No abstract

Bridge management systems focus on optimizing the life-cycle cost of preservation and improvement activities in a network of structures. Pontis, the predominant bridge management system currently implemented in the United States, considers load-carrying capacity as static during an incremental benefit-cost approach. Including consideration of load-carrying capacity, deterioration may enhance this model. To accomplish this goal, a method to relate load-carrying capacity to physical bridge deterioration using a combination of regression analysis and Markov chains is presented. The method is applied to historic bridge data from the United States and Hungary.

No abstract

Our observation that dispersed cultures of neurohypophysis obtained from adult rats are capable of synthesizing and releasing oxytocin and vasopressin is unexpected, because in whole animals these hormones are known only to be stored, not to be produced in the posterior lobe of the pituitary. The hormone content of cell culture medium was elevated from 0 to 129 +/- 14 pg/mg protein for oxytocin and from 0 to 42 +/- 4 pg/mg protein for vasopressin during two weeks as determined by specific radioimmunoassay. By molecular mass and structure determination (tandem mass spectrometry) we have proved that the supernatant of the cell cultures contains not only immunologically but mass spectrometrically identified neurohypophyseal hormones.