Fault bars are common stress-induced feather abnormalities that could produce feather damage thus reducing flight performance. For that reason, it has been hypothesized that birds may have evolved adaptive strategies that reduce the costs of fault bars (the ‘fault bar allocation hypothesis’). An untested prediction of this hypothesis is that fault bars in important feathers for flight (wing and...

Unreinforced masonry (URM) walls are prone to failure when subjected to out-of-plane loads caused by earthquakes or high wind pressures. In this context, fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials may be a solution to solve or lessen the effects of this overloading. This paper describes an experimental program dealing with the flexural behavior of nine concrete URM walls strengthened with glass F...

We explain some limitations of regularization theory of early vision and formulate visual representation and learning as statistical mechanics of surfaces with defects. In this new paradigm, pinning energy consists of a set of local oriented regularization fields. To reconstruct a D dimensional surface, known data, generally a set of patches of 0, I,. . . , D I dimensions, are taken as defects ...

A wide-spread belief that nested bars enhance gas inflow to the galactic centre has recently been contradicted by dynamical models in which inner bars seem to prohibit such inflow. Can the existing models of dynamically possible double bars be modified to enable strong inflow in the secondary bar? I present here simple dynamical arguments which imply that in general, double bars in resonant cou...

A set of vertical bars planted on given points of a horizontal line defines a fence composed of the quadrilaterals bounded by successive bars. A set of bars in the plane, each having one endpoint at the origin, defines an umbrella composed of the triangles bounded by successive bars. Given a collection of bars, we study how to use them to build the fence or the umbrella of maximum total area. W...

The bond characteristics of deformed reinforcing bars are investigated ctnd design equations for development and splice lengths are obtained with the goal of improving the bond strength of steel reinforcing bars to concrete. The research includes both experimental and analytical studies. The experimental studies involved evaluating the performance of deformed steel reinforcing bars with differe...

vetiver grass is known to survive under diverse soil and water conditions. in order to test its potential of salinity and aridity tolerance ability, the effect of salinity and aridity stress on the growth of the vetiveria zizanioides was studied by growing plants in arid soils that receiving salinity stress. the experiment was conducted in a greenhouse, arrangement in a completely randomized de...

[1] In this study we investigate forced bars that form in a channel with periodic width variations. A depth-averaged two-dimensional (2-D) model incorporating a simplified correction for the helical flows induced by streamline curvature is used to obtain analytical solution of bed deformation. Flume experiments are conducted to verify the model results. With the correction included, the 2-D mod...

ristina Hidalgo Carcedo, Alberto Luini, Daniela Corda, and colleagues (Consorzio Mario Negri Sud, Santa Maria Imbaro, Italy) suggest that Golgi membranes are chopped up by a protein called BARS before mitosis can occur. Their cell culture studies contrast, however, with results from genetic knock-out experiments. BARS is closely related to the CtBP family of transcriptional repressors needed fo...

This paper presents data from a study that collected observational data, survey data, and breath samples to estimate blood alcohol concentrations (BrAC) from patrons attending 30 bars. The study examines: (1) drinking behavior and settings prior to going to a bar; (2) characteristics of the bar where respondents are drinking; (3) person and environmental predictors of BrAC change (entrance to e...