The ambiguity of town planning: innovation or re-interpretation?

The paper questions the nature of town planning as a coherent national strategy throughout Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, by analyzing the specific case study of Portsmouth. In 1912, the city unveiled an urban improvement scheme named Curzon Howe Road. This went to replace an industrial working-class residential area that had been classified as unhygienic and dangerous for the general wellbeing of the inhabitants. Having been conceived in 1910 as a direct response to the 1909 Housing and Town Planning Act, Curzon Howe Road can be regarded as being the first example of town planning in Portsmouth. In itself, the notion of town planning is often recognized as a new form of urban intervention aimed at tackling the problems inherited from the industrial revolution. This paper highlights the ambiguity of the term town planning which - to quote John W. Simpson, the president of the RIBA at the time of the prestigious Town Planning Conference of 1910 - “has different meanings in different mouths” (RIBA, 1911, iv). It also discusses how the notion of town planning in the early years of its practice in Portsmouth represents a transitional stage prior to the more design-oriented solutions of the following years. The paper argues that there was no ‘pre-town planning’ vs. ‘post-town planning’ clear-cut distinction in this case study, which can also be observed in diverse locations in Britain. Furthermore, the research shows how in Portsmouth, town planning was interpreted by its instigators as a fusion between the old (i.e. the 19th century Critical Planning practices and rigid ByeLaw standards) and new means of implementing change. Thus, Portsmouth’s Curzon Howe Road represents an example of hybridization, generated by the struggle between forces of permanence and rupture within the context of urban improvement of the early 1900s. In this lies its significance, as it reassesses the true nature of what town planning signified in its formative years for different towns around Britain

Experimental investigation of inter-element isolation in a medical array transducer at various manufacturing stages

This work presents the experimental investigation of vibration maps of a linear array transducer with 192 piezoelements by means of a laser Doppler vibrometer at various manufacturing finishing steps in air and in water. Over the years, many researchers have investigated cross-coupling in fabricated prototypes but not in arrays at various manufacturing stages. Only the central element of the array was driven at its working frequency of 5 MHz. The experimental results showed that the contributions of cross-coupling depend on the elements of the acoustic stack: Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT), kerf, filler, matching layer, and lens. The oscillation amplitudes spanned from (6 ± 38%) nm to (110 ± 40%) nm when the energized element was tested in air and from (6 ± 57%) nm to (80 ± 67%) nm when measurements were obtained under water. The best inter-element isolation of -22 dB was measured in air after cutting the kerfs, whereas the poorest isolation was -2 dB under water with an acoustic lens (complete acoustic stack). The vibration pattern in water showed a higher standard deviation on the displacement measurements than the one obtained in air, due to the influence of acousto-optic interactions. The amount increased to 30% in water, as estimated by a comparison with the measurements in air. This work describes a valuable method for manufacturers to investigate the correspondence between the manufacturing process and the quantitative evaluations of the resulting effects

Writing a Children‟s Book

This project contains the components and procedures for writing a children‟s book, as the first in its series. The story is of a child at a birthday party who puts on a baseball cap. He then morphs into a pitcher of a baseball team on the brink of getting into the playoffs. This project has the timeline and the steps that it took to get to the end result, which was the first draft of the first book in the series. The series has a central theme. In each book, a child will put on a hat, and then transform into a person who wears that type of hat. For example, a child will put on a chef‟s hat and then turn into a gourmet chef with a large meal that needs to be prepared. The hat theme will be used in all of the following books

Demand or productivity: what determines firm growth?

We disentangle the contribution of unobserved heterogeneity in demand and productivity to firm growth using Italian data containing unique information on firm-level prices. Demand and total factor productivity (TFP) shocks are equally important in shaping firm growth. However, the pass-through of shocks to growth is highly incomplete, more so for productivity shocks. We argue that incompleteness and asymmetry of the pass-through can be explained by frictions that, unlike those studied by the literature on factor misallocation, have differential effects according to the nature of the shock. We propose hurdles to firms' ability to reorganize as an example of these types of frictions

Water uptake and swelling in single trabeculæ from human femur head.

The swelling of air-dried single trabeculae from human femur heads was obtained by complete immersion in water and the dimensional changes of the samples were measured over time. The experimental results were analyzed under the viewpoint of the diffusion through a porous material. The dimensional changes of the single trabeculae were 0.26 ± 0.15 percent (length), 0.45 ± 0.25 percent (width) and 1.86 ± 0.97 percent (thickness). The diffusion coefficients were then calculated from the swelling recorded over time and a value of (4.12 ± 0.8) x 10(-10)(m (2)s(-1)) (mean ± standard deviation) was found.   Since the dimensional variations of the specimens is due to the swelling of the collagen bone matrix, this technique could offer new insights for (1) a selective characterization of bone microstructure at the collagen matrix level and (2) the dynamics of diffusion through bone tissue

Experimental investigation on concentration profiles and fluctuations of dense gases in wind tunnel

One of the most frequent accident scenario following a loss of containment during HazMat transportation or processing is represented by the dispersion of a dense gas release. Several dispersion models are available to this purpose, more or less rigorously accounting for gravity slumping, air entrainment and possible heat transfer. Under confined geometry, the correct evaluation of possible concentration fluctuations represent an up-to-date research topic, both considering the process sector and a peculiar application represented by operating theaters for surgery. In this last context, the use of heavier than air gas is usually performed for anaesthetic application, while few validation data are available on the dispersion behavior following a fugitive emission and exposure of persons inside the enclosure. On these bases, the experimental phase of this paper was performed in a laboratory-scale wind tunnel of circular section, under different Reynolds number regimes, considering a continuous release scenario of two tracer gases, namely carbon dioxide and sulphur hexafluoride, at different low release rates. A detailed study on concentration fluctuations and time series is presented yielding reliable information on the influence of the different source types and flow rates. Conclusions are drawn on practical feasibility and application of the experimental results, in view of safe optimization of the design and mode of operation of ventilation systems in the considered settings

Do Female Executives Make a Difference? The Impact of Female Leadership on Gender Gaps and Firm Performance

We investigate the effects of female executives on gender-specific wage distributions and firm performance. We find that female leadership has a positive impact at the top of the female wage distribution and a negative impact at the bottom. Moreover, the impact of female leadership on firm performance increases with the share of female workers. Our empirical strategy accounts for the endogeneity induced by the non-random assignment of executives to firms by including in the regressions firm fixed effects, by generating controls from a two-way fixed effects regression, and by building instruments based on regional trends. The empirical findings are consistent with a model of statistical dis- crimination where female executives are better equipped at interpreting signals of productivity from female workers. The evidence suggests substantial costs of under-representation of women at the top of the corporate hierarchy

Operational parameter influence on heavy metal removal from metal plating wastewater by electrocoagulation process

Among the different treatment processes available for industrial wastewater treatment, electrocoagulation represents a challenging option due to several features, such as environmental compatibility, inherent safety, energy and cost effectiveness. The effectiveness of electrocoagulation process (ECP) using aluminium and iron electrodes for the removal of heavy metals from industrial wastewater has been investigated, with particular attention to the effects of operating parameters (pH, inter-electrode distance, hydraulic retention time and current density) on removal efficiency. In the first step of the experimental phase, a laboratory-made artificial wastewater containing heavy metals (Cu, Ni and Pb) was adopted in order to identify the optimum conditions that were subsequently applied to treat a metal plating industrial wastewater. Experimental results revealed that under the optimal experimental conditions (actual pH 6.32, current density 0.026 A cm-2), the removal efficiency of heavy metals from artificial wastewater was higher than 95 %