185 research outputs found
Observations and Performance of a Soil Nail Shoring Wall in Seattle Silts and Clays
The Seattle Central Library project, which replaced the existing downtown library, consists of a twelve-story building with several below-grade levels. The excavation encompassed an entire city block and had plan dimensions of approximately 250 feet by 240 feet. The original excavation depth was up to 53 feet in height. The excavation was made in highly overconsolidated Seattle silts and clays (Lawton Clay). The Lawton Clay has been documented to exhibit expansive behavior along planes of weakness associated with stress relief upon excavation. The original excavation was designed to be supported using a tieback soldier pile wall, typical of shoring systems retaining the Lawton Clay. A soil nail shoring wall design was submitted, and subsequently installed, as part of a design-build alternative. The soil nail shoring wall system consisted of temporary, top-down soil nail walls that utilized portions of the concrete basement walls of the existing library. Vertical elements and shotcrete facing were constructed in areas where the excavation extended beyond or below the existing basement walls. Soil nails were installed using self-boring grout-injected anchors consisting of hollow bars with sacrificial drill bits. Displacement of the soil nail shoring walls was predicted to be less than 1 inch by the designer. The actual wall movements for three sides of the excavation were as predicted. However, the east wall on the uphill side of the excavation experienced 4 inches of lateral movement and over 2.5 inches of vertical movement, causing damage to the adjacent street and necessitating extensive design modifications during construction. In addition, the excavation depth was reduced to 47 feet because of significant movement occurring below the excavation. This paper describes the construction and observed behavior of the east wall and the applicability of soil nail walls in the Lawton Clay deposit
Supersymmetric AdS_5 Solutions of Type IIB Supergravity
We analyse the most general bosonic supersymmetric solutions of type IIB
supergravity whose metrics are warped products of five-dimensional anti-de
Sitter space AdS_5 with a five-dimensional Riemannian manifold M_5. All fluxes
are allowed to be non-vanishing consistent with SO(4,2) symmetry. We show that
the necessary and sufficient conditions can be phrased in terms of a local
identity structure on M_5. For a special class, with constant dilaton and
vanishing axion, we reduce the problem to solving a second order non-linear
ODE. We find an exact solution of the ODE which reproduces a solution first
found by Pilch and Warner. A numerical analysis of the ODE reveals an
additional class of local solutions.Comment: 33 page
Gravity duals of supersymmetric gauge theories on three-manifolds
We study gravity duals to a broad class of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories
defined on a general class of three-manifold geometries. The gravity
backgrounds are based on Euclidean self-dual solutions to four-dimensional
gauged supergravity. As well as constructing new examples, we prove in general
that for solutions defined on the four-ball the gravitational free energy
depends only on the supersymmetric Killing vector, finding a simple closed
formula when the solution has U(1) x U(1) symmetry. Our result agrees with the
large N limit of the free energy of the dual gauge theory, computed using
localization. This constitutes an exact check of the gauge/gravity
correspondence for a very broad class of gauge theories with a large N limit,
defined on a general class of background three-manifold geometries.Comment: 74 pages, 2 figures; v2: minor change
Supersymmetric AdS_5 solutions of M-theory
We analyse the most general supersymmetric solutions of D=11 supergravity
consisting of a warped product of five-dimensional anti-de-Sitter space with a
six-dimensional Riemannian space M_6, with four-form flux on M_6. We show that
M_6 is partly specified by a one-parameter family of four-dimensional Kahler
metrics. We find a large family of new explicit regular solutions where M_6 is
a compact, complex manifold which is topologically a two-sphere bundle over a
four-dimensional base, where the latter is either (i) Kahler-Einstein with
positive curvature, or (ii) a product of two constant-curvature Riemann
surfaces. After dimensional reduction and T-duality, some solutions in the
second class are related to a new family of Sasaki-Einstein spaces which
includes T^{1,1}/Z_2. Our general analysis also covers warped products of
five-dimensional Minkowski space with a six-dimensional Riemannian space.Comment: 40 pages. v2: minor changes, eqs. (2.22) and (D.12) correcte
Discovery of Two Distant Type Ia Supernovae in the Hubble Deep Field North with the Advanced Camera for Surveys
We present observations of the first two supernovae discovered with the
recently installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space
Telescope. The supernovae were found in Wide Field Camera images of the Hubble
Deep Field North taken with the F775W, F850LP, and G800L optical elements as
part of the ACS guaranteed time observation program. Spectra extracted from the
ACS G800L grism exposures confirm that the objects are Type Ia supernovae (SNe
Ia) at redshifts z=0.47 and z=0.95. Follow-up HST observations have been
conducted with ACS in F775W and F850LP and with NICMOS in the near-infrared
F110W bandpass, yielding a total of 9 flux measurements in the 3 bandpasses
over a period of 50 days in the observed frame. We discuss many of the
important issues in doing accurate photometry with the ACS. We analyze the
multi-band light curves using two different fitting methods to calibrate the
supernovae luminosities and place them on the SNe Ia Hubble diagram. The
resulting distances are consistent with the redshift-distance relation of the
accelerating universe model, although evolving intergalactic grey dust remains
as a less likely possibility. The relative ease with which these SNe Ia were
found, confirmed, and monitored demonstrates the potential ACS holds for
revolutionizing the field of high-redshift SNe Ia, and therefore of testing the
accelerating universe cosmology and constraining the "epoch of deceleration".Comment: 11 pages, 8 embedded figures. Accepted for publication in Ap
A proposal for a coordinated effort for the determination of brainwide neuroanatomical connectivity in model organisms at a mesoscopic scale
In this era of complete genomes, our knowledge of neuroanatomical circuitry
remains surprisingly sparse. Such knowledge is however critical both for basic
and clinical research into brain function. Here we advocate for a concerted
effort to fill this gap, through systematic, experimental mapping of neural
circuits at a mesoscopic scale of resolution suitable for comprehensive,
brain-wide coverage, using injections of tracers or viral vectors. We detail
the scientific and medical rationale and briefly review existing knowledge and
experimental techniques. We define a set of desiderata, including brain-wide
coverage; validated and extensible experimental techniques suitable for
standardization and automation; centralized, open access data repository;
compatibility with existing resources, and tractability with current
informatics technology. We discuss a hypothetical but tractable plan for mouse,
additional efforts for the macaque, and technique development for human. We
estimate that the mouse connectivity project could be completed within five
years with a comparatively modest budget.Comment: 41 page
Trapping \u3ci\u3ePhyllophaga \u3c/i\u3espp. (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) in the United States and Canada using sex attractants.
The sex pheromone of the scarab beetle, Phyllophaga anxia, is a blend of the methyl esters of two amino acids, L-valine and L-isoleucine. A field trapping study was conducted, deploying different blends of the two compounds at 59 locations in the United States and Canada. More than 57,000 males of 61 Phyllophaga species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) were captured and identified. Three major findings included: (1) widespread use of the two compounds [of the 147 Phyllophaga (sensu stricto) species found in the United States and Canada, males of nearly 40% were captured]; (2) in most species intraspecific male response to the pheromone blends was stable between years and over geography; and (3) an unusual pheromone polymorphism was described from P. anxia. Populations at some locations were captured with L-valine methyl ester alone, whereas populations at other locations were captured with L-isoleucine methyl ester alone. At additional locations, the L-valine methyl ester-responding populations and the L-isoleucine methyl ester-responding populations were both present, producing a bimodal capture curve. In southeastern Massachusetts and in Rhode Island, in the United States, P. anxia males were captured with blends of L-valine methyl ester and L-isoleucine methyl ester
MultiCellDS: a community-developed standard for curating microenvironment-dependent multicellular data
Exchanging and understanding scientific data and their context represents a significant barrier to advancing research, especially with respect to information siloing. Maintaining information provenance and providing data curation and quality control help overcome common concerns and barriers to the effective sharing of scientific data. To address these problems in and the unique challenges of multicellular systems, we assembled a panel composed of investigators from several disciplines to create the MultiCellular Data Standard (MultiCellDS) with a use-case driven development process. The standard includes (1) digital cell lines, which are analogous to traditional biological cell lines, to record metadata, cellular microenvironment, and cellular phenotype variables of a biological cell line, (2) digital snapshots to consistently record simulation, experimental, and clinical data for multicellular systems, and (3) collections that can logically group digital cell lines and snapshots. We have created a MultiCellular DataBase (MultiCellDB) to store digital snapshots and the 200+ digital cell lines we have generated. MultiCellDS, by having a fixed standard, enables discoverability, extensibility, maintainability, searchability, and sustainability of data, creating biological applicability and clinical utility that permits us to identify upcoming challenges to uplift biology and strategies and therapies for improving human health
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