scholarly journals RECENT DEVELOPMENT IN SEISMIC ISOLATION IN THE UNITED STATES*

1999 ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.M. Kelly

The first seismically isolated building in the United States was completed in 1985. In the fourteen years since then, a total of not more that twenty-five new buildings and twenty-two retrofits of existing buildings hass been completed. In constrast, the number of base-isolated building in Japan completed over the same time period is of the order of a few hundred, and in China, where the first isloated building was completed in 1995, there are now over seventy base-isolated building.Currently there are several building codes that govern the desing of base-isolated buildings in the United States. New regulations have been prepared for the year 2000 and beyond, which are both complex and conservative, discouraging the use of seismic isolation. These codes require the engineer to desing isolators for very large displacements and mandate extensive prototype and production testing, thereby restricting isolation's application to special structures such as hospitals and emergency service centers where a requirement for operational functionality following large earthquake events justifies the cost premium and time delays associated with the use of seismic isolation.Conversely, seismic isolation is widely used throughout the United States for highway bridges and is governed by a single desing code that is simple tob use and not overly conservative. Isolation systems are being used for the retrofit of several very large bridges in California. The isolators to be used for this projects are very large, and a test machine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), has just been completed to test these Isolators at full-scale, real-time rates.This paper will describe the current regulatory evironment for seismic isolation and the testing requirements for isolators. A description of the new test facility at UCSD will be included. 

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 275-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Y. Yang ◽  
Dimitrios Konstantinidis ◽  
James M. Kelly

The seismic isolation code which must be used for all seismic isolated buildings in the United States is conservative in many of its provisions. While seismic isolation is flourishing in other countries, it is underused in the United States. For static analysis and for the selection of time histories, the spectrum is constant-velocity for periods of one second and longer, leading to large displacements for long period systems and forcing the designer to use added damping to reduce these displacements. The damping systems used are hysteretic with the characteristic that damping decreases with increasing displacement. To achieve the damping needed to reduce these large displacements, expected from very rare seismic input, means that at smaller displacements, caused by realistic levels of seismic input, the damping will be very much higher, and there may be stiffening of the isolation system, meaning that the building may not act as isolated and there may be an impact on sensitive internal equipment. This paper shows how highly damped isolation systems are counterproductive to isolation and suggests an alternative approach that will conform to code requirements but ensure that, at moderate earthquake inputs, the equipment remains protected, and the large code-mandated displacements are kept to acceptable levels.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (13) ◽  
pp. 4336
Author(s):  
Piervincenzo Rizzo ◽  
Alireza Enshaeian

Bridge health monitoring is increasingly relevant for the maintenance of existing structures or new structures with innovative concepts that require validation of design predictions. In the United States there are more than 600,000 highway bridges. Nearly half of them (46.4%) are rated as fair while about 1 out of 13 (7.6%) is rated in poor condition. As such, the United States is one of those countries in which bridge health monitoring systems are installed in order to complement conventional periodic nondestructive inspections. This paper reviews the challenges associated with bridge health monitoring related to the detection of specific bridge characteristics that may be indicators of anomalous behavior. The methods used to detect loss of stiffness, time-dependent and temperature-dependent deformations, fatigue, corrosion, and scour are discussed. Owing to the extent of the existing scientific literature, this review focuses on systems installed in U.S. bridges over the last 20 years. These are all major factors that contribute to long-term degradation of bridges. Issues related to wireless sensor drifts are discussed as well. The scope of the paper is to help newcomers, practitioners, and researchers at navigating the many methodologies that have been proposed and developed in order to identify damage using data collected from sensors installed in real structures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (Supplement_3) ◽  
pp. iii466-iii466
Author(s):  
Karina Black ◽  
Jackie Middleton ◽  
Sunita Ghosh ◽  
David Eisenstat ◽  
Samor Patel

Abstract BACKGROUND Proton therapy for benign and malignant tumors has dosimetric and clinical advantages over photon therapy. Patients in Alberta, Canada are referred to the United States for proton treatment. The Alberta Heath Care Insurance Plan (AHCIP) pays for the proton treatment and the cost of flights to and from the United States (direct costs). This study aimed to determine the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by patients or their families (indirect costs). METHODS Invitation letters linked to an electronic survey were mailed to patients treated with protons between 2008 and 2018. Expenses for flights for other family members, accommodations, transportation, food, passports, insurance, and opportunity costs including lost wages and productivity were measured. RESULTS Fifty-nine invitation letters were mailed. Seventeen surveys were completed (28.8% response rate). One paper survey was mailed at participant request. Nine respondents were from parent/guardian, 8 from patients. All patients were accompanied to the US by a family member/friend. Considerable variability in costs and reimbursements were reported. Many of the accompanying family/friends had to miss work; only 3 patients themselves reported missed work. Time away from work varied, and varied as to whether it was paid or unpaid time off. CONCLUSIONS Respondents incurred indirect monetary and opportunity costs which were not covered by AHCIP when traveling out of country for proton therapy. Prospective studies could help provide current data minimizing recall bias. These data may be helpful for administrators in assessing the societal cost of out-of-country referral of patients for proton therapy.


2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John F Cogan ◽  
R. Glenn Hubbard ◽  
Daniel Kessler

In this paper, we use publicly available data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey - Insurance Component (MEPS-IC) to investigate the effect of Massachusetts' health reform plan on employer-sponsored insurance premiums. We tabulate premium growth for private-sector employers in Massachusetts and the United States as a whole for 2004 - 2008. We estimate the effect of the plan as the difference in premium growth between Massachusetts and the United States between 2006 and 2008—that is, before versus after the plan—over and above the difference in premium growth for 2004 to 2006. We find that health reform in Massachusetts increased single-coverage employer-sponsored insurance premiums by about 6 percent, or $262. Although our research design has important limitations, it does suggest that policy makers should be concerned about the consequences of health reform for the cost of private insurance.


2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (S1) ◽  
pp. 67-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Coleman

There is a direct relationship between years lived beyond age 65 and the number of individuals diagnosed with dementia, primarily Alzheimer's disease (AD). The occurrence of AD has no socioeconomic, geographical, or ethnic limitations. The problem is worldwide. Its magnitude is demonstrated by the following facts: (a) approximately 6% to 8% of persons 65 years or older have AD, and the prevalence of the disease doubles each 5 years after 60 years of age; (b) 30% of 85-year-old individuals can be expected to have the disease; (c) AD affects an estimated 4 million people in the United States, and is expected to affect approximately 14 million Americans within the next few decades; (d) AD patients average 6 to 10 years of comprehensive treatment from symptom onset to death; (e) AD is the fourth leading cause of mortality among elderly Americans, more than 100,000 each year; (f) caregiver attempts at management of the behavioral and psychological symptoms of AD result in up to 50% developing significant psychological distress themselves; and (g) the cost for the management of AD patients is estimated to be between US $80 billion and US $120 billion annually. Primary care is essential for the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of the complex set of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) associated with AD.


2011 ◽  
Vol 103 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Mariotto ◽  
K. Robin Yabroff ◽  
Y. Shao ◽  
E. J. Feuer ◽  
M. L. Brown

Nuncius ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-281
Author(s):  
FRANCO PALLADINO

Abstract<title> SUMMARY </title>We have gathered here twenty-six writings from the correspondence of Giuseppe Peano, as well as letters by Alexander Macfarlane and Alexander Ziwet.Peano's letters were addressed to Ernesto Cesaro, an important member of the great Italian school of mathematics founded in the second half of the Nineteenth century. In these writings, Peano discusses various topics: Infinitesimal calculus and Barycentric calculus, the «Rivista di Matematica» and the «Formulario» of which he was editor; didactics and a question about Actuarial mathematics. Some of the writings are confidential in nature: in one letter, Peano proposes exchanging his professorial chair with Cesaro's, and hence transferring from Turin to Naples.The letters written by Macfarlane and Ziwet were sent to Peano; they contain, at the request of Cesaro, information concerning university chairs and the cost of living in the United States.


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