What now for urban regeneration?

It is against recent experiences of virulent neoliberalism and commodification in UK urban environments that regeneration practitioners and core professionals must confront assumptions about the impact and purpose of recent renewal strategies. Over the last decade, urban landscapes have been reinvigorated through intense design and renewal and a massification of private investment, which have come to characterise a new urbanism. Urban regeneration – the broad banner under which much of this change has occurred – has been encouraged by many localities to the extent that it has been beyond reproach by political and critical analysts. This paper makes use of the current respite in urban renewal, which has been brought about by changes in financial markets, to revisit the policy principles and impacts of existing renewal projects as well as the strategic aspirations of several urban areas. It is hoped that this paper might stimulate debate about the future form of urban regeneration and consideration of the need for changes in policy design

Learning salience amoung [sic] features through contingency in the CEL framework

Determining which features in an environment are salient given a task, salience assignment, is a central problem in Machine Learning. A related phenomenon, contingency (the conditions under which relative salience among environmental features is acquired), is central to learning and memory in animal psychology. This paper presents an analysis of a set of empirical data on contingency and an algorithm for the salience assignment problem. The algorithm presented is implemented in a working computer program which interacts with a simulated environment to produce contingent associative learning corresponding to relevant behavioral data. The model also makes specific empirical predictions that can be experimentally tested

Creative spaces: the role of the underground and the prospect of lock-in in the creative industries

Motivated by thinking that culture can be promoted as a driver of economic development, there has been widespread policy consensus about the importance of developing culture and the creative economy as wider attempts to promote growth in cities and regions. While the impact of creative industries differs from area to area as do the conditions and resources for this, several towns and cities have been quick to recognise and exhort the benefits of creative sectors and creative workers and to invest heavily in their creative offer: investing in creative industries as a subset of the cultural economy; showcasing their cultural assets, and implementing strategies to attract creative professionals and retain graduates

Planning for peak oil: learning from Cuba's special period

It is against recent experiences of proliferative consumption of the earth’s resources that planners and politicians must confront the challenge of peak oil over the coming years. With so few examples of peak oil available worldwide, this paper explores the realities of this in Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 – the so-called special period, which decimated the country’s imports of energy, food and other vital supplies. Drawing on primary research collected in Cuba during 2008 and in an attempt to stimulate debate about how western countries and cities might respond to future losses of global resources, this paper examines the policy responses implemented in Cuba in the fields of transport, spatial planning, agriculture and energy. Despite the Cuban situation being politically different from other countries and the fact that the loss of resources during the special period were abrupt and unplanned, it is argued that there is still considerable scope for a wider application of the concepts to other towns and cities, if not countries and cultures

Two-stage Kondo effect in a four-electron artificial atom

An artificial atom with four electrons is driven through a singlet-triplet transition by varying the confining potential. In the triplet, a Kondo peak with a narrow dip at drain-source voltage V_ds=0 is observed. The low energy scale V_ds* characterizing the dip is consistent with predictions for the two-stage Kondo effect. The phenomenon is studied as a function of temperature T and magnetic field B, parallel to the two-dimensional electron gas. The low energy scales T* and B* are extracted from the behavior of the zero-bias conductance and are compared to the low energy scale V_ds* obtained from the differential conductance. Good agreement is found between kT* and |g|muB*, but eV_ds* is larger, perhaps because of nonequilibrium effects.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Added labels on Fig. 3f and one referenc

Tuning the interactions of spin-polarized fermions using quasi-one-dimensional confinement

The behavior of ultracold atomic gases depends crucially on the two-body scattering properties of these systems. We develop a multichannel scattering theory for atom-atom collisions in quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1D) geometries such as atomic waveguides or highly elongated traps. We apply our general framework to the low energy scattering of two spin-polarized fermions and show that tightly-confined fermions have infinitely strong interactions at a particular value of the 3D, free-space p-wave scattering volume. Moreover, we describe a mapping of this strongly interacting system of two quasi-1D fermions to a weakly interacting system of two 1D bosons.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Learning Salience Anmong Featured Through Contingency in the CEL Framework

Determining which features in an environment are salient given a task, salience assignment, is a central problem in machine learning. A related phenomenon, contingency ( the conditions under which relative salience among environemental features is acquired), is central to learning and memory in animal psychology. This paper presents an analysis of a set of empirical data on contingency and an algorithm for the salience assignment problem. The algorithm presented is implmented in a working computer profram which interacts with a simulated environement to produce contingent asssociative learning corresponding to relevant behavioral data. The model also makes specific empirical predictions that can be experimentally tested

The Examined Side: The Role of Congregations in Clergy Transitions

The transition from theory to practice in the move from seminary to congregational ministry remains a risky leap for clergy despite curricular reforms and addition of context-based learning during professional education. Congregations that serve as teaching environments provide valuable practical ministry training for early-career clergy

Outdoor testing of the photoprotection provided by a new water-based broad-spectrum SPF50+ sunscreen product: Two double-blind, split-face, randomized controlled studies in healthy adults

Purpose: Users often under-apply sunscreens, and one of the main reasons cited for this is the cosmetic formulation of the product. To address this, we developed a water-based sunscreen. The product underwent standard laboratory testing (ISO 24444: 2010) and was determined as sun protection factor (SPF) 50+. However, such laboratory testing does not take into account environmental factors of in-use conditions that could potentially affect sunscreen efficacy, particularly of new cosmetic formulations. We aimed to test this product in conditions more representative of real-life solar exposure, to confirm its reported laboratory efficacy. Methods: Two double-blind, randomized, controlled, split-face intra-individual studies were conducted during summer months in Barcelona. One study compared the product against an SPF15 control (reference standard P3 of ISO 24444: 2010), while the other compared against an SPF50+ control (another commercially available sunscreen). A technician applied the products before sun exposure: investigational product (IP) to one half of the face and the respective control product to the other. Subjects spent 4–6 hrs outdoors performing quiet activities, and sunscreens were reapplied at 2 hourly intervals. A dermatologist clinically scored facial erythema at baseline and at 24 hrs. Results: Sixty-five subjects were included in total. In both studies, skin treated with the IP showed no significant increase in clinical erythema scoring at 24 hrs. There were statistically significant differences between the IP and the SPF15, but not between the IP and the SPF50+ control. SPF15 did not protect all subjects against solar-induced erythema. Conclusion: These outdoor studies confirm the efficacy of this new SPF50+ water-based sunscreen in conditions that closer represent real-life sun exposure