Evaluation of the Overheight Detection System Effectiveness at Eklutna Bridge

The Eklutna River/Glenn Highway bridge has sustained repeated impacts from overheight trucks. In 2006, ADOT&PF installed an overheight vehicle warning system. The system includes laser detectors, alarms, and message boards. Since installation, personnel have seen no new damage, and no sign that the alarm system has been triggered. Although this is good news, the particulars are a mystery: Is the system working? Is the presence of the equipment enough to deter drivers from gambling with a vehicle that might be over the height limit? Is it worth installing similar systems at other overpasses? This project is examining the bridge for any evidence of damage, and is fitting the system with a datalogger to record and video any events that trigger the warning system. Finally, just to be sure, researchers will test the system with (officially) overheight vehicles. Project results will help ADOT&PF determine if this system is functioning, and if a similar system installed at other bridges would be cost-effective.Fairbanks North Star Boroug

First year's results and field experience with the latest JILA absolute gravimeter

One of the six absolute gravity instruments developed and built by the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) between 1982 and 1985 was tested under a variety of environmental conditions between May 1987 and 1988. Of the 30 sites visited during this period, 10 were occupied more than once. These reobservations indicate repeatability between 1 and 4 microgals

Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre: Deadly Versus Healing Fantasy in the Lives and Works of the Brontes

In lieu of an abstract, below is the article\u27s first paragraph. Dreams and fantasies provide humans with a means of escape from everyday reality. According to Sigmund Freud, dreams carry one off into another world (Strachey, 1900, 7). Their aim is to free us from our everyday life (Burdach, 1838, 499) and to provide us with the opportunity to fantasize about how we would like our lives to be or to imagine our lives as worse than they are so that we can cope with our current situation. Dreams can also serve as wish-fulfillments, or the embodiments of fear (Strachey, 1900, 123). However, not all dreams occur in the unconscious; some occur in the conscious state as fantasies. The level of distraction individuals maintain between fantasy and reality can vary considerably. Sometimes, a person loses the ability to discern between reality and fantasy. Such a person may find their fantasies more appealing than their reality and begin to assign more significance to their fantasy lives than their immediate external realities. The fantasies of such imaginative escape artists often take various pieces of their lives and re-synthesize them in a way that helps them to deal with their problems. Branwell, Emily, and Charlotte Bronte all utilized this method; their literary imaginations became, for them, a means of escape to a better life. Their writings represent fantasies that have entered the conscious and have been expressed in a literary form. The fantasies of all three Brontes center on the theme of a great love lost due to circumstances beyond one\u27s control. They had varying degrees of success with this method. Branwell and Emily lost touch with reality and became immersed in their fantasies; they died as a result of their inability to handle reality. Charlotte, on the other hand, was able to cope successfully with her experiences and used her fantasy as a healthy means of expressing her inner feelings

An analytic model of coordinated effort with application to the problem of surveillance C3

In this work, a two-level surveillance system is studied. A cybernetic model is developed from which an ergodic Markov process model and the characteristic entropy function are determined. Computer simulation results are presented that show relative performance curves for "central" and "local" control modes. Several levels of sophistication in resource allocation policies are compared for each modality. The effects of communications delays, sensor mobility, and target dynamic behavior are considered. Extensions of the model to more complex surveillance environments is discussed and avenues for further development of the theory are indicated.supported by the Office of Secretary of Defense, Director of NET Assessment, Washington, DC.http://archive.org/details/analyticmodelofc00moosMIPR # DWAM 90002N

Retrospective Analysis of Medication Adherence and Cost Following Medication Therapy Management

Objective: To determine if pharmacist-provided medication therapy management (MTM) improves medication adherence in Medicare patients. A secondary objective is to compare the total monthly cost of a patient’s prescription medication regimen 6 months before and 6 months following a comprehensive medication review (CMR). Design: Retrospective analysis of medication adherence, pre-post comparison. Setting: Three independent pharmacies in North Carolina. Patients: 97 Medicare Part D beneficiaries with one or more chronic disease states who participated in a comprehensive medication review (CMR). Intervention: MTM services provided by community pharmacists. Main outcome measure: Change in adherence as measured by the proportion of days covered (PDC) and change in medication costs for patients and third party payers. Results: Patients were adherent to chronic disease-state medications before and after MTM (PDC≥ 0.8). Overall, change in mean adherence before and after MTM did not change significantly (0.87 and 0.88, respectively; p = 0.43). However, patients taking medications for cholesterol management, GERD, thyroid and BPH demonstrated improved adherence following a CMR. No change in adherence was noted for patients using antihypertensives and antidiabetic agents. Average total chronic disease-state medication costs for participants were reduced from $210.74 to$193.63 (p=0.08) following the comprehensive medication review. Total costs for patient and third party payers decreased from patients prescribed antilipemics, antihypertensives, GERD and thyroid disorders following a CMR. Conclusions: Pharmacist-provided MTM services were effective at improving medication adherence for some patients managed with chronic medications. Pharmacist-provided MTM services also were effective in decreasing total medication costs

Study of an automatic trajectory following control system

It is shown that the estimator part of the Modified Partitioned Adaptive Controller, (MPAC) developed for nonlinear aircraft dynamics of a small jet transport can adapt to sensor failures. In addition, an investigation is made into the potential usefulness of the configuration detection technique used in the MPAC and the failure detection filter is developed that determines how a noise plant output is associated with a line or plane characteristic of a failure. It is shown by computer simulation that the estimator part and the configuration detection part of the MPAC can readily adapt to actuator and sensor failures and that the failure detection filter technique cannot detect actuator or sensor failures accurately for this type of system because of the plant modeling errors. In addition, it is shown that the decision technique, developed for the failure detection filter, can accurately determine that the plant output is related to the characteristic line or plane in the presence of sensor noise

Performance of tropical maize hybrids under conditions of low and optimum levels of nitrogen fertilizer application grain yield, biomass production and nitrogen accumulation

Nitrogen (N) is the most limiting mineral nutrient in the soils of the major maize producing areas of West and Central Africa. Low soil N and sub-optimal application of N fertilizers lead to N deficiency and poor grain yield (GY) in maize. Maize varieties with improved grain yield under low soil N and increased performance under optimal N availability could be beneficial to low input agriculture. This study evaluated the performance of a selection of experimental and commercial hybrids under suboptimal and optimal N fertilizer applications. Significant differences were observed among the hybrids, as well as significant interactions between hybrid and N level for GY and other measured attributes, with the severity of variation increasing as the level of N decreases. Mean GY reductions across the years was 76.5% at no-N and 35.4% at low-N. Depending on N treatment, GY varied from 0.48 to 4.42 Mg ha-1, grain N content from 0.17 to 1.26 g plant-1, total N content at harvest from 0.33 to 2.00 g plant-1, above ground biomass at silking from 30.6 to 91.2 g plant-1 and at maturity from 39.9 to 191.1 g plant-1. Number of kernels was the GY component most severely reduced by N stress and had significant (p = 0.001) positive correlation with GY at all N levels. Six hybrids (4001/4008, KU1409/4008, KU1409/9613, 4008/1808, 4058/Fun 47-4, and 1824/9432) which showed consistent above average grain yields under no-N, low-N, high-N and across N levels were found and their use could further be investigated