• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.337-353
• /
• 2018

In previous weak-axis moment connection tests, brittle fracture always initiated near the edge of the beam flange groove weld due to force flow towards the stiffer column flanges, which is the opposite pattern as strong-axis moment connections. As part of the China NSFC (51278061) study, this paper tested two full-scale novel weak-axis reduced beam section moment connections, including one exterior frame connection specimen SJ-1 under beam end monotonic loading and one interior frame joint specimen SJ-2 under column top cyclic loading. Test results showed that these two specimens were able to satisfy the demands of FEMA-267 (1995) or ANSI/AISC 341-10 (2010) without experiencing brittle fracture. A parametric analysis using the finite element software ABAQUS was carried out to better understand the cyclic performance of the novel weak-axis reduced beam section moment connections, and the influence of the distance between skin plate and reduced beam section, a, the length of the reduced beam section, b, and the cutting depth of the reduced beam section, c, on the cyclic performance was analyzed. It was found that increasing three parametric values reasonably is beneficial to forming beam plastic hinges, and increasing the parameter a is conducive to reducing stress concentration of beam flange groove welds while increasing the parameters b and c can only reduce the peak stress of beam flange groove welds. The rules recommended by FEMA350 (2000) are suitable for designing the proposed weak-axis RBS moment connection, and a proven calculation formulation is given to determine the thickness of skin plate, the key components in the proposed weak-axis connections. Based on the experimental and numerical results, a design procedure for the proposed weak-axis RBS moment connections was developed.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.1269-1276
• /
• 2016

Background: Tobacco consumption continues to be the leading cause of preventable deaths globally. The objective of this study was to examine the associaton of selected socio-demographic variables with current tobacco use in five countries that participated in the Phase II Global Adult Tobacco Survey in 2011 - 2012. Materials and Methods: We analysed internationally comparable representative household survey data from 33,482 respondents aged ${\geq}15years$ in Indonesia, Malaysia, Romania, Argentina and Nigeria for determinants of tobacco use within each country. Socio-demographic variables analysed included gender, age, residency, education, wealth index and awareness of smoking health consequences. Current tobacco use was defined as smoking or use of smokeless tobacco daily or occasionally. Results: The overall prevalence of tobacco use varied from 5.5% in Nigeria to 35.7% in Indonesia and was significantly higher among males than females in all five countries. Odds ratios for current tobacco use were significantly higher among males for all countries [with the greatest odds among Indonesian men (OR=67.4, 95% CI: 51.2-88.7)] and among urban dwellers in Romania. The odds of current tobacco use decreased as age increased for all countries except Nigeria where. The reverse was true for Argentina and Nigeria. Significant trends for decreasing tobacco use with increasing educational levels and wealth index were seen in Indonesia, Malaysia and Romania. Significant negative associations between current tobacco use and awareness of adverse health consequences of smoking were found in all countries except Argentina. Conclusions: Males and the socially and economically disadvantaged populations are at the greatest risk of tobacco use. Tobacco control interventions maybe tailored to this segment of population and incorporate educational interventions to increase knowledge of adverse health consequences of smoking.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.1675-1682
• /
• 2012

Aim: The study aim was to determine the frequency with which women decline clinicians' treatment recommendations and variations in this frequency by age, cancer and service descriptors. Design: The study included 36,775 women diagnosed with early invasive breast cancer in 1998-2005 and attending Australian and New Zealand breast surgeons. Rate ratios for declining treatment were examined by descriptor, using bilateral and multiple logistic regression analyses. Proportional hazards regression was used in exploratory analyses of associations with breast cancer death. Results: 3.4% of women declined a recommended treatment of some type, ranging from 2.6% for women under 40 years to 5.8% for those aged 80 years or more, and with parallel increases by age presenting for declining radiotherapy (p<0.001) and axillary surgery (p=0.006). Multiple regression confirmed that common predictors of declining various treatments included low surgeon case load, treatment outside major city centres, and older age. Histological features suggesting a favourable prognosis were often predictive of declining various treatments, although reverse findings also applied with women with positive nodal status being more likely to decline a mastectomy and those with larger tumours more likely to decline chemotherapy. While survival analyses lacked statistical power due to small numbers, higher risks of breast cancer death were suggested, after adjusting for age and conventional clinical risk factors, (1) for women not receiving breast surgery for unstated reasons (RR=2.29; p<0.001); and (2) although not approaching statistical significance $p{\geq}0.200$), for women declining radiotherapy (RR=1.22), a systemic therapy (RR1.11), and more specifically, chemotherapy (RR=1.41). Conclusions: Women have the right to choose their treatments but reasons for declining recommendations require further study to ensure that choices are well informed and clinical outcomes are optimized.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.17 no.9
• /
• pp.4323-4326
• /
• 2016

Background: The cancer mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) has been established as an important measure of health disparities in local and global circumstances. Past work has corroborated a linkage between the colorectal cancer MIR and the World Health Organization (WHO) Health System ranking. The literature further documents many Asian countries having incomplete cancer registries and a lack of comprehensive colorectal cancer screening guidelines. Materials and Methods: The colorectal cancer MIR values for 23 Asian countries were calculated from data obtained from the 2012 GLOBOCAN database. The 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) Health System rankings were used as a proxy for health system infrastructure and responsiveness. A regression equation was calculated with the MIR as the dependent variable and the WHO Health System ranking as the independent variable. Predicted MIR values were next calculated based on the regression results. Actual MIR values that exceeded 0.20 from the predicted MIR were removed as 'divergent' points. The regression equation was then re-plotted. Goodness-of-fit for both regressions was assessed by the R-squared test. Results: Asian countries have a relatively wide colorectal cancer MIR range, from a minimum of 0.24 to a maximum of 0.86. For the full dataset, the adjusted R-squared value for this regression was 0.53. The equation was then used to calculate a predicted MIR, whereby two data points were identified as 'divergent' and removed. The adjusted R-squared for the edited dataset increased to 0.66. Conclusions: Asian countries have a marked range in their colorectal cancer MIR values and there is a strong correlationwith the WHO Health System ranking. These results corroborate the contribution of the MIR as a potentially robust tool in monitoring changes in colorectal cancer care for Asian nations.

• Lingua Humanitatis
• /
• v.6
• /
• pp.51-75
• /
• 2004

Is there a pattern in history? How and why does social change occur? Are we to distinguish between the methods to be employed in the study of man and the study of nature? How does linguistic, or 'philological', knowledge contribute to unearthing historical facts? These are the queries that Vico grappled with throughout his life. Vico, however, was an outsider to the intellectual atmosphere of his own day, dismissed as obscure, speculative, and unsound. Only after his death did he begin to inspire enthusiasm among diverse readers, and as long as we remain concerned with the queries mentioned above, Vico's reflections will come alive with contemporary relevance. Actually he has been regarded as the founder--unrecognized by his contemporaries--of the philosophy of history and as a thinker whose ideas anticipated such later intellectual movements as historicism, pragmatism, existentialism, and structuralism. There are many among modern minds who find Vico fascinating for his view of myth as concrete thought and of an age of myth as a necessary age in the intellectual evolution of the human race. James Joyce, for one, was deeply impressed by Vico's view on myth, on metaphor, on Homer, on language, on psychology, and much else besides. 'My imagination grows when I read Vico,' he once confessed, 'as it doesn't when I read Freud or Jung.' Some philosophers, critics, psychologists, social scientists and even geographers would describe themselves as 'Vichians', sharing the view that Vico was a poet and a lawyer, a platonist and a baconian rolled into one. His refusal to be confined within any one discipline, his imaginative effort to understand different cultures, and his insight in dealing with some fundamental problems in the study of humanity all compel admiration and deserve to be emulated in our age--an age when the split between the literary and the scientific approaches to the understanding of society is widening into a chasm. Vico has left some of his most important ideas underdeveloped or even undeveloped, to be excavated and polished by us afier our own fashion. It is surprising that Vico is still a man of obscure name in the academia of our country, Korea.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.51 no.1
• /
• pp.5-16
• /
• 2018

We investigate the escape of $Ly{\beta}$ from emission nebulae with a significant population of excited hydrogen atoms in the level n = 2, rendering them optically thick in $H{\alpha}$. The transfer of $Ly{\beta}$ line photons in these optically thick regions is complicated by the presence of another scattering channel leading to re-emission of $H{\alpha}$, alternating their identities between $Ly{\beta}$ and $H{\alpha}$. In this work, we develop a Monte Carlo code to simulate the transfer of $Ly{\beta}$ line photons incorporating the scattering channel into $H{\alpha}$. Both $H{\alpha}$ and $Ly{\beta}$ lines are formed through diffusion in frequency space, where a line photon enters the wing regime after a fairly large number of resonance scatterings with hydrogen atoms. Various line profiles of $H{\alpha}$ and $Ly{\beta}$ emergent from our model nebulae are presented. It is argued that the electron temperature is a critical parameter which controls the flux ratio of emergent $Ly{\beta}$ and $H{\alpha}$. Specifically for $T\;=\;3{\times}10^4\;K$ and $H{\alpha}$ line center optical depth $\tau{\alpha}\;=\;10$, the number flux ratio of emergent $Ly{\beta}$ and $H{\alpha}$ is ~ 49 percent, which is quite significant. We propose that the leaking $Ly{\beta}$ can be an interesting source for the formation of $H{\alpha}$ wings observed in many symbiotic stars and active galactic nuclei. Similar broad $H{\alpha}$ wings are also expected in $Ly{\alpha}$ emitting halos found in the early universe, which can be potentially probed by the James Webb Telescope in the future.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.147-154
• /
• 2007

This paper describes a 'gyro-mouse', which provides a new human-computer interface (HCI) for persons who are disabled in their upper extremities, for handling the mouse-click and mouse-move function. We adopted the artificial neural network to recognize a quick-nodding pattern of the disabled person as the gyro-mouse click. The performance of our gyro-mouse was evaluated by three indices that include 'click recognition rate', 'error in cursor position control', and 'click rate per minute' on a target box appearing at random positions. Although it turned out that the average error in cursor positioning control was 1.4-1.5 times larger than that of optical mouse control, and the average click rate per minute was 40% of the optical mouse, the overall click recognition rate was 93%. Moreover, the click rate per minute increased from 35.2% to 44% with repetitive trials. Hence, our suggested gyro-mouse system can be used to provide a new user interface tool especially for those persons who do not have full use of their upper extremities.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
• /
• v.38 no.1
• /
• pp.75-84
• /
• 2015

Tropical forests play a critical role in mitigating climate change, and therefore, an accurate and precise estimation of tropical forest carbon (C) is needed. However, there are many uncertainties associated with C stock estimation in a tropical forest, mainly due to its large variations in biomass. Hence, we quantified C stocks in an intact lowland mixed dipterocarp forest (MDF) in Brunei, and investigated variations in biomass and topography. Tree, deadwood, and soil C stocks were estimated by using the allometric equation method, the line intersect method, and the sampling method, respectively. Understory vegetation and litter were also sampled. We then analyzed spatial variations in tree and deadwood biomass in relation to topography. The total C stock was 321.4 Mg C $ha^{-1}$, and living biomass, dead organic matter, and soil C stocks accounted for 67%, 11%, and 23%, respectively, of the total. The results reveal that there was a relatively high C stock, even compared to other tropical forests, and that there was no significant relationship between biomass and topography. Our results provide useful reference data and a greater understanding of biomass variations in lowland MDFs, which could be used for greenhouse gas emission-reduction projects.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.329-345
• /
• 2018

This paper systematically investigated the mechanical performance of the weak-axis cover-plate connection, including a beam end monotonic loading test and a column top cyclic loading test, and a series of parametric studies for exterior and interior joints under cyclic loading using a nonlinear finite element analysis program ABAQUS, focusing on the influences of the shape of top cover-plate, the length and thickness of the cover-plate, the thickness of the skin plate, and the steel material grade. Results showed that the strains at both edges of the beam flange were greater than the middle's, thus it is necessary to take some technical methods to ensure the construction quality of the beam flange groove weld. The plastic rotation of the exterior joint can satisfy the requirement of FEMA-267 (1995) of 0.03 rad, while only one side connection of interior joint satisfied ANSI/AISC 341-10 under the column top cyclic loading. Changing the shape or the thickness or the length of the cover-plate did not significantly affect the mechanical behaviors of frame joints no matter in exterior joints or interior joints. The length and thickness of the cover-plate recommended by FEMA 267 (1995) is also suitable to the weak-axis cover-plate joint. The minimum skin plate thickness and a design procedure for the weak-axis cover-plate connections were proposed finally.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.20
• /
• pp.9021-9025
• /
• 2014

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer among females in Turkey. Predictors affecting the breast self-examination (BSE) performance vary in developing countries. Objective: To determine the frequency of BSE performance and predictors of self-reported BSEs among women in the capital city of Turkey. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 376 Turkish women using a self-administered questionnaire covering socio-demographic variables and BSE-related features. Results: Of the participants, 78.7% (N=296) reported practicing BSE, whereas 9.5% (N=28) were implementing BSE regularly on a monthly basis, and only 5.7% (N=17) were performing BSE regularly within a week after each menstrual cycle. Multivariate logistic regression modeling revealed that BSE performance was more likely in younger age groups [20-39 years] (p=0.018, OR=3.215) and [40-49 years] (p=0.009, OR=3.162), women having a family history of breast disease (p=0.038, OR=2.028), and housewives (p=0.013, OR=0.353). Conclusions: Although it appears that the rates of BSE performers are high, the number of women conducting appropriate BSE on a regular time interval basis is lower than expected. Younger age groups, family history of breast diseases and not being employed were identified as significant predictors of practicing BSE appropriately. Older age and employment were risk factors for not performing BSE in this sample.