Experimental seismic shear force amplification in scaled RC cantilever shear walls with base irregularities

RC structural slender walls under large seismic excitation are expected to reach base moment capacity mainly affected by the first vibration mode. However, the base shear could be affected by higher modes once yielding in flexure has occurred, which might result in base shear underestimation in linear design. In this work, an experimental program is carried out on five RC rectangular walls 1:10 scaled. All five specimens considered irregularities at base, common in construction and one specimen did not consider shear reinforcement or boundary detailing. Tests are carried on a unidirectional shaking table and excitation is based on two Chile earthquake records with different intensities. Damage is concentrated at the wall base for all specimens; primary due to flexure with some participation of shear. For one of the records an average amplification of 1.3 is obtained, and a decrease in height of the resultant equivalent lateral force closes to 0.4 h_w. By increasing the intensity of the input record, amplification grows to an average of 1.7, while it decreases drastically when subjected to input records with low frequency content. No significant difference is observed in shear amplification in specimens with a base central opening, nor with setback, even though the cracking and failure mode was different for such specimens. Ductility demand shows no correlation when two different earthquakes are considered, whereas the frequency content and Arias intensity (I_a) of the input record directly affected the shear amplification.     

Brazilian spatial dynamics in the long term (1872–2000): “path dependency” or “reversal of fortune”?

This paper analyzes the spatial dynamics of Brazilian regional inequalities between 1872 and 2000 using contemporary tools. The first part of the paper provides new estimates of income per capita in 1872 by municipality using census and electoral information on income by occupation. The level of analysis is the Minimum Comparable Areas 1872–2000 developed by Reis et al. (áreas mínimas comparáveis para os períodos intercensitários de 1872 a 2000, 2007). These areas are the least aggregation of adjacent municipalities required to allow consistent geographic area comparisons between census years. In the second section of the paper, Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, Markov chains and stochastic kernel techniques (spatially conditioned) are applied to the dataset. The results suggest that, in broad terms, the spatial pattern of income distribution in Brazil during that period of time has remained stable.     

Analysis of soil drying incorporating a constitutive model for curling

This paper focuses on the shrinkage behavior of soil specimens involving sand, kaolinite, and kaolinite/sand mixtures subjected to desiccation under controlled conditions. Both, free and restrained shrinkage conditions are studied. The experiments show that pure soils do not curl upon unrestrained shrinkage; however, (under the same conditions) kaolinite/sand mixtures exhibited a marked curling. Furthermore, the mixture with the higher sand content broke through the middle of the sample after displaying a significant curling. Soils subjected to restricted shrinkage developed cracks with slight curling. To simulate the observed behavior, a mechanical model able to reproduce the detachment of the soil sample from the mold is proposed in this work and implemented in a fully coupled hydro-mechanical finite-element code. It is concluded that suction and differential shrinkage are key factors influencing the curling behavior of soils. The proposed framework was able to satisfactorily explain and reproduce the different stages and features of soil behavior observed in the experiments.

     

Hydrodynamic and turbulent motions in the galactic disk,II

From a comparative study between stellar and gas data it is seen that turbulent and hydrodynamic motions in the Galaxy are common to both types of materials:

1. Galactic clusters have sizes and intrinsic dispersions compatible with the modified form of the Kolmogorov law seen in molecular clouds: undimensional velocities σ(km s^?1)=0.54d ^0.38 (pc). This indicates that ‘typic’ clusters were born from ‘typic’ dark clouds as these of the Lynds's catalogue (diametersd<10 pc, dispersions σ<1.5 km s^?1 hydrogen densitiesn _H>200 atom cm^?3). These clouds have mass enough to form galactic clusters (1000–3000M _⊙).
2. The cluster formation is related to the supersonic range of the Kolmogorov relationship σ(d>1 pc) while the AFGKM stars are related to the subsonic range of the same relationship σ(d<0.3 pc), the intermediate transition zone is probably related to OB stars and/or trapezia.
3. The effects of the magnetic fields in the clouds are also discussed. It seems to be that in the clouds the magnetic energy does not exceed the kinetic energy (proportional toσ ²(d)) and that this determinates the freezing criteria. The hypotheses introduced here can be checked with 21 cm Zeeman splitting.
4. Low-density globular clusters are also coherent with the Kolmogorov relationship. Some hypotheses about their origin and the type of clouds where they were born are discussed. This last part of the study lets open the possibility of further studies about evolution of globular clusters.

     

Efficacy of Coagulants and Ballast Compounds in Removal of Cyanobacteria (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Microcystis</Emphasis>) from Water of the Tropical Lagoon Jacarepaguá (Rio de Janeiro,Brazil)

Eutrophication is considered the most important water quality problem in freshwaters and coastal waters worldwide promoting frequent occurrence of blooms of potentially toxic cyanobacteria. Removal of cyanobacteria from the water column using a combination of coagulant and ballast is a promising technique for mitigation and an alternative to the use of algaecides. In laboratory, we tested experimentally the efficiency of two coagulants, polyaluminium chloride (PAC) and chitosan (made of shrimp shells), alone and combined with two ballasts: red soil (RS) and the own lagoon sediment, to remove natural populations of cyanobacteria, from an urban brackish coastal lagoon. PAC was a very effective coagulant when applied at low doses (≤8 mg Al L^?1) and settled the cyanobacteria, while at high doses (≥16 mg Al L^?1) large flocks aggregated in the top of test tubes. In contrast, chitosan was not able to form flocks, even in high doses (>16 mg L^?1) and did not efficiently settle down cyanobacteria when combined with ballast. The RS itself removed 33–47 % of the cyanobacteria. This removal was strongly enhanced when combined with PAC in a dose-dependent matter; 8 mg Al L^?1 was considered the best dose to be applied. The lagoon sediment alone did not promote any settling of cyanobacteria but removal was high when combined with PAC. Combined coagulant and ballast seems a very efficient, cheap, fast and safe curative measure to lessen the harmful cyanobacteria bloom nuisance in periods when particularly needed, such as around the 2016 Olympics in Jacarepaguá Lagoon.     

Exploiting historical rainfall and landslide data in a spatial database for the derivation of critical rainfall thresholds

Critical rainfall thresholds for landslides are powerful tools for preventing landslide hazard. The thresholds are commonly estimated empirically starting from rainfall events that triggered landslides in the past. The creation of the appropriate rainfall–landslide database is one of the main efforts in this approach. In fact, an accurate agreement between the landslide and rainfall information, in terms of location and timing, is essential in order to correctly estimate the rainfall–landslide relationships. A further issue is taking into account the average moisture conditions prior the triggering event, which reasonably may be crucial in determining the sufficient amount of precipitation. In this context, the aim of this paper is exploiting historical landslide and rainfall data in a spatial database for the derivation of critical rainfall thresholds for landslide occurrence in Sicily, southern Italy. The hourly rainfall events that caused landslides occurred in the twentieth century were specifically identified and reconstructed. A procedure was proposed to automatically convert rain guages charts recorded on paper tape into digital format and then to provide the cumulative rainfall hyetograph in digital format. This procedure is based on a segmentation followed by signal recognition techniques which allow to digitalize and to recognize the hyetograph automatically. The role of rainfall prior to the landslide events was taken into account by including in the analysis the rainfall occurred 5, 15 and 30 days before each landslide. Finally, cumulated rainfall duration thresholds for different exceedance probability levels were determined. The obtained thresholds resulted in agreement with the regional curves proposed by other authors for the same area; antecedent rainfall turned out to be particularly important in triggering landslides.     

Regularized sparse‐grid geometric sampling for uncertainty analysis in non‐linear inverse problems

This paper introduces an efficiency improvement to the sparse‐grid geometric sampling methodology for assessing uncertainty in non‐linear geophysical inverse problems. Traditional sparse‐grid geometric sampling works by sampling in a reduced‐dimension parameter space bounded by a feasible polytope, e.g., a generalization of a polygon to dimension above two. The feasible polytope is approximated by a hypercube. When the polytope is very irregular, the hypercube can be a poor approximation leading to computational inefficiency in sampling. We show how the polytope can be regularized using a rotation and scaling based on principal component analysis. This simple regularization helps to increase the efficiency of the sampling and by extension the computational complexity of the uncertainty solution. We demonstrate this on two synthetic 1D examples related to controlled‐source electromagnetic and amplitude versus offset inversion. The results show an improvement of about 50% in the performance of the proposed methodology when compared with the traditional one. However, as the amplitude versus offset example shows, the differences in the efficiency of the proposed methodology are very likely to be dependent on the shape and complexity of the original polytope. However, it is necessary to pursue further investigations on the regularization of the original polytope in order to fully understand when a simple regularization step based on rotation and scaling is enough.     

Denudation and retreat of the Serra do Mar escarpment in southern Brazil derived from in situ‐produced 10Be concentration in river sediment

The Serra do Mar escarpment, located along the southeastern coast of Brazil, is a high‐elevation passive margin escarpment. This escarpment evolved from the denudation of granites, migmatites and gneisses. The granites outcrop in the form of a ridge along the escarpment crest, due to its differential erosion (‘sugarloaf’ hills) from the surrounding lithologies. Several studies suggest that the passive margin escarpments are actively retreating toward the interior of the continent. However, no prior study has calculated the long‐term denudation rates of Serra do Mar to test this hypothesis. In this study, we measured the in situ‐produced ¹⁰Be concentration in fluvial sediments to quantify the catchment‐wide long‐term denudation rates of the Serra do Mar escarpment in southern Brazil. We sampled the fluvial sediments from ten watersheds that drain both sides of the escarpment. The average long‐term denudation rate of the oceanic side is between 2.1‐ and 2.6‐fold higher than the rate of the continental side: 26.04 ± 1.88 mm ka^‐1 (integrating over between 15.8 ka^‐1 and 46.6 ka^‐1) and 11.10 ± 0.37 mm ka^‐1 (integrating over between 52.9 ka^‐1 and 85.4 ka^‐1), respectively. These rates indicate that the coastal base level is controlling the escarpment retreat toward the continental high lands, which is consistent with observations made at other high‐elevation passive margins around the globe. The results also demonstrate the differential erosion along the Serra do Mar escarpment in southern Brazil during the Quaternary, where drainages over granites had lower average denudation rates in comparison with those over migmatites and gneisses. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the ocean‐facing catchments have been eroded more intensely than those facing the continent. The results also reveal that drainage over the granites decreases the average denudation rates of the ocean‐facing catchments and the ‘sugarloaf’ hills therefore are natural barriers that slowly retreat once they are exhumed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Methods for estimating the velocities of the Brazil Current in the pre-salt reservoir area off southeast Brazil (23∘ S–26∘ S)

The Brazil Current (BC) is likely the least observed and investigated subtropical western boundary current in the world. This study proposes a simple and systematic methodology to estimate quasi-synoptic cross-sectional speeds of the BC within the Santos Basin (23^° S–26^° S) based on the dynamic method using several combinations of data: Conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD), temperature profiles, CTD and vessel-mounted Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (VMADCP), and temperature profiles and VMADCP. All of the geostrophic estimates agree well with lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (LADCP) velocity observations and yield volume transports of -5.56 ±1.31 and 2.50 ±1.01 Sv for the BC and the Intermediate Western Boundary Current (IWBC), respectively. The LADCP data revealed that the BC flows southwestward and is ～100 km wide, 500 m deep, and has a volume transport of approximately -5.75 ±1.53 Sv and a maximum speed of 0.59 m s^?1. Underneath the BC, the IWBC flows northeastward and has a vertical extent of approximately 1,300 m, a width of ～60 km, a maximum velocity of ～0.22 m s?¹, and a volume transport of 4.11 ± 2.01 Sv. Our analysis indicates that in the absence of the observed velocities, the isopycnal (σ ₀) of 26.82 kg m^?3 (～500 dbar) is an adequate level of no motion for use in geostrophic calculations. Additionally, a simple linear relationship between the temperature and the specific volume anomaly can be used for a reliable first estimate of the BC-IWBC system in temperature-only transects.     

Behaviour of hatchery‐reared and wild‐caught 4th and 5th stage American lobsters,Homarus americanus

Behavioural deficiencies in 4th and 5th stage hatchery‐reared lobsters were examined using time budget analysis and predator trials. Hatchery‐reared 4th stage lobsters were found to behave differently than wild‐caught lobsters and differences existed between hatchery‐reared lobsters from different sources. Local hatchery‐reared 4th stage lobsters spent less time on shelter and suffered higher predator rates in laboratory trials than both wild‐caught 4th stage and lobsters reared in a hatchery in Maine. Fifth stage hatchery‐reared lobsters spent significantly more time in shelter than their wild‐caught counterparts. These differences may be attributable to the lack of development of proper predator‐avoidance behaviour and need to be understood and corrected to maximise the effect of enhancement projects.