Mind the gap? The persistence of pathological discourses in urban regeneration policy

Urban regeneration policy has historically framed policy problems using a discourse that pathologises areas and spatial communities. Since 2001 in England, and 2002 in Scotland a structural change in policy has occurred where citywide partnerships are now meant overcome structural spatial inequalities, countering pathological explanations. This paper uses historical and discourse analysis to evaluate one of the major community regeneration strategies developed by the Scottish Executive in 2002: Better Communities in Scotland: Closing the Gap. It seeks to ask whether structural change in policy was paralleled by discursive change; what discursive path dependence is evidenced? The text is placed in the historic context of UK urban renewal policies dating back to the launch of the Urban Programme in 1968 and particularly the policy discourse created by the influential Conservative government policy of 1988 New Life for Urban Scotland and the wider discourses of poverty and neighbourhood renewal policy created by Labour governments since 1997. The close textual analysis of the text shows that Better Communities in Scotland continues to pathologise spatial communities. Although this suggests a degree of historical path dependency, the historic breadth of the analysis also problematises simple historical determinism

MCF-SMF Hybrid Low-Latency Circuit-Switched Optical Network for Disaggregated Data Centers

This paper proposes and experimentally evaluates a fully developed novel architecture with purpose built low latency communication protocols for next generation disaggregated data centers (DDCs). In order to accommodate for capacity and latency needs of disaggregated IT elements (i.e. CPU, memory), this architecture makes use of a low latency and high capacity circuit switched optical network for interconnecting various endpoints, that are equipped with multi-channel Silicon photonic based integrated transceivers. In a move to further decrease the perceived latency between various disaggregated IT elements, this paper proposes a) a novel network topology, which cuts down the latency over the optical network by 34% while enhancing system scalability and b) channel bonding over multicore fiber (MCF) switched links to reduce head to tail latency and in turn increase sustained memory bandwidth for disaggregated remote memory. Furthermore, to reduce power consumption and enhance space efficiency, the integration of novel multi core fiber (MCF) based transceivers, fibers and optical switches are proposed and experimentally validated at the physical layer for this topology. It is shown that the integration of MCF based subsystems in this topology can bring about an improvement in energy efficiency of the optical switching layer which is above 60%. Finally, the performance of this proposed architecture and topology is evaluated experimentally at the application layer where the perceived memory throughput for accessing remote and local resources is measured and compared using electrical circuit and packet switching. The results also highlight a multi fold increase in application perceived memory throughput over the proposed DDC topology by utilization and bonding of multiple optical channels to interconnect disaggregated IT elements that can be carried over MCF links

Genetic Algorithm Optimization of Multi Core Fibre Transmission Links based on Silicon Photonic Transceivers

We demonstrate a genetic algorithm based system that can optimize optical interconnects using silicon photonic multi-core fibre coupled transceiver. The GA selects 48 parameters to deliver a minimum 6.9×10−16 BER on channels with diverse losses

The Muon G-2 Storage Ring Magnet

The muon g-2 experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory has constructed a 7.112m radius superconducting magnet. The design and construction of the storage ring magnet are described

The Brookhaven muon storage ring magnet

The muon g-2 experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory has the goal of determining the muon anomalous g-value a(mu) ( = (g - 2)/2) to the very high precision of 0.35 parts per million and thus requires a storage ring magnet with great stability and homogeniety. A superferric storage ring with a radius of 7.11 m and a magnetic field of 1.45 T has been constructed in which the field quality is largely determined by the iron, and the excitation is provided by superconducting coils operating at a current of 5200 A. The storage ring has been constructed with maximum attention to azimuthal symmetry and to tight mechanical tolerances and with many features to allow obtaining a homogenous magnetic field. The fabrication of the storage ring, its cryogenics and quench protection systems, and its initial testing and operation are described. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved