Development of high performance structural timver systems for non residential buildings in New Zealand and Australia

Design of structural systems for commercial and multi-residential buildings throughout most parts of the world, is currently dominated by the use of reinforced and / or prestressed concrete construction, usually supported by steel or concrete beams and frames. However, recent developments throughout the world have demonstrated the potential for timber based structural systems to be used in these types of buildings for beams and columns, roof structures and floors. The advent of engineered wood products (EWP's) such as LVL and glulam has made it possible to fabricate large section, long spanning structural members that have excellent structural properties and reliability equivalent to that of steel or concrete used in the same applications. Since 2007, significant (and related) research initiatives have been undertaken in Australia and New Zealand, investigating the performance of timber and timber hybrid systems for use in large span / medium rise commercial and industrial buildings. In 2009 a research consortium of government, industry and three Universities known as the Structural Timber Innovation Company (STIC) commenced an extensive R&D 5 year program with a total budget of $10m NZD. This paper presents an overview of each area of research, describing the focus of work to date, discussion of issues that have been identified and addressed, as well as details of expected outcomes

Investigation on the structural behaviour of timber concrete composite connections

A project exploring innovative structural systems that utilise timber and provide a competitive alternative to steel and concrete products commenced at the University of Technology, Sydney, in 2007. It aims to identify and develop at least three flooring/framing concepts suitable for initial application in a two-/three-storey commercial building in Australia. In this context, a timber concrete composite (TCC) represents a competitive solution. An important aspect of TCC structures corresponds to the shear connectors, which are essential for TCC structural behaviour. Thus, they need to provide sufficient strength and impair slip between TCC layers. A laboratory investigation on these connectors is discussed in this paper. The scope and research plan are presented and the connection strength and stiffness are analysed and commented. © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, London

Pediatric liver transplantation from neonatal donors

Sixteen recipients of neonatal liver grafts were compared with 114 contemporaneous pediatric recipients of grafts from older donors. Graft and patient survival were worse in the neonatal group although the differences were not statistically significant. Patients with neonatal livers who had no technical complications required a longer time postoperatively to correct jaundice and a prolonged prothrombin time. These functional differences were limited to the 1st postoperative month and the end result was the same as with liver transplantation from older donors. © 1992 Springer-Verlag

Ultimate behavior of idealized composite floor elements at ambient and elevated temperature

This paper is concerned with the ultimate behavior of composite floor slabs under extreme loading situations resembling those occurring during severe building fires. The study focuses on the failure state associated with rupture of the reinforcement in idealized slab elements, which become lightly reinforced in a fire situation due to the early loss of the steel deck. The paper describes a fundamental approach for assessing the failure limit associated with reinforcement fracture in lightly reinforced beams, representing idealized slab strips. A description of the ambient-temperature tests on isolated restrained elements, carried out to assess the influence of key material parameters on the failure conditions, is firstly presented. The results of a series of material tests, undertaken mainly to examine the effect of elevated temperature on ductility, are also described. A simplified analytical model is employed, in conjunction with the experimental findings, to assess the salient material parameters and their implications on the ultimate response at both ambient and elevated temperature. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

Flame extension and the near field under the ceiling for travelling fires inside large compartments

Structures need to be designed to maintain their stability in the event of a fire. The travelling fire methodology (TFM) defines the thermal boundary condition for structural design of large compartments of fires that do not flashover, considering near field and far field regions. TFM assumes a near field temperature of 1200°C, where the flame is impinging on the ceiling without any extension and gives the temperature of the hot gases in the far field from Alpert correlations. This paper revisits the near field assumptions of the TFM and, for the first time, includes horizontal flame extension under the ceiling, which affects the heating exposure of the structural members thus their load‐bearing capacity. It also formulates the thermal boundary condition in terms of heat flux rather than in terms of temperature as it is used in TFM, which allows for a more formal treatment of heat transfer. The Hasemi, Wakamatsu, and Lattimer models of heat flux from flame are investigated for the near field. The methodology is applied to an open‐plan generic office compartment with a floor area of 960 m2 and 3.60 m high with concrete and with protected and unprotected steel structural members. The near field length with flame extension (fTFM) is found to be between 1.5 and 6.5 times longer than without flame extension. The duration of the exposure to peak heat flux depends on the flame length, which is 53 min for fTFM compared with 17 min for TFM, in the case of a slow 5% floor area fire. The peak heat flux is from 112 to 236 kW/m2 for the majority of fire sizes using the Wakamatsu model and from 80 to 120 kW/m2 for the Hasemi and Lattimer models, compared with 215 to 228 kW/m2 for TFM. The results show that for all cases, TFM results in higher structural temperatures compared with different fTFM models (600°C for concrete rebar and 800°C for protected steel beam), except for the Wakamatsu model that for small fires, leads to approximately 20% higher temperatures than TFM. These findings mitigate the uncertainty around the TFM near field model and confirm that it is conservative for calculation of the thermal load on structures. This study contributes to the creation of design tools for better structural fire engineering

Theoretical Aspects of Particle Production

These lectures describe some of the latest data on particle production in high-energy collisions and compare them with theoretical calculations and models based on QCD. The main topics covered are: fragmentation functions and factorization, small-x fragmentation, hadronization models, differences between quark and gluon fragmentation, current and target fragmentation in deep inelastic scattering, and heavy quark fragmentation.Comment: 26 pages, 27 figures. Lectures at International Summer School on Particle Production Spanning MeV and TeV Energies, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, August 199

Daily life stress and the cortisol awakening response : testing the anticipation hypothesis

Acknowledgments We thank Paul Stewart for his contribution to data collection and Dr Matthew Jones for programming the handheld computers. Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: WS DJP. Performed the experiments: DJP. Analyzed the data: WS. Wrote the paper: WS DJP.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Dermatitis associated with exposure to a marine cyanobacterium during recreational water exposure

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Anecdotal evidence reported an outbreak of symptoms on Fraser Island during the late 1990s similar to those expected from exposure to dermotoxins found in the cyanobacterium <it>L. majuscula</it>. This coincided with the presence of a bloom of <it>L. majuscula</it>.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Records from the Fraser Island National Parks First aid station were examined. Information on cyanobacterial blooms at Fraser Island were obtained from Queensland National Parks rangers.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Examination of first aid records from Fraser Island revealed an outbreak of symptoms predominantly in January and February 1998.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>During a bloom of <it>L. majuscula </it>there were numerous reports of symptoms that could be attributed to dermotoxins found in <it>L. majuscula</it>. The other four years examined had no <it>L. majuscula </it>blooms and the number of <it>L. majuscula </it>symptoms was much reduced. These cases comprised a high percentage of the cases treated at the first aid station.</p

Improvement of Induction Remission Rate by Modifying the Dose of Idarubicin for Relapsed Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Relapse is the major cause of treatment failure in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), yet there is no established treatment for relapsed ALL. To improve the induction remission rate, we modified the dose of idarubicin in the original Children's Cancer Group (CCG)-1884 protocol, and retrospectively compared the results. Twenty-eight patients diagnosed with relapsed ALL received induction chemotherapy according to the CCG-1884 protocol. Complete remission (CR) rate in all patients after induction chemotherapy was 57%. The idarubicin 10 mg/m2/week group showed CR rate of 74%, compared with the 22% CR rate of the idarubicin 12.5 mg/m2/week group (p=0.010). Remission failure due to treatment-related mortality (TRM) was 44% and 5.2% in the idarubicin 12.5 mg/m2/week and 10 mg/m2/week groups, respectively (p=0.011). Overall survival (OS) and 4-yr event-free survival (EFS) were 12.8% and 10.3%, respectively. OS and 4-yr EFS were higher in the idarubicin 10 mg/m2/week group (19.3% and 15.6%) than in the 12.5 mg/m2/week group (0% and 0%). In conclusion, a modified dose of idarubicin from 12.5 mg/m2/week to 10 mg/m2/week resulted in an improved CR rate in the treatment of relapsed ALL, which was due to lower TRM. However, despite improved CR rate with modified dose of idarubicin, survival rates were unsatisfactory