1,720,961 research outputs found
How Can Vernacular Construction Techniques Sustain Earthquakes: The Case of the Bhatar Buildings
Full text linkAfter the 2005 M7.6 Kashmir earthquake (Pakistan), field observations reported that several buildings manufactured with local traditional techniques resisted well to that strong seismic event. In this paper, the attention is focused on a typical vernacular construction technique commonly named as “Bhatar,” still practiced in the Himalayan regions of India and Pakistan. It is grounded upon the “timber lacing” or “timber reinforcement masonry” concept, i.e., the combination of dry-stacked loose stones with timber beams to increase the wall confinement. Despite its good seismic performances, it has still not been deeply studied from a structural engineering point of view. This paper represents a first attempt to fill this gap. It presents a full analytical study on the structural behavior of a simple one-storey building unit characterized by a 3.6 m × 3.6 m square plan covered by a heavy wooden roof with 20-cm-thick earth coverage, in order to investigate its response under gravity and seismic inertial loadings. Materials properties, static analysis, and seismic analysis are discussed. In detail, Shorea Robusta wood and limestone rocks are identified as the most used construction materials for the Bhatar buildings. The Barton’s model is applied to characterize the shear strength of the rubble stone layers in the wall. Static analysis reveals that normal stresses at the ground level are around 92 kPa, which can be considered acceptable for common soils. With respect to earthquake, the Bhatar technique can absorb wall cracking and distortion mechanisms, and can dissipate energy through friction between stones. Under the assumption of no vertical ground motion, the acceleration which activates in-plane sliding mechanisms is found to be around 0.5 g, being dependent on the interface friction between adjacent layers. Some preliminary considerations about the out-of-plane seismic behavior are also provided concerning overturning and bending failure mechanisms. The results are based on assumptions taken by several authors and have not been verified with experimental tests. Nevertheless, some practical suggestions can be derived to improve the seismic shear strength and to ensure friction also in the case of significant vertical component of earthquake ground motions
Seismic Behavior of One-Storey Gabion-Box Walls Buildings
Full text linkGabion-boxes, made with steel wire mesh and filled with stones of appropriated size, are normally stacked up one into another to form a retaining wall. Given their reduced costs and the easy availability of their constituting materials, gabion-box walls have been extensively used in developing countries (such as Nepal) also to realize simple one-storey residential buildings. In recent years, many of these structures have been subjected to several strong earthquakes and have shown a good seismic behavior, even if they have never been the object of a proper structural design. In the scientific literature, research studies have been developed on gabion-box walls used as retaining systems, but no investigations have been conducted on the performances of gabion-box walls buildings. In this respect, the general objective of this research work is to give a first insight into the static and seismic behavior of such gabion-box walls buildings through analytical considerations and numerical models. In detail, with reference to a typical 5 m × 5 m plan model, this article investigates the in-plane and out-of-plane seismic responses of its constituting walls, by means of simple analytical interpretations and Discrete Element Method numerical simulations. Even if this study should be considered as a starting point and even if the fundamental cellular behavior of the three-dimensional structure has not been fully taken into account, some criticalities have been disclosed and the order of magnitude of the seismic activation load multipliers has been estimated. The out-of-plane collapse mechanism is characterized by multiplier around 0.15, while the in-plane mechanism multiplier depends on the position of the door in the single wall (0.10–0.20), but it can be easily increased with lintel beams placement. The results are based on the assumptions taken by several authors and have not been verified with experimental tests. Nevertheless, some practical suggestions (basically in terms of spacing and construction details, such as vertical connectors and reinforcing steel knots) can be derived to improve the construction in order to ensure a better seismic behavior
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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