Sustainable Concrete for the 21st Century Concept of Strength through Durability

The world is passing through difficult and troubled times, and we live in a rapidly changing world. The construction industry is facing many challenges – global warming, climate change forces, and the capability to achieve sustainable development and economic progress without damaging our environment. The concrete industry in particular faces further challenges. There is extensive evidence to show that concrete materials and concrete structures all over the world are deteriorating at a rapid rate, and that we are unable to ensure their long-term durable service life performance. To confound this situation, we are also faced with an urgent need to regenerate our infrastructure systems if we are to eradicate poverty and provide a decent Quality of Life for all the peoples of the world. This paper shows that the current emphasis on high strength and very high strength, and the design philosophy of Durability through Strength for concrete materials and concrete structures is fundamentally flawed. It is this misleading concept and vision that is primarily responsible for the lack of durable performance of concrete in real life environments. To change this scenario, this paper advocates that concrete materials must be manufactured for durability and not for strength. It is shown that this concept of Strength through Durability can be achieved through careful design of the cement matrix and its microstructure. If concrete is to be an eco-friendly, and sustainable driving force and construction material for social change, the need is to produce durable concrete with strengths of 30 to 60 to 80 MPa rather than very high strength concrete without an assured durable performance

Music, Myth and Motherland: Culturally Centered Music & Imagery

This study assessed ethnic identity in adults of Indian origin through Culturally Centered Music & Imagery (CCMI), a music-centered, psychotherapeutic technique that emphasizes socio-cultural context, identity and meaning. The purpose was to examine how participants’ native music, in the context of CCMI, could evoke identity-based imagery and assess ethnic identity in a globalized context. Five cisgender Indian men and women from Hindu backgrounds participated in one CCMI session each, including an interview and follow up discussions. The qualitative methodology of portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1997) was used in this study. The results reveal how CCMI can access the cultural and ethnic unconscious, a relatively new area of consciousness in Jungian and GIM paradigms. The study also shows how CCMI can highlight the fluid and multiple nature of ethnic identity, revealing its intersection with other identities such as gender, sexual orientation, caste and religion. In addition, the data support the use of contextual and identity-based music selections in assisting participants to explore, recreate or gain a deeper understanding of their ethnic identity through image and metaphor. Major findings include new categories of ethnic identity such as Aesthetic, Ancestral, Philosophical, Mythological, Spiritual and Core Indian identities. Subthemes include experiences of Rebirth, Disconnection, Unconscious Divide, as well as other socio-cultural identities such as Kaleidoscopic, World Citizen and Global Nomad. These and other themes relate to American, global, spiritual, queer, socio-economic, caste, gendered, and individual contexts. The research also suggests that this technique may be effective in emotionally and psychologically supporting adults who are going through the process of immigration or acculturation

q-deformed Fermions

This is a study of $q$-Fermions arising from a q-deformed algebra of harmonic oscillators. Two distinct algebras will be investigated. Employing the first algebra, the Fock states are constructed for the generalized Fermions obeying Pauli exclusion principle. The distribution function and other thermodynamic properties such as the internal energy and entropy are derived. Another generalization of fermions from a different q-deformed algebra is investigated which deals with q-fermions not obeying the exclusion principle. Fock states are constructed for this system. The basic numbers appropriate for this system are determined as a direct consequence of the algebra. We also establish the Jackson Derivative, which is required for the q-calculus needed to describe these generalized Fermions.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex forma

Deformed Heisenberg algebra: origin of q-calculus

The intimate connection between q-deformed Heisenberg uncertainty relation and the Jackson derivative based on q-basic numbers has been noted in the literature. The purpose of this work is to establish this connection in a clear and self-consistent formulation and to show explicitly how the Jackson derivative arises naturally. We utilize a holomorphic representation to arrive at the correct algebra to describe q-deformed bosons. We investigate the algebra of q-fermions and point out how different it is from the theory of q-bosons. We show that the holomorphic representation for q-fermions is indeed feasible in the framework of the theory of generalized fermions. We also examine several different q-algebras in the context of the modified Heisenberg equation of motion.Comment: 11 page

q-deformed fermion oscillators, zero-point energy and inclusion-exclusion principle

The theory of Fermion oscillators has two essential ingredients: zero-point energy and Pauli exclusion principle. We devlop the theory of the statistical mechanics of generalized q-deformed Fermion oscillator algebra with inclusion principle (i.e., without the exclusion principle), which corresponds to ordinary fermions with Pauli exclusion principle in the classical limit $q \to 1$. Some of the remarkable properties of this theory play a crucial role in the understanding of the q-deformed Fermions. We show that if we insist on the weak exclusion principle, then the theory has the expected low temperature limit as well as the correct classical q-limit.Comment: 10 pages, Latex, submitted to Physical Review