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My coauthors and myself recently published a review paper on load testing, titled "State-of-the-art on load testing of concrete bridges" in Engineering Structures. You can download the article for free until September 13th 2017 by accessing this link. The abstract of the paper is as follows: Load testing of bridges is a practice that is as old as their construction. In the past, load testing gave the traveling public a feeling that a newly opened bridge is safe. Nowadays, the bridge stock in many countries is aging, and load testing is used for the assessment of existing bridges. This paper aims at giving an overview of the current state-of-the-art with regard to load testing of concrete bridges. The work is based on an extensive literature review, dealing with diagnostic and proof load testing, and looking at the current areas of research. Additional available information about load testing of steel, timber, and masonry bridges, buildings, and collapse testing is briefly cit...

In my previous post, I wrote about how I envisioned pregnancy as something completely different as what it turned out to be for me. While I understand that every body, every woman, and every pregnancy is different, I do think I have some general advice to share with you. Whether you are a (PhD) student, on the tenure track, or tenured professor, the following points can be good to consider: 1. Don't be afraid to tell your colleagues As I wrote in my story, I worried about the reaction of my colleagues for various reasons. None of these worries turned out to be true. In the end, every body smiles and rejoices at the idea of a baby. Every body has plenty of anecdotes about their children and grandchildren they are happy to share with you, and that makes them happy remembering. In the past, I worried a lot about how to combine a family and career, and, in my case, how I would combine working in two continents and all my conference travel with raising a child. I now think that I maybe ...

Before I became pregnant, I imagined myself as a powerful pregnant woman. I was sure I would simply keep working with the intensity and concentration that I am used to. I was going to be in the gym every day at 6 am to give it my all and start the day right. I definitely was not going to whine, complain, cry, or ask anybody for help. Life only changes when you have a baby, right? So far for my plans and ideas about pregnancy. My fall semester had a crazy travel schedule, in which I was away from university for almost two months. I did fieldwork, conferences, and an invited lecture in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States and South Africa. Traveling anywhere from Ecuador is always a long trip. Traveling to South Africa from Ecuador takes three days and includes two red-eye flights. A trip of this length takes a toll on any body, and on my body in early pregnancy, it took quite a toll. I returned from the conference in South Africa tired, tired, tired. Then came nausea and vomiting...

Today, I am hosting an academic who would prefer to remain anonymous. Current Job : Associate Professor Current Location : Pseudonymless City, USA (at least that’s what I call it on the blog. It’s a somewhat rural college city, popn’ 200,000) Current mobile device : iPhone 5 Current computer : 2014 MacBook Pro Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us? I’m an academic clinical psychologist who is not currently practicing but in the past has done private practice work on the side. I currently do consulting work here and there as well. My research falls under the umbrella of abnormal psychology and functioning, but I can’t really say more than that with my pseudonym. On my blog I say I am an “Agricultural Psychologist” which is a the pseudonym for my research niche I created to allow me to blog about it. What tools, apps and software are essential to your workflow? - Mailplane, which is a software that allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts at the same tim...

Today, I am interviewing Jaime for the "How I Work" series. She is a third year PhD student at a US-based university studying biological engineering. Though most of her free time is consumed spending time with her three young children, she am passionate about running and lifting weights and actively participates in local science education and communication events. She blogs about life as a mom and PhD student at threeandathesis.com . Current Job : PhD Candidate in Biological Engineering Current Location : US Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us? I am a third year PhD candidate in Biological Engineering in the US. My work is focused on computer simulations of bilayer remodeling. My work days are mostly consumed with research and I am currently enrolled in two classes. Luckily, my work is almost all computer-based and therefore portable, so I do 60% of my work from my university office and 40% from home. What tools, apps and software are essen...

Some time ago, I read an inspiring post on DoctoralWriting SIG about tracking research . The author, Dr. Abigail Winter, was inspired by Paul Silvia's "How to write a lot", who mentions that he uses a simple database to track his writing each day, as one of his strategies for writing a lot. Winter then started tracking her reading and writing. She adds: "in the first six months of 2016, I read 281 articles or academic books, and wrote 36,477 words towards articles, submissions, applications and reviews" and shares the tool she developed online. Upon reading this article, I decided to start tracking my reading and writing. I had been tracking my writing between February 15th 2012 and May 22nd 2013, mostly to track my word count on my PhD thesis. At that time, my log functioned mostly as a diary. In November 2016, I started tracking my writing again, and in January 2017 I started tracking my reading as well, as I vouched to read 365 papers in 2017. For my writ...

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Ana Adi in the "How I Work" series. Dr. Adi is a Professor of Public Relations/Corporate Communications at Quadriga University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. She moved here after she lived in the UK, Bahrain, USA, Belgium and Romania. She writes and speaks often about digital communication (from strategy to measurement) including storytelling. She writes about the “serious stuff” she does on her website ( www.anaadi.net ) and Twitter ( @ana_adi ) but check her instagram for a mouth-watering incursion into her culinary experiences and travels ( @ana_ady ). Current Job : Professor of PR/Corporate Communications Current Location : Berlin Current mobile device : Iphone 6 Current computer : MacBook Pro Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us? I am a Professor of PR/Corporate Communication at Quadriga University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany, a university focusing on the training and development of executi...

I ran a poll on Twitter earlier this year to identify how we view blogging as academics. We may consider it as part of our work, as something we take pride in, as something that we feel like our duty perhaps, but at the same time, the results of the poll show that the majority of respondents blog from home, outside of work hours. Granted, in academia the border between work, as the stuff you do in your office, and home is blurry. I too often squeeze in 1 or 2 hours of lighter work in the evening after dinner. With the results of this poll, and the discussion I had on Twitter, I created this Storify: [ View the story "Is blogging "work" or "hobby"?" on Storify ]

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer , your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands. If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic! At the beginning of this year, we look at how you can build and sustain good reading habits , which are necessary to keep up with the output in your field of research, regardless of where you are in your academic career. Today, we are going to look at another important habit in academia: your writing habits. As Cal Newport pointed out, your publications and their citations are the single most important factor for success in academia . There's no denying: you need to develop and sustai...

We recently published a paper titled "Modeling Concrete Material Structure: a Two-Phase Meso Finite Element Model". The work reported in this paper was a collaboration with the department of mechanical engineering of Universidad San Francisco de Quito. My colleague Dr. Bonifaz developed a coupling between Dream3D and Abaqus for modeling metal materials. In our collaboration, we looked at the possibility to apply these concepts to concrete. You can find the full paper here . The abstract reads as follows: Concrete is a compound material where aggregates are randomly placed within the cement paste. To describe the behavior of concrete structures at the ultimate, it is necessary to use nonlinear finite element models, which for shear and torsion problems do not always give satisfactory results. The current study aims at improving the modeling of concrete at the meso-level, which eventually can result in an improved assessment of existing structures. Concrete as a heterogeneous m...