The addition of lead to normal human blood was previously found to cause a decrease in erythrocyte osmotic fragility in vitro. The mechanism of the decreased osmotic fragility caused by lead has not been completely clarified, but the following hypothesis has been proposed. Lead causes a leakage of water from erythrocytes, thus more water can enter the cell before haemolysis occurs. There has be...

When a liquid is cooled below its melting temperature, it usually crystallizes. However, if the quenching rate is fast enough, the system may remain in a disordered state, progressively losing its fluidity upon further cooling. When the time needed for the rearrangement of the local atomic structure reaches approximately 100 seconds, the system becomes "solid" for any practical purpose, and thi...

The improved empirical fragility model addresses statistical dependence among observations of seismic performances, which arises from common but unknown factors influencing the observations. The proposed model accounts for this dependence by explicitly including common variables in the formulation of the limit state for individual components. Additionally, the fact that observations of the same...

By studying the pressure dependence of the fragility, it is expected that new horizons will open to understand the relaxation behaviour of supercooled liquids. However, as far as the authors are informed, no study has been performed on pressure dependence of the fragility in bulk metallic glass forming systems. In the present study, such dependence is investigated based on materials properties ...

background: the capacity of human hbaa erythrocytes of non-malarious blood to withstand osmotic stress in the presence of five antimalarial drugs, chloroquine phosphate, quinine, fansidartm, coartemtm and halfantm was studied in vitro. materials and methods: aqueous solutions of four increasing concentrations of the drugs used in this investigation were in the order: 0.2%, 0.4%, 0.6% and 0.8% (...

Growth, History, or Institutions? What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa We explore the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for a wide range of economic, demographic, geographic and istitutional regressors, we find that institutions, and in particular the civil liberties index and the number of revolutions, are the main determinants of fragility, even...

Specialized topoisomerases solve the topological constraints arising when replication forks encounter transcription. We have investigated the contribution of Top2 in S phase transcription. Specifically in S phase, Top2 binds intergenic regions close to transcribed genes. The Top2-bound loci exhibit low nucleosome density and accumulate gammaH2A when Top2 is defective. These intergenic loci asso...

Recent tsunami events have stimulated research activity into tsunami fragility functions which have been largely based on empirical data. However, empirical fragility functions are biased because the influence of earthquake and tsunami damage are difficult to separate. We develop a new theoretical framework to assess the structural performance of a building due to tsunami inundation by drawing ...

Background: People occasionally undergo medical diagnostic X-ray examinations and expose their red blood cells to radiation. Radiation that is generated from medical diagnostic X-ray machines is widely used in medical diagnoses. One of the important parameters is kilo-voltage (kV) that is applied across the X-ray tube in medical diagnostic X-ray machines. Kilo-voltage influences the radiation d...

Fragility curves are very useful in quantifying the physical and economic damage of buildings that have undergone an earthquake. This paper presents the development of analytical fragility curves representative of mid-rise residential structures built with reinforced concrete, taking into account the specific structural characteristics of Algerian buildings. The derivation of the analytical fra...