12,167 research outputs found
London's spatial economy: the dynamics of change
This 1999 report was commissioned by the London Development Partnership, a body set up to prepare the ground for the Greater London Authority (GLA). It contains the first written proposal for Orbirail, then known as Ringrail and now implemented as the circular element in the Overground - completed on 9 December 2012. That idea had been proposed the previous year in talks by Prof Sir Peter Hall and Drummond Robson at the TCPA to which Michael Edwards contributed. The project was taken up by Nicky Gavron (of LPAC, from 2000 Deputy Mayor of London) and found its way into the London Plan following discussions with DR and Lord Rogers. 1. Infrastructure 1.1 The major likely infrastructure proposals concentrate on improving public transport access in Central London and the corridors east and west of it. 1.2 There is scope to provide significant Inner London improvements largely using existing corridors at lower cost and more quickly than wholly new routes: notably “Ringrail”. This will give rise to interchange and other development opportunities and improve orbital services in Inner London. (There is thus scope for improving public transport access between suburban areas where car-dependence is such a problem). 1.3 A reduced-cost version of Crossrail is possible and should be considered. 1.4 There are few planned road improvements; key ones are likely to be removal of bottlenecks on the primary network, such as the North Circular Road. If these can be designed to favour public transport they could transform accessibility between outer suburbs as the ring rail could closer in. 2. Employment 2.1 Locational choices for employment are excessively restricted or prescribed under current policy which has not kept pace with business practice. 2.2 London’s labour force is highly diverse with a rich range of skills and people are increasingly mobile between jobs. 2.3 Home to work distances have increased as the result of these two forces to the disbenefit of the economy, environment and citizens. 3. Town Centres 3.1 Town centre growth has polarised towards the central and outer areas of London in the last decade or so with declines in the Inner London area where space is short and access deficient. 3.2 The development of retail employment away from Town and Managed Centres is almost entirely of poor quality sheds in a low grade environment, and entirely car dependent. 3.3 PPG6 policies should restrict further Out of Town Centre growth in and around London. Within the framework of these policies there is scope – and an urgent need – to innovate ways which will give centres and local shops a new lease of life and reduce Londoners’ needs to travel
Assessing research impact potential: using the transdisciplinary Outcome Spaces Framework with New Zealand’s National Science Challenges
© 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Calls for science to have impact as well as excellence have been loud and clear from research funders, policymakers and research institutions for some time. Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is expected to deliver impact by connecting scientists with stakeholders and end users to co-produce knowledge to respond to complex issues. While New Zealand’s science system is geared to deliver excellence, its capability to also deliver impact beyond academic institutions is less clear. This paper has two interconnected aims. Firstly, it presents findings from testing innovations to the TDR Outcome Spaces Framework (OSF+) with four National Science Challenges (NSCs). We conclude that OSF+ is a useful tool for planning for multiple outcomes and assessing the potential for impact. Secondly, it presents findings of how using OSF+ to assess research impact potential revealed a range of implicit theories of change (i.e. catalyst, deficit, engagement and collaboration) across the NSCs. The findings raise important questions about the prospects for New Zealand’s science system to deliver the envisaged and needed levels of research impact when current institutional settings, expectations, recognition systems, career paths and measures of success are not yet able to adequately accommodate TDR to deliver the research impact
A historic jet-emission minimum reveals hidden spectral features in 3C 273
Aims. The aim of this work is to identify and study spectral features in the
quasar 3C 273 usually blended by its strong jet emission. Method. A historic
minimum in the sub-millimetre emission of 3C 273 triggered coordinated
multi-wavelength observations in June 2004. X-ray observations from the
INTEGRAL, XMM-Newton and RXTE satellites are complemented by ground-based
optical, infrared, millimetre and radio observations. The overall spectrum is
used to model the infrared and X-ray spectral components. Results. Three
thermal dust emission components are identified in the infrared. The dust
emission on scales from 1 pc to several kpc is comparable to that of other
quasars, as expected by AGN unification schemes. The observed weakness of the
X-ray emission supports the hypothesis of a synchrotron self-Compton origin for
the jet component. There is a clear soft-excess and we find evidence for a very
broad iron line which could be emitted in a disk around a Kerr black hole.
Other signatures of a Seyfert-like X-ray component are not detected.Comment: 4 pages. Accepted for publication in A&A Letter
Exact Algorithms for Maximum Independent Set
We show that the maximum independent set problem (MIS) on an -vertex graph
can be solved in time and polynomial space, which even is
faster than Robson's -time exponential-space algorithm
published in 1986. We also obtain improved algorithms for MIS in graphs with
maximum degree 6 and 7, which run in time of and
, respectively. Our algorithms are obtained by using fast
algorithms for MIS in low-degree graphs in a hierarchical way and making a
careful analyses on the structure of bounded-degree graphs
Detection of Cosmic Microwave Background Structure in a Second Field with the Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope
We describe observations at frequencies near 15 GHz of the second 2x2 degree
field imaged with the Cambridge Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope (CAT). After the
removal of discrete radio sources, structure is detected in the images on
characteristic scales of about half a degree, corresponding to spherical
harmonic multipoles in the approximate range l= 330--680. A Bayesian analysis
confirms that the signal arises predominantly from the cosmic microwave
background (CMB) radiation for multipoles in the lower half of this range; the
average broad-band power in a bin with centroid l=422 (theta = 51') is
estimated to be Delta_T/T=2.1^{+0.4}_{-0.5} x 10^{-5}. For multipoles centred
on l=615 (theta =35'), we find contamination from Galactic emission is
significant, and constrain the CMB contribution to the measured power in this
bin to be Delta_T/T <2.0 x 10^{-5} (1-sigma upper limit). These new results are
consistent with the first detection made by CAT in a completely different area
of sky. Together with data from other experiments, this new CAT detection adds
weight to earlier evidence from CAT for a downturn in the CMB power spectrum on
scales smaller than 1 degree. Improved limits on the values of H_0 and Omega
are determined using the new CAT data.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures (gif), submitted to MNRA
Understanding Search Trees via Statistical Physics
We study the random m-ary search tree model (where m stands for the number of
branches of a search tree), an important problem for data storage in computer
science, using a variety of statistical physics techniques that allow us to
obtain exact asymptotic results. In particular, we show that the probability
distributions of extreme observables associated with a random search tree such
as the height and the balanced height of a tree have a traveling front
structure. In addition, the variance of the number of nodes needed to store a
data string of a given size N is shown to undergo a striking phase transition
at a critical value of the branching ratio m_c=26. We identify the mechanism of
this phase transition, show that it is generic and occurs in various other
problems as well. New results are obtained when each element of the data string
is a D-dimensional vector. We show that this problem also has a phase
transition at a critical dimension, D_c= \pi/\sin^{-1}(1/\sqrt{8})=8.69363...Comment: 11 pages, 8 .eps figures included. Invited contribution to
STATPHYS-22 held at Bangalore (India) in July 2004. To appear in the
proceedings of STATPHYS-2
Unraveling of free carrier absorption for terahertz radiation in heterostructures
The relation between free carrier absorption and intersubband transitions in
semiconductor heterostructures is resolved by comparing a sequence of
structures. Our numerical and analytical results show how free carrier
absorption evolves from the intersubband transitions in the limit of an
infinite number of wells with vanishing barrier width. It is explicitly shown
that the integral of the absorption over frequency matches the value obtained
by the f-sum rule. This shows that a proper treatment of intersubband
transitions is fully sufficient to simulate the entire electronic absorption in
heterostructure THz devices.Comment: 6 pages, accepted by Physical Review
- …