Rare shot of tall buildings vibrating due to the Japan earthquake

Rare shot of tall buildings vibrating due to the Japan earthquake. When sometimes is better to align with the nature's forces instead of resisting them.. [click 'Read more' to view the video]

Impressive new exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco

Director Stephen Mahin's recent research test for the NEEStips project at the nees@berkeley lab is featured in a new exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.  The new exhibit, called "EARTHQUAKE: Life on a Dynamic Planet," explores the seismic science that has shaped Earth’s evolution and continues to impact our lives today. A key feature of the new exhibit is the Earthquake planetarium show, in the largest all-digital planetarium in the world.  The show explores the forces that transform the earth's surface by examining the San Andreas Fault and San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake.  The show concludes with a focus on how engineers today help buildings resist earthquake shaking safely and highlights the benefits of earthquake resisting features, such as seismic isolation. The nees@berkeley staff and researchers worked closely with the California Academy of Sciences to film the seismically isolated two bay, two story specimen that was being tested on nees@berkeley's new hybrid shaking table.  The final resulting footage used in the planetarium show depicts the specimen being shaken as it zooms into a close up to one of the isolators.  If you go to see the planetarium show, be sure to look for the nees@berkeley team in the credits! For more information about research highlighted in the planetarium show, watch an interview with Professor Mahin about the NEEStips testing at UC Berkeley.  Professor Keri Ryan of University Nevada, Reno is the PI of the NEEStips research program. For more information about the California Academy of Science exhibit, visit the "EARTHQUAKE: Life on a Dynamic Planet" website. To watch the Academy's "Science in Action" video trailer highlighting the filming process and the importance of earthquake engineering research at PEER and nees@berkeley, visit the ScienceToday website.

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First International Conference on Performance-based and Life-cycle Structural Engineering

The First International Conference on Performance-based and Life-cycle Structural Engineering (PLSE 2012) organized by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University will be held in Hong Kong on 5-7 December 2012. The following nine world-renowned researchers have agreed to deliver Keynote Lectures at the conference:

Professor Nick BUENFELD, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Professor Oral BUYUKOZTURK, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States

Professor Gregory G. DEIERLEIN, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, United States

Professor Filip C. FILIPPOU, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, United States

Professor Dan FRANGOPOL, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Lehigh University, United States

Professor Koichi MAEKAWA, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Professor Jin-Ping OU, School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Professor Frieder SEIBLE, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego, United States

Professor Surendra P. SHAH, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, United States

http://www.polyu.edu.hk/fce/PLSE2012/

  

The Third International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering

PARENG2013
The Third International Conference onParallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering
Pécs, Hungary25-27 March 2013.
Abstracts of papers to be presented at the above conference may now be submitted via the conference website: http://www.civil-comp.com/conf/pareng2013.htm
Young Researcher Best Paper Competition: To encourage young researchers to attend the conference a 1000 Euro Young Researcher Best Paper Prize will be awarded to the best paper presented at the conference.  (For further details please see the conference website).

Seismo-Artif: a new freeware for generating artificial earthquake accelerograms

Seismosoft has announced the release of SeismoArtif, an application capable of generating artificial earthquake accelerograms matched to a specific target response spectrum using different calculation methods and varied assumptions. In other words, the ideal companion tool of SeismoMatch, to be used in those cases where spectrum matching of real accelerograms is not pursuable.

In tandem with this new release, Seismosoft has also published new versions of SeismoSignal, SeismoSpect and SeismoMatch. In the News  section of the official website it is possible to get a glimpse of the novelties and improvements introduced in these programs, which can all be downloaded from here .