Temperature-based stiffness identification of que-Ti’s in a historic Tibetan timber building

© 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, London. Que-Ti, like the corbel brackets connecting beam and column in modern structures, is an important component in typical Tibetan historic timber buildings. It transfers shear, compression and bending moment by slippage and deformation of components as well as limited joint rotation. A rigorous analytical model of Que-Ti is needed for predicting the behaviour of a timber structure under load. However, few researches have been done with this model, particularly on the parameters describing the performances of this joint under load. The equivalent stiffness of a Que-Ti connection in its operating state is determined by using ambient temperature variations as a forcing function in the complete input(temperature)-output(local mechanical strains) relationship when it is incorporated in a finite element model of the structure. The identification is done iteratively via correlating the calculated strain responses with measured data

Prefix-Projection Global Constraint for Sequential Pattern Mining

Sequential pattern mining under constraints is a challenging data mining task. Many efficient ad hoc methods have been developed for mining sequential patterns, but they are all suffering from a lack of genericity. Recent works have investigated Constraint Programming (CP) methods, but they are not still effective because of their encoding. In this paper, we propose a global constraint based on the projected databases principle which remedies to this drawback. Experiments show that our approach clearly outperforms CP approaches and competes well with ad hoc methods on large datasets

Variable interaction in multi-objective optimization problems

14th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XIV, 2016-09-17, 2016-09-21, Edinburgh, UK, pp. 399 - 409This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.The final publication is available at link.springer.comVariable interaction is an important aspect of a problem, which reflects its structure, and has implications on the design of efficient optimization algorithms. Although variable interaction has been widely studied in the global optimization community, it has rarely been explored in the multi-objective optimization literature. In this paper, we empirically and analytically study the variable interaction structures of some popular multi-objective benchmark problems. Our study uncovers nontrivial variable interaction structures for the ZDT and DTLZ benchmark problems which were thought to be either separable or non-separable

Controlled release of human growth hormone fused with a human hybrid Fc fragment through a nanoporous polymer membrane

Nanotechnology has been applied to the development of more effective and compatible drug delivery systems for therapeutic proteins. Human growth hormone (hGH) was fused with a hybrid Fc fragment containing partial Fc domains of human IgD and IgG(4) to produce a long-acting fusion protein. The fusion protein, hGH-hyFc, resulted in the increase of the hydrodynamic diameter (ca. 11 nm) compared with the diameter (ca. 5 nm) of the recombinant hGH. A diblock copolymer membrane with nanopores (average diameter of 14.3 nm) exhibited a constant release rate of hGH-hyFc. The hGH-hyFc protein released in a controlled manner for one month was found to trigger the phosphorylation of Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) in human B lymphocyte and to exhibit an almost identical circular dichroism spectrum to that of the original hGH-hyFc, suggesting that the released fusion protein should maintain the functional and structural integrity of hGH. Thus, the nanoporous release device could be a potential delivery system for the long-term controlled release of therapeutic proteins fused with the hybrid Fc fragment.X111313sciescopu

An improved prediction of the effective range of stress intensity factor in fatigue crack growth

This paper will summarise the results obtained to date and which demonstrate that the mesoscale CJP model of crack tip fields is capable of providing an improved correlation of fatigue crack growth rates across a range of stress ratios and specimen geometries, compared with the standard stress intensity factor calculations

Efficient Resource Allocation in Cooperative Co-Evolution for Large-Scale Global Optimization

Cooperative co-evolution (CC) is an explicit means of problem decomposition in multipopulation evolutionary algorithms for solving large-scale optimization problems. For CC, subpopulations representing subcomponents of a large-scale optimization problem co-evolve, and are likely to have different contributions to the improvement of the best overall solution to the problem. Hence, it makes sense that more computational resources should be allocated to the subpopulations with greater contributions. In this paper, we study how to allocate computational resources in this context and subsequently propose a new CC framework named CCFR to efficiently allocate computational resources among the subpopulations according to their dynamic contributions to the improvement of the objective value of the best overall solution. Our experimental results suggest that CCFR can make efficient use of computational resources and is a highly competitive CCFR for solving large-scale optimization problems

Chronology of CH···O Hydrogen Bonding from Molecular Dynamics Studies of the Phosphoric Acid-Catalyzed Allylboration of Benzaldehyde

CH···O hydrogen bonds involving formyl groups have been invoked as a crucial factor controlling many asymmetric transformations. We conducted quasi-classical direct molecular dynamics simulations on the phosphoric acid-catalyzed allylboration of benzaldehyde to understand the synergy between the phosphoric acid OH···O hydrogen bond and the secondary CH···O formyl hydrogen bond as the reaction occurs. In the gas phase, both the CH···O and OH···O hydrogen bonds are enhanced from reactants to transition states. In toluene, the trend of H-bond enhancement is observed with a smaller magnitude because of solvent caging. The strength of the formyl hydrogen bond in the TS, a second CH···O interaction between the P═O oxygen and $\textit{ortho}$-hydrogen of the phenyl ring and the OH···O hydrogen bond were determined using quantum mechanical calculations (4.6, 1.0, and 14.5 kcal mol$^{-1}$, respectively).We are grateful to The English-Speaking Union (Lindemann Trust Fellowship to M.N.G.), Girton College, Cambridge (Research Fellowship to M.N.G.) and the NSF (CHE-1361104 to K.N.H.) for financial support. Computational resources were provided by the UCLA Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by the NSF (OCI-1053575)

Sulfur-Modulated Tin Sites Enable Highly Selective Electrochemical Reduction of CO2 to Formate

Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2RR) to formate provides an avenue to the synthesis of value-added carbon-based fuels and feedstocks powered using renewable electricity. Here, we hypothesized that the presence of sulfur atoms in the catalyst surface could promote undercoordinated sites, and thereby improve the electrochemical reduction of CO2 to formate. We explored, using density functional theory, how the incorporation of sulfur into tin may favor formate generation. We used atomic layer deposition of SnSx followed by a reduction process to synthesize sulfur-modulated tin (Sn(S)) catalysts. X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) studies reveal higher oxidation states in Sn(S) compared with that of tin in Sn nanoparticles. Sn(S)/Au accelerates CO2RR at geometric current densities of 55 mA cm−2 at −0.75 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode with a Faradaic efficiency of 93%. Furthermore, Sn(S) catalysts show excellent stability without deactivation (<2% productivity change) following more than 40 hours of operation. With rapid advances in the efficient and cost-effective conversion of sunlight to electrical power, the development of storage technologies for renewable energy is even more urgent. Using renewable electricity to convert CO2 into formate simultaneously addresses the need for storage of intermittent renewable energy sources and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We report an increase of greater than 4-fold in the current density (hence the rate of reaction) in formate electrosynthesis compared with relevant controls. Our catalysts also show excellent stability without deactivation (<2% productivity change) following more than 40 hours of operation. The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2RR) offers a compelling route to energy storage and high-value chemical manufacture. The presence of sulfur atoms in catalyst surfaces promotes undercoordinated sites, thereby improving the electrochemical reduction of CO2 to formate. The resulting sulfur-modulated tin catalysts accelerate CO2RR at geometric current densities of 55 mA cm−2 at −0.75 V versus RHE with a Faradaic efficiency of 93%

Chiral zero-mode for abelian BPS dipoles

We present an exact normalisable zero-energy chiral fermion solution for abelian BPS dipoles. For a single dipole, this solution is contained within the high temperature limit of the SU(2) caloron with non-trivial holonomy.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure (in 2 parts), presented at the workshop on "Confinement, Topology, and other Non-Perturbative Aspects of QCD", 21-27 Jan. 2002, Stara Lesna, Slovaki