Seismic Risk Mitigation for a Portfolio of Reinforced Concrete Frame Buildings through Optimal Allocation of a Limited Budget

The mitigation of seismic risk for a population of vulnerable civil critical structures (e.g., hospitals, schools, and bridges) is a crucial issue for many governments of earthquake-prone regions. Furthermore, owing to the global economic crisis, limited financial resources make full seismic rehabilitation of entire building stocks challenging. Therefore, a critical decision has to be made on the following key question: what is the most advantageous way of spending the available budget while treating each building in a portfolio differently, by giving it a different level of structural improvement to reduce the overall risk of the portfolio of buildings as much as possible? Herein, a decision-making tool is proposed to address this high-social-impact issue. Starting with a limited amount of information, which is gathered through expeditious surveys on existing buildings, and by involving uncertainties, the overall risk is evaluated from the fragility analysis of each structure. This is conducted via simplified pushover analyses by considering the local seismic hazard. Then, an optimization is performed for each building of the portfolio to select a relevant structural intervention from four alternatives (no intervention, partial retrofit, full retrofit, and demolition and reconstruction), based on both the overall risk reduction and the amount of financial resources. Procedures for quick estimation of fragility curves and installation costs are also discussed as part of the proposed approach. Finally, a practical application is presented with reference to a simulated case study consisting of 46 reinforced concrete school buildings located in Campania, Italy

Detecting crypto-ransomware in IoT networks based on energy consumption footprint

An Internet of Things (IoT) architecture generally consists of a wide range of Internet-connected devices or things such as Android devices, and devices that have more computational capabilities (e.g., storage capacities) are likely to be targeted by ransomware authors. In this paper, we present a machine learning based approach to detect ransomware attacks by monitoring power consumption of Android devices. Specifically, our proposed method monitors the energy consumption patterns of different processes to classify ransomware from non-malicious applications. We then demonstrate that our proposed approach out-performs K-Nearest Neighbors, Neural Networks, Support Vector Machine and Random Forest, in terms of accuracy rate, recall rate, precision rate and F-measure

MDA-driven development of standard-compliant OSS components: the OSS/J inventory case-study.

The telecommunications-oriented Operational Support Systems (OSS) industry have recognised the value of technology independent modelling of OSS solutions as a way to reduce cost, add agility, validate and verify solution designs against architectural guidelines of an enterprise and most importantly provide traceability in the design methodology process. The challenges faced by the OSS community is how MDA tools can deliver the promise of advanced meta-modelling, model definition and validation and model transformation for both OSS software components and integration logic in the larger OSS landscape. This paper describes how an advanced extensible meta-modelling tool is used to build an OSS component following best practice industry guidelines. Extended MOF, extended executable OCL and a powerful transformation language are used to capture the constraints in the meta-models as well as models followed by complete, 100% code generation from models. Furthermore, meta-models are also developed to capture graphical user interface elements in conjunction with the inventory data models, which are then automatically translated into code. This work is the precursor for defining extensive meta-models for a component-based OSS infrastructure based on industry best practice, for adding high degree of formality to model specifications and for enabling the verification of domain requirements by executing the models through model snapshot creation, way before system implementation takes place

Internet of Things for Sustainable Community Development: Introduction and Overview

The two-third of the city-dwelling world population by 2050 poses numerous global challenges in the infrastructure and natural resource management domains (e.g., water and food scarcity, increasing global temperatures, and energy issues). The IoT with integrated sensing and communication capabilities has the strong potential for the robust, sustainable, and informed resource management in the urban and rural communities. In this chapter, the vital concepts of sustainable community development are discussed. The IoT and sustainability interactions are explained with emphasis on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and communication technologies. Moreover, IoT opportunities and challenges are discussed in the context of sustainable community development

Multivariate Normal Approximation on the Wiener Space: New Bounds in the Convex Distance

Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. We establish explicit bounds on the convex distance between the distribution of a vector of smooth functionals of a Gaussian field and that of a normal vector with a positive-definite covariance matrix. Our bounds are commensurate to the ones obtained by Nourdin et al. (Ann Inst Henri Poincaré Probab Stat 46(1):45–58, 2010) for the (smoother) 1-Wasserstein distance, and do not involve any additional logarithmic factor. One of the main tools exploited in our work is a recursive estimate on the convex distance recently obtained by Schulte and Yukich (Electron J Probab 24(130):1–42, 2019). We illustrate our abstract results in two different situations: (i) we prove a quantitative multivariate fourth moment theorem for vectors of multiple Wiener–Itô integrals, and (ii) we characterize the rate of convergence for the finite-dimensional distributions in the functional Breuer–Major theorem.FNR grant APOGee (R-AGR-3585-10) at Luxembourg University; FNR grant FoRGES (R-AGR-3376-10) at Luxembourg University; FNR Grant MISSILe (R-AGR-3410-12-Z) at Luxembourg and Singapore Universities

Approximate methods to evaluate storey stiffness and interstory drift of RC buildings in seismic area

During preliminary design of a RC building located in a seismic area, having quick but reliable analytical measurement of interstory drifts and storey stiffnesses might be helpful in order to check the fulfillment of damage limit state and stiffness regularity in elevation required by seismic design codes. This paper presents two approximate methods, strongly interrelated each other, and addressed to achieve each of these two purposes for frame buildings. A brief description of some already existing methods addressed to the same aims is included to compare the main differences in terms of general approaches and assumptions. Both new approximate methods are then applied to 9 ‘ideal’ frames and 2 ‘real’ buildings designed according to the Italian seismic code. The results are compared with the ‘exact’ values obtained by the code-based standard calculation, performed via FEM models, showing a satisfactory range of accuracy. Compared with those by the other methods from literature, they indicate the proposed procedures lead to a better approximation of the objective structural parameters, especially for those buildings designed according to the modern ‘capacity design’ philosophy

Medium to long term behavior of MR dampers for structural control

The medium to long term behavior of a prototype magnetorheological (MR) damper for structural control of earthquake induced vibrations is investigated herein. Unlike some applications for which MR devices experience frequent dynamic loads, seismic dampers might not be used for most of their life, staying dormant for a long period until an earthquake hits the hosting structure. This work aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a MR damper after years of inactivity. A MR device has been tested twice, first in 2008 and then in 2013, after five years of absolute inactivity. The comparison between the results of the two tests is made in terms of force-displacement loops. It is shown that, after a 5-year rest, only part of the first stroke of the damper is characterized by an unexpected response of the damper. After half a stroke, the damper quickly returned to behave like in 2008, even if a slight non-reversible decrease of the reacting force has been recorded. The latter is found to be more evident (5–7%) for larger currents, less visible in the case of zero magnetic field. From the point of view of civil engineering, this decay of performance is definitely acceptable, being largely bounded within the limits of the uncertainties typically involved and taken into account in the structural design. Finally, starting from a literature review, the paper discusses the possible causes of the observed changes in the mechanical response of the damper over time

Neoadjuvant chemoradiation with capcitabine and celecoxib in stage II and III rectal adenocarcinoma

"nBackground: Colorectal cancer is the third common cancer world wide and the forth in Iran. Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy is the standard treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer. In this study we evaluate the efficacy a cox-2 inhibitor on pathologic response, sphincter preservation and acute toxicity during neoadjuvant chemoradiation."n "nMethods: Thirty-six patients that have adenocarcinoma of rectum was enrolled (up to 15 cm of anal verge). The patients were undergone Endometrial Ultrasound (EUS), abdomino-pelvic and chest CT for staging. Then received neoadjuvant concurrent chemo radiation (xeloda 825 mg/m2 bid in combination with celecoxib 100 mg qid and 50-50.4Gy/25-28f). Surgery was done 4-8 weeks after chemoradiation. During the chemoradiation the patients was observed for the probable complication one year. Tumor regression grade was reported."n "nResults: From 36 surgery patients, Total Mesorectal Excision (TME) was done in 30 patients. Pathologic complete response was seen in eight of 30 patients (26.7%). Tumor regression grade was calculated in three and five grade system: in three grade system 17 patients had grade 1 (60.7%), eight patients had grade 2 (28.6%) and three patients had grade 3 (10.7%). In five grade system of tumor regression eight patients had grade 1 (28.6%), nine patients had grade 2 (32.1%), eight patients grade 3 (28.6%), three patients had grade 4 (10.7%). T down staging was 43.3%. N downstaging was 30.8%. No patient had skin reaction or cardio-vascular complication."n "nConclusion: Based on our study results, Celecoxib in combination with neoadjuvant chemoradiation is safe and is associated with low complications. This combination can promote pathologic complete response, TRG and T and N downstaging in Rectal adenocarcinoma

Adsorption of Celecoxib on B12N12 fullerene: Spectroscopic and DFT/TD-DFT study

In this study, we evaluated the effect of the Celecoxib (CXB) adsorption on the electronic and optical properties of B12N12 fullerene by using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations with the M06-2X functional and the 6-311+G** basis set. The calculated adsorption energies of CXB with the B12N12 fullerene was evaluated at T = 298.15 K in the vacuum and solvent (water) environments with the M06-2X functional. UV absorption and IR spectra were calculated and studied in order to identify the most important changes happening as a consequence of interactions between CXB and B12N12 fullerene. The results revealed that the adsorption of the CXB molecule from its NH2 head on the B12N12 is more favorable than those of the SO2 and NH groups in the gas and solvent environments. It is anticipated that the applied B12N12 fullerene could be suitable as a biomedical carrier for the delivery of CXB drug. © 201