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This study aimed to investigate conductivity behavior of concrete containing graphite and its sensitivity to the effects of pressure. Graphite powder was added to concrete to replace partial cement (4 wt.%, 8 wt.%, 12 wt.%, and 16 wt.%) as conductive fillers with a water-to-cementitious ratio of 0.45. Specimens with 0.5 vol.% Kuralon fibers were treated to enhance the performance of self-sensing properties to investigate the influence of graphite and fiber contents on electrical resistivities. The relationship between the axial load and changes in resistivity was determined using cyclic loading tests, indicating the existence and development of internal cracking in concrete. The results indicated that the compressive strength presented a linear decline proportional to the addition of graphite. Specimens with 8% graphite reached the lower bound of self-sensing properties, and with an increase in the amount of graphite, resistivity gradually decreased. In the cyclic loading tests, specimens containing >8% graphite were able to better reflect the relationship between loading and resistivity. Kuralon fibers in concrete had further improvement in resistance and self-sensing properties. In inclusion, the mixture with 8% graphite provided the best self-sensing properties to warn for preventing the effects of cracking, as well as achieved better mechanical properties.

Steel furnace slag containing heavy metal components is covered by asphalt cement when it is used to replace natural aggregates in road paving. When such a pavement deteriorates as a result of wear by people and vehicles as well as washing by rain, the aggregates are worn away and the heavy metal components within can overflow on the road’s surface, forming rust spots. This phenomenon has been observed on many roads, leading the general public to question the validity of using steel furnace slag and whether this is in violation of a contract with the contractor. However, it is known from literature that such rust spots on a road surface may also be caused by natural minerals such as pyrite that are contained in natural aggregates. Unlike cement concrete, the slag cannot be separated from the mixture after hardening; however, the asphalt cement can be separated from the aggregates by using a solvent. In this study, separated aggregates are tested for pH value, magnetic attraction, and elemental composition in order to assess the usability of slag. Based on the findings and the characteristics of steel furnace slag, this paper proposes a method for detection of steel furnace slag in asphalt concrete, which is divided into two stages. In the first stage, core samples of asphalt concrete are obtained from the road site. The asphalt cement is separated from the aggregates according to AASHTO T164 and then the separated aggregates are analyzed in pH value and magnetic attraction tests. When one or both of the tests indicate steel furnace slag characteristics, that is, alkalinity or magnetism, then it is possible that the asphalt concrete sample contains steel furnace slag, and should be tested in the second stage for further confirmation. In the second stage, the separated aggregates are grinded to less than 0.075 mm (No. 200) and their elemental composition is analyzed. Based on the composition of steel furnace slag, when the analysis results indicate ≥30 % CaO and ≥10 % Fe2O3, it can be regarded that steel furnace slag has been used in the asphalt concrete.

A 1/25 scale-down specimen was constructed of a reinforced concrete reactor building used in the nuclear power plant. The non-demoulding technology and self-consolidating concrete were used to cast the specimen with a length of 2.9 m, width of 2.9 m, height of 2.9 m and weight of 28 tons. The entirety struc-ture was composed of a primary containment (thickness of 10 cm), a secondary containment (thickness of 7.5 cm) and three floors (thickness of 30 and 15 cm). Shaking table tests were conducted on it in the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering. Testing results indicated that the scale-down specimen kept the structural integrity under a 0.6 g specific seismic wave hit. In addition, the ETABS model accurately represented the dynamic characteristics of the scale-down specimen by numerical method obtained the conservative results.

In the previous article we studied the strength quality of cement paste blended with waste solar PV cells. In this study, the similar research was performed by replacing cement paste with concrete except that a large w/c ratio of 0.55 was set since high permeability or more capillary pores may take a better observation on the experimental results. The conclusions were made on the effect of cement replacement with ground solar cells. The use of ground solar cells on the mechanical properties of cement-based composite was investigated, and as a result, we identified the strength performance for those of concrete specimens.

In this article we demonstrated the study results of strength quality of cement paste blended with waste solar PV cells. The conclusions were made on effect of this cement replacement. The use of ground solar cells on the mechanical properties of cement-based composite was investigated, and as a result, we identified the factors affecting the strength for those of cement mortar specimens which predefined and made in lab.

In this article we demonstrated the study results of durability quality of cement paste containing waste solar PV cells. The conclusions were made on effect of this cement replacement. The use of ground solar cells on the durability properties of cement-based composite was investigated. As a result, we identified the factors affecting the durability for those of cement mortar specimens which predefined and made in lab.

It’s quite often that dispensing a topping material like concrete crystalline penetration sealer materials onto the surface of a plastic substance such as concrete to extend its service life span by surface protections from outside breakthrough. When applied to concrete it reacts with calcium hydroxide and reduces the porosity and permeability of the concrete matrix. This serves to increase the hardness and chemical resistance which, in turn, increases the service life span of the surface. A series of tests, such as rapid chloride permeability test, scanning electron microscope, and mercury intrusion porosimetry, were performed on the concrete test samples to examine the durability, by taking the penetration depth of concrete crystalline penetration sealer materials as a characterization parameter describing the durability in relation to water resistance. The penetration depth is a critical property for concrete crystalline penetration sealer materials to function effectively. The deeper the penetration, the greater the thickness of concrete strengthened, thus improving wear resistance, the life span and durability. The desirable depth drawn from tests is about 10mm with a minimum of 5mm. However the regular attainment of such penetration will require considerable care in surface preparation and in assuring that the concrete is properly dry. The quality of the concrete will also be a major factor in the depth of penetration obtained. Penetration depths may be greater with poor quality porous concrete while a 10mm depth may not be possible with high-quality dense concrete. Other Factors affecting concrete sealer penetration depth are related to the process, such as coverage and application, a user who should understand how it works, and material itself, having its own image.

Previous studies demonstrated that imatinib mesylate (IM) induces autophagy in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and that this process is critical to cell survival upon therapy. However, it is not known if the autophagic process differs at basal levels between CML patients and healthy individuals and if pretreatment CML cells harbor unique autophagy characteristics that could predict patients’ clinical outcomes. We now demonstrate that several key autophagy genes are differentially expressed in CD34+hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, with the highest transcript levels detected for ATG4B, and that the transcript and protein expression levels of ATG4 family members, ATG5 and BECLIN-1 are significantly increased in CD34+cells from chronic-phase CML patients (P< .05). Importantly, ATG4B is differentially expressed in pretreatment CML stem/progenitor cells from subsequent IM responders vs IM nonresponders (P< .05). Knockdown of ATG4B suppresses autophagy, impairs the survival of CML stem/progenitor cells and sensitizes them to IM treatment. Moreover, deregulated expression of ATG4Bin CD34+CML cells inversely correlates with transcript levels of miR-34a, and ATG4Bis shown to be a direct target of miR-34a. This study identifies ATG4Bas a potential biomarker for predicting therapeutic response in treatment-naïve CML stem/progenitor cells and uncovers ATG4B as a possible drug target in these cells.

Nowadays, its more common of dispensing a topping material like concrete crystalline penetration sealer materials (CSM) onto the surface of a plastic substance such as concrete to extend its service life span by surface protections from outside breakthrough. Its known as the CSM may penetrate into the existing pores or possible cracks in such a way that it may form crystals to block the potential paths which provide breakthrough for any unknown materials. Even though all kinds of test data and researches have been reported to boast of its advantages in both theoretical technologies and application functions, to accept that as an agreed fact, namely the major components and those proportions have not been fully announced in public or research. This study employed various experiments, such as scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), to identify key components of CSM for developing another type of CSM so that its components could be open for the public. There are two types of commercial CSM adopted for the tests and then thru a series of discusses of test results the most possible components of CSM are proposed as a future reference of CSM related researches.

The most desired disaster prevention in Taiwan has to be typhoon; therefore there is a saying good weather, good life. The government does everything to prevent nature disaster, preparedness, response and recovery, especially on typhoon flooding survey. In order to conduct instant contingency handling disaster reaction in biggest disaster conditions, the government hopes to control the disaster immediately, and calculate the disaster loss. The main purpose of this study is to build a flood automation system. Apply auto-recording water level monitoring system (internal or external water) from water stations to collect stage data, and integrate Geographic Information System by the terrain grid computing, then obtain the instant scope of inundation and flood depth. Together with the instant rainfall and forecast to achieve the effectiveness of the flood watch or warning, then we should possibly control the instant information for the anticipation of the flood disaster. Taking it further with the Flood Security Plan, we have the best reference for decision-making use in the Emergency Response Center. The study area is located in Yilan County, the most sensitive flooded region, to set up immediate foregoing typhoon instant information system or so-called flood automation system, and then by several times of investigations and post-disaster flood scar volume measured we completely record ground hydrological information, and calibrate it with water level gauges built by Taiwan National Typhoon and Flood Research Center and AWRSIP weather telemetry information platform of synthetic aperture radar images on the flooded scope and depth. The concept of flood automation system is based on the fact that the occurrence and distribution of flood is not merely a product of chance, but the result of a combination of climatic, hydrologic, geologic, topographic and soil-forming factors that together form an integrated dynamic system, thus, through a combination of real-time rainfall forecast, flood recording, automation requirement, Geographic Information System, flood warning, instant data transmission and the internet, be setting up an ideal typhoon instant information system, which can become high accurate and be suitable for easy use of flooded areas, in order to achieve sustainable development in those areas.

This study was aimed to evaluate the protection effectiveness of various concrete surface treating materials. Four types of surface treating materials and six parameters were selected. Compressive strength test, absorption test and permeability test were performed. Taguchi method was adopted to identify the key factors influencing the protection effectiveness provided by the surface treatment. L16 (81Î26) orthogonal array was chosen to reduce the number of experiments. The major sequentially influential factors are type of coating material, w/c ratio of concrete substrate and coating thickness.

The literature has identified several possible causes of asphalt pavement distresses. Loadrelated distresses are apparent where the pavement has been overstressed by traffic loads applied to its surface. Climate/durabilityrelated distresses arise due to exposure to the environment. Otherrelated distresses are caused by actions not related to load or climate such as fuel spills or construction deficiencies. In this paper, information about fourteen asphalt pavement distresses frequently occurred on Taiwans pavements was surveyed, structured and explored using formal concept analysis (FCA) method. FCA is an important mathematical tool for conceptual data analysis and knowledge acquisition. By using FCA, the concept lattice of the formal context of asphalt pavement distresses was created and studied. Based on the concept lattice and association rules derived from FCA, the causes of asphalt pavement distresses were understood. The findings are consistent with the literature and actual conditions. This study provides alternative solutions to understand the causes of asphalt pavement distresses. This study also clearly shows that FCA is a useful method for further exploring and extending information on pavement distresses.

This study investigated the influence of crystalline sealers and curing environment on compressive strength, splitting strength and elastic modulus of cement-based composites. Four kinds of crystalline sealers addition (0 %, 3 %, 5 % and 7 %) were used in the concrete specimens. SEM observations were assisted in verifying the results of mechanical properties. The test results demonstrated that the specimens increased the mechanical properties with the inclusion of crystalline sealers increased. The crystalline sealers reacted with cement to produce the crystals and hydrations, which could fill with the pore and supply a denser microstructure. This appearance was verified by the SEM micrographs. In inclusion, the cement-based composites containing 7 % crystalline sealers seem to give superior mechanical properties, and make the pores become finer and enhance the durability.

This study investigated the influence of individual constituents of calcined shale or hybrid constituents of calcined shale and fly ash or silica fume on the workability and compressive strength. Calcined shale is heat treated in a kiln and then ground to a finer powder and the calcination temperatures of 800 °C were used. The test results demonstrated that the workability and compressive strength decreased with the inclusion of calcined shale increased and the compressive strength of the specimens containing calcined shale all lower than that of the control specimens. It might be due to the higher water demand and lower CaO value. However, the hybrid batches with calcined shale and fly ash or silica fume enhanced better performance on compressive strength than individual constituents of calcined shale. The combination of 10 % calcined shale and 10 % silica fume in concrete seemed to give superior compressive strength and gave the highest value in the testing series. Finally, the inclusion of calcined shale is help to reduce the emissions of CO2 and revealed an ecological advantage for concrete containing a binder blend of cement and calcined shale.

It is commonly accepted that absolute immunity from flood damage is not physically possible even in the distant future because of unpredictability of several natural forces which might cause unprecedented situation. Even so, with proper planning and continuous effort we can certainly look forward to an appreciable diminution of distress with an accelerated implementation of flood management measures. It is commonly accepted that the measures to mitigate flood losses need to be given the most efforts wherein flood damage assessment is the primary measure of mitigation. This has been viewed mainly as a physical method of protection from floods. To make the measures to mitigate flood losses, it first needs to effectively measure the flood influence in which flooded area and height may be the most desired measures for each of typhoon-induced flood events. On the other hand, sophisticated hydraulic modeling tools are now available to help us estimate the scale of we face from typhoon-induced flooding from a computational perspective. The flood scale in terms of area and height of typhoon-induced flood events may be the major contribution to feedback for the calibration of those sophisticated hydraulic modeling tools. Thus, a flood mark recording device is highly required to be re-examined for its use in such an increasing demand. It’s commonly accepted that a new generation of device should put economic, environmental, simple and practical considerations into its design concept. This becomes the main purpose of this study to modify an old-fashioned stream gauge to a better device, named as Double-Tube Flood Mark (DTFM) stream gauge. A number of DTFM stream gauges were installed in the low-lying plains to experience floods for recording their flood heights as a measure of flooded areas. For a comparative purpose, we set up the electronic stream gauges of the stilling well, which measured the height of a float in a hole dug alongside a stream channel. In addition, we also used other types of stream gauge include the pressure transducer, which inferred the depth of water in a stilling well by measuring the pressure of the column of water inside. The gage height values, taken at regular intervals, were recorded by depending on the technology--transmitted electronically to the dedicated databases. The verification showed a satisfactory result as expected. As a general conclusion, the field installment of a DTFM steam gauge is easy and fast. In the mean time, the cheap cost largely increases its placement at all kinds of possible locations to provide high accuracy of flood measures for the calibration of sophisticated hydraulic modeling.

A high-speed carton packaging machine is developed in view of the current of low-degree automation and low-speed in the packaging industry. Monitoring system of this high-speed carton packaging machine is designed on basis of B&R programmable computer control (PCC) system according to the structure of the packaging machine and process control requirements, and has automatically achieved to feed pad, feed bottles, group bottles, spray glue, package with Servo synchronization technology. The high-speed carton packaging machine has reached world advanced level in performance and packaging speed at the speed of 80 packages per minute.

The pavement condition index (PCI), a numerical rating from 0 to 100, gives a good indication of the pavement condition. However, the pavement distress survey is a labor-intensive procedure which is performed quite subjectively by experienced pavement engineers. Then, a highly complicated calculation is required to determine the PCI of a road network. It is advantageous to determine the PCI from relevant pavement parameters. This study demonstrates how to develop a PCI assessment model based on pavement parameters by combining data mining technique and group method of data handling (GMDH) method. Records from provincial and county roads with asphalt surface and wide variety of pavement structure in Taiwan were employed. After conducting the find dependencies (FD) algorithm in data mining techniques, 120 dependent records were extracted from 253 raw records. For the PCI model development, 100 records were randomly selected as the training dataset. GMDH was successfully applied to develop a PCI assessment model that uses 7 critical pavement parameters and PCI as inputs and output, respectively. The R2 for the training dataset is 0.849. The rest of 20 records were utilized as the testing dataset, which has 0.851 of R2 based on the PCI assessment model. This study confirms that combining data mining technique and GMDH method has the potential to provide significant assistance in pavement condition assessment. The model proposed in this study provides a good foundation for further refinement when additional data is available.

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the effect of incinerator bottom ash (IBA) fineness and the cooled process of molten IBA on fresh mortar properties and compressive strength of hardened mortars. IBA with two finenesses, an original IBA, and a pulverizing incinerator bottom ash (PIBA) powder, with maximum particle size of 4.75 and 0.074 mm respectively were used to partially replace sand and Portland cement at 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% by weight. The pozzolanic activity characteristics of powder were obtained from melting the above PIBA in an electric-furnace at 1450 °C for 1 h. and chilled by quenching in water (WIBA) and air (AIBA). Results indicate that incinerator bottom ash caused a reduction in compressive strength, unit weight, and flowability values when used as a replacement for sand and cement. However, IBA can be processed by melting to regain reactive pozzolanic activity, which may be used to partially replace cement.

Taiwan's climate is marine tropical. The northern part of the island has a rainy season that lasts from January through late March during the northeast monsoon, and experiences hot, humid weather from June through September. Thus, road’s maintenance is a difficult issue due to its long-season rains as well as high groundwater levels. In the mean time, the current roads are generally weaker in most suburban areas due to those soft soil bases uncompacted in construction. Those aspects explain the low performance of suburban roads in northern Taiwan. Therefore, this research takes the Yilan county, located in the northeast part of the island and well-known as a rainy county, as a study area where major suburban roads are selected to take asphalt concrete specimens for testing. The major purpose is to investigate the time effect of asphalt pavements for those of specimens with a period time of three years. A total number of 329 asphalt concrete specimens are characterized as Class I specimens, 305 of which were taken in 2007, as well as Class II of 24 taken in 2010. First, as for the Class I specimens, the Indirect Tensile Strength test (ITS) is conducted, together with the Control Chart as a filter, and then the remaining 253 specimens come to the average ITS value of 15.55 kgf/cm2. Secondly, as for the Class II specimens of 24, the Film Stripping (FS) tests are conducted to obtain the Index of Retained Strength (IRS) values, from which the basis of ITS comparisons is found. Thus, the different average ITS value, 19.16% in three years, is obtained. The result also indicates that the annual reduction of ITS value for an area similar to the study area may be taken as approximately 11% (33.14/3 %) and 4.7% (13.98/3 %) for the conditions of high traffic flow and low traffic flow, respectively. It may also address the common effect of traffic and environment on moisture damage in asphalt pavements.

The disposal and reuse of waste combustion residues has become a critical topic recently in view of the method of treating household wastes in a city, which has gradually changed to be incineration (major) and landfill (minor) in densely populated Taiwan, plus the difficulty of various wastes disposed by the Refuse Incineration Plant at Yilan County. To propose concrete recommendations as references for the local competent authorities’ policy for reuse of bottom ash, we researched and analyzed compositions of wastes and ingredients as well as leaching toxicity of bottom ash (accounting for 70% of waste combustion residues) which had been collected from the Li-Ze Incineration plant at Yilan, and transported bottom ash to a cement plant also at Yilan as an alternative material for Portland cement. The results in this study indicated quite a few products, with ingredients of bottom ash from an incineration plant, can be taken as principal compositions used in production of cement, and the capacity of bottom ash treated by the cement plant can be further expanded according to the quality of produced cement and bottom ash properly processed.

Wireless technologies and applications have developed very quickly in recent years. With this rapid development and enhancement, wireless technology continues to expand, is increasingly deployed, and has become more sophisticated and competitive. Taiwan grapples with the challenge from the new wireless technologies and is making their endeavour upon this issue. In this paper, we introduce a Mobile-Taiwan project for mobile worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) and describe the architecture of a mobile WiMAX trial in Mobility-Yilan (M-Yilan). In addition, we use measurement indexes and tools to measure its performance. To measure the effective range of mobile WiMAX coverage, we propose a new method that generates the interpolation surface for the measurements of received signal strength indicators RSSI and CINR. Interpolation predicts values for cells in a raster that can be used to predict unknown values for any measured point of received signal strength.

Study of fibroblast origins and lineages is complicated by the lack of unambiguous markers that could be used to identify discrete subpopulations on the basis of functional attributes. We have studied the role of the membrane-anchored hydrolytic enzyme tissue-nonspecific alkaline phosphatase (TN-AP) and the placental alkaline phosphatase (PL-AP) in collagen phagocytosis and in the deletion of cells by apoptosis. Rat-2 cells, which do not constitutively express AP, were transfected with full-length rat TN-AP or PL-AP cDNAs to determine the impact of the TN-AP collagen-binding domain on cell function. Various levels of expression were driven by early (strong) or late (weak) SV40 promoters in the plasmid construct. Controls were transfected with plasmids that did not contain AP cDNA. AP expression in transfected cells was confirmed by Northern blotting, histochemical analysis, and SDS-PAGE analysis of membrane-anchored enzyme released by phosphatidyl inositol phospholipase C. Low levels of TN-AP expression increased cell spreading slightly, nearly doubled the percentage of collagen phagocytic cells (up to 80%), and increased the number of internalized collagen-coated fluorescence beads per cell. In cells transfected with PL-AP (i.e., no collagen-binding domain), collagen phagocytosis was not affected. Internalization of BSA beads was also not affected by either AP isozyme, indicating that AP was selective for integrin-mediated phagocytosis. In single cells, histochemically demonstrable TN-AP activity on cell membranes was colocalized with the binding of collagen beads, but this colocalization was not detected in cells transfected with PL-AP. Phagocytosis was inhibited by antibodies to the α2 integrin and to AP but not by levamisole, an inhibitor of AP phosphohydrolytic activity. High-level TN-AP expression caused a fivefold reduction of cell proliferation and was associated with the development of cells with sub-G1 DNA content, nuclear condensation, and nuclear budding. In AP-positive cultures, there was a greatly increased number of floating cells; nick-labeling of DNA by terminal transferase and biotinylated dUTP showed a 15-fold increase of stained cells. These data indicate that low-level TN-AP expression enhances collagen phagocytosis, presumably through the TN-AP collagen-binding domain. High-level AP expression promotes cell deletion by apoptosis. We suggest that the expression of AP by fibroblasts indicates a novel role for this enzyme in collagen degradation by phagocytosis. J. Cell. Physiol. 172:323–333, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Abstract: In this paper, an application of regularized meshless method (RMM) for solving the problem of obliquely incident water wave passing a submerged breakwater is presented. By using desingularization technique to regularize the singularity and hypersingularity of the kernel functions, source points can be located on the physical boundary of an arbitrary domain. To verify the practicability and validity of the RMM, simulations for observing the propagation of oblique incident wave through a barrier are presented where the modified Helmholtz equation is satisfied. Finally, three examples are given to show the effects of breakwater with rigid and absorbing boundary conditions to energy dissipation caused by existence of a barrier. After comparing such analytical solution with the corresponding boundary element method (BEM) solutions, they are shown to be in good agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]