Explains how and why ramps and other inclined planes are used in everyday life.

Nearly twenty percent of Americans live today with some sort of disability, and this number will grow in coming decades as the population ages. Despite this, the U.S. health care system is not set up to provide care comfortably, safely, and efficiently to persons with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities can therefore face significant barriers to obtaining high quality health care. Some barriers result from obvious impediments, such as doors without automatic openers and examining tables that are too high. Other barriers arise from faulty communication between patients and health care professionals, including misconceptions among clinicians about the daily lives, preferences, values, and abilities of persons with disabilities. Yet additional barriers relate to health insurance limits on items and services essential to maximizing health and independence. This book examines the health care experiences of persons who are blind, deaf, hard of hearing, or who have difficulties using their legs, arms, or hands. The book then outlines strategies for overcoming or circumventing barriers to care, starting by just asking persons with disabilities about workable solutions. Creating safe and accessible health care for persons with disabilities will likely benefit everyone at some point. This book has three parts. The first part looks at the historical roots of healthcare access for persons with disabilities in the United States. The second part discusses the current situation and the special challenges for those with disabilities. The third part looks forward to discuss the ways in which healthcare quality and access can improve.

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.

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