Bridge Building Research Articles

Love and Depth in the American Novel: From Stowe to James by Ashley C. Barnes

Reviewed by: Love and Depth in the American Novel: From Stowe to James by Ashley C. Barnes Shirley Samuels ASHLEY C. BARNES Love and Depth in the American Novel: From Stowe to James Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020. 240 pp. For Ashley Barnes, to read the American novel carefully, or, perhaps, deeply, is to employ elements that resemble worship. Developing this idea further as she explores nineteenth-century reading practices, Barnes claims that interpreting literature can invoke communion: "Communion … stands as an alternative to the apparently deeper love of mutual revelation that might be figured by the heart-swapping merge Melville imagines" (2). By her title, Barnes invokes and rephrases the classic work by Leslie Fiedler, and she explains it this way: "The great American love story that was canonized by Leslie Fiedler in Love and Death in the American Novel is a tale built on the frustrated longing for revelatory union" (5). Using a broad set of interpretive goals—"what does it mean to know and love a text?"—the book sets out to weave a story in between what have been read as the opposite poles of interpretive strategy, namely the poles of ethical and historicist critical practice. It is that gap between an attachment that she celebrates and an approach that folds ethics into historicism that the book repeatedly attempts to bridge; yet, even as it argues for an expansion of possibilities, an intriguing resilience keeps these elements apart. While the author attempts objectivity, the book proposes to guide "a literary ethicist who wants to avoid the bad interpretation of colonizing sympathy or of ideological unveiling" (7). Even as the book argues for a "literary-ethical historicism," a "hybrid of historicism and formalism," it does not quite hide its discomfort with presentations that remain in the camp of historical readings (7). According to that discomfort, historicism might be excused for being somewhat random, but its "crime" lies in the "aha" moments of "ideological unveiling" that do not promote community. In the attempt to assuage what often appears literally as an ideological difference between the histories of Catholic and Protestant ideology in the United States, the book allows value to historicism when it announces that "historical contextualizing can forge real intimacy with literature" (8). Under the influence of [End Page 97] such critics as Rita Felski, the author might be seen to present such a statement as a major concession. I'm sympathetic with the desire for bridge building, even as the title of the book indicates its ambition. Further, the careful use of chiasmic statements indicates the oppositions that the book seeks to unpack and that it investigates through a detailed account of critical perspectives in its first and last chapters. If found neither through the "spirit that vivified a historical text" nor the "historical motor that animated a spiritualized text," then it proposes to describe what remains within the opposition: "the idea that the text's deep power must be either exposed or submitted to" (9). Drawing on nineteenth-century belief practices, the "ideology of transcendence finds its emotional justification in the Protestant standard of revelation" (11), which Barnes finds deeply flawed even as she retains some desire for it. Since "the idea of transcendence has served to extract a text from history" (11), she wonders if it is possible to re-embed texts within their histories and still find a form of communion that invokes, without solving, the fraught relations that continue to divide such Protestant yearnings from the doctrines of Catholicism. Interestingly, the novel becomes the necessary battleground for describing a "historicist literary ethics" that fuels what the author also describes as a "postsecular approach" (11). In her elaboration of this position, Barnes invokes the "familiar genres of the sentimental, the romantic, and the realist" novel (13). The didacticism of the oppositional constructions continues as she comments that the "scholarship on sentimentality … can be reductive and high-handed" (21). Such scholarship especially confounds her because it "treats as naïve the view that reading is an encounter with otherness." The concept of communion, for Barnes, "avoids the potential aggression of revelatory reading" (22). The book's paired juxtapositions include some surprising choices as...

Missing Keystones: Echoes of Empire in Kobayashi Masaru’s “Bridge Building”

Postwar writings by and about Japanese repatriates often serve to illustrate the incomplete nature of Japanese decolonization. While the process of repatriation physically removed Japanese colonists from the former empire, it also deferred the necessary process of coming to terms with Japan’s imperial past. This article examines how unresolved memories of empire reemerge in the postwar writings of Kobayashi Masaru (1927–1971), a Japanese author who was born and raised in colonial Korea. Through an analysis of Kobayashi’s Akutagawa Prize-nominated short story “Bridge Building” (“Kakyō,” 1960), set in Japan during the Korean War, it shows that although Kobayashi depicts Japanese and Korean characters who are united by a common goal and their past experiences of imperial violence, the gap between them remains insurmountable. The article contends that Kobayashi’s work represents an attempt to counteract romanticized repatriation narratives that had been coopted for new nationalist ends at the beginning of the Cold War.

Leadership and Social Capital: What Library Leaders Need to Know about Trust, Values, and Bridge Building

Social capital in libraries has been explored in a variety of contexts, including public and academic libraries as well as as a form of intellectual capital that libraries manage alongside other types of capital. To date, however, leadership in relation to social capital in libraries has not been addressed in a sustained and practical way. This article introduces the foundational elements of social capital and explains their dynamic involvement with leadership and leaders, whose primary levers of agency in the social capital space are influence and trust. Examples from public and academic libraries are given to illustrate the conceptual domains in which leaders operate in service to broader organizational goals and to virtuous cycles of increasing social capital.

Thermal simulation trained deep neural networks for fast and accurate prediction of thermal distribution and heat losses of building structures

• Thermal simulation of building structures was trained by deep learning method. • Thermal behavior of building was predicted by deep neural network in a fast time. • Thermal distribution image was trained by convolutional encoding–decoding network. • Heat loss of building was trained by multi-layer perceptron. In this study, state-of-the art deep neural networks to train and predict the heat transfer in building structures were proposed. Today, many of studies analyze thermal energy performance of buildings by analytical or numerical methods. Although building energy performance can be predicted effectively by finite element method, it is still time-consuming to calculate and solve the heat transfer problem. Moreover, expert engineer is required and complicate process to set simulation model is essential. In this work, a novel deep-learning method, which was pre-trained by the thermal simulation data, was developed to predict the thermal behavior of building structures in a fast time without complicated process. Heat transfer simulations of the slab wall building structure depending on its thermal properties and geometries were carried out to get training datasets for deep learning. The database of thermal simulation results was used for deep learning training. The image of temperature and heat flow distribution was trained by convolutional encoding–decoding network and the value of total heat loss through building and thermal bridge coefficient was trained by multi-layer perceptron. After train completed, the thermal behavior could be predicted in a second by just feeding information such as blueprint image and thermal properties of constructions into deep-learning architecture. There was no need to set a new simulation model at each time which consumes time and effort for modeling, meshing and calculating. With the developed network, the prediction of thermal behavior with high accuracy was possible in a super-fast time.

‘Thinking Ontologically’: Ontology Development as the Basis for the Systematic Analysis of a Corpus of Late Antique Aramaic Magic Texts

This article describes the process of developing an ontology of the domain of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic magic bowls and offers some reflections on its significance in the analysis of these materials. Examples are highlighted to illustrate where the work builds on existing conceptualisations of the domain in secondary literature and where magical and religious materials from the Ancient Near East might stimulate some specialised extension of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (ICOM/CIDOC Documentation Standards Group, 2020). The analogy of ‘bridge building’ is offered as a way for humanities researchers to conceive of the work to produce ontologies of specific domains. This reflection is intended to capture the experience of ‘thinking ontologically’ about sources for the first time and of overcoming misconceptions about the nature and significance of this work.

Bridge Building in Higher Education: Multi-Modal Mentoring Programs to Support Retention & Career Preparedness

Despite the limitations on time for career preparedness and shrinking professional development budgets, mentoring remains as important as ever due to the interconnectedness in a global society and the changing demographics of postsecondary education students. The traditional-age population in college that lives on campus and does not work has been declining for over three decades. The majorities of current students that arenow non-traditional, and work at least part-time are first-generation, and are pursuing degrees via distance or online learning. The importance of providing a diverse mentoring strategy for this new population is borne out in research in order to improve retention, persistence, and completion rates, as well as future professional success. As such, this study sheds light on the need to develop a multi-modal mentoring program to support different student populations through a flexible combination of faculty-student, student-student, alumni-student, and supervisor-student mentoring programs applied in different contexts and modalities. While results indicate that overall faculty-initiated mentoring is preferred by both populations and the most impactful method for mentoring is face-to-face with a faculty member with non-academic experience in the field of their discipline, other approaches are more effective for populations, such as first-generation, minority, and online and graduate students.

ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНО-ЕКОНОМІЧНІ ЧИННИКИ АКТИВІЗАЦІЇ ІННОВАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ В РЕАЛІЗАЦІЇ ЗАВДАНЬ РОЗВИТКУ МОСТОБУДІВНОЇ ГАЛУЗІ

The article provides statistical data of the technical condition of bridges in Ukraine, identifies the organizations responsible for the condition of bridges in Ukraine, analyzes the mechanism of design, construction, reconstruction and repair of bridges on a competitive basis in Ukraine, identifies shortcomings, proposes changes in the mechanism for the promotion of innovative technologies, taking into account international experience. The article proposes to use the selection of bidders not only by price, but taking into account the quality of works and services. This need was identified because of the analysis of the current Ukrainian legislation in the field of competitive bidding and building, renovation, and reconstruction of bridges. Identified the need to develop a program to encourage participation in tenders of companies with innovative products for the construction and reconstruction of bridges, using the Japanese experience. The article offers a bonus system of motivation for the winning bidder`s company, in case of reducing the final cost of the project. It was considered the necessity of including a bonus motivation system in the contract. This will lead to greater interest of companies to participate in competitive bidding and bring to the market innovative technologies and products for the construction, reconstruction, repair of bridges in Ukraine. It was outlined the need to develop an open statistical base in competitive bidding programs, what will make these programs more transparent for not only Ukrainian bidders, but for foreign bidders too, that can help to involve foreign innovative technologies in building and reconstruction of bridges in Ukraine. As a result of the analysis of the existing organizational and economic process of implementation of technologies for bridge construction, identified the need to develop a standard Sample of Feasibility Study for bridge construction, taking into account the final cost of the project and to include this mechanism to the contract. Identified the need of using of adaptive foreign experience of participation in bidding in Ukraine, especially in part of implementation of innovative products and services during the building or reconstruction of the bridges.

A participatory data-centric approach to AI Ethics by Design

ABSTRACT Data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) based on machine learning techniques (ML) has increasingly become an enabler in critical societal domains. However, the introduction of ML systems is often accompanied by unjustified, biased, and discriminated outcomes with severe consequences for the individuals affected. Consequently, in recent years value-based design methods have sought to anticipate and mitigate moral wrongdoing by drawing attention to ethical and epistemic challenges related to the design of AI systems. This article presents a participatory data-centric approach to AI Ethics by Design by promoting and refining insights from contributions within the family of value-sensitive design methods. The approach provides a practicable outlook on addressing epistemic and ethical issues related to data activities in early ML development project stages. Hence, the article seeks to enhance opportunities for ethically informed AI design by stressing the need for bridge building to cultivate a shared understanding among system developers and domain experts about a given data domain and its relatedness to a specific practice.

Walter Krenkel – CMC‐pioneer and dedicated expert on ceramics

Professor Walter Krenkel is a worldwide known specialist for Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC), the Liquid Silicon Infiltration (LSI) process and the invention of the C/C-SiC ceramic brake disc. He was born in 1955 in Bad Cannstatt, a famous part of the well-known city of Stuttgart in Germany. After school, he decided to study aerospace engineering in 1976 at the University of Stuttgart where he got his diploma in 1984. Immediately after finishing his diploma, he started his career as a research assistant in the Institute of Structures and Design at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Stuttgart. Since 1990 he worked on the commercial application of C/C-SiC materials that was used for the space application so far. In 1992, within a research project he and his colleagues from DLR created as a spin-off from thermal protection materials for re-entry space vehicles, a ceramic brake disc, based on C/C-SiC for railway vehicles. After gaining valuable experiences in research and development projects, in 1996, he started to work as a leader of the Ceramic Composites and Structures Group in the same department. His continuous work on ceramic brakes led to the invention of the ceramic brake discs for passengers’ cars, together with several industrial partners between 1997 and 2001. His increasing know-how about ceramic matrix composites in general and about ceramic brakes in particular make him the perfect choice as the head of the Centre of Excellence about Ceramic Lightweight Structures and High Temperature Applications in 1999. One year later, he finished his PhD on the subject of cost-efficient manufacturing of CMC, based on the LSI-process in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the University of Stuttgart. Due to his initiative, the LSI-process was successfully transferred to the industry and was developed to the most established high temperature-process to manufacture CMC at reasonable costs. On the basis of his professional performance, it was offered to him to work as a Professor at the University of Bayreuth at the Chair of Ceramic Materials Engineering (CME) in 2004. He continued his engagement in several ceramic societies, as the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Science in the University of Bayreuth during 2015–2017 and as a Guest Professor in the Southeast University in Nanjing and the Central South University of Changsha (China). During his career, he wrote more than 200 articles and 35 patents. In Bayreuth he led the Chair of Ceramic Material Engineering to the top in the university, regarding the funding from third parties. His engagement constantly influenced the whole ceramic community. He was responsible for organizing numerous national and international conferences. In 2010, he brought the HT-CMC 7 conference to Bayreuth and managed this scientific premium event in very remarkable fashion. Due to his constant work as a scientist and a professor in Bayreuth, he gained a huge knowledge in almost all fields of ceramics, with focus in CMC, polymer derived ceramics (PDC), the evaluation of structural and functional ceramics and the tribological properties of high-performance ceramic friction materials. His worldwide reputation is unique and his experiences in the field of ceramics influence the research and development activities in the whole ceramic community. After winning prizes from all significant ceramic societies worldwide (German, American and European), for example, the Bridge Building Award from the ACERS and the Seger Medal of the DKG, he is enjoying the well-deserved retirement since April 2021. His contributions to the field of CMC and ceramics in general are fundamental and lead the way to the future of this material class. The ideas of Professor Krenkel will give his former chair and the ceramic community the best chances to enhance the impact of ceramics and to find new applications within the megatrends and challenges in the 21th century.

A Study on Strengthening of Concrete Structures

Concrete is the most commonly used building material due to its high strength, moldability, weather-resistant, and fire resistance, among other benefits. In recent years, there has been a growth in the usage of Micro Silica fume. Through the Ore sand Bridge building, records show that Micro Silica was used in the concrete. These fabrics are not only environmentally sustainable, but they also have technological advantages on both new and hardened mortar products. Both goods are agricultural by-products, but their usage decreases the amount of primary raw materials removed from the earth. Latent hydraulic content is micro silica fume and fly ash. It has intrinsic cementation effects, which must be activated. Combining the powder with Portland cement is a popular way to achieve these results. Pozzolana is the name given to pulverized fly ash. These materials may not have intrinsic cementation properties, but a cementation substance is created when mixed with a high alkaline material.

A Study on Strengthening of Concrete Structures

Concrete is the most commonly used building material due to its high strength, moldability, weather-resistant, and fire resistance, among other benefits. In recent years, there has been a growth in the usage of Micro Silica fume. Through the Ore sand Bridge building, records show that Micro Silica was used in the concrete. These fabrics are not only environmentally sustainable, but they also have technological advantages on both new and hardened mortar products. Both goods are agricultural by-products, but their usage decreases the amount of primary raw materials removed from the earth. Latent hydraulic content is micro silica fume and fly ash. It has intrinsic cementation effects, which must be activated. Combining the powder with Portland cement is a popular way to achieve these results. Pozzolana is the name given to pulverized fly ash. These materials may not have intrinsic cementation properties, but a cementation substance is created when mixed with a high alkaline material.

App types, user psychological and instrumental needs, and user experience in the sharing economy: An empirical research

With the increasing popularity of the sharing economy, various types of mobile applications (apps) facilitate the building of a new bridge of human–computer interaction. In the human–computer interaction field, user experience is an important topic that influences technology adoption. This study entails an empirical survey to analyze the influence of the satisfaction of users’ psychological and instrumental needs on user experience based on the types of apps as a moderating variable. The conclusions show the followings: first, users’ psychological need is a significant factor that influences their experience, and the direct effects of security, self-esteem, and aesthetics are especially considerable. Second, for apps under pragmatism logic, users’ instrumental needs are also important, as their direct effect is significant. However, for apps under hedonism logic, the direct effect of instrumental needs is not evident; psychological need is a more important factor to improve user experience. Herein, implications are discussed and suggestions are proposed towards improving user experience from a user psychological and instrumental needs perspective based on the different types of apps.

Impact of an Innovative Solution for the Interruption of 3-D Point Thermal Bridges in Buildings on Sustainability

During the design of the external cladding, it is possible to use different materials and compositions. One of these possibilities is also a ventilated facade, which consists of a supporting structure, a thermal insulation, a supporting grid, an air gap for ventilation and a cladding layer. The construction of the supporting grid in the ventilated facade must be mechanically anchored into the supporting structure of the external cladding. This mechanical anchoring causes 3-D point thermal bridges in the external cladding itself. Therefore, the aim of this work is to assess and analyze the influence of these 3-D point thermal bridges on transmission heat losses through the external cladding. A Finite Element Mesh analysis has been used for this analysis. Different types of external cladding compositions were modeled in the simulation program, and the effect on the heat transfer coefficient was determined. In addition to the analysis of the existing anchoring systems, an innovative solution has been suggested that is more economical and easier to implement. The results show that the application of anchors and their number impacts significantly on the thermal properties of the envelope. The difference between the anchoring element with a thermal insulation pad and the patented method is minimal. This is a 1.29% difference. The last variant was a proposal (patent) that the anchoring element is only plastic-coated and thus its thermal engineering properties are improved, which is manifested mainly in heat conduction but also from the radiant point of view, as plasticizing the emissivity changes. Compared to the perimeter cladding without the ap-plication of an anchoring element, the heat loss increases by 29.37%. In addition to the energy savings, there are also financial savings. While the plastic pads costs about EUR 0.3, the plastic coating (patent) represents a price of around EUR 0.03. If we had a building with 10,000 m2 of wall area where 6 pieces of anchors per 1 m2 are applied, the savings would be EUR 16,200. Such savings are already significant. The conclusion of this work is that these point thermal bridges have a significant impact on the overall transmission heat loss coefficient and therefore they have overall heat demand and energy demand.

Preschoolers' Nascent Engineering Thinking During a Construction Task

The objective of this study was to examine in what ways and to what extent preschoolers (5–6 years of age) manifest early Engineering Habits of Mind (EHoM) while engaging in an open-ended problem-solving construction task. The study comprised 228 children (120 boys and 108 girls). The study implemented a quantitative approach. The main research tool was an open-ended LEGO problem-solving play-like construction task (bridge building). All participants and their problem-solving processes were video-recorded. Micro-analysis of videos was conducted using a detailed coding scheme. The results of this study revealed evidence of all six EHoM during participants' execution of the open-ended Bridge Task. Most EHoM were performed by participants to a medium-low extent, based on the coding scheme. Significant positive correlations were found among five EHoM measures: systems thinking, problem-finding, creative problem-solving, visualizing, and improving. The children's scores on the adapting measure did not correlate with any of the other EHoM measures. Significant correlations were found between four of the EHoM and the three measures of the quality of the construction product (length, height, stability) and the time-on-task. To conclude, young children demonstrate nascent EHoM with great enthusiasm. They invent, design, construct, and evaluate like young engineers.

Mechanical and Antibacterial Behavior of Photocatalytic Lightweight Engineered Cementitious Composites

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in using cementitious materials as a catalyst-supporting media such as air-purifying paving block, self-cleaning exterior wall, and photocatalytic ceiling panel. Despite many works on photocatalytic cementitious materials, most of them were focused on the application of TiO2-based cement mortars. Little work has been done on the development of photocatalytic functionalities on highperformance fiber-reinforced cementitious composite (HPFRC). Engineered cementitious composites (ECCs), a class of HPFRC, have been used in a wide range of full-scale applications, from sprayed ECC for dam retrofitting to lightweight building facade and bridge deck pavement. In this work, titanium dioxide (TiO2) was incorporated into lightweight ECC. The influence of TiO2 and different lightweight ingredient materials on mechanical properties and antibacterial behavior based on Escherichia coli (E. coli) was investigated. Two types of lightweight aggregates were evaluated: fly ash cenospheres (FACs) and glass bubbles K-1. Furthermore, an air-entraining agent (AEA) was also evaluated to induce air bubbles to achieve lightweight ECC. The use of a glass bubble is preferable to achieve lightweight ECC with a density of around 890 kg/m3 (60% lower than normal ECC) while maintaining a tensile strain capacity of more than 3% with moderate tensile strength. At the same time, lightweight ECC using glass bubbles show the smallest number of viable bacteria after 240 min of ultraviolet (UV)/visible light exposure. The smallest number of viable bacteria indicates it has the highest antibacterial activity among lightweight ECC materials. The use of glass bubble significantly alters the pore structure of lightweight ECC, which improves the access to irradiate TiO2 particle. The incident photon could pass along the pore to activate more TiO2 particles for the photocatalytic process.

Experimental study on the energy absorption characteristics of viscoelastic damping layers

This work aims to further promote the research and development of flexible damping technology for the seismic damage control of underground engineering structures. On the basis of the understanding of the application of viscoelastic damping theory to the field of earthquake resistance of bridge buildings, impact tests on different rock damping layer– concrete specimens are conducted using the improved split Hopkinson pressure bar test system to analyze the energy absorption characteristics of the viscoelastic damping layers. A comparative analysis of the test results is also performed to differentiate the laws of energy absorption of the viscoelastic damping layer structure using different damping layer materials (rubber and silicone) and different damping layer shapes (honeycomb, corrugated, and cylindrical). Given damping layers with the same material and structure, the energy absorption laws of the structures with different damping layer thicknesses are compared and analyzed. The optimal thickness of the damping layers is also discussed. Results show that the incident energy absorbed by the damping layers of different materials increases by more than 10% relative to the control group (rock–concrete specimen). Such an increase indicates that the structures have superior energy absorption characteristics and that the rubber material can absorb more incident energy than the high-damping silicone as the damping layer. As for the damping layer shapes, the composite damping layer structure with a honeycomb shape achieves the best energy absorption among all structures. The comparison and analysis of the energy absorption effects when the damping layer thicknesses are 10, 20, and 25 mm reveal that a 20 mm-thick damping layer shows the best energy absorption effect. The current findings can provide theoretical foundation and data support for the application of composite damping layers to the seismic design of underground engineering structures.

Городское мостостроение на Европейском Северо-Западе России как часть российской модернизации XIX – начала XX века

Urban bridge construction in Russia remains a largely unexplored topic. At the moment, the vast majority of studies devoted to the history of bridge building (mostly, specialized technical literature) do not consider this topic as a subject of historical research proper. Regional studies rarely focus on urban bridge building. Research into this topic as part of a large modernization process allows us to identify the characteristic features inherent in bridge building in Russia’s regional centres in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The purpose of this article is to study urban bridge construction in the European Northwest of Russia as part of the country’s modernization. The sources include records of the State Archives of the Arkhangelsk Region and published documents on the history of Vologda. The author applied the comparative historical and historical-systematic method, as well as modernization theory. The article analyses various modernization approaches to the study of Russian history, examines the development of bridge construction in the 19th century and its implementation in a number of cities in the European Northwest, highlighting the specifics of each case as well as general features typical of the country as a whole. In conclusion, the characteristic features of urban bridge building in Russia during the period under study and their connection with the country’s modernization are identified. It should be mentioned that this paper is one of the first attempts to analyse the development of bridge construction in Russia from the point of view of historical science. Its results can be used for research into the history of the modernization process in Russian regions, as well as in the preparation of specialized historical works on the development of bridge construction.

Effects of urban construction on Oncomelania snails control in Wuhan City

To evaluate the effectiveness of urban construction projects on Oncomelania snails control in Wuhan City, so as to provide insights into the development of an integrated control strategy for urban schistosomiasis. The data pertaining to the endemic situation of schistosomiasis, schistosomiasis control data, the construction of the Yangtze River Bridge, marshland management and park constructions were collected from Wuhan City from 1990 to 2020. The changes of areas of snail habitats and high-risk settings were compared before and after implementation of these urban construction projects to evaluate the effectiveness of urban construction projects on Oncomelania snails control. The number of schistosomiasis cases decreased by 97.35%, and the number of cattle with schistosomiasis decreased by 100% in Wuhan City from 1990 to 2020, with a 41.99% reduction in areas of snail habitats, including 94.97% and 34.40% reductions in snail habitats inside and outside the embankment decreased. During the period from 1990 through 2020, a total of 10 Yangtze River bridges were built in Wuhan City, and areas of snail habitats around the bridges reduced from 11 699.05 hm2 before the bridge building to 8 726.14 hm2 after the building (a 25.41% reduction), while the areas of high-risk settings reduced from 411.69 hm2 before the bridge building to 276.78 hm2 after the building (a 32.77% reduction). Following treatment of three marshlands in Hankou, Hanyang and Wuchang, the areas of snail habitats reduced from 225.80 hm2 before the management to 199.47 hm2 after the management (a 11.66% reduction), and the areas of high-risk settings reduced from 23.14 hm2 before the treatment to 17.73 hm2 after the building (a 23.38% reduction). Following the building of 5 parks in snail-infested settings, the areas of snail habitats reduced from 319.61 hm2 before the construction to 280.80 hm2 after the construction (a 12.14% reduction), and the areas of high-risk settings reduced from 35.00 hm2 before the construction to 27.73 hm2 after the construction (a 20.77% reduction). Simultaneous implementation of urban construction projects and schistosomiasis control measures is effective to shrink snail-infested setting and high-risk settings and control the endemic situation of schistosomiasis in endemic foci in Wuhan City.

Use of thick, heavy plates for bridge construction

AbstractModern steel or steel composite bridges need modern solutions in steel: often thick heavy plates play a crucial role in bridge building, possibly used as flange plate in heavy bridge beams or as thick deck plate in a trough bridge. Depending on the application thick heavy plates allow efficient fabrication or potentially increase the sustainability of a bridge construction. As today especially fabrication efficiency and durability gain importance, it leads to an increase in the application of thick heavy plates. However, when designing with thick heavy plates often the designer reaches technical or regulatory limits. This report will show some solutions to overcome these existing restraints, e.g. improved possibilities in the production of thick thermomechanically rolled steels or extension of the simplified brittle fracture analysis according to Table 2.1 of EN 1993‐1‐10. The consistent exploitation of these possibilities opens a variety of new advantageous options in constructing road or railway bridges.

Why do Environmental and Ecological Economics Diverge?

Environmental economics and ecological economics became established scientific fields as a result of the growth and the success of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Using the strong programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge and the general theory of scientific/intellectual movements, this article compares four pairs of scholars (two pairs of scholars appropriated for these fields and fields' founders during the emergence and establishment of the fields). The article depicts how their institutional, ideological and scientific backgrounds contributed to the divergence of these fields. Practitioners of environmental economics and ecological economics were influenced by different strands of the environmental movement. Environmental economics has epistemological and institutional links with environmentalism and ecological economics with ecologism. Different types of interdisciplinarity were used in these fields—a bridge building type of interdisciplinarity in the case of environmental economics and a restructuring and integrative in the case of ecological economics.