Study on Seismic Response in Deeply Deposited Saturated Liquefiable Soil Reinforced by Using Subarea Long-Short Gravel Piles

To avoid large deformation, resulting from liquefaction, in inclined and deeply deposited liquefiable soil, it is necessary to design economical and reasonable reinforcement schemes. A reinforcement scheme employing subarea long-short gravel piles was proposed, and it was successfully applied in the embankment construction of the Aksu-kashgar highway. To reveal its underlying mechanism and effect on the seismic performance of the highway, the dynamic responses of natural foundation and two kinds of reinforced foundations were analyzed and compared under this scheme, using the program FEMEPDYN. Results showed that both the seismic subsidence and the excess pore pressure ratios were far less in the foundation reinforced with isometric gravel piles and in the foundation reinforced with subarea long-short gravel piles, compared with that in natural foundation. Therefore, the potential hazards of liquefaction were overcome in these two kinds of reinforced foundations. Furthermore, it was obvious that the shielding region only formed within the foundation reinforced with subarea long-short gravel piles. With the shielding effect, the proposed reinforcement scheme employing subarea long-short gravel piles not only eliminated liquefaction in deeply deposited liquefiable soil, but it also demonstrated an outstanding advantage in that the total length of gravel piles used was greatly reduced compared to the total length in the isometric gravel piles scheme and the interphase long-short gravel piles.

Metaphysical Foundations of Theistic Argumentation

The proofs of God's existence is the subject matter of the article. Four main types of proofs are analyzed: cosmological, teleological, ontological and moral. It is argued that there is a general scheme of theistic reasoning present in all four types of proving. The principal feature of this scheme lies in recognizing a ground of everything existing which goes beyond the material (or natural) world. Possible naturalistic arguments excluding a non-material, super-natural foundation of the world are also analyzed. The objections to naturalistic arguments are formulated, making it possible to assert that the natural world cannot be explained from itself. Nor it can be explained from its physical (or natural) part. At the same time, the material world needs an explanation. To meet this need, the extended direct theistic arguments are formulated in the article. They begin with the fact of there being something and include two aspects of theistic argumentation: one is to establish the existence of immaterial foundation of the natural world; another is to demonstrate that this immaterial foundation may be identified with the world subject – omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, immaterial rational being which mainly corresponds to God of theistic religions. The conclusion is made that the thinkability and rationality of the idea of God is provable. One can argue that the idea of God more rationally explains the world. Moreover, it is evident that theism is rational, naturalism (as the principle of the general explanation of everything) is irrational. But the question remains how rational the world is.

Use of seismic insulation for seismic protection of railway bridges

The problem of seismic protection of the bridge for the conditions of Uzbekistan is considered. The bridge is located in an area with estimated seismicity of 9 points. It has massive high supports on a natural foundation and relatively small and light spans. When selecting seismic isolation, this made it possible to use the span structures as a dynamic damper for the support vibrations in the direction along the bridge. Due to the damping effect, it was possible to achieve that the seismic forces in the support in the presence of the superstructure were less than in the free support without the superstructure. At the same time, the rigidity of fastening the superstructure to the support increased in comparison with the rigidity of classical seismic isolation, which facilitated the design of the supporting elements.

Understanding and Organizing Mathematics Education as a Design Science–Origins and New Developments

The objective of this paper is to revisit briefly the conception of mathematics education as a design science as it has been evolving alongside the developmental research in the project Mathe 2000 from 1987 to 2012 to report in some detail on recent developments, as concerns both conceptual and practical issues. The paper is a plea for appreciating and (re-)installing “well-understood mathematics” as the natural foundation for teaching and learning mathematics.

Development of a settlement prediction model for upper subgrade layers of ballasted tracks

Recently, settlement in railway tracks is posing a serious challenge. In particular, ballasted tracks can experience settlement due to repeated dynamic loading and various geotechnical factors such as consolidated settlements of natural foundation soil and poor compaction, which lead to track irregularities. Among these factors, settlement in track foundation has been identified as the primary cause of track irregularities. Such settlement mainly results from permanent deformation, a form of progressive settlement found in the upper subgrade due to the repeated dynamic loading of trains. As such, it is necessary to conduct a behavioral analysis of upper subgrade soil, which is susceptible to permanent deformation. A large-scale finite element analysis was performed using an existing permanent deformation prediction model to analyze the effects of permanent deformation on settlement in underlying soil materials of ballasted tracks. The results were used to propose a prediction model for settlement in the upper subgrade of ballasted tracks. The proposed model allows more accurate predictions of settlement that may occur in the upper subgrade of ballasted tracks, and can also be employed in predicting track irregularities.

Early Modern Epicureanism

Two fundamental notions of Epicureanism took new life in modern political thought: that of the social contract, the agreed and consensual basis of law and authority, and that of the “state of nature” that precedes it. There is no question that among all ancient traditions the Garden was one of very few to base law and politics on the contract and consent of the contracting parties. Yet, by contrast with the Sophists, who emphasized the conventional aspects so far as to be open to the charge of pure relativism, Epicureans looked for a “weak” but “natural” foundation of the social contract deducing it from an idea or mental anticipation (prolēpsis) of justice based on utility. This approach was revived in the seventeenth-century Neo-Epicureanism of Pierre Gassendi who also reworked Epicurus’s and Lucretius’s outdated psychology, transforming it into a more modern “mechanistic” theory of mind. During the greater part of the 1640s Hobbes and Gassendi both lived in Paris and were in close personal contact. The same period was for both thinkers decisive for the construction of their works: the Syntagma philosophicum for Gassendi, De cive, De motu, loco et tempore, and Leviathan for Hobbes. This chapter explores the complex interplay between them, especially with regards to psychology, the foundations of ethics, legal theory, and political philosophy, stressing the important role that ancient Epicureanism and seventeenth-century Neo-Epicureanism played in the birth of a modern theory of individual rights.

DEPENDENT CHOICE, PROPERNESS, AND GENERIC ABSOLUTENESS

We show that Dependent Choice is a sufficient choice principle for developing the basic theory of proper forcing, and for deriving generic absoluteness for the Chang model in the presence of large cardinals, even with respect to $\mathsf {DC}$ -preserving symmetric submodels of forcing extensions. Hence, $\mathsf {ZF}+\mathsf {DC}$ not only provides the right framework for developing classical analysis, but is also the right base theory over which to safeguard truth in analysis from the independence phenomenon in the presence of large cardinals. We also investigate some basic consequences of the Proper Forcing Axiom in $\mathsf {ZF}$ , and formulate a natural question about the generic absoluteness of the Proper Forcing Axiom in $\mathsf {ZF}+\mathsf {DC}$ and $\mathsf {ZFC}$ . Our results confirm $\mathsf {ZF} + \mathsf {DC}$ as a natural foundation for a significant portion of “classical mathematics” and provide support to the idea of this theory being also a natural foundation for a large part of set theory.

Passions and Institutions According to Spinoza

According to Matheron’s interpretation, Spinoza’s political theory and analysis of the different forms of government all follow directly from his theory of the passions. With this in mind, Matheron develops the three implications that follow from this philosophical foundation: 1) political society has as its ‘natural foundation’ the interactions to which human passions are subject 2) this same theory of passions makes possible an account of the ‘institutional dysfunctions’ that necessarily affect the majority of political societies and 3) lastly, the remedies for such dysfunctions can be envisioned by theorizing the conditions necessary to establish perfectly self-regulating institutional systems. Spinoza’s strategy, as Matheron shows, is to propose remedies to the dysfunctions of monarchy and aristocracy by encouraging the maximalisation of democratic functioning. As for Spinoza’s account of a perfectly functioning democracy, one can only speculate since the Political Treatise remained unfinished on precisely this point.