Fabian Schmidt, Wayne Hu, and Marcos Lima Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology M/C 350-17, Pasadena, California 91125-0001, USA Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and Enrico Fermi Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637-1433, USA Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philade...

The general theory of matching conditions is developed for gravitational theories in two spacetime dimensions. Models inspired from general relativity and from string theory are considered. These conditions are used to study collapsing dust solutions in spacetimes with non-zero cosmological constant, demonstrating how two-dimensional black holes can arise as the endpoint of such collapse proces...

The paper deals with the reliability–based design optimization (RBDO) of concrete gravity dams subjected to earthquake load using subset simulation. The optimization problem is formulated such that the optimal shape of concrete gravity dam described by a number of variables is found by minimizing the total cost of concrete gravity dam for the given target reliability. In order to achieve this p...

Some experimental implications of the recent progress on wave function collapse are calculated. Exact results are derived for the center-of-mass wave function collapse caused by random scatterings and applied to a range of speciic examples. The results show that recently proposed experiments to measure the GRW eeect are likely to fail, since the eeect of naturally occurring scatterings is of th...

Cold collapse of a cluster consisting of small identical clumps, each of which is in equilibrium, is considered. At the beginning the clumps have no relative motion, and then the cluster collapses by its gravity. At the first collapse most of the clumps are destroyed, but some clumps survive. From numerical simulations, we obtained a empirical condition of the number and the size of the clumps ...

Health Assessment Methods (HAM) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) aim to improve the standard of knowledge regarding the safety and maintenance of structures and infrastructure acquiring information about geometrical, mechanical and dynamical characteristics of structures. In earthquake-prone areas, this activity has the double aim of assessing the buildings structural integrity and extrac...

The present-day chemical and dynamical properties of the Milky Way are signatures of the Galaxy's formation and evolution. Using a self consistent chemodynamical evolution code we examine these properties within the currently favoured paradigm for galaxy formation-hierarchical clustering within a CDM cosmology. Our Tree N-body/Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code includes a self-consistent trea...