• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.44
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• pp.7-28
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• 2016

This study examines the sociocultural background of negritude by delving into Caseríos, Reggaeton, and $Trigue{\tilde{n}}os$, which are interrelated with the racism deeply embedded in Puerto Rican society. These terms have also been discussed in relation to the ideological discourse of racial democracy, which has caused Puerto Rican people to be blind to silenced inequality and hegemonic racial policies. Caseríos, housing projects for the poor urban class, are targeted by the state - sponsored project 'Mano Dura'. Due to the policing, control and surveillance of this anticrime project, Caseríos became perceived even more as residential communities of violence, poverty, and insecurity generally connected to the stigmatization of blackness. Reggaeton emerged as a mega hit genre of transnational Puerto Rican music in the 2000s, which in turn, drew attention to both the afrodiaspora in New York and the urban musical power in the Island. This musical genre serves to highlight the meaningfulness of black heritage in the national cultural identity of Puerto Rico. $Trigue{\tilde{n}}idad$ has recently become a common racial cultural term that embraces a broader racial paradigm of mestizaje. This term can function as an alternative concept of blackness, but it has not yet been transformed into enough cultural politics to resist ongoing racial democracy. The three terms intrinsically address both the uprooted racism and potential methods of challenging it. This paper argues the necessity of stronger and more responsive cultural politics to defy the pervasiveness and invisibility of racial discrimination in Puerto Rico.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.23-44
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• 2007

Wind tunnel experiments on small scale groups of tanks are reported in the paper, with the aim of evaluating the pressure patterns due to group effects. A real tank configuration is studied in detail because one tank buckled during a hurricane category 3. Three configurations are studied in a wind tunnel, two with several tanks and different wind directions, and a third one with just one blocking tank. The pressures were measured in the cylindrical part and in the roof of the tank, in order to obtain pressure coefficients. Next, computational buckling analyses were carried out for the three configurations to evaluate the buckling pressure of the target structure. Finally, imperfection-sensitivity was investigated for one of the configurations, and moderate sensitivity was found, with reductions in the maximum load of the order of 25%. The results help to explain the buckling of the tank for the levels of wind experienced during the hurricane.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.445-468
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• 2014

The objective in this research is to determine the feasibility of using changes on the dynamic properties of a reinforced concrete (RC) structure to identify different levels of seismic induced damage. Damping ratio and natural frequency changes in a RC bridge column are analyzed using different signal processing techniques like Hilbert Transforms, Random Decrement and Wavelet Transforms. The data used in the analysis was recorded during a full-scale RC bridge column shake table test. The structure was subjected to ten earthquake excitations that induced different levels of inelastic demand on the column. In addition, low-intensity white noises were applied to the column in-between earthquakes. The results obtained show that the use of the damping ratio and natural frequency of vibration as damage indicators is arguable.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.441-459
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• 2012

Identification of vibration parameters from the analysis of the dynamic response of a structure plays a key role in current health monitoring systems. This study evaluates the capabilities of the recently developed Synchrosqueezed Wavelet Transform (SWT) to extract instant frequencies and damping values from the simulated noise-contaminated response of a structure. Two approaches to estimate the modal damping ratio from the results of the SWT are presented. The results obtained are compared to other signal processing methods based on Continuous Wavelet (CWT) and Hilbert-Huang (HHT) transforms. It was found that the time-frequency representation obtained via SWT is sharped than the obtained using just the CWT and it allows a more robust extraction of the individual modal responses than using the HHT. However, the identification of damping ratios is more stable when the CWT coefficients are employed.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.119-130
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• 2009

This paper reports results of the structural response of empty steel tanks under vertical ground motions. The tanks are modeled using a finite element discretization using shell elements, and the vertical motion is applied and analyzed using nonlinear dynamics. Several excitation frequencies are considered, with emphasis on those that may lead to resonance of the roof. The computational results illustrate that as the base motion frequency is tuned with the frequency of the first roof-mode of the tank, the system displays large-amplitude displacements. For frequencies away from such mode, small amplitude displacements are obtained. The effect of the height of the cylinder on the dynamic response of the tank to vertical ground motion has also been investigated. The vertical acceleration of the ground motion that induces significant changes in the stiffness of the tank was found to be almost constant regardless of the height of the cylinder.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.325-342
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• 2005

This paper deals with the buckling behavior of thin-walled aboveground tanks under wind load. In order to do that, the wind pressures are obtained by means of wind-tunnel experiments, while the structural non linear response is computed by means of a finite element discretization of the tank. Wind-tunnel models were constructed and tested to evaluate group effects in tandem configurations, i.e. one or two tanks shielding an instrumented tank. Pressures on the roof and on the cylindrical part were measured by pressure taps. The geometry of the target tank is similar in relative dimensions to typical tanks found in oil storage facilities, and several group configurations were tested with blocking tanks of different sizes and different separation between the target tank and those blocking it. The experimental results show changes in the pressure distributions around the circumference of the tank for half diameter spacing, with respect to an isolated tank with similar dimensions. Moreover, when the front tank of the tandem array has a height smaller than the target tank, increments in the windward pressures were measured. From the computational analysis, it seems that the additional stiffness provided by the roof prevents reductions in the buckling load for cases even when increments in pressures develop in the top region of the cylinder.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1241-1260
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• 2015

Any rational approach to define the configuration and size of viscous fluid dampers in a structure should be based on the dynamic properties of the system with the dampers. In this paper we propose an alternative representation of the complex eigenvalues of multi degree of freedom systems with dampers to calculate new equivalent natural frequencies. Analytical expressions for the dynamic properties of a two-story building model with a linear viscous damper in the first floor (i.e. with a non-proportional damping matrix) are derived. The formulas permit to obtain the equivalent damping ratios and equivalent natural frequencies for all the modes as a function of the mass, stiffness and damping coefficient for underdamped and overdamped systems. It is shown that the commonly used formula to define the equivalent natural frequency is not applicable for this type of system and for others where the damping matrix is not proportional to the mass matrix, stiffness matrix or both. Moreover, the new expressions for the equivalent natural frequencies expose a novel phenomenon; the use of viscous fluid dampers can modify the vibration frequencies of the structure. The significance of the new equivalent natural frequencies is expounded by means of a simulated free vibration test. The proposed approach may offer a new perspective to study the effect of viscous dampers on the dynamic properties of a structure.

• ALGAE
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2014

Small red algae, especially those previously referred to as 'primitive' are often overlooked, but can be quite abundant. These 'primitive' red algae are now placed in several classes distinct from the Florideophyceae, for example the Stylonematophyceae. A brownish-red filamentous alga was collected from a sandy tide pool at Cape Tribulation, Queensland, Australia. Cultured specimens were identified as Bangiopsis and conformed to the morphological characters of the genus (multicellular base, erect filaments branched or unbranched, uniseriate to multiseriate-tubular, single multilobed purple-red to red-brown plastid with central pyrenoid, vegetative cells released directly as spores). Molecular data of two plastid genes (rbcL, psbA) support placement of the Australian isolate and isolates from India in Bangiopsis. The genetic variation between these isolates and isolates from Puerto Rico previously attributed to B. subsimplex indicates that these should be considered as a separate species. As the type locality is in the Atlantic Ocean, French Guiana, and not far from Puerto Rico, and the Puerto Rican isolate has been used often in phylogenetic analyses, we propose that the Indian and Pacific Ocean isolates be designated a new species, B. franklynottii, to acknowledge Ott's many years of research on inconspicuous freshwater and marine red algae. Our research also highlights the lack of careful descriptions in many of the records of this genus and the lack of morphological characters to distinguish species. Especially within the morphologically simple red algae, morphological distinctness does not necessarily reflect evolutionary divergences.

• Journal of the Speleological Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.17
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• pp.27-33
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• 1988

석회동굴의 분포는 석회암지대에 존재하기 때문에 Karst 지형의 분포와 밀접한 관계가 있다. Karst 지형은 1893년 유고슬라비아의 J.Cvijic에 의해서 Istria에서 Kotoor지역에서 최초로 보고되었다. 세계의 주요 카르스트지형의 분포지를 보면 Yugoslavia의 Karst지방 남부, France의 Causs지방, Espania의 Andalusia지방, 그 밖에 Greece와 북부 Yucatan반도, 중앙 America의 Jamaica와 Puerto Rico와 Cuba의 북부지역 그리고 북부 Great Australian Bight 부근의 해안평야, 미국의 Florida 반도의 중부와 Great Valley, Indiana 남부 Kentucky의 각지의 Tennessee 중서부, 그리고 영국의 중앙북부인 백악지방, 중국의 화남지방, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, Celebes 남부, Java, 일본의 추길대지방과 평미대지역 등이다.(중략)

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.809-815
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• 2018

Influenza, which is a highly contagious disease caused by the influenza A virus, continues to be a major health concern worldwide. Although the accurate and early diagnosis of influenza virus infection is important for controlling the spread of this disease and rapidly initiating antiviral therapy, the current influenza diagnostic kits are limited by their low sensitivity. In this study, we developed several new influenza nucleoprotein (NP)-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and compared their sensitivity and specificity of those with commercially available anti-NP mAbs. Three mAbs, designated M24.11, M34.3, and M34.33, exhibited higher reactivities to recombinant NPs and A/Puerto Rico/8/1934 (H1N1) viral lysates compared with the commercial mAbs, as assessed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. M34.3 and M34.33 showed higher reactivities with A/California/04/09 (pandemic H1N1) and A/Philippines/2/82 (H3N2) viral lysates than the commercial mAbs. In contrast, M24.11 had marked reactivity with H3N2 but not with pandemic H1N1. Immunofluorescent confocal microscopy showed that the three mAbs effectively detected the presence of influenza virus in lung tissues of mice infected with A/Puerto Rico/8/1934. These results indicate that the newly developed M34.3 and M34.33 mAbs could be useful for the development of influenza diagnostics.