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The human immunoglobulin heavy chain (IGH) locus on chromosome 14 includes more than 40 functional copies of the variable gene (IGHV).

In order to better evaluate the lifetime performance of glass panel facade systems, this study firstly proposes to conduct a full-scale wind resistance, air/water infiltration, and seismic resistan...

Out-of-phase ventilation occurs when local regions of the lung reach their maximum or minimum volumes at breathing phases other than the global end inhalation or exhalation phases. This paper presents the N-phase local expansion ratio (LER $_{N}$ ) as a surrogate for lung ventilation. A common approach to estimate lung ventilation is to use image registration to align the end exhalation and inhalation 3DCT images and then analyze the resulting correspondence map. This 2-phase local expansion ratio (LER2) is limited because it ignores out-of-phase ventilation and thus may underestimate local lung ventilation. To overcome this limitation, LER $_{N}$ measures the maximum ratio of local expansion and contraction over the entire breathing cycle. Comparing LER2 to LER $_{N}$ provides a means for detecting and characterizing locations of the lung that experience out-of-phase ventilation. We present a novel in-phase/out-of-phase ventilation (IOV) function plot to visualize and measure the amount of high-function IOV that occurs during a breathing cycle. Treatment planning 4DCT scans collected during coached breathing from 32 human subjects with lung cancer were analyzed in this study. Results show that out-of-phase breathing occurred in all subjects and that the spatial distribution of out-of-phase ventilation varied from subject to subject. For the 32 subjects analyzed, 50% of the out-of-phase regions on average were mislabeled as low-function by LER2 (high-function threshold of 1.1, IOV threshold of 1.05). 4DCT and Xenon-enhanced CT of four sheep showed that LER8 is more accurate than LER2 for measuring lung ventilation.

Although monotonic bond tests are available in the literature, limited experimental studies exist for cyclic loading conditions. To fill this gap, this work describes results from cyclic pull-out tests of eleven specimens with Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) rebars embedded in high strength concrete (fck > 50 MPa). Six of the samples were sand-coated while the remaining five were ribbed carbon fiber rebars to account for various bond conditions. CFRP rebars were concentrically embedded into U-shaped 350 mm × 350 mm × 300 mm concrete blocks that provided sufficient development lengths. Rebar surfaces and development lengths with multiples of rebar diameters of 5db, 10db, 15db, 20db, 25db, 30db and 40db were taken as the main parameters in this experimental work. Both tension load versus slip relationships and CFRP bar strain measurements were obtained and presented. In order to observe the distribution of the tensile stresses between the concrete and embedded part of the CFRP bar, three strain gauges were attached on the surface of each bar before pouring the concrete. During the tests, typical bond slip (i.e. debonding) and concrete splitting failures were observed. According to the experimental data obtained in this work, bond strengths were in the range of 7–11 MPa and 9–14 MPa, for the sand-coated and ribbed CFRP bars, respectively. These values indicate that the bond strength obtained for ribbed rebars is considerably higher, and therefore, it is necessary to take into account the change in the bond strength of CFRP rebars embedded in RC elements according to the rebar surface conditions. When the obtained results are compared with current specifications, it is seen that relationships and limitations proposed for the design are not in good agreement with the experimental data obtained in this work. The evaluation of specifications has shown that the Canadian CAN.CSA.S806 and Japanese JSCE-E131 codes remain on the safe side while the American ACI 440 code does not produce reliable results for the class of surface conditions considered here since the obtained design capacities using the ACI formula are very close to the experimental capacities without any safety factor. Bond stiffness’s of specimens has decreased as number of load cycles has increased. Cyclic loading reduced the bond capacity of the specimens by maximum 40%.

This paper presents the Population Learning followed by One Shot Learning (PLOSL) pulmonary image registration method. PLOSL is a fast unsupervised learning-based framework for 3D-CT pulmonary image registration algorithm based on combining population learning (PL) and one-shot learning (OSL). The PLOSL image registration has the advantages of the PL and OSL approaches while reducing their respective drawbacks. The advantages of PLOSL include improved performance over PL, substantially reducing OSL training time and reducing the likelihood of OSL getting stuck in local minima. PLOSL pulmonary image registration uses tissue volume preserving and vesselness constraints for registration of inspiration-to-expiration and expiration-to-inspiration pulmonary CT images. A coarse-to-fine convolution encoder-decoder CNN architecture is used to register large and small shape features. During training, the sum of squared tissue volume difference (SSTVD) compensates for intensity differences between inspiration and expiration computed tomography (CT) images and the sum of squared vesselness measure difference (SSVMD) helps match the lung vessel tree. Results show that the PLOSL (SSTVD+SSVMD) algorithm achieved subvoxel landmark error while preserving pulmonary topology on the SPIROMICS data set, the public DIR-LAB COPDGene and 4DCT data sets.

Existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings designed according to outdated codes may lack sufficient strength, stiffness or ductility to meet the seismic performance criteria of current codes. To enhance the system stiffness and re-centering capability, an elastically designed supplementary steel frame (SF) is installed in parallel with the BRBs. Near full-scale cyclic tests are conducted on such retrofit schemes for performance evaluation. The retrofitted specimens showed stable hysteretic behavior up to the retrofit target story drift of 1/150 as proposed in the Japanese seismic regulations. Tests demonstrate that the proposed system is feasible and increases both strength, ductility, and damping to an adequate seismic performance level while the elastic steel frame is effective in providing post-yield stiffness and re-centering capability even when the RC frame is subjected to moderate inelasticity. Special emphasis is placed on the composite behavior of RC members and SF. A simplified composite interaction model is proposed and results from the developed model show good agreement with the experimental data. Ductility demands are shown to concentrate in the BRBs as per the design intent.

The aim of this study is to examine the behavior of protected and unprotected steel–concrete composite I-beams with large cell diameters (D0/H = 0.7) and closely spaced cell configurations under the ISO 834 fire curve. Previous studies on experimental full-scale fire performances of cellular beams have been somewhat limited under vertical service loads and different insulation properties. To address this limitation, a total of four composite beams, two unprotected (one beam with a solid web, and one cellular beam) and two protected cellular beams (60 min fire resistance with implementation of water and solvent-based intumescent coatings) were tested. As outputs of the tests, the failure modes observed, such as web buckling, the Vierendeel effect, the slab behavior, including the mechanism of concrete cracking, the overall displacement behavior (i.e., deflected shapes) up to collapse at very large deflections, and temperature changes in the steel elements are discussed. It was concluded that the quality of the intumescent coating applied is crucial in achieving the desired fire resistance. Experiments showed that unprotected trapezoid deck voids did not have a decisive influence on the behavior of the beams for up to 60 min of fire testing. At high temperatures, similar crack patterns occurred in the composite slabs of the protected and unprotected steel–concrete composite cellular beams. In the protected beams, the behavior of reactive coatings was significant and resulted in a non-uniform temperature distribution in these beams’ web and flanges.

Büyük açıklıklar geçebilen ve mimari davranış olarak diğer boşluklu kirişlere göre daha avantajlı olan dairesel gövde boşluklu kirişlerin üstün yapısal özelliklerine karşın yüksek sıcaklıklarda mekanik özelliklerinde önemli ölçüde azalmalar olduğu bilinmektedir. Türkiye’de ilk kez dairesel gövde boşluklu kompozit kirişlerin yangın performanslarının tahminine yönelik bir deney modeli geliştirilmiş ve tam ölçeğe yakın deneyler gerçekleştirilmiştir. Çalışma kapsamında, biri dolu ve diğeri gövdesi dairesel boşluklu IPE 140 profilinden üretilmiş kompozit kirişlerin varsayılan servis yükleri ve ISO 834 standart yangın eğrisi altındaki göçme davranışları incelenmiştir. Yangın sonrası çelik malzemenin mekanik özelliklerinde meydana gelen değişiklikler ayrıca kaydedilmiştir. Sonuç olarak, yalıtımsız ve dolu gövdeli DK-R numunesi beklenildiği üzere yalıtımsız gövde boşluklu GBK-YS numunesine göre daha uzun süreli yangın dayanımı sağlamıştır. Böylece, gövde boşluklarının erken göçmelere neden olarak yangın dayanımı önemli düzeyde azalttığı, koruma olmaksızın yönetmeliklerde öngörülen dayanımlara ulaşılamayacağı anlaşılmaktadır.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an umbrella term used to define a collection of inflammatory lung diseases that cause airflow obstruction and severe damage to the lung parenchyma. This study investigated the robustness of image-registration-based local biomechanical properties of the lung in individuals with COPD as a function of Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) stage. Image registration was used to estimate the pointwise correspondences between the inspiration (total lung capacity) and expiration (residual volume) computed tomography (CT) images of the lung for each subject. In total, three biomechanical measures were computed from the correspondence map: the Jacobian determinant; the anisotropic deformation index (ADI); and the slab-rod index (SRI). CT scans from 245 subjects with varying GOLD stages were analyzed from the SubPopulations and InteRmediate Outcome Measures In COPD Study (SPIROMICS). Results show monotonic increasing or decreasing trends in the three biomechanical measures as a function of GOLD stage for the entire lung and on a lobe-by-lobe basis. Furthermore, these trends held across all five image registration algorithms. The consistency of the five image registration algorithms on a per individual basis is shown using Bland–Altman plots.

Pulmonary respiratory motion artifacts are common in four-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) of lungs and are caused by missing, duplicated, and misaligned image data. This paper presents a geodesic density regression (GDR) algorithm to correct motion artifacts in 4DCT by correcting artifacts in one breathing phase with artifact-free data from corresponding regions of other breathing phases. The GDR algorithm estimates an artifact-free lung template image and a smooth, dense, 4D (space plus time) vector field that deforms the template image to each breathing phase to produce an artifact-free 4DCT scan. Correspondences are estimated by accounting for the local tissue density change associated with air entering and leaving the lungs, and using binary artifact masks to exclude regions with artifacts from image regression. The artifact-free lung template image is generated by mapping the artifact-free regions of each phase volume to a common reference coordinate system using the estimated correspondences and then averaging. This procedure generates a fixed view of the lung with an improved signal-to-noise ratio. The GDR algorithm was evaluated and compared to a state-of-the-art geodesic intensity regression (GIR) algorithm using simulated CT time-series and 4DCT scans with clinically observed motion artifacts. The simulation shows that the GDR algorithm has achieved significantly more accurate Jacobian images and sharper template images, and is less sensitive to data dropout than the GIR algorithm. We also demonstrate that the GDR algorithm is more effective than the GIR algorithm for removing clinically observed motion artifacts in treatment planning 4DCT scans. Our code is freely available at https://github.com/Wei-Shao-Reg/GDR., Accepted to the journal Medical Image Analysis (MedIA)

"How can we animate 3D-characters from a movie script or move robots by simply telling them what we would like them to do?" "How unstructured and complex can we make a sentence and still generate plausible movements from it?" These are questions that need to be answered in the long-run, as the field is still in its infancy. Inspired by these problems, we present a new technique for generating compositional actions, which handles complex input sentences. Our output is a 3D pose sequence depicting the actions in the input sentence. We propose a hierarchical two-stream sequential model to explore a finer joint-level mapping between natural language sentences and 3D pose sequences corresponding to the given motion. We learn two manifold representations of the motion -- one each for the upper body and the lower body movements. Our model can generate plausible pose sequences for short sentences describing single actions as well as long compositional sentences describing multiple sequential and superimposed actions. We evaluate our proposed model on the publicly available KIT Motion-Language Dataset containing 3D pose data with human-annotated sentences. Experimental results show that our model advances the state-of-the-art on text-based motion synthesis in objective evaluations by a margin of 50%. Qualitative evaluations based on a user study indicate that our synthesized motions are perceived to be the closest to the ground-truth motion captures for both short and compositional sentences., 13 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables. Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2021, pp. 1396-1406

Lung biomechanical properties can be used to detect disease, assess abnormal lung function, and track disease progression. In this work, we used computed tomography (CT) imaging to measure three biomechanical properties in the lungs of subjects with varying degrees of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): the Jacobian determinant (J), a measure of volumetric expansion or contraction; the anisotropic deformation index (ADI), a measure of the magnitude of anisotropic deformation; and the the slab-rod index (SRI), a measure of the nature of anisotropy (i.e., whether the volume is deformed to a rod-like or slab-like shape). We analyzed CT data from 247 subjects collected as part of the Subpopulations and Intermediate Outcome Measures in COPD Study (SPIROMICS). The results show that mean $J$ and mean ADI decrease as disease severity increases, indicating less volumetric expansion and more isotropic expansion with increased disease. No differences in average SRI index were observed across the different levels of disease. The methods and analysis described in this study may provide new insights into our understanding of the biomechanical behavior of the lung for COPD patients with various Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) stages.

Metallic dampers are sacrificial devices (fuses) that dissipate significant energy during earthquakes while protecting other parts of structures from possible damage. In addition to numerous implementation opportunities of other base isolation systems, U-shaped dampers (UD) are one of the widely investigated and used devices in practice especially in Japan. The present study focuses on enhancing seismic performance of these types of dampers by changing their geometric properties. UDs with perforated (i.e. with holes) and/or nonparallel arms are developed for this purpose. For a better comparison, the criterion of equal material volume (or mass) has been utilized. Three dimensional finite element models of the new type of UDs are formed and investigated numerically under selected displacement histories. Based on the obtained hysteretic curves; dissipated energy intensities, effective stiffness ratios, reaction forces, effective damping ratios are evaluated in this parametric study. It is found that both damper types have merits in use of seismic applications and that the selection of the damper configuration is dependent on the design specific issues.

Buckling restrained braces (BRBs) display balanced hysteretic behavior under reversed cyclic tension and compression forces and dissipate a significant amount of seismic energy during credible earthquakes. This paper reports on an experimental investigation of newly developed BRBs with different core materials (steel and aluminum alloy) and end connection details. A total of four full-scale BRBs with two steel cores and outer tubes (BRB-SC4 and BRB-SC5) as well as two with aluminum alloy cores and aluminum outer tubes (BRB-AC1 and BRB-AC3) with specific end details were designed as per the AISC Seismic Provisions, manufactured and cyclically tested. These tests made it possible to compare the impact of the steel and aluminum alloy material characteristics on the hysteretic behavior and energy dissipation capacities. The proposed steel and aluminum alloy core BRBs with various end details achieved the desired behavior, while no global buckling occurred under large inelastic displacement cycles.

This study presents stick and panel curtain wall systems’ lifetime performance comparison by conducting full-scale testing according to a proposed test method. The procedure is based on Turkish standards and supported by CWCT. Besides weather tightness, wind and seismic resistance tests, thermal cycling are included to the procedure in two-stages between −10 °C and +50 °C considering temperatures in 20 years in Istanbul. Results showed that stick system might be more fragile than panel system under the same conditions. This study is thought to be a leading work in lifetime performance assessment of such curtain wall types by considering specific local conditions.

Conventional approach to earthquake resistant building design relies upon strength, stiffness, and inelastic deformation capacity, which are great enough to withstand a given level of design earthquake effects. However, modern approach in today's designs aims to mitigate seismic energy before the input energy reaches the structural elements. Dissipating seismic energy through the inelastic deformation of metallic dampers is one of the cost effective solutions. After appearing concept of dissipating energy through the inelastic deformation (mainly yielding and post yielding) of metallic dampers, numerous types of metallic dampers, such as X-shaped, J-shaped, U-shaped, shear panel, triangular plate dampers have been developed and their effectivenesses have been proved both theoretically and experimentally. Inelastic hysteretic behaviour of U-shaped devices is somewhat complex and varies with geometry of the damper. To address this issue and possibly attain some practical results, this present paper focuses on modelling hysteretic behaviour of U-shaped dampers. ABAQUS has been used as the computational tool in which a finite element model made of the C3DR8 solid element is adopted. Nonlinear kinematic and isotropic hardening material assumptions are considered to determine cyclic behaviour at 0o, 45o and 90o loading directions. For each analysis, effective stiffness, effective damping ratio, and maximum reaction forces (i.e. horizontal strengths) of the damper are calculated to evaluate performance. As an additional parameter, two different loading protocols are taken into consideration. Hysteretic curves and deformed shapes of a selected damper type taken from an existing experimental work and this numerical study show very good agreement proving that the modelling assumptions made during the analyses are appropriate and sufficient for a better prediction of behaviour. Additional numerical analyses on several dampers under various loading protocols reveal that effective damping ratio of the damper is more than ξeff =40% at the maximum displacement level due to significant energy dissipation through plastic deformation of the damper. A numerical example of mixed use of U-shaped steel dampers and rubber isolation bearings on a selected two story steel framed building is also discussed.

There has been an increasing interest in using residual deformation as a seismic performance indicator for earthquake resistant building design. Self-centering braced structural systems are viable candidates for minimizing residual deformations following a major earthquake. Hence, this study proposes an alternative type of buckling restrained brace (BRB) with externally attached posttensioned (PT-BRB) carbon fiber composite cables (CFCCs). The steel core of the brace is used as an energy dissipator, whereas the CFCCs provide the self-centering force for minimizing residual story drifts. Three proof-of-concept specimens are designed, fabricated, and cyclically tested at different posttensioning force levels. The CFCC behavior to obtain cyclic response, including the anchorage system, is examined closely. A parametric study is also conducted to show the effect of the different configurations of PT-BRBs on the inelastic response. Furthermore, optimal brace parameters are discussed to realize design recommendations. The results indicated that the implementation of partially self-centering BRBs in building frames can lead to the target residual displacements. A stable behavior is obtained for the proposed PT-BRBs when subjected to the loading protocol specified in the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) 2016 Seismic Provisions.

Aim: The most common cause of death in childhood is unintentional injury. Most childhood injuries occur when children are under the supervision of caregivers. There is no valid and reliable instrument for measuring the parents' supervision attributes in Turkey. The aim of this study was to adapt the Parent Supervision Attributes Profile Questionnaire to Turkish. Material and Methods: This research was methodological. The data were collected through a questionnaire that consisted of 11 questions about the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the family and the Turkish Parent Supervision Attributes Profile Questionnaire. The Questionnaire, developed by Morrongiello and House, is a 5-point Likert-type scale and consists of 29 items. High scores obtained from the scale, which has no cut-off, indicate a high supervisory behavior. The language adaptation and content validity of the scale were completed by experts. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for construct validity. Reliability was tested by internal consistency coefficients. Results: Five hundred sixty people participated in the study, 81.9% of whom were mothers. The mean age of the mothers was 33.8 +/- 4.6 years and the mean age of the fathers was 37.2 +/- 5.1 years. The percentage of uni-versity graduates was 56.8% among mothers and 53.9% among fathers. According to the confirmatory factor analysis, the fit index values were as follows: Standardized Root Mean Square Residual =0.097, Goodness of Fit Index =0.80, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation =0.089, Comparative Fit Index =0.88, Non-Normed Fit Index =0.87. The fit index values were moderate and confirmed 4-factor structure. It was found that the internal consistency coefficient calculated for reliability was 0.75 for the whole scale and ranged between 0.57 and 0.79 for the subscales. Conclusion: The Turkish Parent Supervision Attributes Profile Questionnaire is a valid and reliable measurement tool. Further research is needed to determine the current situation regarding supervisory behaviors. C1 [Ozdemir, Caner] Agri Prov Directorate Hlth, Agri, Turkey. [Ergin, Ahmet] Pamukkale Univ, Dept Publ Hlth, Div Social Pediat, Fac Med, Denizli, Turkey. [Ergin, Ahmet] Pamukkale Univ, Dept Pediat, Fac Med, Denizli, Turkey. [Baysal, Serpil Ugur] Dokuz Eylul Univ, Dept Pediat, Div Social Pediat, Fac Med, Izmir, Turkey. [Oguz, Ceren; Yilmaz, Bilge Betul] Pamukkale Univ, Fac Med, Dept Publ Hlth, Denizli, Turkey.

Pulmonary respiratory motion artifacts are common in four-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) of lungs and are caused by missing, duplicated, and misaligned image data. This paper presents a geodesic density regression (GDR) algorithm to correct motion artifacts in 4DCT by correcting artifacts in one breathing phase with artifact-free data from corresponding regions of other breathing phases. The GDR algorithm estimates an artifact-free lung template image and a smooth, dense, 4D (space plus time) vector field that deforms the template image to each breathing phase to produce an artifact-free 4DCT scan. Correspondences are estimated by accounting for the local tissue density change associated with air entering and leaving the lungs, and using binary artifact masks to exclude regions with artifacts from image regression. The artifact-free lung template image is generated by mapping the artifact-free regions of each phase volume to a common reference coordinate system using the estimated correspondences and then averaging. This procedure generates a fixed view of the lung with an improved signal-to-noise ratio. The GDR algorithm was evaluated and compared to a state-of-the-art geodesic intensity regression (GIR) algorithm using simulated CT time-series and 4DCT scans with clinically observed motion artifacts. The simulation shows that the GDR algorithm has achieved significantly more accurate Jacobian images and sharper template images, and is less sensitive to data dropout than the GIR algorithm. We also demonstrate that the GDR algorithm is more effective than the GIR algorithm for removing clinically observed motion artifacts in treatment planning 4DCT scans. Our code is freely available at https://github.com/Wei-Shao-Reg/GDR.

Seismically retrofitting reinforced concrete (RC) building with a combination of buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) and elastic steel frames offers a practical solution that provides additional lateral stiffness and energy dissipation capacity. However, the available methods to vertically distribute the BRB sizes based on equivalent linearization do not consider the additional stiffness due to the composite behavior between the RC frame and the elastic steel frame, which may lead to an overly conservative estimate of the BRB stiffness demands. This study proposes a retrofit design method incorporating the composite behavior. Numerical models considering the detailed composite behavior are developed and calibrated against quasi-static cyclic loading tests, and a simplified evaluation method is proposed. A four-story RC school building is used as a benchmark model, and the proposed retrofit design method is validated using nonlinear response history analysis. The analysis results suggest that taking the composite behavior into account by using the proposed retrofit design method more accurately estimates the lateral stiffness of the retrofitted structure and leads to a more economic retrofit.

Hysteretic performance of buckling restrained braces (BRBs) having various core materials, namely, steel and aluminum alloy and with various end connections are numerically investigated. As a computational tool, nonlinear finite element analyses (FEAs) are performed to better model the hysteretic behavior. For the simulation, various aspects such as 1) stress - strain relationship including the strain hardening effect 2) von Mises yield criterion 3) contact surface parameters between the core metal and surrounding high strength grout and 4) friction are defined. Experimental results from near-full scale cyclic tests on two steel core BRBs having steel casing as a restraining environment (named as BRB-SC4 and BRB-SC5) and an aluminum alloy core & aluminum alloy casing tube (named as BRB-AC3) are used in the analyses. All cyclically tested specimens have been designed according to AISC Seismic Provisions. Numerical results obtained from 3D models developed in ANSYS-Workbench give satisfactory response parameters when compared with the experimental ones (e.g., hysteretic curves, dissipated energies). Further, a convergence analysis regarding element numbers in the developed model is conducted for each BRB specimen. Finally, key issues that influence the hysteretic modeling of BRBs are identified.

This paper presents an experimental investigation into possible variations of mechanical properties of structural steel and concrete in composite cellular beams exposed to ISO 834 fire and cooled down phases. Four full-scale fire tests were performed on protected and unprotected beams under assumed service loads. Tensile stress-strain behavior of steel coupons taken from the beams and compressive strengths of concrete cores taken from the reinforced concrete slabs are studied. Material coupon tests for steel are carried out as per TS EN ISO 6892-1. As for the concrete, compression tests were conducted. Coupon test results reveal that, after fire testing, a maximum reduction ratio of 65% in ultimate strain is obtained for the unprotected beam samples. This indicates that the reductions in the mechanical properties of steel in the protected beams are much less when compared to those of the unprotected beams. It is also found that the maximum increase in post-fire strength/pre-fire strength ratios for concrete is 11% for the unprotected beam, while a 20 % decrease is recorded for water based protected cellular beam. For the protected specimens, the RC slabs were exposed to higher temperatures, and the compressive strength of concrete after testing was lower than that of the unprotected beam slabs.

Rural areas are important for the realization of agricultural production and sustainability of resources. Providing to sustainable usage of resources is possible by conservation of local originated seeds, which act on principle of agriculture and inputs besides cause to an increase in ratio of 25-40% in production. The data were obtained from the family farms making production with 68 local seeds using the "Unclassified single-step simple random probability sampling based on ratios" method in 20 villages. The obtained table were created and the chi-square analysis was performed on the percentage ratios and the bilateral relations. As a result of the research, 49 local seed varieties were identified. Consequently, it is necessary to encouragement of young people for agricultural activities, a better data transfer among the stakeholders and project production for conservation of local originated seeds. © 2019, Centenary University. All rights reserved., British Association for Psychopharmacology: 16201026 British Association for Psychopharmacology: 16201026, ** The study was considered as a master's thesis and was supported Selcuk University, Scientific Research Fund (BAP) Project No: 16201026., This study was supported Selcuk University, Scientific Research Fund (BAP) Project No: 16201026. We would like to thank Selcuk University Scientific Research Fund and Projects Coordination Unit for their financial support to this project. The study was considered as a master's thesis. This manuscript was presented in II. International Eurasian Agricultural and Natural Sciences Congress was held on Azerbaijan, 11-15 September 2018. It was only published as an abstract.

This paper presents an experimental investigation into possible variations of mechanical properties of structural steel and concrete in composite cellular beams exposed to ISO 834 fire and cooled down phases. Four full-scale fire tests were performed on protected and unprotected beams under assumed service loads. Tensile stress-strain behavior of steel coupons taken from the beams and compressive strengths of concrete cores taken from the reinforced concrete slabs are studied. Material coupon tests for steel are carried out as per TS EN ISO 6892-1. As for the concrete, compression tests were conducted. Coupon test results reveal that, after fire testing, a maximum reduction ratio of 65% in ultimate strain is obtained for the unprotected beam samples. This indicates that the reductions in the mechanical properties of steel in the protected beams are much less when compared to those of the unprotected beams. It is also found that the maximum increase in post-fire strength/pre-fire strength ratios for concrete is 11% for the unprotected beam, while a 20 % decrease is recorded for water based protected cellular beam. For the protected specimens, the RC slabs were exposed to higher temperatures, and the compressive strength of concrete after testing was lower than that of the unprotected beam slabs.

A ribbon is, intuitively, a smooth mapping of an annulus $S^1 \times I$ in 3-space having constant width $\varepsilon$. This can be formalized as a triple $(x,\varepsilon, \mathbf{u})$ where $x$ is smooth curve in 3-space and $\mathbf{u}$ is a unit vector field based along $x$. In the 1960s and 1970s, G. Calugareanu, G. H. White, and F. B. Fuller proved relationships between the geometry and topology of thin ribbons, in particular the "Link = Twist + Writhe" theorem that has been applied to help understand properties of double-stranded DNA. Although ribbons of small width have been studied extensively, it appears that less is known about ribbons of large width whose images (even via a smooth map) can be singular or self-intersecting. Suppose $K$ is a smoothly embedded knot in $\mathbb{R}^3$. Given a regular parameterization $\mathbf{x}(s)$, and a smooth unit vector field $\mathbf{u}(s)$ based along $K$, we may define a ribbon of width $R$ associated to $\mathbf{x}$ and $\mathbf{u}$ as the set of all points $\mathbf{x}(s) + r\mathbf{u}(s)$, $r \in [0,R]$. For large $R$, these wide ribbons typically have self-intersections. In this paper, we analyze how the knot type of the outer ribbon edge $\mathbf{x}(s) + R\mathbf{u}(s)$ relates to that of the original knot $K$. We show that, generically, there is an eventual limiting knot type of the outer ribbon edge as $R$ gets arbitrary large. We prove that this eventual knot type is one of only finitely many possibilities which depend just on the vector field $\mathbf{u}$. However, the particular knot type within the finite set depends on the parameterized curves $\mathbf{x}(s)$, $\mathbf{u}(s)$, and their interactions. Finally, we show how to control the curves and their parameterizations so that given two knot types $K_1$ and $K_2$, we can find a smooth ribbon of constant width connecting curves of these two knot types., 20 pages, 9 figures

Four-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) is regularly used to visualize tumor motion in radiation therapy for lung cancer. These 4DCT images can be analyzed to estimate local ventilation by finding a dense correspondence map between the end inhalation and the end exhalation CT image volumes using deformable image registration. Lung regions with ventilation values above a threshold are labeled as regions of high pulmonary function and are avoided when possible in the radiation plan. This paper investigates a sensitivity analysis of the relative Jacobian error to small registration errors. We present a linear approximation of the relative Jacobian error. Next, we give a formula for the sensitivity of the relative Jacobian error with respect to the Jacobian of perturbation displacement field. Preliminary sensitivity analysis results are presented using 4DCT scans from 10 individuals. For each subject, we generated 6400 random smooth biologically plausible perturbation vector fields using a cubic B-spline model. We showed that the correlation between the Jacobian determinant and the Frobenius norm of the sensitivity matrix is close to -1, which implies that the relative Jacobian error in high-functional regions is less sensitive to noise. We also showed that small displacement errors on the average of 0.53 mm may lead to a 10% relative change in Jacobian determinant. We finally showed that the average relative Jacobian error and the sensitivity of the system for all subjects are positively correlated (close to +1), i.e. regions with high sensitivity has more error in Jacobian determinant on average.

Functional avoidance radiation therapy (RT) uses lung function images to identify and minimize irradiation of high-function lung tissue. Lung function can be estimated by local expansion ratio (LER) of the lung, which we define in this paper as the ratio of the maximum to the minimum local lung volume in a breathing cycle. LER is computed using deformable image registration. The end exhale (0EX) and the end inhale (100IN) phases of four-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) are often used to estimate LER, which we refer to as LER3D. However, the lung may have out-of-phase ventilation, i.e., local lung volume change is out of phase with respect to global lung expansion and contraction. We propose the LER4D measure which estimates the LER measure using all phases of 4DCT. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the amount of out-of-phase ventilation of the lung. Out-of-phase ventilation is defined to occur when the LER4D measure is \(5\%\) or more than the LER3D measure. 4DCT scans of 14 human subjects were used in this study. Low-function (high-function) regions are defined as regions that have less (greater) than \(10\%\) expansion. Our results show that on average \(19.3\%\) of the lung had out-of-phase ventilation; \(3.8\%\) of the lung had out-of-phase ventilation and is labeled as low-function by both LER3D and LER4D; \(9.6\%\) of the lung is labeled as low-function by LER3D while high-function by LER4D; and \(5.9\%\) of the lung had out-of-phase ventilation and is labeled as high-function by both LER3D and LER4D. We conclude that out-of-phase ventilation is common in all 14 human subjects we have investigated.

This study presents an experimental investigation into the seismic retrofit of tubular steel braces using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) members. CFRP retrofitting of net sections for compact tubes are proposed for delaying potential local net section failure. A total of almost full-scale three (TB-1, TB-2, and TB-3) compact steel tubular specimens were designed per AISC specifications, constructed, and cyclically tested to fracture. Retrofitted braces, when compared to the reference specimen, developed fuller hysteretic curves. Increase in cumulative hysteretic energy dissipation and the elongation in fracture life in the specimen retrofitted with CFRP plates and CFRP sheet wraps at net sections are observed during testing. This resulted in a maximum of 82.5% more dissipated energy for compact tube specimens. Also, this retrofit provided a longer experimental fracture life (maximum 59% more). Due to fracture initiation during the last cycles, significant reductions in strength and stiffness have been obtained. No significant change (maximum 10%) in the brace stiffness was observed, which could be desirable in seismic retrofit applications. Pushover analysis per FEMA 356 for the bare specimen shows that FEMA does not represent actual brace behavior in the compression side although pushover and experimental results are in good agreement in the tension side., Çelik tüp çaprazların deprem etkilerine karşı karbon lifli polimer (CFRP) elemanlarla güçlendirilmesi deneysel olarak incelenmiştir. Zayıflatılmış uç kesitten olası kopmanın geciktirilmesi için bu bölgelerin CFRP elemanlarla (plaka ve kumaş) güçlendirilmesi önerilmiştir. Zayıflatılmış kesitte güçlendirmenin etkinliğini incelemek için üç adet kompakt kesitli, gerçeğe yakın ölçekli numune AISC yönetmeliklerine uygun olarak tasarlanmış ve kopmaya ulaşıncaya kadar yön değiştiren tekrarlı yükler altında denenmişlerdir. Referans numuneyle karşılaştırıldıklarında, beklendiği üzere, güçlendirilmiş numunelerin daha dolu histeretik eğrilere sahip olduğu görülmüştür. Zayıflatılmış uç bölgenin yan yüzlerine önce CFRP plaka sonrasında da kumaş ile sarılmasıyla numunenin kümülatif enerji tüketiminde artış ve kopma ömründe uzama görülmüştür. Güçlendirme, kopma anında en çok %82.5 oranında daha fazla enerjinin tüketilmesine katkıda bulunmuş, kopma ömürlerinde ise en çok %59 oranında artış görülmüştür. Süneklikteki artışa karşın son çevrimlerde kopma başlangıcı nedeniyle dayanım ve rijitlikte önemli denilebilecek azalmalar elde edilmiştir. Çapraz rijitliklerindeki değişim en fazla %10 civarında olduğundan önerilen yöntem çaprazlı çelik sistemlerin deprem etkilerine karşı güçlendirme uygulamaları için uygundur. FEMA 356’ya göre tanımlanan eksenel plastik mafsallı çaprazlara yapılan itme (pushover) analizi sonucunda FEMA’nın basınç bölgesinde gerçek davranışı yansıtmadığı, çekme bölgesinde ise uyumlu sonuçlar elde edildiği görülmüştür.

Bir tür metalik sönümleyiciler olarak kabul edilen Burkulması önlenmiş Çaprazlar (BÖÇ) önemli depremlerde çekme ve basınçta akarak dengeli bir histeretik davranış gösterirler. Bu çalışmada farklı çelik uç detayı malzemesine sahip BÖÇ’lerin yön değiştiren tekrarlı yükler altındaki histeretik davranışına ilişkin deneysel bulgu ve değerlendirmeleri verilmektir. Denenen BÖÇ’ler için kuvvet-yerdeğiştirme histeretik eğrileri, histeretik enerji yutma miktarları ve etkili sönüm oranları hesaplanarak karşılaştırmalar yapılmıştır. Özgün detaylar ile üretilen ve denenen BÖÇ’lerin yeterli bir performans gösterdiği ve bu performansının ileride yapılabilecek çalışmalarla iyileştirilebileceği sonucuna varılmıştır.

This article presents the analysis of the structure, energy and cost efficiency of three lightweight structural systems – wood light frames (WLF), lightweight steel frames (LGSF) and 3D sandwich (3DSP) panels – during their useful life. The structural systems focussed upon in this study are commonly used in Eastern Europe with specific reference to Turkey. The structural analysis and design was carried out using ETABS while EnergyPlus was used in the analysis of the energy consumption of the buildings. The results of the structural analysis of the three alternative construction systems show that 3DSP has better structural behaviour in terms of resistance against lateral loads. The thermal performance evaluation of the walls and ceilings shows that the WLF and LGSF walls have better insulation values (12.5% lower U-value) while the roof construction of the 3DSP has much better insulation performance (70% lower U-value). Moreover, the building designed with 3DSP requires 11% less energy for total heating and cooling during one year. The information for the building industry in Turkey shows that the cost of construction for 3DSP construction is 34.6% lower than for WLF and 27.7% lower than LGSF.