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Smart concretes and structures are intelligent systems that have properties different from normal concrete, such as selfsensing and self-healing properties, or have the ability to react upon an external stimulus, such as stress and temperature. The ''smartness'' of concrete and structures is achieved through material composition design, special processing, introduction of other functional components, or modification of the microstructure. They are designed to meet specific requirements through tailored properties for improving serviceability, safety, reliability, longevity, and durability of the infrastructures and reducing the life-cycle costs of the infrastructures. This article reviews the recent researches of various smart concretes and structures, with attentions to their principles, fabrication, and properties. Future challenges in the development and applications of smart concretes and structures are also discussed.

Sensing concrete has the capability to sense its condition and environmental changes, including stress (or force), strain (or deformation), crack, damage, temperature, and humidity, by incorporating functional fillers. Sensing concrete has recently attracted major research interest aiming to produce smart infrastructures with elegantly integrated health monitoring abilities. In addition to having highly improved mechanical properties, sensing concrete has multifunctional properties, such as improved ductility, durability, resistance to impact, and, most importantly, self-health monitoring due to its electrical conductivity capability, allowing damage detection without the need for an external grid of sensors. This tutorial will provide an overview of sensing concrete, with attention to its principles, properties, and applications. It concludes with an outline of some future opportunities and challenges in the application of sensing concrete in the construction industry.

Gene expression data generated from multiple biological samples (mutant, double mutant, and wild-type) are often compared via Venn diagram tools. It is of great interest to know the expression pattern between overlapping genes and their associated gene pathways or gene ontology (GO) terms. We developed DiVenn (Dive into the Venn diagram and create a force directed graph)—a novel web-based tool that compares gene lists from multiple RNA-Seq experiments in a force-directed graph, which shows the gene regulation levels for each gene and integrated KEGG pathway and gene ontology knowledge for the data visualization. DiVenn has four key features: (1) informative force-directed graph with gene expression levels to compare multiple data sets; (2) interactive visualization with biological annotations and integrated pathway and GO databases, which can be used to subset or highlight gene nodes to pathway or GO terms of interest in the graph; (3) Pathway and GO enrichment analysis of all or selected genes in the graph; and (4) high resolution image and gene-associated information export. DiVenn is freely available at http://divenn.noble.org/ .

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