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As the focus on embodied carbon within the built environment has grown in the U.S., local jurisdictional codes have increasingly proposed and implemented code language that requires the use of concrete mixtures that have reduced environmental impacts. This paper provides details about the various ways that localized sustainable concrete provisions have been proposed and implemented in the U.S., including limits on cement content and Global Warming Potential (GWP). These laws and code revisions vary in their measurement of low-carbon concrete and their exemptions and incentives. While the current version of the ACI Building Code, ACI 318-19, does allow for the consideration of sustainability in concrete design, specifics about how the relative sustainability of concrete mixtures and systems are to be measured and compared are not included. This paper addresses how the changing landscape of local jurisdictional codes is driving the development of future ACI 318 provisions to play a part in providing more consistency in the application of sustainable design practices in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a coordinated experimental and analytical study that investigated the seismic performance of wood-stud construction with clay masonry veneer and of RC masonry construction with clay masonry veneer designed according to current U.S. building codes. As part of this study, two 1-story buildings were tested on a shaking table. Both had clay veneer on the outside. One had wood-frame walls for the backing and load-resisting system, whereas the other had RC masonry walls. With one exception, the behavior of the veneer in the wood-framed building was satisfactory up to levels of shaking consistent with the design level earthquake. That exception was related to the relatively low pullout strength in wet wood of the conventional nails used to attach the veneer connectors to the wood-stud wall. On the basis of this study, code changes have been implemented to require the use of higher-capacity fasteners for such applications. The wood-frame building specimen itself did not collapse under levels of shaking consistent with the maximum considered earthquake. Behavior of the RC masonry building and the veneer on that building was satisfactory up to levels of shaking well in excess of the maximum considered earthquake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission's regulations to implement certain provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and recent changes to listing standards adopted by the two most important US exchanges (the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ) all contain important implications for the corporate compliance and business-ethics efforts of affected companies. This paper discusses those aspects of recent legislation and rule making relating directly to corporate compliance, including (i) the requirement that companies implement (or explain why they have not implemented) codes of conduct and ethics; (ii) the requirement that the national securities exchanges and associations prohibit the listing of any company's securities if the audit committee of the company has not established procedures for the receipt, retention and treatment of complaints received by the company regarding accounting, internal accounting controls or auditing matters and the confidential, anonymous submission by employees of concerns regarding questionable accounting or auditing matters; and (iii) oversight by the board of directors of a company's compliance with applicable law and regulations. This paper sets forth a short description of the recent history of government incentives for compliance in the USA and explains that, while government initiatives to date with respect to compliance programmes have tended to be incentive based, recent legislation and rule making place compliance requirements on some companies, putting a new spin on the US government's compliance initiatives. Recent legislation and rule making may produce greater communication in at least some affected companies about compliance generally and, more specifically, how to report suspected wrongdoing; this could lead to less corporate malfeasance, or at least to earlier detection. Recent requirements and proposals may also increase and formalise boards of directors' oversight of affected companies' compliance efforts; this could strengthen those companies' compliance efforts substantially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Last generation printing equipment is easily used nowadays in committing crime, to create highquality counterfeits and forgeries. Forensic experts participate actively in the fight against criminality by identifying new ways of examining a document. For this purpose, this method of identifying electrophotographic printers was studied and implemented. This was done by examining the grid made by the yellow dots on the printed documents. A large majority of electro-photographic printer manufacturers embed a yellow dot code of various shapes in colour printouts. This code contains data which allow us to determine the identification series of the printer which was used, the date of printing or other information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arch-roof industrial buildings are very wind sensitive. The current aerodynamic coefficients in wind codes do not contemplate the possibility of existence of canopies attached to the buildings. This paper presents the results of an investigation on the influence exerted by canopies on the static wind actions on arch-roof industrial buildings. Six scale models of these arch-roof buildings were tested, with five types of canopies attached. Three of these canopies were instrumented and the static wind pressures were measured. The tests were done at the boundary layer wind tunnel of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. The results show that the aerodynamic coefficients for the roof are not affected by the canopies, in the case of axial incidence. However, the influence on the pressure distribution is noticeable for wind incidence perpendicular to the main axis of the arch roofs and for other incidences as well. This influence is discussed in the paper. The aerodynamic coefficients for the design of the arch-roofs, with and without the attached canopies are given. Aerodynamic coefficients for design of the canopies are also suggested. Furthermore, the paper discusses the relation between the magnitude of the canopy design forces and the canopy width, as well as the relation between the canopy height location and the height of the building wall. The results were compared with design recommendations from previous work of Jancauskas and Holmes (in: US National Conference on Wind Engineering, Proceedings, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, 1985) and Jancauskas and Eddleston (in: International Conference on Wind Engineering, Fotodruck J. Mainz, Aachen, 1987). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Each year there are nearly 57 million deaths worldwide, with over 2.7 million in the United States. Timely, accurate and complete death reporting is critical for public health, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, as institutions and government agencies rely on death reports to formulate responses to communicable diseases. Unfortunately, determining the causes of death is challenging even for experienced physicians. The novel coronavirus and its variants may further complicate the task, as physicians and experts are still investigating COVID-related complications. To assist physicians in accurately reporting causes of death, an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach is presented to determine a chronically ordered sequence of conditions that lead to death (named as the causal sequence of death), based on decedent's last hospital discharge record. The key design is to learn the causal relationship among clinical codes and to identify death-related conditions. There exist three challenges: different clinical coding systems, medical domain knowledge constraint, and data interoperability. First, we apply neural machine translation models with various attention mechanisms to generate sequences of causes of death. We use the BLEU (BiLingual Evaluation Understudy) score with three accuracy metrics to evaluate the quality of generated sequences. Second, we incorporate expert-verified medical domain knowledge as constraints when generating the causal sequences of death. Lastly, we develop a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) interface that demonstrates the usability of this work in clinical practice. Our results match the state-of-art reporting and can assist physicians and experts in public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Northridge earthquake (near Los Angeles, CA, USA, January 17, 1994) and the Tecomán–Colima earthquake (near Manzanillo, México, January 21, 2003) have increased our knowledge of the behavior of masonry buildings in significant earthquakes, and also have led to changes or proposals for changes in US masonry design provisions. In this paper, the masonry code-development process in the US is briefly reviewed, with emphasis on the fundamental role of the Masonry Standards Joint Committee (MSJC). The Northridge and Tecomán–Colima earthquakes are discussed, with emphasis on the behavior of modern engineered masonry. Lessons learned from those earthquakes with regard to masonry are summarized, and the related evolution of MSJC design provisions for the US is discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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The meaning of the concept 'culture' as used in American sociology is incoherent. Despite the advances and maturing of cultural sociology, the central idea of 'culture' itself remains conceptually muddled. This article demonstrates this critical point by analyzing the definitions, meanings, and uses of the word 'culture' in the field of cultural sociology's most significant, recent edited volumes, handbooks, readers, companions, annual review chapters, and award-winning books and journal articles. Arguing for the scholarly importance of conceptual coherence, this article calls for more disciplined and cooperative theoretical work to clarify and move toward a more standardized meaning of 'culture' in American sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The years 1929 through 1931 were among the most turbulent in American cryptology. During this period, the joint War and State Department Cipher Bureau of Herbert Yardley was closed. The Army created the Signal Intelligence Service under William Friedman. Finally, the Army and Navy began their first tentative steps towards inter-service cooperation. This article examines these events in detail and also takes a look at the relationship between Yardley and Friedman. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]