The Great Salt Lake Causeway – A Calculated Risk Revisited

The construction of the Great Salt Lake Causeway involved several calculated risks. Original design assumptions on lake level and consolidation settlement were not realized, creating a unique situation where the critical time for stability of this embankment was not necessarily at the end-of-construction. Along more than half of the causeway\u27s 12-1/2 mile length, consolidation and strength gain has apparently been inhibited by a layer of salt. Because it was anticipated that calculated Factors of Safety for current conditions would be close to the 1.0 originally used, a comparative approach to stability evaluations was adopted. In this approach, Factors of Safety calculated for known, past stable conditions were compared with those predicted for future conditions. Judgements of future Causeway stability were made by comparing Factors of Safety with time. The presence of a salt layer in the foundation of a portion of the Causeway\u27s length renders exact solution of stability intractable to usual analytical procedures

Load-deformation behavior of saturated clays during undrained shear.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil Engineering. Thesis. 1970. Sc.D.MICROFICHE COPY ALSO AVAILABLE IN BARKER ENGINEERING LIBRARY.Vita.Bibliography: leaves 112-117.Sc.D

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

Counting the cost: estimating the number of deaths among recently released prisoners in Australia

Objective: To estimate the number of deaths among people released from prison in Australia in the 2007–08 financial year, within 4 weeks and 1 year of release. Design, participants and setting: Application of crude mortality rates for ex-prisoners (obtained from two independent, state-based record-linkage studies [New South Wales and Western Australia]) to a national estimate of the number and characteristics of people released from prison in 2007–08. Main outcome measures: Estimated number of deaths among adults released from Australian prisons in 2007–08, within 4 weeks and 1 year of release, classified by age, sex, Indigenous status and cause of death. Results: It was estimated that among people released from prison in 2007–08, between 449 (95% CI, 380–527) and 472 (95% CI, 438–507) died within 1 year of release. Of these, between 68 (95% CI, 56–82) and 138 (95% CI, 101–183) died within 4 weeks of release. Most of these deaths were not drug-related. Conclusion: The estimated annual number of deaths among recently released prisoners in Australia is considerably greater than the annual number of deaths in custody, highlighting the extreme vulnerability of this population on return to the community. There is an urgent need to establish a national system for routine monitoring of ex-prisoner mortality and to continue the duty of care beyond the prison walls

Combining cross-sectoral, prospective data linkage with other data sources to examine health outcomes for socially excluded populations: A case study from Australia

Introduction Studies of the health of prisoners have proliferated in the past decade. However, relatively few studies have examined health outcomes after release from custody. As such, although >30 million people are released from prison globally each year, the health and health service experiences of this population remain poorly understood. Objectives and Approach Well-powered longitudinal studies are essential for answering these questions but are expensive and difficult to conduct. Internationally, few such studies have been undertaken, and most suffer from either substantial and biased attrition, or recruitment bias. Cross-sectoral linkage of health and justice data circumvents some of these problems but presents its own ethical and methodological challenges. Large longitudinal studies, combining rich survey and clinical data with prospective data linkage, provide unique opportunities to examine and understand health outcomes for these highly marginalised individuals. Results This presentation will describe the process and challenges of establishing the world’s largest (N=2,702) prospective study of adults released from prison: the Health After Release from Prison (HARP) cohort study. The cohort spans two Australian states and includes 538 women and 1,002 Indigenous Australians. An overview of the data collected through face-to-face surveys, medical record review, and prospective linkage with State-based health and correctional records, national Medicare and pharmaceutical records, and the National Death Index, will be provided. Some examples of how these data have been used to answer novel public health questions will be presented. The strengths and limitations of the cohort, and the applicability of this research design for other inclusion health populations, will be discussed. Conclusion/Implications Given their extreme vulnerability, understanding the health of people who cycle through prisons is important to addressing health inequalities at the population level. Novel research designs that combine prospective data linkage with other data sources provide new opportunities to examine the health of socially excluded populations

Proteomic Profiling of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Responses to Mechanical Strain and TGF-β1

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are a potential source of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) for constructing tissue-engineered vascular grafts. However, the details of how specific combinations of vascular microenvironmental factors regulate MSCs are not well understood. Previous studies have suggested that both mechanical stimulation with uniaxial cyclic strain and chemical stimulation with transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) can induce smooth muscle markers in MSCs. In this study, we investigated the combined effects of uniaxial cyclic strain and TGF-β1 stimulation on MSCs. By using a proteomic analysis, we found differential regulation of several proteins and genes, such as the up-regulation of TGF-β1-induced protein ig-h3 (BGH3) protein levels by TGF-β1 and up-regulation of calponin 3 protein level by cyclic strain. At the gene expression level, BGH3 was induced by TGF-β1, but calponin 3 was not significantly regulated by mechanical strain or TGF-β1, which was in contrast to the synergistic up-regulation of calponin 1 gene expression by cyclic strain and TGF-β1. Further experiments with cycloheximide treatment suggested that the up-regulation of calponin 3 by cyclic strain was at post-transcriptional level. The results in this study suggest that both mechanical stimulation and TGF-β1 signaling play unique and important roles in the regulation of MSCs at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, and that a precise combination of microenvironmental cues may promote MSC differentiation