Evaluating the process of mental health and primary care integration:The Vermont Integration Profile

Objective:We developed and tested a measure to identify level of primary care behavioral health integration.We produced a thirty item,six domain electronically delivered measure,and a total score.Methods:We generated a convenience sample of 137 survey responses,including 104 pri-mary care practices.We provided each practice a summary of their own data,and generated a data base of all submissions.We calculated descriptive statistics.Results:The mean total score was 56/100.The Vermont Integration Profile(VIP)discrimi-nated between types of practices in the direction hypothesized.Initial test retest reliability was good.Conclusion:The VIP demonstrated good feasibility and construct validity,initial reliability,low provider demand and good discrimination between types of practices.

Thermal integrity profiling of cast-in-situ piles in sand using fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing

Defects in cast-in-situ piles have an adverse impact on load transfer at the pile‒soil interface and pile bearing capacity. In recent years, thermal integrity profiling (TIP) has been developed to measure temperature profiles of cast-in-situ piles, enabling the detection of structural defects or anomalies at the early stage of construction. However, using this integrity testing method to evaluate potential defects in cast-in-situ piles requires a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of hydration heat transfer from piles to surrounding soils. In this study, small-scale model tests were conducted in laboratory to investigate the performance of TIP in detecting pile integrity. Fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing (DTS) technology was used to monitor detailed temperature variations along model piles in sand. Additionally, sensors were installed in sand to measure water content and matric suction. An interpretation method against available DTS-based thermal profiles was proposed to reveal the potential defective regions. It shows that the temperature difference between normal and defective piles is more obvious in wet sand. In addition, there is a critical zone of water migration in sand due to the water absorption behavior of cement and temperature transfer-induced water migration in the early-age concrete setting. These findings could provide important insight into the improvement of the TIP testing method for field applications.

Sensitivity of tropical cyclone damage costs to integrated wind profile

The dramatic tropical cyclone(TC)damages in coastal areas around the world have gained significant attention from asset owners,policy makers and engineers.The estimate of TC damage for a specific region of interest is informative of the preparedness and resilience of the area subjected to TC hazards,and thus should be conducted using a quantitative approach.A reasonable indicator of TC damage should incorporate not only the TC characteristics(e.g.,intensity,frequency and duration)but also the vulnerability of the TC-prone areas.In this paper,a new indicator is proposed to measure the TC threat,which takes into account both the TC characteristics and the vulnerability of the area.The indicator has two forms:the first one considers the maximum wind speed only and the second incorporates the integrated wind speed profile.The historical damage scenarios along the US East Coast,as well as those in Hong Kong,China,are examined to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed indicator.Results show that the proposed indicator is capable of representing the impact of TC wind field profile on the TC damage costs.The proposed indicator could be further used to project the future TC damages for areas subjected to TC hazards.