Damage assessment and strengthening of an existing RC building

This paper investigates seismic capacity and probable damages assessment from earthquakes on existing buildings, more specifically, Archeological Museum building. Also, in this paper one of the techniques (reinforced concrete jacket) for increasing the structural capacity is applied. The importance of studying the behavior of this building is based on two issues: its essential use as well as the period of construction based on KTP-N2-89.This building is designed as R/C frame system, and a reconstructed model is chosen to be estimate; so, conclusions are referred only to that building. However, the developed approach may be used in analyzing other structural R/C frame systems.The first step of the study is related to the identification of the seismic zones, where the building is situated, and the period of its constructions as well as actual condition of structural elements and materials. Secondly, using the information of seismic design conditions and by performing respective pushover analyses, the capacity curve can be provided. After that, modeling bilinear capacity curves in AD format, defining the damage threshold levels; calculating cumulative probability and performing regression analysis - the fragility curves can be obtained.Considering different seismic codes requirements (the existing Albanian Code KTP-N2-89 -still in force and Eurocode 8) the analyses of performance points makes possible to assess the probable damage levels of buildings. After results of damage assessment regarding actual structural situation, comes out, a valuation of structural strengthening is considered.Applying reinforced concrete jacket for columns, it is recalculate the capacity of the strengthened structure. Finally, compari

Manual for an International Trade Data Base on the IBM Computer of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

This manual has been prepared to allow IIASA economists to access an international trade data base stored on the IBM computer at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. It describes the contents of the data base and the capabilities of the data-handling program, and explains how the data base may be accessed from IIASA via the Gateway system. It is hoped that the information made available in this way will be useful in the work on economic structural change currently in progress at IIASA

Seeding hESCs to achieve optimal colony clonality

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have promising clinical applications which often rely on clonally-homogeneous cell populations. To achieve this, it is important to ensure that each colony originates from a single founding cell and to avoid subsequent merging of colonies during their growth. Clonal homogeneity can be obtained with low seeding densities; however, this leads to low yield and viability. It is therefore important to quantitatively assess how seeding density affects clonality loss so that experimental protocols can be optimised to meet the required standards. Here we develop a quantitative framework for modelling the growth of hESC colonies from a given seeding density based on stochastic exponential growth. This allows us to identify the timescales for colony merges and over which colony size no longer predicts the number of founding cells. We demonstrate the success of our model by applying it to our own experiments of hESC colony growth; while this is based on a particular experimental set-up, the model can be applied more generally to other cell lines and experimental conditions to predict these important timescales