BENEFITS OF CONTROLLING SALINE WATER IN COLORADO

The Arkansas River in Colorado is confronted with a salinity issue; the majority of this salinity problem is due to agricultural runoff caused by irrigation. Reducing applications of irrigation water through adoption of more technically efficient irrigation systems is one means of improving water quality in the Arkansas River basin. This research uses positive mathematical programming to model the cropping practices of the farms along the Arkansas River. It examines the affect of acreage and profit levels of these farms given the choice of changing their irrigation technologies.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Comparison of Regional and Statewide Impacts on Salinity Mitigation in the Arkansas River Valley

The Arkansas River in Colorado has a major salinity problem, due to agricultural runoff caused by irrigation. It is necessary to see how on-farm net sales, regional and state employment and income levels are affected by alternative aquifer recharge rates. The positive impacts were greatest for the 40% recharge rate.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Performance observations of geosynthetic reinforced bridge abutments

Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil - Integrated Bridge System (GRS-IBS) is a technology which has been around for almost 40 years in the United States but is now being pushed by the FHWA due to improved performance and promised cost savings in the construction of small bridges. GRS-IBS is a mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) wall acting as the abutment with a bridge deck placed on top. The vertical spacing of the geosynthetic reinforcement in a MSE wall is much larger than in a GRS-IBS abutment. MSE walls have reinforcement vertical spacing of on average 24 inches compared to GRS-IBS bridge abutment vertical spacing of 8 inches. The GRS-IBS process starts by removing material to a depth and area of the foundation for the abutment, then backfill is placed and compacted. Once the backfill is compacted, a layer of geosynthetic reinforcement is placed along with a row of precast concrete blocks to form the faces of the abutment. This process is continued until the abutment is at the level needed for the bridge girders. Bridge girders are then placed directly on the geosynthetically reinforced backfill abutment. Once the girders are in place, the abutments are then brought up to road level and pavement can be placed for the approach

Pretend and Physical Play: Links to Preschoolers’ Affective Social Competence

This study investigated different forms of pretend and physical play as predictors of preschool children’s affective social competence (ASC). Data were collected from 122 preschool children (57 boys, 65 girls; 86 European American, 9 African American, 17 Hispanic, and 10 other ethnicity) over a 2-year period. Children participated in emotion knowledge interviews, mothers rated children’s emotion regulation skill, and observations were conducted of children’s emotional expressiveness with peers in both Years 1 and 2. Naturalistic observations of children’s peer play behavior were conducted to assess the proportion of time children spend in pretend and physical play in Year 1. Analyses revealed that sociodramatic play predicted children’s emotional expressiveness, emotion knowledge, and emotion regulation 1 year later, after controlling for Year 1 ASC skills. Rough-and-tumble play predicted children’s emotional expressiveness and emotion regulation 1 year later, whereas exercise play predicted only emotion regulation. Some associations between sociodramatic play and rough-and-tumble play and children’s ASC were moderated by gender

It\u27s All Fun and Games Until Someone Gets Hurt: An Analysis of Trampoline Injuries in the Pennsylvania Trauma System

Introduction: It is well known that trampolines can be a particular source of danger, especially in children. We sought to examine the profile of those patients with trampoline injuries. We hypothesized there would be certain injury patterns predicative of trampoline injuries. Methods: All patients submitted to Pennsylvania Trauma Outcome Study (PTOS) database from 2016-2018 were analyzed. Trampoline injury was determined by ICD10 activity code. Injury patterns in the form of abbreviated injury scale (AIS) body regions were examined in the trampoline injured patients. Patient demographics and clinical variables were compared between those with trampoline injury versus those without. Results: There were 107 patients from 2016-2018 in PTOS who had a trampoline injury. All of these patients were discharged alive and had a blunt mechanism of injury. Of the 107 patients, the most common injury type was injury to the extremities (90/107 patients [84.1%]) with 54 (50.5%) patients having upper extremity injury and 36 (33.6%) patients having lower extremity injury. 10 (9.35%) patients had injury to the spine and 5 (4.67%) had head injury. Those with trampoline injuries were significantly younger (mean age: 13.0 vs. 48.6) and more likely to be white or of Hispanic ethnicity. Almost half of the patients injured (49.5%) were under 10 years of age. Patients with trampoline injuries had significantly lower injury severity scores and significantly higher Shock Index (Table 1). Conclusions: The majority of patients with trampoline injuries had injury to an extremity and were pediatric patients. These results help better understand the demographic, physiologic and anatomic patterns surrounding trampoline injuries. Current government standards recommend that no child under age 6 should use a full-sized trampoline; however, based off of the study results, we advise that this age be increased to 10

Measuring galaxy cluster masses with CMB lensing using a Maximum Likelihood estimator: Statistical and systematic error budgets for future experiments

We develop a Maximum Likelihood estimator (MLE) to measure the masses of galaxy clusters through the impact of gravitational lensing on the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that, at low noise levels in temperature, this optimal estimator outperforms the standard quadratic estimator by a factor of two. For polarization, we show that the Stokes Q/U maps can be used instead of the traditional E- and B-mode maps without losing information. We test and quantify the bias in the recovered lensing mass for a comprehensive list of potential systematic errors. Using realistic simulations, we examine the cluster mass uncertainties from CMB-cluster lensing as a function of an experiment's beam size and noise level. We predict the cluster mass uncertainties will be 3 - 6% for SPT-3G, AdvACT, and Simons Array experiments with 10,000 clusters and less than 1% for the CMB-S4 experiment with a sample containing 100,000 clusters. The mass constraints from CMB polarization are very sensitive to the experimental beam size and map noise level: for a factor of three reduction in either the beam size or noise level, the lensing signal-to-noise improves by roughly a factor of two.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures: figs 2, 3 updated, references added: accepted for publication in JCA