Review of Different Pushover Analysis Methods Applied to Masonry Buildings and Comparison with Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis

This article presents the comparison among different nonlinear seismic analysis methods applied to masonry buildings, i.e., pushover analyses with invariant lateral force distributions, adaptive pushover analysis and nonlinear dynamic analysis. The study focuses on the influence of lateral force distribution on the results of the pushover analysis. Two simple benchmark case studies are considered for the purpose of the research, i.e., a four-wall masonry building prototype without floor rigid diaphragms and a two-wall system with a cross-vault. The comparative study offers a useful review of pushover analysis methods for masonry structures and shows advantages and possible limitations of each approach.     

Thermal effects on cathodoluminescence in forsterite

Cathodoluminescence (CL) spectral analysis has been conducted for luminescent forsterite (olivine) of terrestrial and meteoritic origins. Two emission bands at 3.15 and 2.99 eV in blue region can be assigned to structural defect centres and two emission bands at 1.91 and 1.74 eV in red region to impurity centres of Mn²⁺ and Cr³⁺, respectively. These emissions reduce their intensities at higher temperature, suggesting a temperature quenching phenomenon. The activation energy in the quenching process was estimated by a least-square fitting of the Arrhenius plots using integrated intensity of each component as follows; blue emissions at 3.15 eV: 0.08–0.10 eV and at 2.99 eV: 0.09–0.11 eV, red emissions at 1.91 eV: ～0.01 eV and at 1.74 eV: ～0.02 eV. The quenching process can be construed by the non-radiative transition by assuming the Mott-Seitz model. The values of activation energies for blue emissions caused by structural defects correspond to the vibration energy of Si-O stretching mode in the lattice, and the values for red emissions caused by Mn and Cr impurity centres to Mg-O vibration energy. It implies that the temperature quenching energy might be transferred as a phonon to the specific lattice vibration.     

Physical and mechanical properties of waterlogged wood treated with hydrolyzed feather keratin

The physical and mechanical properties of waterlogged wood treated using avian feather were investigated. Avian feather is mainly composed of keratin protein and expectable materials for industrial utilization. The feather hydrolysate enhanced the mechanical properties of waterlogged wood and recovered the correlations between modulus of rupture (MOR) and modulus of elasticity (MOE) and anisotropy. The color of the wood treated with hydrolyzed feather solution exhibited natural wood texture. The feather hydrolysate had antimicrobial activity. However, the wood treated with hydrolyzed feather solution showed high hygroscopicity.     

History,distance and text: narratives of the 1853–1854 Perry expedition to Japan

In both the US and Japan, popular narratives recounting the story of Commodore Perry's 1853–1854 US naval expedition to Japan have played a key role in the textual negotiation of commonsense understandings of space, place, history, and geopolitics. We use the textual analysis of a range of US and Japanese popular narratives of Perry/‘black ships’ stories to read this negotiation in terms of concepts of proximity and distance. Discussing different ways in which the vastness of the Pacific Ocean has been dealt with textually, we comment on the ways in which narrative histories of these events relate to differing understandings of national identity and US–Japan relations. We argue that the history of US popular narratives displays a steady reduction of transpacific distance, with the story's focus shifting away from details of the ocean voyage and towards the creation of a metaphorical setting for US–Japan relations, a setting identified with a Japanese location but framed within a US point of view. Japanese narratives, meanwhile, have displayed two contrasting trends, both of which could be read as forms of resistance to US rhetorical appropriations of Japanese national space and history. On the one hand, narratives dealing with Japanese history in the context of a US–Japan rivalry have tended to remove the ocean and shorten transpacific distance, thereby reducing the significance of the Perry initiative; on the other hand, narratives setting Japanese history on the broader global stage have tended to highlight the ocean as a vast space of distances and opportunities.