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The authors discuss fatigue strength of welded rib-to-web junctions at the deck supports with reference to redecking of the Williamsburg and the Bronx-Whitestone bridges, where low available depth necessitated the use of special details, and recommend the use of the “modified nominal stress approach” for the design of such connections. However, experience with thousands of existing orthotropic deck bridges throughout the world shows that applied live load stresses are not the only cause of fatigue cracking and that factors related to fabrication may be of equal, or possibly, greater significance. It has been reported that in many cases, cracks in orthotropic decks developed shortly after fabrication and welding, or early after the deck installation, before the live loads had been fully applied. This led to the conclusion that fatigue cracking occurs where the effects of heavy wheel loads coincide with faulty details or inappropriate fabrication procedures. PSP 2005. Therefore, consideration of the effects of live load stresses alone addresses only one aspect of the fatigue problem. The authors imply that the type of weld used for the rib-toweb connection is accounted for by Detail Category assigned to the fillet, the partial and the full penetration welds. However, many other factors related to welding such as weld size total heat input, welding method manualautomatic, welding speed and sequence, weld imperfections, weld terminations, etc. may be more important. Dimensional fabrication tolerances and the degree of constraint of the plate elements to be welded are further factors that must be considered in the assessment of fatigue resistance. Tensile forces developing at welds due to weld shrinkage upon cooling could be a direct cause of cracking. These forces are directly related to loose fabrication tolerances and the geometric

Fatigue design criteria are necessary to design steel corrugated web girders for highway bridges. The paper presents research on the fatigue life of steel bridge I-girders with trapezoidal web corrugations. Eight large-scale test girders were fabricated from HPS 485W steel and fatigue-tested in four-point bending. The web-to-flange fillet welds were made using semiautomatic gas metal arc welding (GMAW) or robotic GMAW. Fatigue cracks initiated in the tension flange at the web-to-flange fillet weld toe along the inclined web folds and adjacent bend regions, and propagated in the flange. The results demonstrate that steel corrugated web I-girders exhibit a fatigue life that is longer than that of conventional steel I-girders with transverse stiffeners. For design of corrugated web I-girders, the Category B′ design curve of the AASHTO LRFD specifications is recommended for finite life fatigue design calculations, and a value of 96.5 MPa (14.0 ksi) is recommended for the constant amplitude fatigue limit.

This paper presents an overview of research conducted to bridge the rich field of graphical models with the emerging field of data fusion for sensor networks. Both theoretical issues and prototyping applications are discussed in addition to suggesting new lines of reasoning.

A statistical model is presented that combines the registration of an atlas with the segmentation of magnetic resonance images. We use an Expectation Maximization-based algorithm to find a solution within the model, which simultaneously estimates image artifacts, anatomical labelmaps, and a structure-dependent hierarchical mapping from the atlas to the image space. The algorithm produces segmentations for brain tissues as well as their substructures. We demonstrate the approach on a set of 22 magnetic resonance images. On this set of images, the new approach performs significantly better than similar methods which sequentially apply registration and segmentation.

Fisher (1998) proposed a spiritual well-being model, comprising primary factors for the domains of personal, communal, environmental and transcendental well-being, that cohere to form a single higher order or global spiritual well-being dimension. In line with this model, Gomez and Fisher (2003) published the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire (SWBQ), with scales for measuring personal, communal, environmental and transcendental spiritual well-being. This study used multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine gender equivalencies of the measurement and structural models of the SWBQ, and the latent mean in the four SWBQ factors. A total of 3101 females and 1361 males, with age ranging from 15 to 32 years, completed the SWBQ. The statistical fit results supported the invariance of the measurement model, and some aspects of the structural model. The practical fit indices results provided support for the invariance of both the measurement and structural models. The results also showed little gender differences. Together, these findings support gender equivalencies for the SWBQ.

Highly constrained details have been known to be the cause of brittle fractures in several plate girder bridges around the United States, as well as other types of structures such as ships and more recently buildings. In bridges, the constraint is introduced by attachments welded to the girder web. In ships and buildings, the constraint is introduced by welding intersecting plates together, similar to that observed in plate girders. A detailed finite element model was developed to study the potential for fracture of the detail through linear and nonlinear analyses. The linear analysis demonstrated the effect of having welded attachments on elevating triaxial stresses in the girder's web. The nonlinear analysis was needed to assess the triaxiality demand of the detail and the potential for the development of large brittle cracks in the girder.

PURPOSE To assess the health status of the Hispanic population of Orange County, Florida. METHODS The methodology utilized secondary data for 66 ethnically identified indicators in a comparative framework applied for a 5-year period (1997-2001). FINDINGS Orange County Hispanics are younger with lower per capita income than their Florida peers, less likely to be White, and much more likely to be of Puerto Rican origin. Relative to the Hispanic populations in the selected peer counties and statewide, Orange County Hispanics have higher age-adjusted death rates for a majority of disease categories and conditions, such as breast, lung, and prostate cancers; chronic liver disease and cirrhosis; diabetes mellitus; pneumonia and influenza; stroke; acquired immunodeficiency syndrome; motor vehicle accidents; and infant, neonatal, and child mortality. Orange County Hispanics did better in comparison to Orange non-Hispanics, with lower age-adjusted death rates for major causes of death such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. However, for many indicators, the 5-year trends for Orange County Hispanics are moving in an unfavorable direction in contrast to the trends for non-Hispanics, which are either stable or improving. CONCLUSION Comparative assessments of Hispanic populations using secondary data enable the development of a comprehensive health status profile. However, this approach is currently constrained by the limited number of ethnically identified indicators and, especially for Hispanics, problems in the accuracy and consistency of the assignment to racial categories and subsequent reporting.

Automatic self-localization is a critical need for the effective use of ad hoc sensor networks in military or civilian applications. In general, self-localization involves the combination of absolute location information (e.g., from a global positioning system) with relative calibration information (e.g., distance measurements between sensors) over regions of the network. Furthermore, it is generally desirable to distribute the computational burden across the network and minimize the amount of intersensor communication. We demonstrate that the information used for sensor localization is fundamentally local with regard to the network topology and use this observation to reformulate the problem within a graphical model framework. We then present and demonstrate the utility of nonparametric belief propagation (NBP), a recent generalization of particle filtering, for both estimating sensor locations and representing location uncertainties. NBP has the advantage that it is easily implemented in a distributed fashion, admits a wide variety of statistical models, and can represent multimodal uncertainty. Using simulations of small to moderately sized sensor networks, we show that NBP may be made robust to outlier measurement errors by a simple model augmentation, and that judicious message construction can result in better estimates. Furthermore, we provide an analysis of NBP's communications requirements, showing that typically only a few messages per sensor are required, and that even low bit-rate approximations of these messages can be used with little or no performance impact.

Recently, Gomez and Fisher (2003) published the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire (SWBQ). This is a self-rating measure with separate 5-item scales for personal, communal, environmental, and transcendental spiritual well-being. This study used item response theory (IRT) to examine the psychometric properties of these scales. A sample comprising 4462 participants from mainly secondary schools and universities completed the SWBQ. Samejima's graded response model was used for the analyses. The results showed that the discrimination parameters for all items in the four scales were moderate to large. The threshold parameters showed adequate representation of the relevant traits from low to the mean trait level for personal, communal and environmental items, and from low to moderately high trait level for the transcendental items. With the exception of five items, all other items showed good item information function values, and therefore acceptable reliability. The findings also indicated that the number of response options could be decreased and increased at the low and high trait levels, respectively. Thus while there was general support for the psychometric properties of the SWBQ from an IRT perspective, there were also indications that this measure can be further improved.

Determining the structure of dependencies among a set of variables is a common task in many signal and image processing applications, including multitarget tracking and computer vision. In this paper, we present an information-theoretic, machine learning approach to problems of this type. We cast this problem as a hypothesis test between factorizations of variables into mutually independent subsets. We show that the likelihood ratio can be written as sums of two sets of Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence terms. The first set captures the structure of the statistical dependencies within each hypothesis, whereas the second set measures the details of model differences between hypotheses. We then consider the case when the signal prior models are unknown, so that the distributions of interest must be estimated directly from data, showing that the second set of terms is (asymptotically) negligible and quantifying the loss in hypothesis separability when the models are completely unknown. We demonstrate the utility of nonparametric estimation methods for such problems, providing a general framework for determining and distinguishing between dependency structures in highly uncertain environments. Additionally, we develop a machine learning approach for estimating lower bounds on KL divergence and mutual information from samples of high-dimensional random variables for which direct density estimation is infeasible. We present empirical results in the context of three prototypical applications: association of signals generated by sources possessing harmonic behavior, scene correspondence using video imagery, and detection of coherent behavior among sets of moving objects.

Audio and visual signals arriving from a common source are detected using a signal-level fusion technique. A probabilistic multimodal generation model is introduced and used to derive an information theoretic measure of cross-modal correspondence. Nonparametric statistical density modeling techniques can characterize the mutual information between signals from different domains. By comparing the mutual information between different pairs of signals, it is possible to identify which person is speaking a given utterance and discount errant motion or audio from other utterances or nonspeech events.

This paper presents an overview of materials selection, design, and detailing of steel girders for fatigue and fracture limit states. The historical context of the fracture control plan for bridges is presented. A discussion of fracture toughness of structural steel and weld metal is presented along with typical Charpy and fracture-toughness test data, including the new high-performance steel A709 HPS 485W. Fatigue of cover plate details and distortion-induced cracking are discussed. Methods of dealing with variable-amplitude loading are then compared to test data.

Fisher (1998) proposed a spiritual well-being model, comprising the domains of personal, communal, environmental and transcendental well-being, and a single global spiritual well-being dimension. This paper reports on four studies aimed at testing Fisher’s theoretical model, and establishing the validity and reliability of a new self-rating questionnaire (Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire; SWBQ), developed to reflect this model. All four studies supported Fisher’s model. The SWBQ showed good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability and variance extracted), and validity (construct, concurrent, discriminant, predictive and factorial independence from personality). The SWBQ has the advantage over other existing spiritual well-being measures in that it is based on a broader and more empirically based conceptualization of spiritual well-being, and has well established psychometric properties.

Final design of the replacement orthotropic deck panels for the rehabilitation of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City was based on laboratory fatigue tests of a full-scale prototype and an as-built orthotropic deck panel carried out at Lehigh University in the latter 1990s. The tests focused on determining and comparing the fatigue resistance of two different welded rib-to-diaphragm connection details that were recommended in the 1994 AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications and an alternative proposed by Steinman. The test on the prototype panel demonstrated that the fatigue resistance of the alternative detail was superior and influenced additional design changes that were incorporated into the replacement panels installed on the southern inner and outer roadways. Subsequent tests on the as-built panel further confirmed that the fatigue resistance of the alternative detail was superior and demonstrated that the additional design changes were also beneficial. Static and dynamic tests revealed the complex behavior of the orthotropic deck panels and demonstrated the effectiveness of retrofit and repair options at cracked connections. An assessment of fatigue resistance based on fracture mechanics models provided theoretical correlation. This research has led to the revision of design specifications for steel orthotropic decks first provided in the 2000 Interim AASHTO LRFD Specifications.

Enhancement of the fatigue resistance of welded transverse stiffeners and cover plate details by ultrasonic impact treatment (UIT) was evaluated in 18 full-scale W27×129 rolled beam specimens. Fatigue tests were conducted under constant amplitude loading at various stress range levels and at two minimum stress levels simulating the effect of sustained load. The test specimens were investigated for fatigue crack initiation and propagation. Distributions of residual stresses adjacent to the weld toe were determined before and after the treatment. Test results indicated that UIT enhanced the fatigue performance of all treated details by improving the weld toe profile, changing microstructure and introducing beneficial compressive residual stresses at the treated weld toe. The treatment effectively elevated the fatigue crack growth threshold and the fatigue limit without changing the slope of the S–N curve.

High tensile weld residual stress is one important factor contributing to fatigue crack development even under reversal or compressive cyclic loadings. A compressive stress induced by post-weld treatment is beneficial by eliminating the tensile residual stresses and generating compressive residual stresses, which improves fatigue strength of welded structures. A study is underway to characterize the magnitude and subsurface distribution of residual stresses produced by post-weld treatments, particularly by Ultrasonic Impact Treatment (UIT), and to establish the post-weld treatment effect on fatigue resistance. Two post-weld treatments, UIT and shot peening, are involved in the present study. Internal stresses were investigated on three base metal samples treated by UIT and shot peening and on one welded sample treated by UIT through neutron diffraction and X-ray diffraction techniques. This paper presents the experimental conditions and the results of these stress measurements. It is revealed that the peak compressive residual stress induced by both treatments exceeded the yield stress of the base material near the sample surface. The depth of compressive stress layer in base metal was 1.5–1.7 mm for UIT and ~0.8 mm for shot peening. The induced compressive residual stresses benefit to increase the threshold value of stress intensity factor range, ΔKth, for fatigue crack initiation and early propagation. The effect of residual stresses modification on fatigue strength is discussed based on fracture mechanics model and verified by fatigue test results of large-scale welded beams.

Full scale tests of welded AL-6XN superaustenitic stainless steel I-beams were carried out to assess the fatigue behavior of three weld details. A total of 66 full-scale I-beams were tested under constant amplitude loading. The test program was developed to assess the effects of minimum stress, stress range, and residual stress on the fatigue behavior of the longitudinal fillet weld detail, transverse groove weld detail, and a simulated bulkhead attachment detail. Weld defects that initiated fatigue crack growth were characterized. Internal discontinuities included porosity, entrapped oxides, and lack of fusion sites located in the longitudinal fillet welds and the groove welds. Surface cracks initiated at microdiscontinuities at the toe of the attachment fillet welds and at the toe of the groove welds.

The results of a 3-D finite element study of welded unreinforced flange beam-to-column moment connections in steel special moment resisting frames are presented. Computer models of connection subassemblies were developed using the general-purpose nonlinear finite element program abaqus . Several issues were addressed in the study: (1) geometry and size of the weld access hole; (2) benefit of a welded beam web; (3) control of inelastic panel zone deformations; and (4) effectiveness of continuity plates in reducing local demand on the connection. The analytical results provided information related to basic performance and the effects that these connection parameters have on inelastic cyclic performance, thereby furthering the current understanding of welded moment connection behavior under seismic loading conditions and leading to improved design criteria. Based on the results of the analytical study, recommendations for the seismic design of connections are given. The incorporation of the recommendations into an experimental test program showed good connection ductility in the test specimens.

Scattering from man-made objects in SAR imagery exhibits aspect and frequency dependencies which are not well modeled by standard SAR imaging techniques. If ignored, these deviations will reduce recognition performance due to the model mismatch, but when appropriately accounted for, these deviations from the ideal point scattering model can be exploited as attributes to better distinguish scatterers and their respective targets. With this premise in mind, we have developed an efficient modeling framework that incorporates scatterer anisotropy. One of the products of our analysis is the assignment of an anisotropy label to each scatterer conveying the degree of anisotropy. Anisotropic behavior is commonly predicted for geometric scatterers (scatterers with a simple geometric structure), but it may also arise from volumetric scatterers (random arrangements of interfering point scatterers). Analysis of anisotropy arising from these two modalities shows a clear source-dependent relationship between the anisotropy classification and parameters of the scatterer. In particular, the degree of anisotropy is closely related to the size of the scatterer, and increasing the aperture size reduces the incidence of volumetric anisotropy but preserves the detection rate for geometric anisotropy. This result helps to address the question in the SAR community regarding the utility of wide-aperture SAR data for ATR since wide-aperture data reveals geometric anisotropy while resolving volumetric anisotropy into individual isotropic scatterers.

The Triborough Bridge connects the boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx in New York City. The bridge has suspended spans with a total length of 2,700 ft (823 m). The existing concrete deck is being replaced with an orthotropic steel deck to reduce the overall dead load. Before deck replacement, a prototype steel orthotropic deck was installed on the main span for a length of 120 ft (36.6 m). About 300 strain gauges were installed at critical locations to investigate the fatigue strength under static and dynamic loads of the AASHTO fatigue truck and under normal traffic. The strain gauge testing was done in three phases, and structural refinements were made to the deck system between phases. Traffic monitoring was conducted for the most critical locations over a 30-day period during Phase III. The results from three phases of the strain gauge testing, including influence lines and traffic monitoring data, were used to calculate fatigue stress ranges and the fatigue life for each detail. In addition to strain gauge testing, a finite element analysis of the orthotropic deck was performed with loading criteria set by AASHTO load and resistance factor design. The results from the finite element analysis were compared with the results obtained from the strain gauge testing. It was concluded that the heavy trucks on the bridge cause fatigue stresses higher than what had been anticipated by AASHTO. The investigation assisted in modifying the design to obtain a longer service life for the deck system under heavy-truck traffic.

Several hundred bridges are known to have developed one or more types of fatigue cracks. Often several types of fatigue cracks have developed in a single bridge because different details existed on the structure. Increasing demands on the aging infrastructure of the United States has resulted in accelerated deterioration of structural components. During the period between 1960 and 2000, a number of localized failures developed in steel bridge components due to fatigue crack propagation. In a few cases, brittle fracture resulted from crack instability without detectable fatigue cracking. The recent fracture of girder sections in the Hoan Bridge in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is an example of an unexpected failure from a welded web detail.

Over the past four years, extensive research has been initiated on the application of ultrasonic impact treatment (UIT) for fatigue enhancement of fracture-critical details in steel bridges. The research is particularly relevant in light of the development of high strength steels and their use within the bridge industry. The main investigation involved fatigue tests on full-size fabricated and rolled ASTM A709 GR 50W steel girders with welded attachments (stiffeners and cover plates). These enabled the influence of weld detail design on the benefit of UIT to be investigated. At the same time, a series of fatigue tests was also carried out, aimed at the comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of various post-weld fatigue improvement methods. The results obtained to-date in these investigations are presented in this paper. Specific emphasis is focused on weld design options and the benefits achieved by ultrasonic impact treatment. The fatigue test results obtained to-date from the research are presented in this paper. Conclusions are drawn regarding the improvement in fatigue performance that can be achieved with UIT for consideration in the design of welded bridge structures as well as maintenance and repair procedures.

The appeal of distributed sensing and computation is matched by the formidable challenges it presents in terms of estimation and communication. Applications range from military surveillance to collaborative office environments. Despite the attractiveness of exploiting networks of low-power and low-cost sensors, how to do so is a difficult problem. In this paper, we adopt a statistical viewpoint of such networks, and identify three key challenges. The first is to develop principled methods for low-level fusion of sensors measuring different modalities. We discuss an information-theoretic approach to sensor fusion, and present experimental results using audio and video data. The core component of this method is the learning of a nonparametric joint statistical model for the sensing modes. Secondly, we discuss how one might apply such a sensor fusion algorithm to acquire the relative geometry of a network of sensors using passively-sensed data. Specifically, we show how the fusion method previously developed can be used to find correspondences between pairs of long-baseline sensors. Finding such correspondences is, in general, the starting point for recovering the geometry. Finally, we discuss two iterative algorithms for performing inference on graphical models with cycles. Such models provide a flexible framework for constructing globally consistent statistical models from a set of local interactions. Importantly, the algorithms that we present allow information to be transmitted and processed in a distributed manner.

The results of an experimental study of the seismic performance of improved, welded unreinforced beam-to-column moment connections are presented. The study involved the inelastic cyclic testing of 11 full-scale connection specimens to evaluate the effects of weld access hole geometry, beam web attachment detail, panel zone strength, continuity plates, and composite slab on connection performance. With a high toughness weld metal and modified detailing, it is demonstrated that a welded unreinforced flange moment connection can reliably achieve an inealstic rotation of 0.03 rad or more prior to failure. The modified details include the use of a weld access hole with a modified geometry and a welded beam web. The test results indicate that a strong panel zone enhances inelastic connection performance. Based on the results of the study recommendations are given for the seismic-resistant design of improved welded unreinforced connections for steel moment-resisting frames.

A comprehensive research program was conducted at Lehigh University to investigate the causes of brittle failures observed in numerous welded connections during the 1994 Northridge earthquake and ways to improve their ductility. In this program, tests on pre-Northridge connection details demonstrate that several weak links in the connection design and fabrication resulted in their premature failures. To develop improved details for welded unreinforced connections the effects of weld metal, weld access hole geometry, beam web attachment, continuity plates, and panel zone strength on cyclic ductility were investigated using non-linear finite element models and full-scale connection tests. The results from these studies are presented, along with recommendations to insure ductile connection performance.

A random sample of 1,033 adults in an Australian community survey completed a form containing the abbreviated Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with questions about the practice of prayer and Eastern meditation. While prayer was associated with low psychoticism scores, Eastern meditation was associated with high psychoticism scores.

A sample of 311 primary school teachers completed the Spiritual Health in Four Domains Index alongside the abbreviated revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and measures of religiosity. The data demonstrate that higher levels of spiritual health are found among older teachers who record low scores on the psychoticism scale and who practice religious faith through church attendance and personal prayer.

Spiritual well-being is perceived to be reflected in the quality of relationships that people have in four areas, namely with God, others, nature, and self. Many spiritual well-being questionnaires exist, but not many provide an adequate assessment of these four relationships. As part of a survey of parental perceptions of holistic early childhood education in kindergartens in Hong Kong, 1383 parents and 165 teachers, from 22 kindergartens, completed a written survey questionnaire which helped to investigate the potential for a single question with four parts to provide a valid and reliable measure for spiritual well-being. Face, content, and construct validity were confirmed, together with Cronbach’s alpha providing a test for reliability. Similarity of findings from regression analysis of items in the 4-ISWBI with domains of spiritual well-being in the 20-item SHALOM, as well as partial discrimination by gender, reinforce the validity of the 4-ISWBI as a sound indicator of spiritual well-being and its four domains. In brief, the 4-Item Spiritual Well-Being Index (4-ISWBI) promises to be a handy instrument to aid researchers looking for a convenient, concise, coherent indicator, but not an exhaustive measure, of spiritual well-being.

In order to examine the association between prayer and happiness, a sample of 1,002 students, ranging in age from 12- to 18-years, attending ten non-government secondary schools in Victoria, Australia, completed three measures: the Oxford Happiness Inventory, the short form of the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised, and a single-item measure of prayer affect assessed on a five-point scale. The data demonstrated a significant positive correlation between prayer affect and happiness after taking into account individual differences in sex, age and personality.

Objects and structures within man-made environments typically exhibit a high degree of organization in the form of orthogonal and parallel planes. Traditional approaches to scene representation exploit this phenomenon via the somewhat restrictive assumption that every plane is perpendicular to one of the axes of a single coordinate system. Known as the Manhattan-World model, this assumption is widely used in computer vision and robotics. The complexity of many real-world scenes, however, necessitates a more flexible model. We propose a novel probabilistic model that describes the world as a mixture of Manhattan frames: each frame defines a different orthogonal coordinate system. This results in a more expressive model that still exploits the orthogonality constraints. We propose an adaptive Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo sampling algorithm with Metropolis-Hastings split/merge moves that utilizes the geometry of the unit sphere. We demonstrate the versatility of our Mixture-of-Manhattan-Frames model by describing complex scenes using depth images of indoor scenes as well as aerial-LiDAR measurements of an urban center. Additionally, we show that the model lends itself to focal-length calibration of depth cameras and to plane segmentation., United States. Office of Naval Research. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (Award N00014-11-1-0688), United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Award FA8650-11-1-7154), Technion, Israel Institute of Technology (MIT Postdoctoral Fellowship Program)

Studies of racial disparities in patient safety events often do not use race-specific risk adjustment and do not account for reciprocal covariate interactions. These limitations were addressed by using classification tree analysis separately for black patients and white patients to identify characteristics that segment patients who have increased risks for a venous catheter-related bloodstream infection.A retrospective, cross-sectional analysis of 5,236,045 discharges from 103 Florida acute hospitals in 2005-2009 was conducted. Hospitals were rank ordered on the basis of the black/white Patient Safety Indicator (PSI) 7 rate ratio as follows: Group 1 (white rate higher), Group 2, (equivalent rates), Group 3, (black rate higher), and Group 4, (black rate highest). Predictor variables included 26 comorbidities (Elixhauser Comorbidity Index) and demographic characteristics. Four separate classification tree analyses were completed for each race/hospital group.Individual characteristics and groups of characteristics associated with increased PSI 7 risk differed for black and white patients. The average age for both races was different across the hospital groups (p.01). Weight loss was the strongest single delineator and common to both races. The black subgroups with the highest PSI 7 risk were Medicare beneficiaries who were eitheror = 25.5 years without hypertension oror = 39.5 years without hypertension but with an emergency or trauma admission. The white subgroup with the highest PSI 7 risk consisted of patientsor = 45.5 years who had congestive heart failure but did not have either hypertension or weight loss.Identifying subgroups of patients at risk for a rare safety event such as PSI 7 should aid effective clinical decisions and efficient use of resources and help to guide patient safety interventions.

We present a generative, probabilistic model that decomposes an image into reflectance and shading components. The proposed approach uses a Dirichlet process Gaussian mixture model where the mean parameters evolve jointly according to a Gaussian process. In contrast to prior methods, we eliminate the Retinex term and adopt more general smoothness assumptions for the shading image. Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling techniques are used for inference, yielding state-of-the-art results on the MIT Intrinsic Image Dataset.

The results of a 3D finite-element study of the inelastic behavior of unreinforced, flange-welded moment connections in steel seismic moment resisting frames is presented. Computer models of connection subassemblies with notch tough weld metal were developed using the general-purpose computer program ABAQUS. Several issues were addressed in the study: (1) geometry and size of the weld access hole; (2) control of inelastic panel zone deformation; and (3) benefit of a welded beam web. The analytical results provided information on basic performance and the effects of these parameters on inelastic performance, thereby furthering the current understanding of welded connection behavior under seismic loading. Based on the results, recommendations for the seismic design of connections are given. The recommendations include using a groove welded beam web attachment with supplemental fillet welds along the edges of the shear tab and a modified weld access hole geometry. The results indicate that a strong panel zon...

This article reports on a survey completed by Chaplains, Religious Education and Student Welfare Coordinators in State, Catholic and Independent schools in Victoria. Results from this survey support the model of spiritual well-being, which was seen to be reflected in the quality of relationships that people develop with themselves, others, the environment, and with a Transcendent Other. The staff surveyed generally reported positively on current practice and expressed high priorities for action in nurturing their students' spiritual well-being. School type contributed to significant differences in each of these four sets of relationships.

We present an integrated probabilistic model for layered object tracking that combines dynamics on implicit shape representations, topological shape constraints, adaptive appearance models, and layered flow. The generative model combines the evolution of appearances and layer shapes with a Gaussian process flow and explicit layer ordering. Efficient MCMC sampling algorithms are developed to enable a particle filtering approach while reasoning about the distribution of object boundaries in video. We demonstrate the utility of the proposed tracking algorithm on a wide variety of video sources while achieving state-of-the-art results on a boundary-accurate tracking dataset.

The nearly singular subsistence reliance by Late Prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the northwestern Plains on bison (Bison bison) is well-established. In a significant departure from that subsistence adaptation, a group of Avonlea Phase people occupying a floodplain of the upper Missouri River during late winter ca. 1200 radiocarbon years before present (RCYBP) procured a large number of pronghorn (Antilocapra arnericana). The excavated sample contains a minimum of 83 post-natal and 25 fetal pronghorn. Comprehensive breakage and utilization of carcass parts indicates that these people experienced significant nutritional stress. Whether Lost Terrace represents an example of patterned seasonal pronghorn hunting in the river bottom or was forced as a subsistence departure from reliance on river bottom wintering bison has not been determined at this time.

The Boar's Tusk site is a Late Prehistoric or Protohistoric short-term probable campsite in southwestern Wyoming. Pronghorn predominates the bone assemblage. Site structure at Boar's Tusk is compared to campsites of Efe and Ju/'hoansi foragers of central and southern Africa. Features at Boar's Tusk were arranged in an oval configuration like the arrangement of dwellings generally seen at Efe and Ju/'hoansi campsites, but with much greater distance between features at Boar's Tusk. This may be the result of differing characteristics of the physical environment, such as density of vegetation, or of differences in the degree to which resources were shared between households.

A comprehensive research program on large-size, welded moment connections conducted after the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California has identified three critical issues that could significantly affect the strength and ductility of the connections. They are: fracture toughness of weld metal, geometry and size of weld access hole, and control of panel zone deformation. Experimental and analytical studies on each of the issues have been performed at the Center for Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems at Lehigh University. This paper presents brief descriptions of the studies, key results obtained and recommendations made to insure ductile performance of the connections.

This study argues for the assessment of spiritual health in terms of four domains of wellbeing concerned with self, community, environment, and God. This view of spiritual health is supported by data from 311 teachers in the UK. The Spiritual Health in Four Domains Index (SH4DI) developed from these data both provides an overall index of spiritual health and distinguishes among six different spiritual health perspectives represented by personalists, communalists, environmentalists, religionists, existentialists, and globalists.

This paper discusses a framework for learning based on information theoretic criteria. A novel algorithm based on Renyi's quadratic entropy is used to train, directly from a data set, linear or nonlinear mappers for entropy maximization or minimization. We provide an intriguing analogy between the computation and an information potential measuring the interactions among the data samples. We also propose two approximations to the Kulback-Leibler divergence based on quadratic distances (Cauchy-Schwartz inequality and Euclidean distance). These distances can still be computed using the information potential. We test the newly proposed distances in blind source separation (unsupervised learning) and in feature extraction for classification (supervised learning). In blind source separation our algorithm is capable of separating instantaneously mixed sources, and for classification the performance of our classifier is comparable to the support vector machines (SVMs).

Two large-scale fatigue test studies of plate girders are reported on. One study involved a series of coverplated bridge girders with small fatigue cracks that were retrofitted in 1976 as described in NCHRP Report 206. The second study involved plate girders fabricated from HPS-485W (HPS-70W) steel with welded attachments. The Category E’ coverplated beams that were removed from the I-95 Yellow Mill Pond Bridge in 1997 had been retrofitted in 1976 by either air hammer peening or gas tungsten arc (GTA) remelting. All details had small fatigue cracks at the time of retrofit. No further fatigue cracking was observed at the coverplate ends after 20 years of service and an estimated 56 million truck passages. The beams were tested at a stress range of 69 MPa (10 ksi). Cracks developed from the root of the transverse end weld and propagated through the weld throat. The fatigue resistance of the treated weld toe details improved to Category C except for one GTA-remelted detail, which exceeded Category D. Another study was carried out on large-scale HPS-485W plate girders with as-welded and ultrasonic-impact treatment (UIT) details. UIT was applied to the weld toe of transverse stiffeners welded to the web and flanges (Category C) and to coverplated ends (Category E’). The as-welded details cracked at their expected fatigue resistance. The UIT transverse stiffeners improved to Category B fatigue resistance, whereas the UIT coverplated details improved to Category C fatigue resistance.

To minimize the possibility of fatigue cracking on the new orthotropic deck of the Williamsburg Bridge, laboratory tests with a full-scale prototype panel were conducted. During the study, recommendations for improving fatigue resistance of the welded rib-diaphragm connection detail were made before construction. In addition, load testing and long-term remote monitoring of the orthotropic deck were conducted. The field data suggest that actual truckloads are greater than the standard truck-loads assumed in the AASHTO Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) Specifications. They also suggest that modifications to the fatigue design of deck elements may be required because the maximum stress range exceeds twice the stress range provided by the fatigue truck (i.e., twice the fatigue truck assumed by the AASHTO LRFD Specifications).

Interviews with 98 teachers from a variety of schools were used to develop a definition of spiritual health, and to establish how these teachers thought spiritual health might best be fostered and what hindered its development in the school curriculum. A recurring theme, which seemed to be coming through the comments from teachers in this study, was the very important role that teachers play in helping students develop relationships. This was of vital importance as spiritual health was seen as being reflected in the quality of relationships that students develop with themselves, others, the environment, and with a Transcendent Other. The characteristics of teachers most frequently mentioned as desirable for the promotion of spiritual health were classified as follows: • caring, sensitive, personal approach; • concern for individuals; • committed to personal beliefs and values. Investigation of these teacher characteristics showed variation by gender, personal view of spiritual health, major curri...