Straight tendons in pretensioned members can cause high-tensile stresses in the concrete extreme fibers at end sections because of the absence of the bending stresses due to self-weight and superimposed loads and the dominance of the moment due to prestressing force alone. Accordingly, the concrete tensile stresses at the ends of a member prestressed with straight tendons may limit the service load capacity of the member. It is therefore important to establish limiting zone in the concrete section within which the prestressing force can be applied without causing tension in the extreme concrete fibers. Two practical methods are available to reduce the stresses at the end sections due to the prestressing force. The first method based

A variety of liquid crystals comprising heterocyclics 1,3,4-oxadiazol ring [III], aminooxazol [IV]a, and aminothiazol [IV]b were synthesized through a number of steps, beginning of the reaction of 3, 3'- dimethyl - [1, 1'-biphenyl] -4, 4'- diamin, ethyl monochloroacetate and sodium acetate to synthesize diacetate compound[I]. The diester reacted with hydrazine hydrate(N2H4-H2O) to give dihydrazide compound [II], then reacted with Pyruvic acid and phosphorous oxychloride to produce diketone compound [III]. The last compound was reacted with urea and thiourea to give aminooxazol and aminothiazol respectively. The synthesized compounds actually characterized and determined the structures by melting points, FT-IR and 1H-NMR spectroscopies. By u

Some new 2,5-disubsituted-1,3,4-oxadiazole derivatives with azo group were synthesized by known reactions sequence . The structure of the synthesized compounds were confirmed by physical and spectral means .

Frustrated Total Internal Reflection FTIR phenomenon is manifested employing Newton‟s rings setup generated via a coherent light beam of a laser diode ( . All concentric bright and dark rings, except the central bright spot, were noticed to recede (disappear) when the incident angle exceeded the critical angle of 41o.
It was also shown that the current setup has proven its applicability for other tests and can give convenient results that conform with theory. Neither the concept nor the design is beyond what can be realized in an undergraduate laboratory. However, technical improvements in mounting the prism - lens may be advisable. As an extension of the experiments, the effect can be studied using hollow prism filled with liquids

Objectives: Recently, there have been important advances in the clinical application of targeted hybrid near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent-radioactive tracers. ICG-99mTc-nanocolloid, for example, is already being used by some centres for sentinel lymph node biopsy in head and neck cancer. The radioactive component allows imaging at depths which would not be possible with NIR alone and, once exposed, the NIR fluorescence reporter can be imaged at very high resolution. Gamma detection is currently carried out with a separate hand-held gamma camera or with a non-imaging probe. Visualisation of NIR fluorescence during surgery requires a dedicated NIR camera, several of which are available commercially. We describe a novel hand-held hybrid NIR-gamm

Number theorists believe that primes play a central role in Number theory and that solving problems related to primes could lead to the resolution of many other unsolved conjectures, including the prime k-tuples conjecture. This paper aims to demonstrate the existence of this conjecture for admissible k-tuples in a positive proportion. The authors achieved this by refining the methods of “Goldston, Pintz and Yildirim” and “James Maynard” for studying bounded gaps between primes and prime k-tuples. These refinements enabled to overcome the previous limitations and restrictions and to show that for a positive proportion of admissible k-tuples, there is the existence of the prime k-tuples conjecture holding for each “k”. The sig

Here we determined the structure of a cold active family IV esterase (EstN7) cloned from Bacillus cohnii strain N1. EstN7 is a dimer with a classical α/β hydrolase fold. It has an acidic surface that is thought to play a role in cold-adaption by retaining solvation under changed water solvent entropy at lower temperatures. The conformation of the functionally important cap region is significantly different to EstN7's closest relatives, forming a bridge-like structure with reduced helical content providing greater access to the active site through more than one substrate access tunnel. However, dynamics do not appear to play a major role in cold adaption. Molecular dyn

Triticale is a hybrid of wheat and rye grown for use as animal feed. In Florida, due to its soft coat, triticale is highly vulnerable to Sitophilus oryzae L. (rice weevil) and there is interest in development of methods to detect early-instar larvae so that infestations can be targeted before they become economically damaging. The objective of this study was to develop prediction models of the infestation degree for triticale seed infested with rice weevils of different growth stages. Spectral signatures were tested as a method to detect rice weevils in triticale seed. Groups of seeds at 11 different levels (degrees) of infestation, 0–62%, were obtained by combining different ratios of infested and uninfested seeds. A spectrophotometer wa