This study examines buyers and nonbuyers of long-term care insurance. The findings show that consumers purchased more comprehensive products in 1994-95 than they did in 1990, and that they appeared to get better value for the premium dollar. While annual sales are increasing at a rate of 25%, the market for long-term care insurance remains small, and many of the market barriers that existed fou...

Xyloglucan is widely believed to function as a tether between cellulose microfibrils in the primary cell wall, limiting cell enlargement by restricting the ability of microfibrils to separate laterally. To test the biomechanical predictions of this "tethered network" model, we assessed the ability of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) hypocotyl walls to undergo creep (long-term, irreversible extension)...

Shape optimization is an effective tool for designing free-form structures a variety of design objectives. Aiming at long-term structural performance, computational framework presented performing shape shells while considering material creep. The creep model incorporated into gradient-based algorithm using viscoelastic finite element model. Non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) employed to para...

The Brawley fault zone (BFZ) and the Brawley Seismic Zone constitute the principal transfer zone accommodating strain between the San Andreas and Imperial faults in southernmost California. The BFZ ruptured along with the Imperial fault in the 1940 Mw 6.9 and the 1979 Mw 6.4 earthquakes, although in each case only minor slip apparently occurred on the BFZ; several other episodes of slip and cre...

Existing design guidelines for concrete hinges consider bending-induced tensile cracking, but the structural behavior is oversimplified to be time-independent. This is the motivation to study creep and bending-induced tensile cracking of initially monolithic concrete hinges systematically. Material tests on plain concrete specimens and structural tests on marginally reinforced concrete hinges a...

An instrument for measuring the creep response of a material maintained under a controlled environment of temperature and vapor pressure is described. The temperature range of the instrument is 20-250 degrees C while the range of vapor pressure is 0-1 atm. Data are presented for tests conducted on this instrument with Nafion, a perfluorinated ionomer developed by DuPont and used as a membrane i...

High operating temperatures can have very deleterious effects on the long-term performance of high-Cr, creep-resistant steels used, for example, in the structural components of power plants. For the popular creep-resistant steel X20CrMoV12.1 we analysed the processes of carbide growth using a variety of analytical techniques: transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and diffraction (TED), scannin...