The promises of creative industry higher education: an analysis of university prospectuses in Malaysia

In the context of economic growth policies that stress the importance of a ‘creative economy’, and the expansion of private universities, there has been an enormous growth in the number of creative industry degrees offered by Malaysian HEIs. This paper provides a critical discourse analysis of the promotional materials used by two private institutions, Multimedia University and Limkokwing University, to persuade students that these degrees will offer them a desirable future as employable ‘industry savvy and tech savvy’ creative graduates. We explore the structures of feeling that promotional material seeks to engender in potential students as it promises them future success in a globalised, high-tech world.     

In-Situ Destructive Testing of Ancient Strengthened Masonry Vaults

ABSTRCT

Developing suitable tools to assess the actual structural performance and designing and executing interventions to improve that performance is a key issue in the field of conservation and enhancement of architectural heritage. This article presents the results of five full-scale destructive tests performed on the Castello di San Pietro in Verona (North-East Italy), a building set on a hill above the city and going back to the 19th century under the Habsburg Empire. It evaluates the behavior of the barrel vaults of 5.6 m span, 1.1 m rise, and 27 cm thickness in the original building. Although experimental work is common in the relevant literature, the testing program described here was not performed on reconstructed vaults but on original elements, which can reveal their real behavior more clearly. Four strengthening solutions were also evaluated, in which organic and inorganic fibers were applied to both types of matrix.     

Seismic behavior of two Portuguese adobe buildings: Part I - in-plane cyclic testing of a full-scale adobe wall

This article addresses the laboratory testing of a full-scale double-T shaped adobe wall, under in-plane horizontal cyclic loading of increasing amplitude, with the aim of contributing to the understanding of the seismic behavior of adobe structures. The wall was built with lime adobes taken from an existing building and mortar with a traditional composition. The behavior of the wall was assessed in terms of: shear stress versus horizontal drift and moment versus rotation relationships; maximum lateral strength; drift and rotation at peak stress; evolution of stiffness, lateral displacements, dissipated energy, and natural frequency; and damage pattern. The wall exhibited brittle behavior and in-plane strength corresponding to 56% of the vertical load. Cracking was observed with an X-shaped pattern whereas no sliding occurred at its base. This research supported the subsequent development of a repair and retrofit solution and also of numerical models to simulate the seismic behavior of two adobe buildings.     

Modeling and Seismic Response Analysis of Italian Code-Conforming Single-Storey Steel Buildings

ABSTRACT

This article describes the structural design, nonlinear modeling, and seismic analysis of prototype single-storey non-residential steel buildings made of moment-resisting portal frames in the transverse direction and concentric braces in the longitudinal direction. Various design parameters (building geometry, seismic hazard, foundation soil category) and different modeling assumptions (bare frame model, model including cladding elements, ground motions including vertical accelerations, and modeling uncertainties) were considered to investigate their effects on the simulated seismic performance.     

General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942

During General Mario Roatta's tenure as commander of the Italian 2nd Army in Yugoslavia, he faced a mounting Communist insurgency. To defeat the partisan forces of Tito, he resorted to proactive politics and a strategy of counter-insurgency. Owing to Italian military weakness and his army's lack of training in guerrilla warfare, Roatta was not averse to enlisting the services of Orthodox Serbs in Croatia, who the previous year had asked for Italian protection after a fearful massacre had been unleashed against them by Mussolini's handpicked ruler in Zagreb, the Croatian Usta?a leader Ante Paveli?. Against the wishes of the Fascist government in Rome, Roatta armed Serbs (called ?etniks) because they agreed to assist the Italian legions in fighting the partisans, their common ideological foe. But as Yugoslavia descended into civil war – one triggered by the Axis invasion – Roatta paid a price for his freelance pro-Serb politicking by alienating Zagreb, irritating the Germans, and dismaying his superiors in Rome. Italian policy was reduced to a tug-of-war between the Fascist empire-builders surrounding Mussolini and the military command in Yugoslavia, and Roatta became enmeshed in a cobweb of intrigues involving Croats, ?etniks and Germans. Apart from political manoeuvring, Roatta, in the ineluctable necessity of defeating the partisans, devised a detailed strategy of counter-insurgency. On 1 March 1942, he circulated a pamphlet entitled ‘3C’ among his commanders that spelled out military reform and draconian measures to intimidate the Slav populations into silence by means of summary executions, hostage-taking, reprisals, internments and the burning of houses and villages. By his reckoning, military necessity knew no choice, and law required only lip service. Roatta's merciless suppression of partisan insurgency was not mitigated by his having saved the lives of both Serbs and Jews from the persecution of Italy's allies Germany and Croatia. Under his watch, the 2nd Army's record of violence against the Yugoslav population easily matched the German. Tantamount to a declaration of war on civilians, Roatta's ‘3C’ pamphlet involved him in war crimes.     

ELASTIC AND INELASTIC RESPONSE OF TUNNELS UNDER LONGITUDINAL EARTHQUAKE EXCITATION

This paper addresses the problem of the behaviour of underground tunnels subjected to longitudinal earthquake excitation. State-of-the-art solutions, which are relative to infinite length tunnels in the stationary case, with linear models for both the ground and the structure, are first recalled. These models are either static or dynamic; results generally indicate large strains, often incompatible with reinforced concrete structures, and small crack widths.

For finite length tunnels, in this study the dynamic solution for the linear case is developed and it is shown that maximum strain is an increasing function of the tunnel length so that, in many situations, the behavior of the lining is satisfactory also under the aspect of crack formation. When the nonlinear behaviors of the tunnel and soil are taken into account, segments of reinforced concrete tunnels, after cracking, may undergo considerable relative displacement, undesired both for serviceability and ultimate limit states. After review of the constitutive relationship for the ground, a parametric study on the crack openings for an example tunnel is presented. It is shown that crack widths computed with linear static analyses underestimate the real value for tunnels embedded in stiff grounds and that the lining longitudinal reinforcement can reduce crack width so as to cope with serviceability and ultimate limit states.     

FATIGUE ANALYSIS OF MOMENT RESISTING STEEL FRAMES

A procedure for the fatigue assessment of steel building structures subjected to earthquakes is presented. The procedure constitutes an extension of the present, high-cycle, fatigue assessment to cases of low-cycle fatigue. It may serve as a basis for the introduction of a fatigue limit state in the earthquake design of steel structures. It may be also used for the damage assessment of existing steel buildings subjected to past earthquakes. By means of parametric studies, the effects of various parameters on the fatigue susceptibility of several moment resisting steel frames are studied. The influence of a number of parameters such as the type of ground motion, type of structural typology, local fatigue behaviour, overall frame design and semi-rigidity of joints on the susceptibility to damage are investigated.     

INSTANTANEOUS OPTIMAL CONTROL FOR SEISMIC ANALYSIS OF NON-LINEAR STRUCTURES

In this paper, an effective active control algorithm is developed for the vibration control of non-linear structural systems subjected to earthquake excitation. It is an attempt to include the non-linear characteristics of the structural behaviour throughout the entire analysis (design and validation), accounting for the eventual cumulative structural damage and energy dissipation. This is a very important factor since, in current design practice, structures are assumed to behave nonlinearly when subjected to strong ground motion. The proposed algorithm focusses on the instantaneous optimal control approach for the development of the control algorithm where the nonlinearities are brought into the analysis through a non-linear state vector and a non-linear open loop term. A performance index that is quadratic in the control force and in the non-linear states and is subjected to a non-linear constraint equation, is minimised at every time step. The effectiveness of the proposed non-linear instantaneous optimal control (NIOC) strategy is critically evaluated in comparison with currently available active control techniques. Numerical simulation results indicate that the proposed approach provides a significant reduction of the peak response quantities, such as maximum response deformation, maximum response acceleration, ductility of the system, associated with a reduced maximum control force.     

大都市双核廊道结构空间增长过程研——以究美国华盛顿-巴尔的摩地区为例

本文以华盛顿-巴尔的摩地区200年都市化发展史为例,通过Mapinf07．0得到两城市内、外接圆半径值。以Logistic模型为基础计算出其半径增长速率并进行对比分析。研究表明,巴尔的摩和华盛顿城市化区的扩展表现为核心与廊道的共同增长,但二者的增长速率不具有同步增长过程;1962年前华盛顿城市化区的空间形态要优于巴尔的摩,随后则相反。传统的双核廊道结构空间增长研究多以整体为对泉研究其增长过程,本文的创新特色在于通过对比分析两个城市内、外接圆半径的变化,来揭示双核廊道结构空间增长的特殊规律。