Precast post-tensioned segmental (PPS) bridge piers mitigate global and local damages of structures through natural hinges (joints between their segments) rocking motion segments. The application the PPS is currently growing in Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) where segments are manufactured offsite with higher quality, assembled onsite a short time. Structural vulnerability analysis very ...

Within the process of plot development, authors create a complete story universe and develop the traits of its inhabitants. The inherit complexity of the story universe only adumbrates in the storyline, but it is crucial for its attractiveness and emotional impact. Interactive storytelling systems exploit the power of the author’s imagination by generating a variety of plots from a rich story u...

As a foundation for the definition of bidirectional protocol mappings between the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), this document specifies the architectural assumptions underlying such mappings as well as the mapping of addresses and error conditions.

Contaminated sediment management is complex and multivariate, involving a careful balance of science, politics and economics. As is true for most such complex issues, there is not a single correct way to address a problem, but rather the approach should be driven by the ecological, political and economic goals of all interested parties. However, because the choices made have far-reaching implic...

This paper investigates the incentive effects of automobile insurance, compulsory insurance laws, and no-fault liability laws on driver behavior and traffic fatalities. We analyze a panel of 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia for 1970–98, a period in which many states adopted compulsory insurance regulations and/or nofault laws. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find evidenc...

The core-based design style of integrated circuits (ICs) helps to manage the development challenges brought by the ever increasing complexity of integrated systems and the ever tighter time-to-market. Nevertheless, test-related problems are still far away from having a unitary and satisfactory solution, especially in the system on a chip (SOC) context. For the test of ICs two reference approach...

After Northridge (1994) and Kobe (1995) earthquakes, several studies have been conducted to improve the seismic performance of steel structures. In this investigation, new steel moment-resisting connections (FSFN) developed by the authors, were studied by the non-linear numerical analysis. These connections were single-sided beam-to-column assemblies that are representative of exterior beam-to-...

We present a general method for fault localization based on abstracting over program traces, and a tool that implements the method using Ernst’s notion of potential invariants. Our experiments so far have been unsatisfactory, suggesting that further research is needed before invariants can be used to locate faults.

The society is moving away from central mainframe based computing to network based computing to achieve increased performance, sharing of resources, increased extendibility and reliability, availability and fault tolerance[1]. Developing effective distributed systems which are portable, simple, expressive and secured are difficult. Verifying the correctness of such systems is far more challenging.