Reading Guide 7: Intervention strategies and business case

Earthworks deteriorate over time and are additionally subject to increasingly extreme weather conditions. A range of intervention types is available to maintain the safety and serviceability of earthworks assets, and these should be selected and made as cost-effectively as possible, to maximise asset condition improvement within the available budget

Reading Guide 6: The role of data analytics in decision-making.

Long linear infrastructure, e.g. highways and railways, includes large numbers of dispersed earthwork assets. Depending on their age and history, it can be practically impossible to constantly maintain up-to-date condition information. However, this data, and models using it, play a vital role in predicting earthwork behaviour and guiding intervention decision-making, which must take account of both the likelihood and consequences of asset failures. ACHILLES has developed novel surrogate models to help address uncertainty in earthwork assessment and make the most of limited data

ACHILLES Reading Guide 5: Design considerations for clay earthworks

Steeper slope angles mean less land take, reduced earthworks volumes, reduced embodied carbon, and cost savings. However, they may also come with increased future maintenance. Considering long-term slope conditions in design enables decisions about whole-life cost and carbon trade-offs between initial slope angles, asset-life, and future maintenance

Simulation of weather-driven deterioration of clay embankments

Clay embankments used for road, rail, and flood defense infrastructure experience several weather-driven deterioration processes that lead to a progressive degradation in their hydromechanical performance. This paper presents a numerical modeling approach that accounts for the development of desiccation cracking in clay embankments. Specifically, a bimodal soil water retentivity model was adopted to capture the long-term hydraulic behavior of clay embankments prone to weather-driven desiccation cracking. A numerical model was developed for a heavily instrumented and monitored full-scale research embankment with long-term field data. The model was able to capture the variation of near-surface soil moisture and matric suction over a monitored period of nine years in response to weather cycles. The developed and validated numerical modeling approach enables forecasting of the long-term performance of clay embankments under a range of future climate scenarios

ACHILLES Reading Guide 3: Asset scale deterioration

The deterioration of earthworks reduces theirserviceable performance and increases thelikelihood of instability. This can havesignificant impacts on the safe and reliableoperation of the transportation networks thatthey support. These deterioration processesare weather-driven and may lead to failuremany years after construction even in theabsence of increased mechanical loads.Evidence also indicates that climate changewill increase rates of asset deterioration andreduce time to failure. This documentsummarises the key conclusions on assetdeterioration drawn from the ACHILLES bodyof work. A more detailed overview of theACHILLES concept can be found in ReadingGuide 1 [1], the project website (achilles-grant.org.uk), and the following papers: [2,3]

Emulating long-term weather-driven transportation earthworks deterioration models to support asset management

The deterioration of transport infrastructure earthworks is a global problem, with negative impacts for infrastructure resilience, becoming of increasing significance as existing infrastructure ages. Key mechanisms which affect this deterioration include seasonal pore pressure cycling driven by changing weather and climate, and the long-term dissipation of construction induced excess pore pressures. These complex processes lead to significant uncertainty in rates of deterioration and the current state of existing earthworks assets. The objective in this work was to establish a framework to emulate deterministic numerical models of slope deterioration over time using statistical (Gaussian process) emulation. A validated, physically based, deterministic modeling capability has been developed that can replicate the hydro-mechanically coupled behavior of cut and embankment slopes and their deterioration as driven by weather and climate. In parallel, a statistical (Gaussian process) emulator model was developed, and then trained with data from a deterministic modeling parametric study, using a formal experimental design approach, making use of Latin hypercube sampling. Exemplar forecasting outputs are presented to demonstrate application of the approach for use in decision-making. This information can be used in the design of new earthworks and the management of existing earthwork portfolio

Associations of Vitamin D with Inter- and Intra-Muscular Adipose Tissue and Insulin Resistance in Women with and without Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Low vitamin D and insulin resistance are common in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and associated with higher inter- and intra-muscular adipose tissue (IMAT). We investigated associations between vitamin D, IMAT and insulin resistance in a cross-sectional study of 40 women with PCOS and 30 women without PCOS, and pre- and post-exercise in a 12-week intervention in 16 overweight participants (10 with PCOS and six without PCOS). A non-classical body mass index (BMI) threshold was used to differentiate lean and overweight women (BMI ≥ 27 kg/m²). Measurements included plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD), insulin resistance (glucose infusion rate (GIR; mg/m²/min), fasting glucose and insulin, and glycated haemoglobin), visceral fat, mid-thigh IMAT (computed tomography) and total body fat (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry). Women with both PCOS and low 25OHD levels had the lowest GIR (all p < 0.05). Higher IMAT was associated with lower 25OHD (B = -3.95; 95% CI -6.86, -1.05) and GIR (B = -21.3; 95% CI -37.16, -5.44) in women with PCOS. Overweight women with pre-exercise 25OHD ≥30 nmol/L had significant increases in GIR, and decreases in total and visceral fat (all p < 0.044), but no associations were observed when stratified by PCOS status. Women with PCOS and low 25OHD levels have increased insulin resistance which may be partly explained by higher IMAT. Higher pre-training 25OHD levels may enhance exercise-induced changes in body composition and insulin resistance in overweight women

A new fireworm (Amphinomidae) from the Cretaceous of Lebanon identified from three-dimensionally preserved myoanatomy

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