Data on discontinuities are always necessary for design, characterization and analysis of rock structures. The time honored method of manual measurements with Brunton compass is both time consuming and often inconvenient given issues such as restricted access to measurement areas, introduction of erroneous data due to sampling difficulties and human bias, considerable safety risks since measure...

Polyurethane is enjoying a widespread use as polymer-based waterproof material in civil engineering In the present study we consider temperature-sensitive and moisture-permeable polyurethane (PTPE-PU) characterized by one or more phase transition temperatures (critical temperatures). Near critical temperature, moisture permeability of undergo abrupt changes. The related stability, thermal perfo...

Past earthquakes have demonstrated that old RC bridges may be seismically vulnerable. Bridge responses during the last decades illustrated the necessity of the seismic assessment of bridges especially those which were designed with old codes. In this research an existing concrete bridge representative of the most common bridges in the highway system in Iran are studied. Push over and nonlinear ...

In order to strengthen the prediction of rockburst and inquire the relationship between the rockburst proneness of rock and its surface fractal characteristic, the surface fractal of the rock was studied by fractal method and uniaxial compression test. The change rules of surface fractal of different types of rock were compared by calculating its fractal dimension of rock before experiment and ...

The CC chemokine eotaxin plays a pivotal role in local accumulation of eosinophils. Very little is known about the eotaxin signaling in eosinophils except the activation of the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase family. The p21 G protein Rho and its substrate Rho-associated coiled-coil forming protein kinase (ROCK) regulate the formation of stress fibers and focal adhesions. In the present ...

Any 2-bridge knot in S has a bridge sphere from which any other bridge surface can be obtained by stabilization, meridional stabilization, perturbation and proper isotopy.

Tutte’s famous 5-flow conjecture asserts that every bridgeless graph has a nowhere-zero 5-flow. Seymour proved that every such graph has a nowhere-zero 6-flow. Here we give (two versions of) a new proof of Seymour’s Theorem. Both are roughly equal to Seymour’s in terms of complexity, but they offer an alternative perspective which we hope will be of value.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is characterized by progressive lung scarring, short median survival, and limited therapeutic options, creating great need for new pharmacologic therapies. IPF is thought to result from repetitive environmental injury to the lung epithelium, in the context of aberrant host wound healing responses. Tissue responses to injury fundamentally involve reorganizatio...

Rho-associated kinases (ROCKs) are critical molecules involved in the physiological functions of macrophages, such as chemotaxis and phagocytosis. We demonstrate that macrophage adherence promotes rapid changes in physiological functions that depend on translational upregulation of preformed ROCK-1 mRNA, but not ROCK-2 mRNA. Before adherence, both ROCK mRNAs were present in the cytoplasm of mac...