3D cities and numerical weather prediction models: An overview of the methods used in the LUCID project

Transferring spatial data between different types of spatial models is often a much trickier process than GIS professionals would like to admit. This is further complicated if the models were generated for very different purposes and at different levels of spatial granularity and using different spatial projections. This is the case when you try to couple Ordnance Survey Mastermap data (which is at a 1:1,250 scale) with a numerical weather prediction model (NWP), (which until this project was based upon a grid of around 4km per grid cell). To achieve this, some new methods were developed to generate data for a localised NWP model at a 1000m and a 250m grid for the UK Meteorological Office as part of the LUCID project (the development of a Local Urban Climate Model and its Application to the Intelligent Development of Cities). These methods generated detailed urban morphology data to act as input data for the climate models, using Geographical Information System (GIS). The results form part of a chain of data that contribute to the main LUCID target: to develop world leading methods for calculating local temperature and air quality in the urban environment, in particular with reference to the heat island effect in large urban areas (in this case London)

Randomness and Complexity in Networks

I start by reviewing some basic properties of random graphs. I then consider the role of random walks in complex networks and show how they may be used to explain why so many long tailed distributions are found in real data sets. The key idea is that in many cases the process involves copying of properties of near neighbours in the network and this is a type of short random walk which in turn produce a natural preferential attachment mechanism. Applying this to networks of fixed size I show that copying and innovation are processes with special mathematical properties which include the ability to solve a simple model exactly for any parameter values and at any time. I finish by looking at variations of this basic model.Comment: Survey paper based on talk given at the workshop on ``Stochastic Networks and Internet Technology'', Centro di Ricerca Matematica Ennio De Giorgi, Matematica nelle Scienze Naturali e Sociali, Pisa, 17th - 21st September 2007. To appear in proceeding

Women\u27s Social Rights: Untapped Economic Potential

This paper analyzes whether women’s social rights play a role in fostering higher levels of economic development. Prior development initiatives and economic policies failed to account for the productive capacities of women by discriminating against their basic rights to things such as an equitable education, equal inheritance, and marital rights. Applying the CIRI (Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights) dataset for women’s social rights, I found that improvements in these areas of human rights leads to significant increases in real GDP per capita, which highlights the need for development analysts and economists to focus their attention on countries’ most viable productive resource, women

Exact Solutions for Network Rewiring Models

Evolving networks with a constant number of edges may be modelled using a rewiring process. These models are used to describe many real-world processes including the evolution of cultural artifacts such as family names, the evolution of gene variations, and the popularity of strategies in simple econophysics models such as the minority game. The model is closely related to Urn models used for glasses, quantum gravity and wealth distributions. The full mean field equation for the degree distribution is found and its exact solution and generating solution are given.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Minor changes and corrections made for publicatio

Thermal Bosonic Green Functions Near Zero Energy (6 characters removed for email)

The properties of the various types of bosonic Green functions at finite temperature in the zero energy limit are considered in the light of recent work.Comment: 14, LaTeX (article style), Imperial/TP/91-92/3

Complex Networks

An outline of recent work on complex networks is given from the point of view of a physicist. Motivation, achievements and goals are discussed with some of the typical applications from a wide range of academic fields. An introduction to the relevant literature and useful resources is also given.Comment: Review for Contemporary Physics, 31 page

NICMOS Observations of Luminous and Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies

HST NICMOS observations of a sample of 24 luminous (LIGs: L_(IR) [8-1000 microns] = 10^(11.0-11.99) L_sun) and ultraluminous (ULIGs: L_(IR) > 10^(12.0) L_sun) infrared galaxies are presented. The observations provide, for the first time, high resolution HST imaging of the imbedded 1.1 - 2.2 micron nuclear regions of these mergers. All but one of the ULIGs are observed to have at least one compact (50-200 pc) nucleus, and more than half contain what appear to be blue star clusters. The warm infrared galaxies (i.e., the transition sources) are observed to have bright nuclei which account for most of the light of the galaxy. This, combined with the tendency for the light of ULIGs to become more centrally concentrated as a function of increasing wavelength, implies that most of their energy is generated within a region 50-200 pc across.Comment: LaTex, 6 pages with 1 postscript and 1 jpg figure, and 1 postscript table, To appear in the proc. of the Ringberg workshop on "Ultraluminous Galaxies: Monsters or Babies" (Ringberg castle, Sept. 1998), Ap&SS, in pres