Accessibility to buildings promotes social participation through the application of inclusive design. However, architectural frameworks for constructing accessibility ramps are based on scant scientific evidence. This article presents a statement of established standards for construction criteria for accessibility ramps and makes recommendations from the perspective of inclusive design. A literature review was performed using the databases Medline, OTseeker, PsycINFO, and CINAHL (2000 to 2013), combining keywords referring to: universal accessibility, inclusive design, accessibility ramps, biomechanics, obesity, and disabilities. Non-scientific literature was also explored (e.g. building codes). The fifty-eight articles selected were grouped under five themes: 1) ramps and users; 2) materials and climate; 3) visual reference; 4) "wayfinding"; 5) durability, aesthetics and culture. Recommendations encouraging interdisciplinary practice, pegged to inclusive design, are exhibited (e.g. tracking, tilt, contrast).

Ramp load/unload (L/UL) mechanisms are widely used to rest sliders in hard disk drives (HDDs). Loading/unloading a slider swiftly and smoothly is crucial in a HDD design. A novel, efficient simulation scheme is proposed to investigate the behaviors of a head disk interface (HDI) in ramp unloading processes. A dual scale model is enabled by decoupling the nano-meter scale change of an air bearing and the micro- or milli-meter scale deformation of a suspension. A modified Reynolds equation governing the air bearing was solved numerically. The slider design was characterized with performance functions. Three stages in an unloading process were analyzed with a lumped parameter suspension model. Key parameters for the model were estimated with a comprehensive finite element suspension model. Finally, simulation results are presented for a commercial HDI design.

The well-exposed Hoogland Member (c. 549 Ma) of the northern Nama Group (Kuibis Subgroup), Namibia, represents a storm-dominated carbonate ramp developed in a foreland basin of terminal Proterozoic age. The ramp displays facies gradients involving updip grainstones which pass downdip into broad, spatially extensive tracts of microbial laminites and finely laminated mudstones deposited above and below storm wave base. Trough cross-bedded, coarse grainstones are shown to transit downdip into finer-grained calcarenites, irregular microbial laminites and mottled laminites. Siliciclastic siltstones and shales were deposited further downdip. Platform growth was terminated through smothering by orogen-derived siliciclastic deposits. Ramp morphology was controlled by several different processes which acted across many orders of magnitude (millimetres to kilometres), including in situ growth of mats and reefs, scouring by wave-produced currents, and transport and infilling of coarse-grained carbonates and fine-grained carbonates and clastics. At the smallest scale, ‘roughening’ of the sea-floor through heterogeneous trapping and binding by microbial mats was balanced by smoothing of the sea-floor through accumulation of loose sediment to fill the topographic lows within the upward-propagating mat. At the next scale up, parasequence development involved roughening of the sea-floor through shoal growth and grainstone progradation, balanced by sea-floor smoothing through shale infilling of resulting downdip accommodation, as well as the metre-scale topographic depressions within the mosaic of shoal-water facies. At even larger (sequence/platform) scales, roughening of the sea-floor occurred through aggradation and progradation of thick carbonates, balanced by infilling of the foreland basin with orogen-derived siliciclastic sediments. At all scales a net balance was achieved between sea-floor roughening and sea-floor smoothing to maintain a more or less constant ramp profile.

Genetic diversity and relationships among 21 accessions of Secale L., including three species and 10 subspecies, were evaluated using RAMP markers. Forty-one out of 80 (50.5%) RAMP primers, which produced clear and polymorphic bands, were selected for PCR amplification of genomic DNA. A total of 446 bands were amplified from the 41 primers, and 428 of these bands (about 96%) were polymorphic. Three to 19 polymorphic bands could be amplified from each primer, with an average of 10.4 bands. The RAMP-based genetic similarity (GS) values among the 21 Secale accessions ranged from 0.266 to 0.658, with a mean of 0.449. A high level of genetic variation was found between or within the wild populations and the cultivars. Based on the GS matrix, a dendrogram was constructed using the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic average (UPGMA). All 21 accessions could be distinguished by RAMP markers. Clustering results showed that the genetic diversity of Secale based on RAMP markers was correlated with geographical distribution. Six rye cultivars, originating from Poland, Portugal, Mexico, Hungary, Armenia and Ukraine, were clustered into one group. The six countries are all located in the transitional region of broad-leaf forests between maritime and continental temperate zones, with narrow latitude span. In comparison, the other five cultivars from countries scattered over a region with large latitude span were distributed within different groups or subgroups. Genetic relationships based on RAMP markers had great deviation from the original taxonomy. Some subspecies of the same species were distributed within different groups, while some accessions of different species were closely clustered into one subgroup. These results suggest that RAMP markers could be an effective technique for detecting genetic diversity among Secale and give some useful information about its phylogenic relationships.