Impaired Glucose Metabolism among Those with and without Diagnosed Diabetes and Mortality: A Cohort Study Using Health Survey for England Data.

The extent that controlled diabetes impacts upon mortality, compared with uncontrolled diabetes, and how pre-diabetes alters mortality risk remain issues requiring clarification

Redevelopment of a Municipal Solid Waste Landfill: Engineering Design Challenges

Loyola College in Maryland is a land-locked University in dire need of increasing its academic space. Working with the Baltimore Development Corporation, Loyola purchased a 52-acre parcel of land within miles of their campus which consisted of three closed landfills. The site was Loyola’s preferred location to construct a state-of-the-art athletic complex because moving their athletic facilities to an off-campus location would allow the expansion of their academic space. The athletic complex includes a home game field for lacrosse and soccer, two practice fields, administrative and maintenance buildings, stadium, and supporting infrastructure. Filling at the three landfills began in 1930 and continued on and off until 1985. Landfill materials consist of construction debris, municipal solid waste (MSW), flyash and white goods. Landfill thicknesses range from approximately 60 ft to 190 ft. in the development area. This paper describes the design and implementation of geotechnical systems to overcome the challenges of building a sports complex on the closed landfills. These systems include grade separation structures, ground improvement, utility protection, and geotechnical instrumentation. This paper will discuss landfill material properties and the design methodology associated with each of these systems

An Interactive Multimedia Educational Program for Pasture Management

Developing abilities in pasture management decision making is important for all students of pasture agronomy, whether they plan to work in management, extension or research. Such problem-based learning fosters an ability to understand and apply principles, and to integrate and use information from various sources. A computerassisted, problem based, multimedia educational programme, “Pasture Management” has been developed to complement limited field exercises in pasture assessment and management. It comprises illustrated case studies and supporting information. Students interact with the programme by choosing alternative management options, calling up images and text as required to assist them. The programme supplies feedback for each decision. Evaluation in the first year of use showed that students found “Pasture Management” easy, interesting and satisfying to use and helpful for learning pasture management. They appreciated the multimedia aspects and feedback. “Pasture Management” is available on CD-ROM. Development is continuing

D-Terms from Generalized NS-NS Fluxes in Type II

Orientifolds of type II string theory admit a certain set of generalized NS-NS fluxes, including not only the three-form field strength H, but also metric and non-geometric fluxes, which are related to H by T-duality. We describe in general how these fluxes appear as parameters of an effective N=1 supergravity theory in four dimensions, and in particular how certain generalized NS-NS fluxes can act as charges for R-R axions, leading to D-term contributions to the effective scalar potential. We illustrate these phenomena in type IIB with the example of a certain orientifold of T^6/Z_4.Comment: 31+1 pages, uses utarticle.cls; v2: references adde

One-dimensional spin-liquid without magnon excitations

It is shown that a sufficiently strong four-spin interaction in the spin-1/2 spin ladder can cause dimerization. Such interaction can be generated either by phonons or (in the doped state) by the conventional Coulomb repulsion between the holes. The dimerized phases are thermodynamically undistinguishable from the Haldane phase, but have dramatically different correlation functions: the dynamical magnetic susceptibility, instead of displaying a sharp single magnon peak near $q = \pi$, shows only a two-particle threshold separated from the ground state by a gap.Comment: 9 pages, LaTex, to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 78, May 199

G83-683 Quality Concrete for Swine Facilities

This NebGuide discusses the major items to consider when using concrete for swine facilities to help assure that quality concrete is obtained. Concrete is widely used to construct swine production facilities. Versatility, durability, and relatively low cost are characteristics that make it ideally suited for floors, walls, foundations, pen dividers, and manure storage structures. With appropriate design, concrete can even be used for the building roof and feeders. There are, however, certain major items to consider to help assure quality concrete and years of reliable service regardless of the specific use

HYDROLOGIC EVALUATION OF RESIDENTIAL RAIN GARDENS USING A STORMWATER RUNOFF SIMULATOR

Engineered bioretention cells with underdrains have shown water quality and hydrologic benefits for abating urban stormwater problems. Less is known about the hydrologic performance of residential rain gardens that rely on in situ soil infiltration as the primary mechanism of volume control. Eleven residential rain gardens in Lincoln, Nebraska, were evaluated using a variable-rate stormwater runoff simulator. A volume-based water quality volume (WQV) design storm of 3.0 cm was applied to each rain garden as an SCS Type II runoff hydrograph until the system began overflowing to test the rain gardens for surface and subsurface storage capacity, drawdown rate, ponding depth, and overflow characteristics. Every rain garden tested drained in 30 h or less, with six gardens draining in less than 1 h. Rain garden surface storage capacity was poor, retaining on average only 16% of the WQV. On average, the rain gardens studied could store and infiltrate only 40% of the WQV, with only two gardens able to store and infiltrate greater than 90% of the WQV. On average, 59% of the runoff was captured as subsurface storage. Results of this study indicate that these 2- to 4-year-old rain gardens are limited not by drain times and rates, which often met or exceeded common design recommendations, but rather by inadequate surface storage characteristics. Extrapolating measured surface storage volumes to hypothetical systems with evenly graded depths of 15.2 cm, a minimum local depth recommendation, resulted in only one garden with enough storage to contain the WQV. On average, the extrapolated storage held only 65% of the WQV. It was shown that subsurface storage can make up for a lack of surface storage; the systems studied herein had an average of 2.7 times more subsurface storage than surface storage as a percentage of inflow volume before overflow began

Superconductivity in a spin liquid - a one dimensional example

We study a one-dimensional model of interacting conduction electrons with a two-fold degenerate band away from half filling. The interaction includes an on-site Coulomb repulsion and Hund's rule coupling. We show that such one-dimensional system has a divergent Cooper pair susceptibility at T = 0, provided the Coulomb interaction $U$ between electrons on the same orbital and the modulus of the Hund's exchange integral $|J|$ are larger than the interorbital Coulomb interaction. It is remarkable that the superconductivity can be achieved for {\it any} sign of $J$. The opening of spectral gaps makes this state stable with respect to direct electron hopping between the orbitals. The scaling dimension of the superconducting order parameter is found to be between 1/4 (small $U$) and 1/2 (large $U$).Comment: 11 pages, Latex, no figure

System for the measurement of ultra-low stray light levels

An apparatus is described for measuring the effectiveness of stray light suppression light shields and baffle arrangements used in optical space experiments and large space telescopes. The light shield and baffle arrangement and a telescope model are contained in a vacuum chamber. A source of short, high-powered light energy illuminates portions of the light shield and baffle arrangement and reflects a portion of same to a photomultiplier tube by virtue of multipath scattering. The resulting signal is transferred to time-channel electronics timed by the firing of the high energy light source allowing time discrimination of the signal thereby enabling the light scattered and suppressed by the model to be distinguished from the walls and holders around the apparatus

Changes in Productivity Associated with Replacement of Heteropogon cotortus by Aristida species and Chrysopogon fallax in the Savannas of South East Queensland

Heteropogon contortus-dominated rangelands, which cover 22 million ha, are the most important areas for beef production in northern Australia. Due to overgrazing, this dominant species ,is disappearing and is being replaced by unpalatable species such as Aristida and Chrysopogon in a patchy mosaic pattern. In a large graiing experiment· adjacent to the CSIRO Narayen research station: in south-east Queensland on granite country, patches dominated bf the unpalatable grasses comprised 24-32% of the area. Aristida-dominant and Chrysopogon-dominant patches had lower productivity (1000 and 650 kg/ha, respectively) than areas dominated by Heteropogon contorus (1850 kg/ha). It was estimated that a rangeland invaded by less productive grass species could lose up to 65% of its previous production potential. This could lead to reduced levels of livestock production