introduction one of the important problems that most of the metropolitans encounter with is natural disasters. earthquake is a main natural disaster. annually 27 sever earthquakes are happened by nineteen thousands killed and twenty six homeless. in recent report of united nations planning office in 2003, iran has had the first position in number of earthquakes with severity higher than 5.5 ric...

Metal Plate Shear Walls (MPSWs) represent an effective, practical and economical system for the seismic protection of existing RC framed buildings. They consist of one or more metallic thin plates, bolted or welded to a stiff steel frame, which are installed in the bays of RC framed structures. A case study of an existing RC residential 5-storey building, designed between the ‘60s and ‘70s of t...

Purpose: There is lack of evidence on the effects of health-promoting programmes among adolescents. Health behaviour models and studies seldom compare the underlying factors of unhealthy behaviours between different adolescent age groups. The main objective of this study was to investigate factors including sociodemographic parameters that were associated with vulnerability to health-damaging b...

Bridges are potentially one of the most seismically vulnerable structures in the highway system during earthquake events. It is known that the seismic performance of transportation systems plays a key role in the post-earthquake emergency management. Hence, it is necessary to evaluate both physical and functional aspects of bridge structures. The physical aspects of the seismic performance...

Text: Recently, Minagawa proposed a knowledge refinement method for crack diagnostic expert system. The inference engine was constructed for a reciprocal network based on min-max composition algorithm. The knowledge refinement function was installed into the engine by using the concept of back propagation algorithm. First the inference and refinement method are applied to the rule-base system f...

This paper examines the hypothesis that corporatist intermediation by party governments facilitates incomes policy formation and is effective in reaching agreements between employers and trade unions as well. A social democratic party in government would positively enhance this process. Investigating this for the Netherlands between –, two puzzles emerge. The first puzzle is that coalit...

We investigate the incentives behind investments by competing companies in discovery of their security vulnerabilities and sharing of their findings. Specifically, we consider a game between competing firms that utilise a common platform in their systems. The game consists of two stages: firms must decide how much to invest in researching vulnerabilities, and thereafter, how much of their findi...

This article analyzes the relationship between organizational memory and forgetfulness in the generation of operational vulnerabilities, based on a case study carried out with a highly specialized technical team from a multinational company of the automotive sector. The article starts with the presentation of the complexity context of the Brazilian automotive sector in the last decades. It then...

BACKGROUND The research on Postpartum Depression (PPD) to date suggests that there is a knowledge gap regarding women's perception of their partners' role as carer and care activities they perform. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to describe women's understanding of their partners' or husbands' involvement in the midst of PPD. METHODS This study used interview data from a larger stud...