• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.6
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• pp.869-887
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• 2012

Ground motion scaling techniques are actively debated in the earthquake engineering community. Considerations such as what amplitude, over what period range and to what target spectrum are amongst the questions of practical importance. In this paper, the effect of various ground motion scaling approaches are explored using three reinforced concrete prototypical building models of 8, 12 and 20 stories designed to respond nonlinearly under a design level earthquake event in the seismically active Southern California region. Twenty-one recorded earthquake motions are selected using a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis and subsequently scaled using four different strategies. These motions are subsequently compared to spectrally compatible motions. The nonlinear response of a planar frameidealized building is evaluated in terms of plasticity distribution, floor level acceleration and uncorrelated acceleration amplification ratio distributions; and interstory drift distributions. The most pronounced response variability observed in association with the scaling method is the extent of higher mode participation in the nonlinear demands.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.391-396
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• 2009

Image-based, high-content screening assays demand solutions for image segmentation and cellular compartment encoding to track critical events - for example those reported by GFP fusions within mitosis, signalling pathways and protein translocations. To meet this need, a series of nuclear/cytoplasmic discriminating probes have been developed: DRAQ5$^{TM}$ and CyTRAK Orange$^{TM}$. These are spectrally compatible with GFP reporters offering new solutions in imaging and cytometry. At their most fundamental they provide a convenient fluorescent emission signature which is spectrally separated from the commonly used reporter proteins (e.g. eGFP, YFP, mRFP) and fluorescent tags such as Alexafluor 488, fluorescein and Cy2. Additionally, they do not excite in the UV and thus avoid the complications of compound UV-autofluorescence in drug discovery whilst limiting the impact of background sample autofluorescence. They provide a convenient means of stoichiometrically labelling cell nuclei in live cells without the aid of DMSO and can equally be used for fixed cells. Further developments have permitted the simultaneous and differential labelling of both nuclear and cytoplasmic compartments in live and fixed cells to clearly render the precise location of cell boundaries which may be beneficial for quantitative expression measurements, cell-cell interactions and most recently compound in vitro toxicology testing.