The condition of the transportation infrastructure in the United States is an issue of national importance. State departments of transportation and transit agencies face tough choices as they make decisions about how and when to keep their assets safely open to the public. The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program and National Cooperative Highway Research Program's TCRP Legal Research Digest 57/NCHRP Legal Research Digest 84: Fix It, Sign It or Close It: State of Good Repair in an Era of Budget Constraints addresses the legal ramifications to transportation agencies that have to decide whether to repair, improve, or rebuild assets that are in poor repair.

The condition of the transportation infrastructure in the United States is an issue of national importance. State departments of transportation and transit agencies face tough choices as they make decisions about how and when to keep their assets safely open to the public. Agencies that receive federal formula grant dollars must work with their funding agencies, as well as local partners, to determine whether to repair, improve, rebuild or close their assets. This digest addresses the legal ramifications to transportation agencies that have to decide whether to repair, improve, or rebuild assets that are in poor repair. This digest provides a compendium of pertinent laws and practices related to achieving a state of good repair. In addition, it addresses the legal ramifications to transportation agencies when faced with prioritizing infrastructure planning decisions and whether to repair, improve, rebuild substandard assets, or close. The digest also includes a detailed discussion of an agency's requirements related to its assessment of risks. State transportation administrators, planners, researchers, transportation consultants, transportation and tort lawyers, and students should find this digest beneficial and informative.

Language is the species-specific human version of the animal system of communication. In contrast to non-human animals, language enables humans to invent a plurality of possible worlds; reflect upon signs; be responsible for our actions; gain conscious awareness of our inevitable mutual involvement in the network of life on this planet; and be responsibly involved in the destiny of the planet. The author looks at semiotics, the study of signs, symbols, and communication as developing sequentially rather than successively, more synchronically than diachronically. She discusses the contemporary phenomenon that people in today's society have witnessed and participated in, as part of the development of semiotics. Although there is a long history preceding semiotics, in a sense the field is, as a phenomenon, more "of our time" than of any time past. Its leading figures, whom Petrilli examines, belong to the twentieth and twenty-first century. Semiotics is associated with a capacity for listening. This capacity is also the condition for reconnecting to and recovering the ancient vocation of semiotics as that branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs or symptoms. The pragmatic aspect of global semiotics studies the impact of language or signs on those who use them, and looks for consequences in actual practice. In this respect, Petrilli theorizes that the task for semiotics in the era of globalization is nothing less than to take responsibility for life in its totality.

This book presents a collection of papers on two related topics: topology of knots and knot-like objects (such as curves on surfaces) and topology of Legendrian knots and links in 3-dimensional contact manifolds. Featured is the work of international experts in knot theory ("quantum" knot invariants, knot invariants of finite type), in symplectic and contact topology, and in singularity theory. The interplay of diverse methods from these fields makes this volume unique in the study of Legendrian knots and knot-like objects such as wave fronts. A particularly enticing feature of the volume is its international significance. The volume successfully embodies a fine collaborative effort by worldwide experts from Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Poland, Russia, Sweden, the UK, and the US.

Mouth actions in sign languages have been controversially discussed but the sociolinguistic factors determining their form and functions remain uncertain. This first empirical analysis of mouth actions in Irish Sign Language focuses on correlations with gender, age, and word class. It contributes to the linguistic description of ISL, research into non-manuals in sign languages, and is relevant for the cross-modal study of word classes.

Indian hand gestures are listed alphabetically by English equivalent, with sample sentence structure as well as information on ideographs and pictograph stories

This book studies diverse aspects of braid representations via knots and links. Complete classification results are illustrated for several properties through Xu’s normal 3-braid form and the Hecke algebra representation theory of link polynomials developed by Jones. Topological link types are identified within closures of 3-braids which have a given Alexander or Jones polynomial. Further classifications of knots and links arising by the closure of 3-braids are given, and new results about 4-braids are part of the work. Written with knot theorists, topologists,and graduate students in mind, this book features the identification and analysis of effective techniques for diagrammatic examples with unexpected properties.

Under orders from General Sheridan, Captain W. P. Clark spent over six years among the Plains Indians and other tribes studying their sign language. In addition to an alphabetical cataloguing of signs, Clark gives valuable background information on many tribes and their history and customs. Considered the classic of its field, this book provides, entirely in prose form, how to speak the language entirely through sign language, without one diagram provided.