In this paper we study the use of the Brill tagger [5,6,7] for tagging Modern Standard Arabic (henceforth MSA) text. The Brill tagger is a famous public domain part of speech tagger, originally designed for tagging English text by implementing machine learning approach through the method of transformation rules. IT had been adopted for other languages by many researchers [17,19,22]. Some modifications are needed on the learner and tagger that are written partly in perl and partly in C programming languages, and are run under the unix/linux operating system. The main change is done on the initial state tagger, which is used by both learner and tagger. A program is written using the lexical analyzer Lex to capture Arabic morphological structures, and then interfaced with both learner and tagger. The tagset used in this work is a revised version of that introduced by Khoja [11]. The revision included changing some of the tags for linguistic considerations and introducing some new tags to make the set more powerful, or to make up for limitations in the original tagset that hinder tagging some words. The corpus is obtained from two Jordanian magazines, and has to go through a series of editing steps. A collection of lexical rules and contextual rules are obtained and applied to Arabic text. The tagging accuracy of the resulting tagged text is measured now to be an average of up to about 84% for both known and unknown words, A rate, which is very promising for such a complex language and rich tagset. We still hope for better performance.

Abstract

The paper presents studies on numerical modelling of beam-to-column joint behaviour in typical service and exceptional design situations. The complexity of such investigations arises from highly nonlinear effects associated with the prediction of joint performance, such as structural imperfections, large displacements and rotations, inelastic properties of steel and concrete, bonding effects between steel and concrete, and slip between concrete and structural steel, among others. The paper addresses these problems and provides validation of numerical modelling techniques trough comparison with experimental data for joints under hogging and sagging moments. © (2012) Trans Tech Publications.

A new class of high‐performance resins of combined molecular structure of both traditional phenolics and benzoxazines has been developed. The monomers termed as methylol‐functional benzoxazines were synthesized through Mannich condensation reaction of methylol‐functional phenols and aromatic amines, including methylenedianiline (4,4′‐diaminodiphenylmethane) and oxydianiline (4,4′‐diaminodiphenyl ether), in the presence of paraformaldehyde. For comparison, other series of benzoxazine monomers were prepared from phenol, corresponding aromatic amines, and paraformaldehyde. The as‐synthesized monomers are characterized by their high purity as judged from ¹H NMR and Fourier transform infrared spectra. Differential scanning calorimetric thermograms of the novel monomers show two exothermic peaks associated with condensation reaction of methylol groups and ring‐opening …

The design phase is the most important phase in determining the green performance of building projects. The performance of the design team is crucial. The growing importance of sustainability globally necessitates the inclusion of green criteria in the design team selection process. Therefore, a competent design teams is required to have a range of attributes as the basis for design decisions. The propose of this study to identify current green design performance level of design teams of building projects and establish key design attributes influencing green design performance. To achieve mentioned aim a questionnaire survey was conducted to collect dada required. A sample of 274 respondents has been covered under the study, including architects and engineers practicing design and consultancy building sectors. Prior to analysis of data WINSTEPS software were used to determine validity and reliability of date. Descriptive analysis data includes quantitative and qualitative. In general, design team attributes were moderate (3.32). The general design team attributes were high such experience (3.81), communication (3.43) and leadership effectiveness (3.48). However, green attributes of design team were moderate such as green knowledge (2.98), green skills (3.13) and green initiatives (2.84). The result indicates that most design teams have inadequate knowledge and skills to produce high green design performance of building projects. Therefore, to overcome green design complexity, careful selecting design team members and more education and training courses on green building are required to deal with green design requirements.

The effect of austenitizing temperature and Cr, Mo and Mn addition on microstructure and mechanical

properties of V microalloyed medium carbon steel has been studied by means of metallography and mechanical

testing. The addition of Cr, Mn and Mo leads to a decrease in yield strength (YS) by approximate 100 MPa in

comparison to the base steel. It is assumed that Mn and Mo increase hardenability by promoting the formation

of bainitic sheaves (BS), i:e: by suppressing the formation of ferrite-pearlite and acicular ferrite (FP-AF). Cr

at the level used in this work is not that e®ective. Presence and packet size of bainitic sheaves decrease

the Charpy V-notch impact energy at 20 ±C (CVN20) in comparison to ferrite-pearlite and acicular ferrite

microstructures.

The aim of this work was to investigate whether the Malaysian current building projects are considered as “Green Designs”. To achieve this aim a questionnaire survey was conducted. A sample of 274 respondents is covered, which included architects and engineers in the building design and consultancy sectors. WINSTEPS software is used in Rasch modeling to determine the validity and reliability of the data. Descriptive data analysis (quantitative and qualitative) is done. The results reveal that design green building performance, in general, energy efficiency, and indoor air quality requirements are considered moderate. The majority of the designed buildings are with low utilization of recycled and reused materials. Moreover, high utilization of regional materials, low consideration to water efficiency requirements and environmental innovations are also moderate. Design team attributes are the key factors to improve green design performance. Client quality play major role to enhance design team attributes. Therefore, effective Design team attributes and client’s qualities may increase performance of the design green building performance in order to enhance building performance and reduce building impact on environment.

Eurocodes [1], [2] cover presently only the so-called basic design situations where the beam-to-column joints are subjected to hogging bending with a negligible influence of the axial force. Design requirements for structural robustness in case of exceptional or extreme actions are being developed in which the joint ductility demand is one of the primary requirement [3][6]. Localized structural damage due to these actions may propagate through a large portion of a structural system causing its entire collapse or the progressive collapse process may be restricted to the relatively small region that is in proportion to the load effects caused. The latter might be provided by design ensuring the ability of transfer the so-called tying forces. Eurocodes do not give any guidelines on how to calculate the tying resistance of joints, mainly because of lack of experimental evidence on the joint ductility under extreme actions. For robust design, joints need to pose the rotation capacity required for inelastic redistribution process to take place on the so-called alternative equilibrium path. The capability of a structure to sustain local damage is evaluated by a notionally conducted removal of its column(s) and checking whether the local damage may be absorbed by the deteriorated structural system. This requires investigations conducted into the behaviour of joint responses to sagging bending accompanied by an axial tying. This paper is concerned with experimental tests of steel and steel-concrete composite sub-frames through which the beam-to-column joint behaviour in typical standard and exceptional design situations is possible to be evaluated. Problems related to the joint strength, stiffness and rotation capacity response under sagging moment in case of the column removal that simulates the frame system behaviour in an exceptional situation are addressed and conclusions drawn.

Various types of pavement deterioration can affect pavement performance, including rutting,

which causes safety and service quality problems on the highways. Rutting, often referred to as

permanent deformation of a pavement surface, causes longitudinal depressions creating

channels in wheel paths. There are many in-service pavement performance databases, but the

Long Term Pavement Performance database (LTTP) is the largest of its kind in the world. It

encompasses data from four different climate zones in North America. Data on flexible

pavements from only the dry freeze zone was included in the scope of the study reported herein.

Regression analysis was performed to develop a rutting model. The proposed model indicates

that the voids in the mineral aggregate (VMA) of hot mixed asphalt is the most important factor

and the positive values of the regression coefficient of VMA implies that rut depth increases

when VMA increases. The other important factors in this model are Marshall stiffness and

freeze index. The negative values of the regression coefficients of Marshall stiffness and freeze

index indicates that the rut depth will decrease when the Marshall stiffness and freeze index

increase.

Historically, applications for traditional phenolic resin/polyurethane materials are limited due to the inherently weak thermal stability of urethane-phenolic linkage and slow reaction rate. A novel concept has been developed to produce phenolic resin/polyurethane copolymers ...

The unique features of polybenzoxazines make them attractive for a wide range of applications. The characteristics of polybenzoxazines such as excellent dimensional stability, lower surface energy, higher Tg, and lower moisture absorption are attributed to the stable intramolecular hydrogen bonding in their network structure. The features make polybenzoxazines excellent candidates for the applications that require near zero shrinkage and high dimensional stability. Polybenzoxazines are formed by the autocatalytic polymerization of benzoxazine monomers. Polybenzoxazines are well known as a new class of thermoset polymers used for high performance applications. They provide the characteristic properties found in phenolic resins, such as high thermal stability, excellent electrical properties, good mechanical properties, and better flame retardancy. Furthermore, they have the advantages …