Defining And Managing The Historic Urban Landscape: Reflections On The English Experience And Some Stories From Liverpool

The period since the 1960s has been characterised by growing societal concern with urban heritage protection and the development of legislative, fiscal and urban planning instruments that seek to ensure the protection and enhancement of historic buildings and environments. International organisations such as UNESCO and European level documents such as the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) have stressed the cultural and economic value of the ‘wise management of natural and cultural heritage’. Since the 1970s many cities have sought to redefine and regenerate themselves through a revalorisation of their past and the protection and enhancement of their historic urban landscapes. Urban heritage has thus often come to be seen as a component of the territorial capital of places, and often had a symbiotic relationship with the objective of urban regeneration. However, urban heritage is not a static concept and ideas about what constitutes heritage, the value of different historic urban environments, and the contribution they can make to city development and regeneration continue to evolve. This paper reflects on this evolution in the context of the English planning system and illustrates some key trends and issues surrounding urban heritage through a consideration of recent and ongoing heritage related planning episodes in the northern English city of Liverpool

Motion Planning for Optimal Information Gathering in Opportunistic Navigation Systems

Motion planning for optimal information gathering in an opportunistic navigation (OpNav) environment is considered. An OpNav environment can be thought of as a radio frequency signal landscape within which a receiver locates itself in space and time by extracting information from ambient signals of opportunity (SOPs). The receiver is assumed to draw only pseudorange-type observations from the SOPs, and such observations are fused through an estimator to produce an estimate of the receiver’s own states. Since not all SOP states in the OpNav environment may be known a priori, the receiver must estimate the unknown SOP states of interest simultaneously with its own states. In this work, the following problem is studied. A receiver with no a priori knowledge about its own states is dropped in an unknown, yet observable, OpNav environment. Assuming that the receiver can prescribe its own trajectory, what motion planning strategy should the receiver adopt in order to build a high-fidelity map of the OpNav signal landscape, while simultaneously localizing itself within this map in space and time? To answer this question, first, the minimum conditions under which the OpNav environment is fully observable are established, and the need for receiver maneuvering to achieve full observability is highlighted. Then, motivated by the fact that not all trajectories a receiver may take in the environment are equally beneficial from an information gathering point of view, a strategy for planning the motion of the receiver is proposed. The strategy is formulated in a coupled estimation and optimal control framework of a gradually identified system, where optimality is defined through various information-theoretic measures. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the improvements gained from adopting the proposed strategy over random and pre-defined receiver trajectories.Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanic

The issue of Bahasa Malayu from colonial to decolonial era

This paper illustrates a general picture of development of Bahasa Melayu in terms of its socializati on through out the colonial and de-colonial periods. Colonialism ought to be regarded to a larger extent, a reconstruction of the languages of the natives in their homeland. On the other hand, de-colonialism has witnessed the process of de- con str uction of existing language policies an d practices in n ewl y established nation -states. This is a process that cannot be alienated from the efforts of the colonial scholarly rulers, since they played a paramount role and functioned well pertaining to the use of Bahasa Melayu, though they did not plan for what appeared during the de- colonial era. To map the position of Bahasa Melayu during the different colonial periods, the investigation has been narrowed to certain fields focusing on the use of the language in an education system. Henceforth, it would be naïve to expect that the language issue would be settled in a short time after the independence. Wh en all steps and phases are traced, it would become clear that how the process was stressful and is still in evitably, at least to some extent, a national issue. It was during the British era and most of the post -in dependence era, that various types of policies were designed to rediscover the phenomen on of Bahasa Melayu in terms of history, sociology, culture and civilization. All the policies have played paramount roles and functioned as tools in the construction of cultural unity and nation -state formation in a successive manner. These transformations have led Bahasa Melayu to be brought into full existence normatively from a mere position of vernacular system wh ich was described as a malfunction during the colonial era. The attempts to design a national and official language are claimed as the cement of socio-political unity in the newly established nation-state. The language transformation process was smooth , in stead, it in cluded extremely challenging situations and contradictory encounters. The nation-state building during the decolonization has witnessed the growing competitiven ess between languages, not only the English and Bahasa Malayu but also Bahasa Malayu and minority languages as an expression of exoglossic policy and endoglossic policies

Use of the Recreation Opportunity Planning System to Inventory Recreation Opportunities of Arid Lands

Recreation opportunity planning, which is being adopted by some land management agencies for recreation input to land management planning, is reviewed for Its applicability to arid land situations* Particular attention is given to the Inventory and analysis phases of the system and to what we have learned about its Implementation during its development

Marbles: The Application of Input-Output Concepts to Safety Management Systems

The goal of this research was to apply the economic concept titled Input-Output Analysis to an aviation safety concept titled Safety Management Systems (SMS). Input-Output (IO) is based upon the interrelationships of various components of an economic system and what happens to the system when one or more of those components changes. Since SMS is, by definition, a system with definable components, the research sought to determine if the interrelationships between those components could be determined and quantified. The term ‘‘marbles’’ was used to describe the activities that led to the IO-SMS matrix. Marbles was used as a metaphor for quantifying interrelationships. A team of SMS experts was assembled to collectively determine the interrelationships among the four components of SMS. Next the team determined the relative values of the elements and processes inside each component. (There are 24 discrete items—elements and processes—in SMS.) Once these values were determined and placed into a 24 6 24 matrix, IO matrix mathematics was applied to produce the IO-SMS Matrix. The SMS matrix that resulted from this experiment may be a powerful management tool that can determine the impact of any numerical input, such as an SMS survey, on the total system. It can also be used to perform ‘‘what if’’ analysis by changing the value of one element or process within the SMS. The weakness of the IO-SMS matrix is that it is highly sensitive to the original input data that define the interrelationships among the components

Do we really care?:An exploration of patient’s perspectives on healthcare for chronic conditions in children and adolescents

In the past few years there has been a major shift in health care policies, clinical decision making and research toward greater patient centeredness and optimizing quality of care (partly driven by value-based healthcare). A fundamental principle of patient-centered care is to respect the needs, values and preferences of patients in clinic and clinical decision making. The general aim of this thesis was to analyze to what extend current care in chronic disease, particularly chronic kidney disease in young patients, meets the needs and wishes for these patients. What are potential obstacles? And what is the impact of the chronic disease on daily life for these patients?The first part of the thesis focusses on current experiences with shared-care, particularly on to what extent valid outcomes for patients are integrated in research and care for young patients with CKD and in how clinicians experience shared-care decision making. We also explore to what extent the current care system meets the special needs for health-care in transgender youth in terms of shared-decision making.In part II of the thesis we focused on the determinants and impact of an impaired adaptive functioning and life participation for children and (young) adults with CKD. We aim to focus on patient perspectives on life participation and daily life functioning/ adaptive functioning in children with CKD. Previously, it has been found that ‘life participation’ is the most important outcome for children with CKD. Yet, what does life participation mean for this group of patients? Which topics should healthcare workers keep in mind and pay attention to? How can life participation be disturbed and what is the impact of this on the patient

A genetic approach to management education and the science of teaching

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.In this thesis the philosophy and mechanisms of Cybernetics are applied to Management Education. A philosophical analysis of Management Education is developed and the notion of teleology introduced. Change, dynamic stability and a concept of self-renewal are employed in a cybernetic framework for managing conflicting curricula demands from: (A) academics who are concerned with the intellectual good and analytical ability of their students; (B) representatives of industry, commerce and government who ate concerned with manpower demands, and (C) students' demand for freedom to make up their own curricula from a menu of subjects chosen by them. A model of a regulatory system is developed for controlling a teaching/learning situation to achieve a desired level of mastery. Such a system would contribute towards an improvement in the science of teaching. The mechanisms of communication being parts of the study of Cybernetics are directly relevant to the teaching/learning situation. They form a means to an end relationship, between a teacher and students in the transmission of knowledge. A "black-box" approach to the processes of learning and problem solving is developed. From this approach evolved five essential phases to designing a protocol on how management students should learn what we (teachers) want them to learn. A case is presented to illustrate a learning process. A reflective approach giving teachers a more realistic view (than that given by Newell, Shaw and Simon (1958) and Newell and Simon (1972) ) of the important components for modelling how management students actually learn what we want them to learn is developed. A curriculum design is presented in section 8 which contains basic forms of knowledge and arrangements for a worthwhile management scheme. SYSTEM TWO is an operations system designed to implement the curriculum. It has advantages over committee arrangements and designed to accommodate co-operative educational programs for Management Education. This research has a positive value in that it demonstrates, among other things that Cybernetics is a worthwhile field of discipline which is needed to improve: the state of Management; pedagogy, and Management Education

Student Access and Success: Issues and Interventions in South African Universities

Low rates of access and success in post-secondary education are arguably the single biggest challenge facing South Africa's public education system. The sustem is failing to meet the educational needs of young people, a growing economy, and a rapidly changing society. Black students, particularly those from poor backgrounds are deeply affected. Senior managers, 30 in all, at 18 of the country's 23 public universities were interviewed to understand issues such as primary academic interventions designed to support and improve student success. The authors conclude that no single intervention is likely to shift student performance and success. The answer, however, will require "understanding the holistic needs of students." The authors also feel it is crucial that the imporatnce of teaching and learning - as well as research- be understood

Tasks, cognitive agents, and KB-DSS in workflow and process management

The purpose of this paper is to propose a nonparametric interest rate term structure model and investigate its implications on term structure dynamics and prices of interest rate derivative securities. The nonparametric spot interest rate process is estimated from the observed short-term interest rates following a robust estimation procedure and the market price of interest rate risk is estimated as implied from the historical term structure data. That is, instead of imposing a priori restrictions on the model, data are allowed to speak for themselves, and at the same time the model retains a parsimonious structure and the computational tractability. The model is implemented using historical Canadian interest rate term structure data. The parametric models with closed form solutions for bond and bond option prices, namely the Vasicek (1977) and CIR (1985) models, are also estimated for comparison purpose. The empirical results not only provide strong evidence that the traditional spot interest rate models and market prices of interest rate risk are severely misspecified but also suggest that different model specifications have significant impact on term structure dynamics and prices of interest rate derivative securities.