Salient features of lightweight aggregate concrete (LAC) include noticeable fire resistance, high strength-to-weight ratio, and low magnitude dead loads. Further, LAC has a cost, eases construction practices, possesses an environment-friendly nature. On the downside, substandard mechanical properties in comparison to normal concrete. Natural fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs) have shown their pot...

Construction and demolition waste are one of the major streams in world. Aggregates must be used significant quantities during road construction maintenance as base sub-base materials. Government local businesses promoting use recycled material old pavement andconstruction due to high cost virgin aggregates. Concrete, subgrade, railroad ballast materials can all made from concrete aggregate (RC...

Bacterial biofilms are usually assumed to originate from individual cells deposited on a surface. However, many biofilm-forming bacteria tend to aggregate in the planktonic phase so that it is possible that many natural and infectious biofilms originate wholly or partially from pre-formed cell aggregates. Here, we use agent-based computer simulations to investigate the role of pre-formed aggreg...

Construction and Demolition (C&D) wastes contribute the highest percentage of wastes worldwide (75%). Furthermore, ceramic materials contribute the highest percentage of wastes within the C&D wastes (54%). The current option for disposal of ceramic wastes is landfill. This is due to unavailability of standards, avoidance of risk, lack of knowledge and experience in using ceramic wastes in const...

In this paper, we discuss amyloidogenic proteins, their misfolding, resulting structures, and interactions with membranes, which lead to membrane damage and subsequent cell death. Many of these proteins are implicated in serious illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Misfolding of amyloidogenic proteins leads to the formation of polymorphic oligomers and fibrils. Oligome...

Alzheimer's disease is one of the devastating illnesses mankind is facing in the 21st century. The main pathogenic event in Alzheimer's disease is believed to be the aggregation of the β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides into toxic aggregates. Molecules that interfere with this process may act as therapeutic agents for the treatment of the disease. Use of recognition unit based peptidomimetics as inhibitor...

There is an increasing requirement for the production of concrete globally, due to rapid infrastructure development, leading to shortage in the availability of raw materials, which in turn increase its costs. At the same time, many waste materials are also produced as by-products from various industries and construction sites, the disposal of which cause a major problem. Thus it becomes necessa...

Biological systems are characterized by compartmentalization from the subcellular to the tissue level, and thus reactions in small volumes are ubiquitous in living systems. Under such conditions, statistical number fluctuations, which are commonly negligible in bulk reactions, can become dominant and lead to stochastic behavior. We present here a stochastic model of protein filament formation i...

Self-consolidating concrete (SCC) has been developed for use in precast prestressed concrete bridge girders in the state of Minnesota. Locally available materials were used with a number of cementitious and filler materials, including ASTM Type III cement, Class C fly ash, and blast furnace slag. SCC was successfully proportioned with both natural river gravels and crushed stone as coarse aggre...

As they are not subjected to natural selection process, de novo designed proteins usually fold in a manner different from natural proteins. Recently, a de novo designed mini-protein DS119, with a βαβ motif and 36 amino acids, has folded unusually slowly in experiments, and transient dimers have been detected in the folding process. Here, by means of all-atom replica exchange molecular dynamics ...