Settlement behaviour of hybrid asphalt-ballast railway tracks

The use of structural asphalt layers inside ballasted railway tracks is attractive because it can increase track bending stiffness. Therefore, for the first time, this paper investigates the long-term settlement characteristics of asphaltic track in the presence of a subgrade stiffness transition zone. Phased load cyclic compression laboratory tests are performed on a large-scale hybrid asphalt-ballast track, supported by subgrade with varying stiffness. It is found that an asphaltic layer acts as a bridge to shield the subgrade from high stresses. It is also found that the asphalt reduces track settlement, and is particularly effective when subgrade stiffness is low

Improving Detection of Events at Water Treatment Works: A UK Case Study

This is the author accepted manuscriptThis study presents improvements to the event detection capabilities of the existing, thresholdbased detection system used by United Utilities in one of their Water Treatment Works. These improvements were achieved by using new threshold and persistence values identified by performing a sensitivity type analysis. The findings from this study show that, although an overall increase in the true detection rate and decrease in the number of false alarms were achieved, the high number of false alarms remains an issue

Effects of SGLT2 inhibitors in type 2 diabetes, comparing women to men

AIM: Sodium glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors prevent cardiovascular complications in type 2 diabetes. We aimed to study whether they have similar effects in women and men. METHODS: We summarised the effects of SGLT2 compared to placebo on vascular and safety outcomes by sex. We included patients with type 2 diabetes enrolled in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME, CANVAS Program, DECLARE TIMI-58 and CREDENCE trials. RESULTS: There were no sex differences in the risk ratios, SGLT2 versus control, for vascular efficacy outcomes or death (all p interaction ≥ 0.12) with clear protection against major adverse cardiovascular events, heart failure, vascular death and total mortality. SGLT2 inhibitor treatment was also associated with comparable relative risks in women and men for the safety outcomes of amputation, fracture, genital infection and urinary tract infection (all p interaction ≥ 0.17). CONCLUSION: SGLT2 inhibition provided comparable protection against vascular risks and death, and similar risks of serious adverse events, for women and men. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Distribution and genetic diversity of Dothistroma septosporum in Pinus brutia forests of south-western Turkey

The support of the DIAROD project, funded as EU COST Action FP1102, is gratefully acknowledged. Forest engineers Ali Datumani and Erdal Örtel are thanked for their great help in the field. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers who helped improve the manuscript. We would like to thank Dr Alkan Unlu for providing the climate data and to Dr Ilker Ercanli for performing the statistical analysis. The study was financially supported by the Forestry Commission, United Kingdom and by the European Regional Development Fund, Project Phytophthora Research Centre Reg. No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000453.Peer reviewedPostprin

Host microenvironment in breast cancer development: Epithelial-cell–stromal-cell interactions and steroid hormone action in normal and cancerous mammary gland

Mammary epithelial cells comprise the functional component of the normal gland and are the major target for carcinogenesis in mammary cancer. However, the stromal compartment of the normal gland and of tumors plays an important role in directing proliferative and functional changes in the epithelium. In vivo and in vitro studies of the murine mammary gland have provided insights into novel stroma-dependent mechanisms by which estrogen and progesterone action in the epithelium can be modulated by hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) and the extracellular matrix proteins, collagen type I, fibronectin and laminin. In vitro and in vivo studies of estrogen receptor positive, estrogen-responsive human breast cancer cells have also demonstrated that estrogen responsiveness of tumor cells can also be modulated by extracellular matrix proteins, collagen type I and laminin

Adaptive flood risk management under climate change uncertainty using real options and optimisation

It is well recognised that adaptive and flexible flood risk strategies are required to account for future uncertainties. Development of such strategies is however, a challenge. Climate change alone is a significant complication but in addition complexities exist trying to identify the most appropriate set of mitigation measures, or interventions. There are a range of economic and environmental performance measures that require consideration and the spatial and temporal aspects of evaluating the performance of these is complex. All of these elements pose severe difficulties to decision makers. This paper describes a decision support methodology that has the capability to assess the most appropriate set of interventions to make in a flood system and the opportune time to make these interventions, given the future uncertainties. The flood risk strategies have been explicitly designed to allow for flexible adaptive measures by capturing the concepts of Real Options to evaluate potential flood risk management opportunities. A state of the art flood risk analysis tool is employed to evaluate the risk associated to each strategy over future points in time and a multi-objective genetic algorithm is utilised to search for the optimal adaptive strategies. The modelling system has been applied to a reach on the Thames Estuary (London, England), and initial results show the inclusion of flexibility is advantageous while the outputs provide decision makers with supplementary knowledge which previously has not been considered