731 research outputs found

    A History of the Constitution and Government of Washington Territory

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    Chapters cover Washington Becomes a Territory, The Federal Government and the Territory, the Revised Statutes--A Revolution in Territorial Policy, the Departments of the Territorial Government, the Territorial Legislature, the Territorial Judiciary, Martial Law in Washington Territory, the Convention and Constitution of 1878, and the Convention and Constitution of 1889. Includes a bibliography. A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Washington.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/selbks/1000/thumbnail.jp

    Predicting transit times and flow concentrations of contaminants through a metropolitan sewage system

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    Neural Networks were used to build a model that would predict the transit times and the levels of trace amounts of radioactive components at the outlet of a sewage treatment plant. The Neural Networks are compared with more conventional approximation methods as a tool for prediction

    Submarine landslides on the upper southeast Australian passive continental margin – preliminary findings

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    The southeast Australian passive continental margin is narrow, steep and sediment-deficient, and characterized by relatively low rates of modern sedimentation. Upper slope (\u3c1200m) sediments comprise mixtures of calcareous and terrigenous sand and mud. Three of twelve sediment cores recovered from geologically-recent, submarine landslides located offshore New South Wales/Queensland (NSW/QLD) are interpreted to have sampled failure surfaces at depths of between 85 cm and 220 cm below the present-day seabed. Differences in sediment physical properties are recorded above and below the three slide-plane boundaries. Sediment taken directly above the inferred submarine landslide failure surfaces and presumed to be post-landslide, returned radiocarbon ages of 15.8 ka, 20.7 ka and 20.1 ka. The last two ages correspond to adjacent slide features, which are inferred to be consistent with their being triggered by a single event such as an earthquake. Slope stability models based on classical soil mechanics and measured sediment shearstrengths indicate that the upper slope sediments should be stable. However, multibeam sonar data reveal that many upper slope landslides occur across the margin and that submarine landsliding is a common process. We infer from these results that: a) an unidentified mechanism regularly acts to reduce the shear resistance of these sediments to the very low values required to enable slope failure, and/or b) the margin experiences seismic events that act to destabilise the slope sediments

    How to Undertake a Clinically Relevant Systematic Review in a Rapidly Evolving Field: Magnetic Resonance Angiography

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    Objectives: The aim was to determine which generations of the evolving technology of magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) are currently of clinical relevance in two clinical applications. Our purpose was to plan a systematic review that would be valuable both to purchasers driven by cost-effectiveness and to practicing clinicians. Methods: Information was gathered from a search of major bibliographic databases, from a short questionnaire sent to 500 U.K. vascular radiologists and vascular surgeons, and from local clinical The authors thank A. Jackson and all those who completed a questionnaire. This work was carried out with the financial support of the Secretary of State for Health under the NHS Health Technology Assessment Programme, project 97/13/04. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Secretary of State for Health. In part, this work was undertaken by the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which received funding from the NHS Executive. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS Executive.experts. We asked which of the MRA techniques were currently used and, assuming availability, what would be their technique of choice. Results: There were 206 published articles that satisfied preliminary inclusion criteria: 69 discussed 2D time of flight (TOF); 47, 3D TOF; and 38, contrast-enhanced techniques. There were 162 questionnaires returned (60 radiologists, 102 surgeons). Of the total respondents, 77/162 (48%) used MRA in the assessment of carotid artery stenosis; 47/77 (61%) used 2D TOF; 32/77 (42%), 3D TOF; and 26/77 (34%), contrast-enhanced techniques. Thirty-five of 162 (22%) respondents used MRA in the assessment of peripheral vascular disease (PVD); 15/35 (43%) used 2D TOF, 4/35 (11%) used 3D TOF, and 22/35 (63%) used contrast-enhanced techniques. For those wishing to use MRA, contrast-enhanced techniques were the method of choice. Conclusions: The TOF methods that represent earlier generations of the technology remain clinically relevant, and will therefore be included in our systematic review. To ensure complete and relevant coverage in reviews of other evolving technologies, it would be advisable to obtain data for guidance in a similar way

    Use of magnetic resonance angiography to select candidates with recently symptomatic carotid stenosis for surgery: systematic review

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    Objective To determine if sufficient evidence exists to support the use of magnetic resonance angiography as a means of selecting patients with recently symptomatic high grade carotid stenosis for surgery. Design Systematic review of published research on the diagnostic performance of magnetic resonance angiography, 1990-9. Main outcome measures Performance characteristics of diagnostic test. Results 126 potentially relevant articles were identified, but many articles failed to examine die performance of magnetic resonance angiography as a diagnostic test at the surgical decision thresholds used in major clinical trials on endarterectomy. 26 articles were included in a meta-analysis that showed a maximal joint sensitivity and specificity of 99% (95% confidence interval 98% to 100%) for identifying 70-99% stenosis and 90% (81% to 99%) for identifying 50-99% stenosis. Only four articles evaluated contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography. Conclusions Magnetic resonance angiography is accurate for selecting patients for carotid endarterectomy at the surgical decision thresholds established in the major endarterectomy trials, but the evidence is not very robust because of the heterogeneity of the studies included. Research is to determine the diagnostic performance of the most recent developments in magnetic resonance angiography, including contrast enhanced techniques, as well as to assess the impact of magnetic resonance angiography on surgical decision making and outcomes

    Numerical Modeling of Nonhomogeneous Behavior of Structured Soils during Triaxial Tests

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    The nonhomogeneous behavior of structured soils during triaxial tests has been studied using a finite element model based on the Structured Cam Clay constitutive model with Biot-type consolidation. The effect of inhomogeneities caused by the end restraint is studied by simulating drained triaxial tests for samples with a height to diameter ratio of 2. It was discovered that with the increase in degree of soil structure with respect to the same soil at the reconstituted state, the inhomogeineities caused by the end restraint will increase. By loading the sample at different strain rates and assuming different hydraulic boundary conditions, inhomogeneities caused by partial drainage were investigated. It was found that if drainage is allowed from all faces of the specimen, fully drained tests can be carried out at strain rates about ten times higher than those required when the drainage is allowed only in the vertical direction at the top and bottom of the specimen, confirming the findings of previous studies. Both end restraint and partial drainage can cause bulging of the triaxial specimen around mid-height. Inhomogeneities due to partial drainage influence the stress–strain behavior during destructuring, a characteristic feature of a structured soil. With an increase in the strain rate, the change in voids ratio during destructuration reduces, but, in contrast, the mean effective stress at which destructuration commences was found to increase. It is shown that the stress–strain behavior of the soil calculated for a triaxial specimen with inhomogeneities, based on global measurements of the triaxial response, does not represent the true constitutive behavior of the soil inside the test specimen. For most soils analyzed, the deviatoric stress based on the global measurements is about 25% less than that for the soil inside the test specimen, when the applied axial strain is about 30%. Therefore it can be concluded that the conventional global measurements of the sample response may not accurately reflect the true stress–strain behavior of a structured soil. This finding has major implications for the interpretation of laboratory triaxial tests on structured soils

    A dissipated energy comparison to evaluate fatigue resistance using 2PB

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    Flexural fatigue due to repeated traffic loading is a process of cumulative damage and one of the main failure modes of flexible pavement structures. Typically, micro-cracks originate at the bottom of an asphalt concrete layer due to horizontal tensile strains. Micro-cracking starts to propagate towards the upper layers under repeated loading which can lead to pavement failure. Different approaches are usually used to characterise fatigue resistance in asphalt mixtures including the phenomenological approach, the fracture mechanics approach and the dissipated energy approach. This paper presents a comparison of fatigue resistance calculated for different dissipated energy models using 2 Point Bending (2PB) at IFSTTAR in Nantes. 2PB tests have been undertaken under different loading and environmental conditions in order to evaluate the properties of the mixtures (stiffness, dissipated energy, fatigue life and healing effect)

    Influence of the single-particle Zeeman energy on the quantum Hall ferromagnet at high filling factors

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    In a recent paper [B. A. Piot et al., Phys. Rev. B 72, 245325 (2005)], we have shown that the lifting of the electron spin degeneracy in the integer quantum Hall effect at high filling factors should be interpreted as a magnetic-field-induced Stoner transition. In this work, we extend the analysis to investigate the influence of the single-particle Zeeman energy on the quantum Hall ferromagnet at high filling factors. The single-particle Zeeman energy is tuned through the application of an additional in-plane magnetic field. Both the evolution of the spin polarization of the system and the critical magnetic field for spin splitting are well described as a function of the tilt angle of the sample in the magnetic field.Comment: Published in Phys. Rev.
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