Along with the economic and technological developments of the past decades, obesity has become a growing public health problem. This study empirically investigates whether the large and widespread increases in body-mass index (BMI) that have been observed around the world are related to economic freedom, as measured and defined by the Economic Freedom of the World Index. Economic freedom is par...

Tuned mass damper (TMD) have been studied and installed in structures extensively to protect the structures against lateral loads. Multiple tuned mass dampers (MTMDs) which include a number of TMDs with different parameters have been proposed for improving the performance of single TMDs. When the structural system is considered as multiple degrees of freedom (MDOF) and implemented with MTMDs, t...

In this paper, the dynamic responses of cracked beams under different moving forces, including moving load, moving mass, moving oscillator, and four-degrees-of-freedom moving system, are investigated. Structural elements such as beams are designed to withstand the predicted loads, but unfortunately, they are always exposed to unpredictable damage such as cracks. Several factors may cause these ...

The Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) designed at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Canterbury is in an early stage of development. With the design of the AUV completed, the primary focus now is to design control software. The control software has to be able to stabilize the vehicle at a desired position and let the vehicle follow a desired trajectory within a reasonabl...

We consider the Salam-Weinberg theory by introducing tensor gauge fields. When these fields are coupled in a topological way with the vector ones, the resulting system constitutes an alternative mechanism of mass generation for vector fields without the presence of Higgs bosons. We show that these masses are in agreement with the ones obtained by means of the spontaneous symmetry breaking. 1 1....