The loss of water from hardened concrete (stored in unsaturated air) causes drying shrinkage. Shrinkage of hardened concrete is influenced by various factors in a similar manner to creep under drying conditions. High cementitious materials content, particularly fine particles will reduce bleeding, but increase long term drying shrinkage. (The time of sawing the joints for induced cracking is no...

Spatially resolved measurement of creep deformation across weldments at high temperature cannot be achieved using standard extensometry approaches. In this investigation, a Digital Image Correlation (DIC) based system has been developed for long-term high-temperature creep strain measurement in order to characterise the material deformation behaviour of separate regions of a multi-pass weld. Th...

Water plays an important role in geological processes. Providing constraints on what may influence the distribution of aqueous fluids is thus crucial to understanding how water impacts Earth's geodynamics. Here we demonstrate that ductile flow exerts a dynamic control on water-rich fluid circulation in mantle shear zones. Based on amphibole distribution and using dislocation slip-systems as a p...

Nanoscale time-dependent mechanical-electrical coupled behavior of single crystal ZnO nanorods was systematically explored, which is essential for accessing the long-term reliability of the ZnO nanorod-based flexible devices. A series of compression creep tests combined with in-situ electrical measurement was performed on vertically-grown single crystal ZnO nanorods. Continuous measurement of t...

introduction: stress is associated with neurological and cognitive disorders. it has been suggested that doxepin, in addition to its influence on the content of neurotransmitters, has probable neuroprotective effects as well. therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of doxepin on synaptic plasticity and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (bdnf) gene expression in the rat h...

long-term potentiation (ltp) is a reflection of synaptic plasticity that induced by specific patterns of synaptic activity and has an important role in learning and memory. the first clue of the potential role of glutamate receptors in ltp was in 1991 with the observation that the mglur agonists 1-amino-1, 3-cyclopentanedicarboxylic acid (acpd), increased ltp. studies have shown that acpd induc...

The term synaptic plasticity points to a series of persistent changes related to the activity of synapses. Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a reflection of synaptic plasticity that has an important role in learning and memory. LTP is a long-lasting increase of synaptic activity due to enhancement of excitatory synaptic transmission after a high-frequency train of electrical stimulations. Differe...

BACKGROUND This study examines the effects of long-term care insurance (LTCI) on the length of stay (LoS) of senior citizens under the national health insurance of Korea. METHODS The subjects include 3,903,448 people aged 65 and over as of July 1, 2008 when the LTCI was introduced in Korea. This study uses their panel data which traced the records of medical services and LTCI services for the...

We demonstrate the existence of multiple dimensions of private information in the long-term care insurance market. Two types of people purchase insurance: individuals with private information that they are high risk and individuals with private information that they have strong taste for insurance. Ex post, the former are higher risk than insurance companies expect, while the latter are lower r...