Extra Demands Research Articles

Applications of Deep Neural Networks with Fractal Structure and Attention Blocks for 2D and 3D Brain Tumor Segmentation.

In this paper, we propose a novel deep neural network (DNN) architecture with fractal structure and attention blocks. The new method is tested to identify and segment 2D and 3D brain tumor masks in normal and pathological neuroimaging data. To circumvent the problem of limited 3D volumetric datasets with raw and ground truth tumor masks, we utilized data augmentation using affine transformations to significantly expand the training data prior to estimating the network model parameters. The proposed Attention-based Fractal Unet (AFUnet) technique combines benefits of fractal convolutional networks, attention blocks, and the encoder-decoder structure of Unet. The AFUnet models are fit on training data and their performance is assessed on independent validation and testing datasets. The Dice score is used to measure and contrast the performance of AFUnet against alternative methods, such as Unet, attention Unet, and several other DNN models with relative number of parameters. In addition, we explore the effects of the network depth to the AFUnet prediction accuracy. The results suggest that with a few network structure iterations, the attention-based fractal Unet achieves good performance. Although deeper nested network structure certainly improves the prediction accuracy, this comes with a very substantial computational cost. The benefits of fitting deeper AFUnet models are relative to the extra time and computational demands. Some of the AFUnet networks outperform current state-of-the-art models and achieve highly accurate and realistic brain-tumor boundary segmentation (contours in 2D and surfaces in 3D). In our experiments, the sensitivity of the Dice score to capture significant inter-models differences is marginal. However, there is improved validation loss during long periods of AFUnet training. The lower binary cross entropy loss suggests that AFUNet is superior in finding true negative voxels (i.e., identifying normal tissue), which suggests the new method is more conservative. This approach may be generalized to higher dimensional data, e.g., 4D fMRI hypervolumes, and applied for a wide range of signal, image, volume, and hypervolume segmentation tasks.

Experiences of Academic Women in Jordan on Their Return to Work After Childbirth

ObjectiveTo describe the experiences of women living in Jordan returning to work at their academic positions after giving birth to their first newborns. DesignQualitative descriptive phenomenological design. SettingVarious schools within a governmental university in Jordan. This study describes the challenges women in academia experience in the context of Jordan’s Arabic patriarchal communities. ParticipantsA purposive sample of 15 women returning to their academic positions. MethodsUnstructured, face-to-face, in-depth interviews of women returning to their academic positions within 3 months after giving birth to their first newborns. The recorded interviews were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis process. ResultsThree major themes emerged: Living in Chaos, The Urgent Need for Transitional Time, and Calling for Help andSupport. Participants described their return to work as a period marked by a sense of chaos and instability, in which they felt a loss of control over their lives. They expressed a pressing need for a transitional period before resuming full-time academic roles, highlighting the importance of a gradual return. Finally, participants shared their struggles with the extra demands added to their daily routine. As working mothers, participants experienced extreme distress while attempting to fulfill their daily responsibilities. They emphasized the lack of adequate support in this challenging period. ConclusionWomen returning to their academic work after giving birth to their first newborns need to be prepared physically and emotionally for the changes and responsibilities of their new life. A longer period of maternity leave or a transitional period may help women working in academia to manage the demands of multiple maternal roles alongside their professional commitments. These findings highlight the absence of formal policies needed to support women in academia in their return to work after maternity leave.

Fleeting Alliances and Frugal Collaboration in Piecework: A Video-Analysis of Food Delivery Work in India

Food delivery platforms are designed to match on-demand workers with jobs and then manage, monitor, and assess their performance. These platforms provide workers with a digital representation of delivery work. Once a worker accepts a delivery job they need to deal with the complexities of an unsettled urban landscape with varied infrastructures, traffic, and regulations. In particular, the Global South presents a demanding context for this type of work, given less clearly mapped addresses alongside other socio-cultural intricacies. In order to understand how food delivery workers bridge gaps and mismatches between the demands of the app and the realities encountered in situ, for this paper we shadowed six delivery workers over the course of their working day delivering food in Pune, India. The six workers included a complete novice and more experienced riders. We used helmet mounted cameras to record the delivery work, and how our participants managed the extra demands of food delivery work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our moment-by-moment analysis of the video data is informed by the methodological traditions of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. While the food delivery platform imposes a detailed workflow expected to be performed alone by the worker, our detailed video analysis reveals the collaborative nature of delivery work. We highlight how workers draw upon their ability to participate in ‘fleeting alliances’ and produce ‘frugal collaboration’ with co-located others, such as other delivery workers or security guards. This allows them to resolve everyday troubles, often learning or imparting ‘the tricks of the trade’ in the process. While gig platforms have commonly been presented as disruptive technologies for coordinating, regulating, and assessing gig workers individually and independently, our findings highlight collaboration as a critically important aspect of food delivery work.

Carbon Footprint Reduction by Reclaiming Condensed Water

Everyday activity incurs carbon footprints, which are classified as personal, production, organizational and national, and may be assessed by input–output analysis (IOA), life-cycle assessment (LCA), or the combination of LCA and IOA methods. Notwithstanding international standards, like ISO 14064 and Publicly Available Specification (PAS) released for standardization, carbon footprint results can vary and sometimes lack consistency that due to variations in data sources, crossover boundary definitions, and operational boundaries for indirect emissions. The novelty of this study is the direct utilization of condensed water in an existing cooling water system, without the need for prior wastewater treatment, as typically required for greywater. The lack of practical case studies exploring the water–energy nexus in the context of reclaiming condensed water for evaporative cooling tower systems makes this research particularly significant. This highlights that condensed water can be a straightforward and cost-effective solution for both water conservation and energy savings. This case study highlights the benefits of reclaiming condensed water as supplementary cooling water, which proved effective in water quality treatment and dilution augmentation, considering that a higher cycle of concentration (CoC) was achieved, leading to reduced bleed-off that resulted in a water saving of 44% for make-up and 80% for bleed-off water, and energy savings from 6.9% to 13.1% per degree Celsius of condensing refrigerant temperature (CRT). The analytical assessment revealed that reclaiming condensed water is a promising answer for green building and is a by-product of condensation without extra power demands, avoiding the generation of an increased carbon footprint and exacerbation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from freshwater resource extraction, and for the production of energy-efficient devices or substitutions. By eliminating the need for wastewater treatment, this research enhances the practicality and feasibility of direct use of condensed water in various applications. This approach not only promotes sustainability by conserving water and energy but also renews interest among proponents of green building practices. It has the potential to accelerate the adoption of this method and integrate it into green building designs.

Was 2021–2022 an Annus Horribilis for teacher educators? Reflections on a survey of teacher educators

AbstractThe COVID pandemic temporarily altered the functioning of all sections of society. In England, it led to major disruption in the teacher education sector leading to curtailed training in schools and a rapid shift to alternative approaches to teaching and learning. By the 2021–2022 academic year, it was hoped that activity would return to a level of normalcy. However, the continued hangover of the pandemic together with the return of high‐stakes inspections by Ofsted, and a decision by the UK Government to instigate an accreditation process for all English initial teacher education (pre‐service teacher education) programmes, required to allow institutions to continue offering initial teacher education beyond 2024, all combined to create the potential for a very difficult year. We surveyed 159 teacher educators to capture reflections of their experiences form the 2021–2022 academic year, understanding their perceptions through the lens of the Job Demands‐Resources Model (Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 499–512, 10.1037//0021‐9010.86.3.499) which identifies those factors which may lead to stress and burnout in the work environment (demands) and those which balance against this and offer emotional well‐being (resources). The results show a number of high demands over the course of the year, especially related to accreditation and Ofsted pressures, and the extra demands made by the overhang of the pandemic, all factors leading to increased workload. Counteracting these demands are the resources present, particularly the support between colleagues and a strong commitment and enjoyment gained form working with student teachers. However, the long‐term sustainability of the role of teacher educator is in question.

An Improvement Project in Reducing After-Visit Phone Calls in a Community Pediatric Neurology Clinic: Too Much Communication?

Physicians strive to provide high-quality clinical care, yet after-visit patient telephone calls create extra demands on a clinician's time. Pediatric neurologists are particularly affected by this challenge given the number of patients with chronic illnesses they serve and the volume of worried parents they support. Added workload coupled with a busy office practice increases the likelihood of early physician burnout, which can have downstream effects on the quality of patient care and patient satisfaction. Using the IHI model for quality improvement (abbreviated QI moving forward), QI methodology was used to determine volume and key drivers of patient/family communications after a visit to a pediatric neurology clinic. Interventions aimed at reducing telephone messages by 15% over a 6-month period were put into place. A baseline audit of clinic phone calls was completed in 2019 to develop an overview of after-visit communications. After-visit telephone calls and web-based portal messages were then tracked for 3-week periods in 2019, 2020, and 2021 to understand key trends. A key driver diagram of patient/family communications after a clinic visit was created, and interventions aimed at reducing telephone messages were discussed. These interventions included optimizing MD-RN workflows, synchronous and asynchronous educational initiatives, and changes to our clinic's voicemail phone tree. Our primary outcome measure was the average monthly telephone call volume, and this measure was tracked monthly from November 2020 through December 2022. Similarly, electronic portal message volume was tracked and served as our balancing measure. Physicians, nurses, and patients were primary drivers of phone call volume. After interventions were in place, the average monthly call volume decreased by 30% from a baseline of 293 calls to 203 calls. This change was sustained for at least 1 year. The average monthly portal message volume remained consistent throughout the study period at 359 messages. Both physicians and nurses agree that after-visit patient communication affects their workload. This study illustrates that QI methodology can be used to plan and implement interventions aimed at decreasing after-visit telephone calls.

Clinicians' Attitudes Toward Electronic Health Records in Saudi Arabia.

This study explored physicians' and nurses' attitudes towardan electronic health record (EHR) system and examined the features and factors that clinicians associated with the implementation of EHR systems. A self-administered anonymous questionnaire with high reliability and validity was adopted from existing research to gather clinicians' attitudes towardthe EHR system implemented at King Khalid UniversityHospital, one of the biggest hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A total of 438 questionnaire responses were received from the participants; 240 of them were physicians and 198 were nurses. The participants had a mean age of 43.7 years (standard deviation (SD) 17.1), 213 (52.7%) were femaleand 207 (47.3%) were male. Most participants (424, 96.8%) had one or more years of experience using computers, and a majority (304, 69.4%) had one or more years of experience using EHR systems.Most physicians and nurses (214, 89.5%vs. 174, 87.9%) were satisfied with their hospital's EHR systemand felt that the system was highly usable and had the potential to improve communication between staff, facilitate easy storage of and access to informationand lead to improved health outcomes for patients. The study found positive attitudes among clinicians concerning the quality of training and education around the new system (178, 74.2%of physiciansvs. 142, 71.7%of nurses; p > 0.05) and towardleadership during the transition to HER (222, 92.5%vs. 183, 92.4%). On the other hand, a majority of nurses reported that the EHR system took longer to use and increased their workload compared with the previous analogue system (115 (47.9%) vs. 133 (67.2%); p ≤ 0.01and 46.7% vs. 112 (64.1%)). A large majority of physicians and nurses surveyed (214(89.2%) vs. 167 (84.3%)) stated that clinicians should be consulted in the design of such systems as a way to maximise the potential benefits of EHRand mitigate extra workload demands. Most clinicians expressed overall satisfaction with the EHR system, but there were some areas of dissatisfaction among the respondents, such as increasing workload and stress among nurses. There is scope for further research to continue to explore physicians' and nurses' attitudes towardEHRsand for future experimental studies that examine the impact of EHRs on clinician workloads, patient health outcomesand quality of care.

Onscreen presence of instructors in video lectures affects learners’ neural synchrony and visual attention during multimedia learning

COVID-19 forced students to rely on online learning using multimedia tools, and multimedia learning continues to impact education beyond the pandemic. In this study, we combined behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging paradigms to identify multimedia learning processes and outcomes. College students viewed four video lectures including slides with either an onscreen human instructor, an animated instructor, or no onscreen instructor. Brain activity was recorded via fMRI, visual attention was recorded via eye-tracking, and learning outcome was assessed via post-tests. Onscreen presence of instructor, compared with no instructor presence, resulted in superior post-test performance, less visual attention on the slide, more synchronized eye movements during learning, and higher neural synchronization in cortical networks associated with socio-emotional processing and working memory. Individual variation in cognitive and socio-emotional abilities and intersubject neural synchronization revealed different levels of cognitive and socio-emotional processing in different learning conditions. The instructor-present condition evoked increased synchronization, likely reflecting extra processing demands in attentional control, working memory engagement, and socio-emotional processing. Although human instructors and animated instructors led to comparable learning outcomes, the effects were due to the dynamic interplay of information processing vs. attentional distraction. These findings reflect a benefit-cost trade-off where multimedia learning outcome is enhanced only when the cognitive benefits motivated by the social presence of onscreen instructor outweigh the cognitive costs brought about by concurrent attentional distraction unrelated to learning.

Delayed resonator for complete vibration suppression of primary structures with nonlinear stiffness

Delayed resonator (DR) is an active vibration absorber and is known for its complete vibration suppression capability by manipulating the feedback loop delay. This work aims to extend the DR concept from the widely considered linear applications to suppress vibrations on primary structures with nonlinear stiffness, based on the motivation that absolute linearity does not exist and nonlinearity is inherent in many structures to be protected. The nonlinearity stems from the commonly seen nonlinear symmetrical restoring forces. Threefold objectives are pursued: (1). To generalize the tuning mechanism of the DR and the dynamical analysis of the system to the nonlinear case. (2). To evaluate the effect of such nonlinearity on system dynamics and vibration suppression. (3). To enhance control performance by properly constructing nonlinearity and, accordingly, to establish the design criteria. Without loss of generality, a widely considered three-spring-two-link model is borrowed as an example for constructing the stiffness nonlinearity. Then, an exclusive resultant-based calculation procedure is introduced to efficiently handle the delay-coupled nonlinear dynamics. Besides, the feedback tuning for complete vibration suppression and the related stability issues are tackled, showing that the nonlinearity can significantly extend the operable frequency band while posing no extra demands on the control law. Based on the parameters of an actual experimental setup, numerous comparisons between linear and nonlinear cases are performed to demonstrate how the DR settles a nonlinear primary structure and, furthermore, how such nonlinearity can affect control performance and how it can be utilized to enhance vibration suppression.

The bright side and dark side of performance expectations: the role of organizational culture and the impact on employee performance and wellbeing

Organizational culture has the potential to contribute to employee performance and wellbeing when it creates reasonable expectations and provides employees with the necessary skills and other resources to succeed. A wide range of stakeholders inside and outside the organization influence performance expectations, which largely revolve around workload (the quantity, quality and timeliness of the tasks they are entrusted with), customer service, innovation, and internal relationships. Given the relative lack of attention paid in prior research to performance expectations as an element of organizational culture, our qualitative study sought to investigate the sources and types of expectations of employees and the impact on their actual performance and wellbeing. We focused on the finance industry, which has received considerable criticism in various countries in terms of the undue pressure exerted on employees and the effects on their stress levels. It was therefore surprising to find that most of our New Zealand participants felt that expected performance levels were reasonable, apart from the extra but temporary demands created by the Covid-19 pandemic, and that their wellbeing was a genuine concern to their employers. We signal new research directions to explore how organizations can shape cultures where performance expectations lead to good results and staff wellbeing.

Sparse Coding Inspired LSTM and Self-Attention Integration for Medical Image Segmentation.

Accurate and automatic segmentation of medical images plays an essential role in clinical diagnosis and analysis. It has been established that integrating contextual relationships substantially enhances the representational ability of neural networks. Conventionally, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Self-Attention (SA) mechanisms have been recognized for their proficiency in capturing global dependencies within data. However, these mechanisms have typically been viewed as distinct modules without a direct linkage. This paper presents the integration of LSTM design with SA sparse coding as a key innovation. It uses linear combinations of LSTM states for SA's query, key, and value (QKV) matrices to leverage LSTM's capability for state compression and historical data retention. This approach aims to rectify the shortcomings of conventional sparse coding methods that overlook temporal information, thereby enhancing SA's ability to do sparse coding and capture global dependencies. Building upon this premise, we introduce two innovative modules that weave the SA matrix into the LSTM state design in distinct manners, enabling LSTM to more adeptly model global dependencies and meld seamlessly with SA without accruing extra computational demands. Both modules are separately embedded into the U-shaped convolutional neural network architecture for handling both 2D and 3D medical images. Experimental evaluations on downstream medical image segmentation tasks reveal that our proposed modules not only excel on four extensively utilized datasets across various baselines but also enhance prediction accuracy, even on baselines that have already incorporated contextual modules. Code is available at https://github.com/yeshunlong/SALSTM.

Vertiport Selection in Hybrid Air–Ground Transportation Networks via Mathematical Programs With Equilibrium Constraints

Urban air mobility is a concept that promotes aerial modes of transport in urban areas. In these areas, the location and capacity of the vertiports–where the travelers embark and disembark the aircraft–not only affect flight delays, but can also aggravate the congestion of ground vehicles by creating extra ground travel demands. We introduce a mathematical model for selecting the location and capacity of the vertiports that minimizes traffic congestion in hybrid air-ground transportation networks. Our model is based on a mathematical program with bilinear equilibrium constraints. Furthermore, we show how to compute a global optimal solution to this mathematical program by solving a mixed integer linear program. We demonstrate our results via the Anaheim transportation network model, which contains more than 400 nodes and 900 links.

Remote data collection in sociolinguistics: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT This article reports on our experience of collecting language data from informants in video-conferencing settings under a research design originally developed with face-to-face interactions in mind. We had set out to investigate whether individual stylistic features persist in different modes of textual production and designed a complex set of data-collection procedures, which we then adopted for use in a fully virtual environment with 112 informants, who were asked to provide language samples in eight discourse types. We conclude that the unintended shift to virtual settings had only a minimal impact on the volume and quality of the data. While the process was occasionally afflicted by IT-related technical issues and made extra demands on the data collector, it also created opportunities, notably around the management of interactional power asymmetries. Additional benefits included instant troubleshooting during data handover sessions and the ability to recruit participants who would not have been able to travel to face-to-face sessions.

Novel fiber-based seismic response modelling and design method of partially CFST bridge piers considering local buckling effect

Considering the prohibitive computation time and convergence problems of shell-solid models in seismic analysis of partially concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) bridge piers, a simple fiber-based nonlinear modelling method is proposed and calibrated in this study intended for large-scale seismic analyses. The local buckling effect of the outer steel tube is considered in the proposed method. By comparing the results of the numerical modelling with those from the experiments, the proposed fiber models are demonstrated to capture the hysteretic behavior of CFST piers with a comparable effectiveness but an enhanced efficiency and analysis time and effort over the shell-solid models. Based on the proposed fiber models, extensive cyclic pushover and time-history analyses are conducted to investigate the effect of critical design parameters on seismic performance of partially CFST piers. The analysis results indicate that the parameters of steel tube and infilled concrete should be properly designed in a combined way to mitigate the local buckling of the steel tube and thus improve the overall seismic performance of partially CFST piers. A novel design method using layered concrete filling is proposed for partially CFST piers, which can achieve an improved structural seismic performance. Furthermore, this method is validated to be especially efficient for seismic retrofit of existing hollow steel piers, which can significantly enhance the pier deformation capacity without imposing much extra force demands on pier foundations.

Relationship between Academic Stress and Thesis Completion among University Postgraduate Students

The study examined the association between academic stress and thesis completion among the University of Cape Coast postgraduate students. The correlational research design was employed for the study. A sample of 294 postgraduate students who completed their postgraduate studies between 2018 and 2020 was purposively selected for the study. Means and standard deviations, Pearson's Moment Correlation, and independent sample t-tests were used to answer the research questions and test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that the major factors causing academic stress were that, lecturers made too many extra demands on students, poor interest in some courses, eleventh-hour preparation for examinations, worry about examination results, and monotonous teaching style by some lecturers among others. The study also found a statistically significant relationship between academic stress and thesis completion among postgraduate students. It was therefore, recommended that the University of Cape Coast’s management in collaboration with all its academic departments, should take the challenge of academic stress more seriously by ensuring that all postgraduate students seek professional counselling services available at the university to enable them to cope with the ever-increasing academic demands on them.

Childcare Services Adopted by Female Bankers with Children Aged 1-5 Years in Owerri Municipal, Nigeria

The study basically concerns itself with child care services adopted by career mothers in banks with children (0-5) yrs in Owerri Municipality. Four research objectives guided the study and a structured questionnaire was used to elicit data from the respondents which consist of career mothers working in the various 30 banks in the study area, while data collected were analysed using Tables and mean scores calculated. Based on the findings of this study, the researchers reached the conclusions that career mothers in banks have various ways of taking care of their children (0-5)yrs in Owerri Municipality and encounter a range of challenges including mother’s difficulty to understand who the children are, children refuse to obey mothers when mothers are available, mothers lose grip on their children in terms of respect, tiredness makes mothers adopt permissive parenting, children make extra demands of attention when mothers are available, are encountered by career mothers in banks in bringing up their children (0-5yrs) in Owerri Municipality. Despite the challenges, there are possible strategies adopted by career mothers in banks to help them cope with these challenges in Owerri Municipality which are; career mothers in banks should spend extra time with their children, consider adopting punitive measures in parenting, as well as, motivation and family incentives. Career mothers should also share appropriately their time between work-life balances.

Waterway carrying capacity assessment: Model development and application in the lower Yangtze River, China

With rapid socioeconomic development, extra demands have been placed on the waterway sustainable exploration, which are closely related to river ecological protection, flood control and comprehensive utilization of water resources. Therefore, it is theoretically and practically relevant to investigate the waterway carrying capacity (WCC) under multi-objective coordination. Based on a hierarchical indicators system framework of WCC which including four subsystems (i.e., economic-demand system, flood-control system, water-supply system and ecological-protection system), we propose a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model of WCC, which covers a flow module, a sediment module, an ecological module and a comprehensive analysis module. This model integrates two assessment methods of comprehensive index evaluation and fuzzy-pattern recognition with analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Determining weights by the AHP method can avoid the subjectivity and errors caused by weighing a large number of indicators, while the combined two methods have a complementarity of function to more objectively reflect the carrying capacity level of different layers. The WCC of the lower Yangtze River from Hukou to Nanjing reaches was assessed, and the results suggested that the carrying capacity states of waterway are generally on a downward trajectory with the increase of waterway scale, and the carrying capacity levels of waterway for the built (in 2015) and planning scales (in 2030) are in the state of bearable or critical bearable. In a certain future period, the exploitable thresholds of channel scales in the sections from Hukou-Anqing, Anqing-Wuhu and Wuhu-Nanjing reaches are estimated to be 8.0 × 200 × 1050 m, 8.0 × 200 × 1050 m and 10.5 × 500 × 1050 m, respectively. The evaluation results are generally consistent with exiting studies, thus the proposed model is effective to identify the threshold of waterway exploitation under the restriction of multiple factors. This research can provide a reference for the evaluation of WCC in the sustainable development of similar inland waterways.

Parent–child conflict during homeschooling in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: A key role for mothers’ self-efficacy in teaching

To contain the COVID-19 pandemic schools have been closed in many countries. Children stayed at home and were assisted by their parents with their schoolwork. Evidently, homeschooling puts extra demands on parents. We presumed that parents’ sense of efficacy in teaching would play a key role in how they cope with this extra task of homeschooling. In particular, we hypothesized that parental characteristics (level of parental education and stress) and social contextual factors (household chaos and school support) would contribute to parents’ teaching self-efficacy and that, in turn, a lower efficacy would result in more parent–child conflict during home schooling. Participants were 173 mothers of children in kindergarten or early elementary schools, who provided information for one of their children about interpersonal conflicts around schoolwork before and during school closure. Additionally, they reported on their self-efficacy in teaching, perceived stress during lockdown, home chaos, and school support. Path analyses indicated that mothers’ perceived stress and household chaos were associated with a lower sense of efficacy in teaching, whereas school support, but not level of parental education, was related to a higher level of teaching self-efficacy. Higher levels of self-efficacy beliefs, in turn, were associated with a lower degree of mother–child conflict during schoolwork, even after controlling for prior levels of conflict. We discuss how the results of this study might be used to foster parents’ self-efficacy in teaching and thereby decrease the amount of parent–child conflict during parents’ support with schoolwork.

Perspectives on How 1.5 Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic Have Impacted Biophysicists at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions

Perspectives on How 1.5 Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic Have Impacted Biophysicists at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions

A revival in façades: Textile reinforced concrete panels are light, safe and aesthetically pleasing

Textile reinforced concrete was developed in recent years into a construction technique that has its benefits and advantages in applications where conventional types of reinforcement have their limits. The current, minimum slab thickness for steel-reinforced concrete façade slabs is 7.0 cm; this is due to the minimum, required concrete cover to ensure adequate corrosion protection. Façade slab anchors for these slab thicknesses are building authority approved. As corrosion protection is not an issue for textile reinforced concrete, the minimum thickness for the concrete cover can be significantly reduced. The requirement for component thickness is now determined by the load-bearing capacity and by production-related boundary conditions. For practical building reasons, panel thicknesses of 3.0 cm have proven to be the best choice. Compared to steel-reinforced façade panels, this is a weight and thickness reduction of almost 60%. Thin concrete elements are of great interest in cases when the thickness or the weight of the panels is largely limited e.g. because of adjoining concrete elements in renovation or upgrade projects, retrofitting or improvements. Compared to other building materials, concrete has characteristic advantages in building physics and fire protection properties, irrespective of the thickness. Obviously, minimal thicknesses place extra demands on planning and construction. Especially effects on concrete, punching, splitting and concrete breakout must be examined in experiments. This is an overview of calculation and test methods. Results are provided to show the bearing behaviour of fixings in thin, textile reinforced concrete slabs. The design rules are explained and the results are illustrated.