Expansion and Rehabilitation of the State Fish Pier in Gloucester, Massachusetts

The State Fish Pier in Gloucester, Massachusetts, has been expanded and rehabilitated to provide an upgraded facility to support the local fishing industry. Expansion consisted of a new Finger Pier and solid fill extension of the existing pier. Rehabilitation consisted of replacing a deteriorated wharf with a new higher load carrying wharf. Subsurface conditions ranged from rock outcrops exposed at low tide at some locations to thick marine deposits overlying rock at other locations. Foundation support for the new Finger Pier and rehabilitated wharf consisted of concrete filled steel pipe piles, a portion of which had to he socketed into bedrock due to lack of soil overburden. Compression and tension load tests were performed to verify the pile design capacities

Subcortical volumes across the lifespan: data from 18,605 healthy individuals aged 3-90 years

Age has a major effect on brain volume. However, the normative studies available are constrained by small sample sizes, restricted age coverage and significant methodological variability. These limitations introduce inconsistencies and may obscure or distort the lifespan trajectories of brain morphometry. In response, we capitalized on the resources of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to examine age-related trajectories inferred from cross-sectional measures of the ventricles, the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, pallidum, and nucleus accumbens), the thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala using magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from 18,605 individuals aged 3-90 years. All subcortical structure volumes were at their maximum value early in life. The volume of the basal ganglia showed a monotonic negative association with age thereafter; there was no significant association between age and the volumes of the thalamus, amygdala and the hippocampus (with some degree of decline in thalamus) until the sixth decade of life after which they also showed a steep negative association with age. The lateral ventricles showed continuous enlargement throughout the lifespan. Age was positively associated with inter-individual variability in the hippocampus and amygdala and the lateral ventricles. These results were robust to potential confounders and could be used to examine the functional significance of deviations from typical age-related morphometric patterns.Education and Child Studie

Improving the Testing and Testability of Software Product Lines

Abstract. Software Product Line (SPL) engineering offers several advantages in the development of families of software products. There is still a need, however, for better understanding of testability issues and for testing techniques that can operate cost-effectively on SPLs. In this paper we consider these testability issues and highlight some differences between optional versus alternative features. We then provide a graph based testing approach called the FIG Basis Path method that selects products and features for testing based on a feature dependency graph. We conduct a case study on several non-trivial SPLs and show that for these subjects, the FIG Basis Path method is as effective as testing all products, but tests no more than 24 % of the products in the SPL.

Greater male than female variability in regional brain structure across the lifespan

For many traits, males show greater variability than females, with possible implications for understanding sex differences in health and disease. Here, the ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis) Consortium presents the largest-ever mega-analysis of sex differences in variability of brain structure, based on international data spanning nine decades of life. Subcortical volumes, cortical surface area and cortical thickness were assessed in MRI data of 16,683 healthy individuals 1-90 years old (47% females). We observed significant patterns of greater male than female between-subject variance for all subcortical volumetric measures, all cortical surface area measures, and 60% of cortical thickness measures. This pattern was stable across the lifespan for 50% of the subcortical structures, 70% of the regional area measures, and nearly all regions for thickness. Our findings that these sex differences are present in childhood implicate early life genetic or gene-environment interaction mechanisms. The findings highlight the importance of individual differences within the sexes, that may underpin sex-specific vulnerability to disorders