Documenting the ‘soft spaces’ of London planning: Opportunity Areas as institutional fix in a growth-oriented city

The concentration of economic growth into large metropolises is widely documented across Europe. Yet, planning of this growth at the strategic metropolitan scale shows significant variation. This paper documents the evolution of Opportunity Areas within Greater London. Through statistical and documentary analysis, and participant observation, we reveal how they have been repurposed from a tool employed to facilitate brownfield regeneration to one that sustains growth through brokering relationships, enhancing land value and capturing it. The paper argues that the cumulative impact of these ‘soft spaces’ of planning represents a fundamental change in the nature of strategic planning for city-regions

Using airborne LiDAR Survey to explore historic-era archaeological landscapes of Montserrat in the eastern Caribbean

This article describes what appears to be the first archaeological application of airborne LiDAR survey to historic-era landscapes in the Caribbean archipelago, on the island of Montserrat. LiDAR is proving invaluable in extending the reach of traditional pedestrian survey into less favorable areas, such as those covered by dense neotropical forest and by ashfall from the past two decades of active eruptions by the Soufrière Hills volcano, and to sites in localities that are inaccessible on account of volcanic dangers. Emphasis is placed on two aspects of the research: first, the importance of ongoing, real-time interaction between the LiDAR analyst and the archaeological team in the field; and second, the advantages of exploiting the full potential of the three-dimensional LiDAR point cloud data for purposes of the visualization of archaeological sites and features

Thermal detection of single e-h pairs in a biased silicon crystal detector

We demonstrate that individual electron-hole pairs are resolved in a 1 cm$^2$ by 4 mm thick silicon crystal (0.93 g) operated at $\sim$35 mK. One side of the detector is patterned with two quasiparticle-trap-assisted electro-thermal-feedback transition edge sensor (QET) arrays held near ground potential. The other side contains a bias grid with 20\% coverage. Bias potentials up to $\pm$ 160 V were used in the work reported here. A fiber optic provides 650~nm (1.9 eV) photons that each produce an electron-hole ($e^{-} h^{+}$) pair in the crystal near the grid. The energy of the drifting charges is measured with a phonon sensor noise $\sigma$ $\sim$0.09 $e^{-} h^{+}$ pair. The observed charge quantization is nearly identical for $h^+$'s or $e^-$'s transported across the crystal.Comment: 4 journal pages, 5 figure

Cardiac cell modelling: Observations from the heart of the cardiac physiome project

In this manuscript we review the state of cardiac cell modelling in the context of international initiatives such as the IUPS Physiome and Virtual Physiological Human Projects, which aim to integrate computational models across scales and physics. In particular we focus on the relationship between experimental data and model parameterisation across a range of model types and cellular physiological systems. Finally, in the context of parameter identification and model reuse within the Cardiac Physiome, we suggest some future priority areas for this field

Low energy excitations in crystalline perovskite oxides: Evidence from noise experiments

In this paper we report measurements of 1/f noise in a crystalline metallic oxide with perovskite structure down to 4.2K. The results show existence of localized excitations with average activation energy $\approx$ 70-80 meV which produce peak in the noise at T $\approx$ 35-40K. In addition, it shows clear evidence of tunnelling type two-level-systems (as in glasses) which show up in noise measurements below 30K.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys Rev B, vol 58, 1st Dec issu

The Child Brain Computes and Utilizes Internalized Maternal Choices

As children grow, they gradually learn how to make decisions independently. However, decisions like choosing healthy but less-tasty foods can be challenging for children whose self-regulation and executive cognitive functions are still maturing. We propose a computational decision-making process in which children estimate their mother's choices for them as well as their individual food preferences. By employing functional magnetic resonance imaging during real food choices, we find that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) encodes children's own preferences and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) encodes the projected mom's choices for them at the time of children's choice. Also, the left dlPFC region shows an inhibitory functional connectivity with the vmPFC at the time of children's own choice. Our study suggests that in part, children utilize their perceived caregiver's choices when making choices for themselves, which may serve as an external regulator of decision-making, leading to optimal healthy decisions

Model for Spreading of Liquid Monolayers

Manipulating fluids at the nanoscale within networks of channels or chemical lanes is a crucial challenge in developing small scale devices to be used in microreactors or chemical sensors. In this context, ultra-thin (i.e., monolayer) films, experimentally observed in spreading of nano-droplets or upon extraction from reservoirs in capillary rise geometries, represent an extreme limit which is of physical and technological relevance since the dynamics is governed solely by capillary forces. In this work we use kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations to analyze in detail a simple, but realistic model proposed by Burlatsky \textit{et al.} \cite{Burlatsky_prl96,Oshanin_jml} for the two-dimensional spreading on homogeneous substrates of a fluid monolayer which is extracted from a reservoir. Our simulations confirm the previously predicted time-dependence of the spreading, $X(t \to \infty) = A \sqrt t$, with $X(t)$ as the average position of the advancing edge at time $t$, and they reveal a non-trivial dependence of the prefactor $A$ on the strength $U_0$ of inter-particle attraction and on the fluid density $C_0$ at the reservoir as well as an $U_0$-dependent spatial structure of the density profile of the monolayer. The asymptotic density profile at long time and large spatial scale is carefully analyzed within the continuum limit. We show that including the effect of correlations in an effective manner into the standard mean-field description leads to predictions both for the value of the threshold interaction above which phase segregation occurs and for the density profiles in excellent agreement with KMC simulations results.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.