Ramps

Skateboards, roller coasters, and playground slides, all of these are ramps. From award-winning author Michael Dahl, this nonfiction picture book provides an introduction to one of the most important machines humans rely on. With fun facts and bright illustrations, find out how people use ramps every day.

This synthesis will be of interest to highway design engineers, maintenance personnel, safety and enforcement officials, traffic engineers, and others responsible for the safe operation of large trucks on highways. Information is provided on the critical aspects of site location, design criteria, and maintenance procedures, and their relationship to truck escape ramp performance. The safety of truck drivers, other road users, and occupants of roadside properties is often imperiled by the combination of heavy trucks and steep downgrades on highways. Frequently, gearing down, applying the brakes, and using the retarding power of the engine are not sufficient to control the truck, and serious crashes can result. Many states have constructed truck escape ramps to safely remove runaway trucks from the traffic stream. This report of the Transportation Research Board provides information on the location, design, construction materials, geometrics, and construction costs of truck escape ramps. Operational considerations, such as descriptions of advance warning signs, traffic control devices at the ramp, and vehicle removal procedures are described. Information on frequency and type of usage, maintenance of the ramps, and driver-related issues is also included.

Among the many GPCRs discovered, the calcitonin family of receptors comprise of members that regulate a number of physiological processes and are involved in many pathological conditions. Therefore, understanding how these receptors function is a critical question in the field. When Foord and his colleagues discovered that a single transmembrane protein called Receptor Activity Modifying Proteins (RAMPs) could modulate the surface expression of GPCRs of the calcitonin family, it widely opened the field of receptor life cycle. Hundreds of studies have confirmed the importance of RAMPs in the life cycle of this receptor family. Receptor biology is a rapidly expanding field and with the advances in cell and molecular biology and in vivo techniques, it is very likely that the field of RAMPs will explode further and many unanswered questions will be answered with in the next few years.

With talent shortages looming over the next decade, what can companies do to attract and retain the large number of professional women who are forced off the career highway? By documenting the successful efforts of a group of cutting-edge global companies to retain talented women and reintegrate them if they’ve already left, Off-Ramps and On-Ramps answers this critical question. Working closely with companies such as Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner, General Electric and others, author Sylvia Ann Hewlett identifies what works and why. Based on firsthand experience with these companies, along with extensive data that provides the most comprehensive and nuanced portrait of women's career paths, this book documents the actions forward-thinking companies must take to reverse the female brain drain and ensure their access to talent over the long term.

Children are intrigued by moving objects, even more so when they can engineer the movement. This volume in the STEM for Our Youngest Learners Series uses ramps and pathways as a context to provide children ages 3–8 opportunities to engage in STEM every day. Ramps and Pathways is a meaningful and fun way for children to develop engineering habits of mind as they explore concepts in force and motion, properties of objects, and how those properties affect their movement. In the process, children develop spatial thinking that is essential for future careers in STEM. The text also offers guidance for arranging the physical, intellectual, social–emotional, and promotional environments of a classroom to embrace the natural integration of literacy learning. Each volume in this series includes guidance for forming partnerships with families and administrators that support STEM learning, vignettes showing educators and children engaging in inquiry learning, tips for selecting materials, modifications and accommodations for diverse learners, ways to establish adult learning communities that support professional development, and more. Book Features: Alignment with both the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework (ELOF) and the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices, with specific descriptions of how those science and engineering practices in Ramps and Pathways look and feel in Pre-K–2 classrooms.Examples of how to integrate literacy learning in a meaningful way.Descriptions of how the open-ended nature of ramps and pathways aligns with the Universal Design for Learning Framework (UDL). Guidance to help teachers anticipate and plan for all children to become purposeful, motivated, resourceful, knowledgeable, strategic, and goal-directed about learning.Examples of how to stage, introduce, and support children’s designs to develop engineering habits of mind (systems thinking, optimism, creativity, communication, collaboration, attention to ethical considerations).A meaningful and healthy context to grow children’s executive function skills (EFs), including inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Contributors: Sherri Peterson, Jill Uhlenberg, Linda Fitzgerald, Allison Barness, Rosemary Geiken, Sarah VanderZanden, Brandy Smith, Kimberly Villotti, Shelly Counsell, Lawrence Escalada

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 687: Guidelines for Ramp and Interchange Spacing explores guidelines for ramp and interchange spacing based on design, operations, safety, and signing considerations. The report is designed to help aid the decision-making process when an agency is considering new ramps or interchanges on existing facilities, modifying ramps and interchanges of existing facilities, or when planning and designing new highway and interchange facilities. The guidelines also offer standardized definitions measuring ramp and interchange spacing, which have varied in previous design guides. A final report documenting the full research effort related to the development of NCHRP Report 687 was published as NCHRP Web-Only Document 169--