonlinear operators consisting of a composition, generalizing a sigmoidal operation, followed by convolutions with filter pairs H0 and H1. The pyramidal wavelet packet structure is defined by bit reversal trees. The reconstruction theorem, from which the original signal is obtained from frequency localized data at other nodes of the three, requires fixed point theory as well as conditions on H0 and H1 resembling those defining quadrature mirror filter pairs. Applications will be to biological systems and neural networks where such nonlinearities occu

Compactly supported wavelets through the classical umbral calculus

We explore compactly supported scaling functions of wavelet theory by means of classical umbral calculus as reformulated by Rota and Taylor. We set a theory of orthonormal scaling umbra which leads to a very simple and elementary proof of Lawton's theorem for umbrae. When umbrae come from a wavelet setting, we recover the usual Lawton condition for the orthonormality of the integer translates of a scaling function

Characterization of Asphalt Mixtures Produced with Coarse and Fine Recycled Asphalt Particles

Utilizing recycled asphalt pavements (RAP) in pavement construction is known as a sustainable approach with significant economic and environmental benefits. While studying the effect of high RAP contents on the performance of hot mix asphalt (HMA) mixes has been the focus of several research projects, limited work has been done on studying the effect of RAP fraction and particle size on the overall performance of high RAP mixes produced solely with either coarse or fine RAP particles. To this end, three mixes including a conventional control mix with no RAP, a fine RAP mix (FRM) made with 35% percent fine RAP, and a coarse RAP mix (CRM) prepared with 54% of coarse RAP were designed and investigated in this study. These mixes were evaluated with respect to their rutting resistance, fatigue cracking resistance, and low temperature cracking performance. The results indicate that although the CRM had a higher RAP content, it exhibited better or at least the same performance than the FRM. The thermal stress restrained specimen testing (TSRST) results showed that the control mix performed slightly better than the CRM, while the FRM performance was adversely affected with respect to the transition temperature midpoint and the maximum tensile stress temperature. Both of the RAP incorporated mixes exhibited better rutting resistance than the control mix. With regard to fatigue cracking, the CRM performed better than the FRM. It can be concluded that the RAP particle size has a considerable effect on its contribution to the total binder content, the aggregate skeleton of the mix, and ultimately the performance of the mix. In spite of the higher RAP content in the CRM versus FRM, the satisfactory performance observed for the CRM mix indicates a great potential in producing high RAP content mixes through optimizing the RAP particle size and content. The results also suggest that the black curve gradation assumption is not representative of the actual RAP particles contribution in a high RAP mix

Self-Similar Pyramidal Structures and Signal Reconstruction

Pyramidal structures are defined which are locally a combination of low and highpass filtering. The structures are analogous to but different from wavelet packet structures. In particular, new frequency decompositions are obtained; and these decompositions can be parametrized to establish a correspondence with a large class of Cantor sets. Further correspondences are then established to relate such frequency decompositions with more general self-similarities. The role of the filters in defining these pyramidal structures gives rise to signal reconstruction algorithms, and these, in turn, are used in the analysis of speech data. Keywords: Pyramidal structures, self-similarities, frequency decomposition, speech analysis 1. INTRODUCTION We shall define pyramidal structures in the form of dyadic trees, see Figure 1. The nodes at any level will be function spaces on the real line; and the nodes at level m will be subspaces of the nodes at level m \Gamma 1. There are many examples of such..