Ground movements due to excavation in clay: physical and analytical models

In view of the recent catastrophes associated with deep excavations, there is an urgent need to provide vital guidelines on the design of the construction process. To develop a simple tool for predicting ground deformation around a deep excavation construction for preliminary design and decision-making purposes, small scale centrifuge models were made to observe the complicated mechanisms involved. A newly developed actuation system, with which the construction sequences of propping could be implemented, was developed, the new procedures were proven to give more realistic initial ground conditions before excavation with minimal development of pre-excavation bending moment and wall displacement. Incremental wall deformation profiles generally followed the O’Rourke cosine bulge equation and a new deformation mechanism was proposed with respect to wall toe fixity and excavation geometry. Validation of the conservation energy principle was carried out for the undrained excavation process. The total loss of potential energy was shown to be balanced by the total work done in shearing and the total elastic energy stored in structures with an error term of 30%. An improved mobilizable strength method (MSD) method using observed mechanistic deformation patterns was introduced to calculate the displacement profile of a multi-propped undrained excavation in soft clay. The incremental loss in potential energy associated with the formation of settlement toughs was balanced by the sum of incremental storage of elastic energy and the energy dissipation in shearing. A reasonable agreement was found between the prediction by the MSD method and the finite element results computed by an advanced MIT-E3 model for wall displacements, ground settlement, base heave and bending moment on fixed base walls. For cases of excavations supported by floating walls, the effect of embedded wall length, depth of the stiff layer, bending stiffness of wall and excavation geometry and over-consolidation ratio of soils were found to have a influence on the maximum wall deflection. In general, the predictions fell within 30% of the finite element computed results. A new chart ψ versus normalized system stiffness was used to demonstrate that MSD could correctly capture the trend of wall displacements increasing with the ratio of excavation depth to depth of stiff layer, which could be controlled by increasing wall stiffness for very stiff wall system only. The incorporation of a simple parabolic curve quantifying small strain stiffness of soil was proven to be essential to good ground movement predictions. A new dimensionless group has been defined using the MSD concepts to analyze 110 cases of excavation. The new database can now be used to investigate the relationship between structural response ratio S and soil-structure stiffness ratio R where this is shown on log-log axes to capture the enormous range of wall stiffness between sheet-piles and thick diaphragm walls. Wall stiffness was found to have a negligible influence on the magnitude of the wall bulging displacements for deep excavation supported by fixed-based wall with stiffness ranging from sheet pile walls to ordinary reinforced concrete diaphragm walls, whereas excavations supported by floating walls were found to be influenced by wall stiffness due to the difference in deformation mechanisms

Visual Pigments and Light Detection in the Eye

Most forms of animal vision begin with light absorption by visual pigments in the eye. A typical visual pigment consists of a G protein-coupled receptor protein – opsin – covalently conjugated to a chromophore. Sub-families of opsins show distinctive physicochemical properties and cellular expressions, often attuned to the specific visual functions that they serve. Here, we examined a number of molecular and functional features of three sub-families of opsins. We found that: (1) an active molecule of rhodopsin (a ciliary opsin expressed in rod photoreceptors for dim-light vision) amplifies the light signal by activating about 20-30 transducin molecules at the peak of the current response to single photon-absorption. (2) the thermal activation of native and some mutant rhodopsin and cone pigments (ciliary opsins in cone photoreceptors for color vision) in the dark is indeed an isomerization event, the rate of which can be quantitatively predicted by multi-vibrational-mode statistical mechanics. (3) melanopsin, a rhabdomeric opsin that underlies the intrinsic photosensitivity of a subgroup of retinal ganglion cells and is responsible for diverse non-image-forming visual functions in mammals, is also expressed in some thick, myelinated neuronal processes in the rat iris that possibly originate from the trigeminal ganglia. (4) neuropsin (OPN5), a previous orphan opsin, mediates the photoentrainment of the local circadian rhythm in the mammalian retina and cornea

Implantation of neural stem cells embedded in hyaluronic acid and collagen composite conduit promotes regeneration in a rabbit facial nerve injury model

The implantation of neural stem cells (NSCs) in artificial scaffolds for peripheral nerve injuries draws much attention. NSCs were ex-vivo expanded in hyaluronic acid (HA)-collagen composite with neurotrophin-3, and BrdU-labeled NSCs conduit was implanted onto the ends of the transected facial nerve of rabbits. Electromyography demonstrated a progressive decrease of current threshold and increase of voltage amplitude in de-innervated rabbits after implantation for one, four, eight and 12 weeks compared to readouts derived from animals prior to nerve transection. The most remarkable improvement, observed using Electrophysiology, was of de-innervated rabbits implanted with NSCs conduit as opposed to de-innervated counterparts with and without the implantation of HA-collagen, NSCs and HA-collagen, and HA-collagen and neurotrophin-3. Histological examination displayed no nerve fiber in tissue sections of de-innervated rabbits. The arrangement and S-100 immunoreactivity of nerve fibers in the tissue sections of normal rabbits and injured rabbits after implantation of NSCs scaffold for 12 weeks were similar, whereas disorderly arranged minifascicles of various sizes were noted in the other three arms. BrdU+ cells were detected at 12 weeks post-implantation. Data suggested that NSCs embedded in HA-collagen biomaterial could facilitate re-innervations of damaged facial nerve and the artificial conduit of NSCs might offer a potential treatment modality to peripheral nerve injuries

New “haploid biofilm model” unravels IRA2 as a novel regulator of Candida albicans biofilm formation

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