Adopting new activity-based classifications of town and city centres are key to combating decline

• Analysis of nine years' of UK hourly footfall counts identifies new classes of town and city centres based on their activity signature (comparison shopping, holiday, multifunctional and speciality) • Dynamic indicators of town and city centre performance can radically alter the way we manage and develop the

High Street 2020: An Analysis for Morecambe

Overall, footfall in UK town centres is falling and Morecambe’s footfall is falling at nearly twice the average rate1. This indicates that the town centre is ‘at risk’ – and that it is likely to be less resilient to shocks such as increased edge-of-town competition. Morecambe’s footfall profile most closely matches that of a ‘holiday town’ meaning that leisure and distinctive retail need to be an important part of the overall offer. Nevertheless, the identity of Morecambe is confused – there seems to be little overall vision and leadership to enable the town to adapt to change in a proactive, positive way to create a more positive and differentiated identity. In our opinion, based on the High Street 2020 research we have undertaken, the proposed Bay Shopping Park will have a negative impact on the existing centre as it is too far away to generate linked trips – and there are no plans to integrate it in a way that could complement the existing offer. Retailers will be attracted to the Bay Park’s larger units, 1 Over a 30 month period ending May 2014 better road access and convenient car-parking – and this will further reduce the comparison offer in the existing town centre. In this respect, the Bay Shopping Park will impact in a similar manner to out-of-town development – which, as our model demonstrates, diverts up to 30% of footfall. As a result of the newly built Morrison’s supermarket and other developments, there is no doubt some of this diversion has already taken place. However, the spiral of decline that will come with more vacant retail units and less footfall after the opening of the Bay Shopping Park will eventually impact upon Morecambe’s ability to sustain its traditional centre. To what extent is the Council willing to sacrifice the traditional centre to the new shopping park development? Our research also demonstrates the proposed development could also be detrimental to overall rateable value. Nevertheless, whilst we predict the Bay Shopping Park would have a detrimental impact, we are aware that the existing centre is also not serving the resident catchment or visitors/tourists effectively. Newspaper reports refer to the Arndale Centre as ‘a disgrace’ and our own High Street UK 2020 project points out the negative impact that out-of-date and out-of-scale in-town development has on vitality and viability. In order to strengthen the existing town centre, all stakeholders have to work together – under a shared vision for the future – and New River Retail must make the necessary investment, to improve the retail offer (both comparison and convenience) through their Arndale Centre. Our research demonstrates the role a channel anchor, such as a shopping centre, can take in coordinating and supporting place change. The town also needs to improve the overall customer experience and create an appropriate and differentiated identity, with the traditional town centre at the heart of these developments

Five ways to save Britain’s struggling high streets

The high street, or the main shopping area, has always been the heart of any UK town or city. But over the last ten years, it’s significance has dwindled. Over 28,000 stores have closed, and footfall has been on a “relentless downward trend”. While commentators often blame store closures on online shopping and poor footfall on the weather, our research uncovered a rather different problem

High Street UK 2020 Interim Project Report: Identifying factors that influence vitality and viability

The purpose of this document is to report the progress of the High Street UK2020 (HSUK2020) project. Started in January 2014, HSUK2020 aims to bring evidence to 10 UK High Streets, to improve local decision making that will improve vitality and viability. The 10 partner locations are Alsager, Altrincham, Ballymena, Barnsley, Bristol (St George), Congleton, Holmfirth, Market Rasen, Morley and Wrexham. The report outlines the background to the project, the methods we have employed, the results we have found and a brief overview of how some of our partner towns are using these findings. By undertaking a systematic review of the literature and, through adopting a more ‘engaged’ model of scholarship, the project has identified 201 factors that influence the performance of the UK High Street. This has enabled us to classify the top 25 priorities for action our partner towns should focus on

Towns and Cities as Multifunctional Centres

Whilst omni-channel retailing and the digital high street may be two of the latest talking points in the retail property industry, our towns and city centres have always been shaped by a series of technological, social and political revolutions. The purpose of this report is to examine how, after many years of mono-functionality focused upon retailing, our centres are experiencing something of a renaissance, and remerging as multi-functional ones, supporting leisure and recreation, employment, tourism, heritage, culture, housing, employment, education, health and wellbeing as well as retail. A multi-functional centre means a diverse offer, and, therefore, traditional economic indicators will not, on their own, act as a sensible yardstick of performance or tool for decision-making. For the multi-functional centre, activity levels are the key performance indicators. How much is the centre used, when and for what? Multi-functional centres draw people in for a much wider ‘bundle of benefits’ than just shopping. This requires all stakeholders to work together much more effectively to deliver a better collective experience in locations, to the commuter who may want to choose and collect at different times of the day, depending on their personal transport options and shift patterns, to the carer who may want to combine exercise and top-up shopping near to reliable respite care. Many of the newfound uses for underused or redundant retail space have resulted from structural changes in the retail sector, as well as from a more tightly gripped public purse. This has opened up the possibility for much more community involvement in the redevelopment and reuse of space. Sometimes this influx of creativity is only temporary, but it still demonstrates what an important asset an engaged community can be to a place, and what a difference it can make to vitality and viability. We think the retail property sector should work harder to integrate more local entrepreneurship and civic practice into both the development of new centres and the management of existing ones. The successful multi-functional centre will have both a multitude of users as well as a multitude of caretakers. Most of all, our report argues that all retail developments (both new and existing) have to integrate more effectively into the overall offer of the multi-functional centre. Decision making and management must become less hierarchical and myopic and more place-based and ‘porous’ to allow more intelligence and input from the location

Forced Gravity Waves and the Tropospheric Response to Convection

We present theoretical work directed toward improving our understanding of the mesoscale influence of deep convection on its tropospheric environment through forced gravity waves. From the linear, hydrostatic, non-rotating, incompressible equations, we find a two-dimensional analytical solution to prescribed heating in a stratified atmosphere, which is upwardly radiating from the troposphere when the domain lid is sufficiently high. We interrogate the spatial and temporal sensitivity of both the vertical velocity and potential temperature to different heating functions, considering both the near-field and remote responses to steady and pulsed heating. We find that the mesoscale tropospheric response to convection is significantly dependent on the upward radiation characteristics of the gravity waves, which are in turn dependent upon the temporal and spatial structure of the source, and the assumed stratification. We find a 50% reduction in tropospherically averaged vertical velocity when moving from a trapped (i.e. low lid) to upwardly-radiating (i.e. high lid) solution, but even with maximal upward radiation, we still observe significant tropospheric vertical velocities in the far-field 4 hours after heating ends. We quantify the errors associated with coarsening a 10 km wide heating to a 100 km grid (in the way a General Circulation Model (GCM) would), observing a 20% reduction in vertical velocity. The implications of these results for the parameterisation of convection in low-resolution numerical models are quantified and it is shown that the smoothing of heating over a grid-box leads to significant in grid-box tendencies, due to the erroneous rate of transfer of compensating subsidence to neighbouring regions. Further, we explore a simple time-dependent heating parameterisation that minimises error in a parent GCM grid box, albeit at the expense of increased error in the neighbourhood

Assessment of a novel, capsid-modified adenovirus with an improved vascular gene transfer profile

<p>Background: Cardiovascular disorders, including coronary artery bypass graft failure and in-stent restenosis remain significant opportunities for the advancement of novel therapeutics that target neointimal hyperplasia, a characteristic of both pathologies. Gene therapy may provide a successful approach to improve the clinical outcome of these conditions, but would benefit from the development of more efficient vectors for vascular gene delivery. The aim of this study was to assess whether a novel genetically engineered Adenovirus could be utilised to produce enhanced levels of vascular gene expression.</p> <p>Methods: Vascular transduction capacity was assessed in primary human saphenous vein smooth muscle and endothelial cells using vectors expressing the LacZ reporter gene. The therapeutic capacity of the vectors was compared by measuring smooth muscle cell metabolic activity and migration following infection with vectors that over-express the candidate therapeutic gene tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase-3 (TIMP-3).</p> <p>Results: Compared to Adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5), the novel vector Ad5T*F35++ demonstrated improved binding and transduction of human vascular cells. Ad5T*F35++ mediated expression of TIMP-3 reduced smooth muscle cell metabolic activity and migration in vitro. We also demonstrated that in human serum samples pre-existing neutralising antibodies to Ad5T*F35++ were less prevalent than Ad5 neutralising antibodies.</p> <p>Conclusions: We have developed a novel vector with improved vascular transduction and improved resistance to human serum neutralisation. This may provide a novel vector platform for human vascular gene transfer.</p&gt

Investigation of MoOx/Al2O3 under Cyclic Operation for Oxidative and Non-Oxidative Dehydrogenation of Propane

A MoOx/Al2O3 catalyst was synthesised and tested for oxidative (ODP) and non-oxidative (DP) dehydrogenation of propane in a reaction cycle of ODP followed by DP and a second ODP run. Characterisation results show that the fresh catalyst contains highly dispersed Mo oxide species in the +6 oxidation state with tetrahedral coordination as [MoVIO4]2− moieties. In situ X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) shows that [MoVIO4]2− is present during the first ODP run of the reaction cycle and is reduced to MoIVO2 in the following DP run. The reduced species are partly re-oxidised in the subsequent second ODP run of the reaction cycle. The partly re-oxidised species exhibit oxidation and coordination states that are lower than 6 but higher than 4 and are referred to as MoxOy. These species significantly improved propene formation (relatively 27% higher) in the second ODP run at similar propane conversion activity. Accordingly, the initial tetrahedral [MoVIO4]2− present during the first ODP run of the reaction cycle is active for propane conversion; however, it is unselective for propene. The reduced MoIVO2 species are relatively less active and selective for DP. It is suggested that the MoxOy species generated by the reaction cycle are active and selective for ODP. The vibrational spectroscopic data indicate that the retained surface species are amorphous carbon deposits with a higher proportion of aromatic/olefinic like species

CXC chemokines and antimicrobial peptides in rhinovirus-induced experimental asthma exacerbations

RATIONALE: Rhinoviruses (RVs) are the major triggers of asthma exacerbations. We have shown previously that lower respiratory tract symptoms, airflow obstruction, and neutrophilic airway inflammation were increased in experimental RV-induced asthma exacerbations. OBJECTIVES: We hypothesized that neutrophil-related CXC chemokines and antimicrobial peptides are increased and related to clinical, virologic, and pathologic outcomes in RV-induced exacerbations of asthma. METHODS: Protein levels of antimicrobial peptides (SLPI, HNP 1–3, elafin, and LL-37) and neutrophil chemokines (CXCL1/GRO-α, CXCL2/GRO-β, CXCL5/ENA-78, CXCL6/GCP-2, CXCL7/NAP-2, and CXCL8/IL-8) were determined in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid of 10 asthmatics and 15 normal controls taken before, at day four during and 6 weeks post-experimental infection. RESULTS: BAL HNP 1–3 and Elafin were higher, CXCL7/NAP-2 was lower in asthmatics compared with controls at day 4 (P = 0.035, P = 0.048, and P = 0.025, respectively). BAL HNP 1–3 and CXCL8/IL-8 were increased during infection (P = 0.003 and P = 0.011, respectively). There was a trend to increased BAL neutrophils at day 4 compared with baseline (P = 0.076). BAL HNP 1–3 was positively correlated with BAL neutrophil numbers at day 4. There were no correlations between clinical parameters and HNP1–3 or IL-8 levels. CONCLUSIONS: We propose that RV infection in asthma leads to increased release of CXCL8/IL-8, attracting neutrophils into the airways where they release HNP 1–3, which further enhances airway neutrophilia. Strategies to inhibit CXCL8/IL-8 may be useful in treatment of virus-induced asthma exacerbations

Polyandrous females avoid costs of inbreeding

Why do females typically mate with more than one male? Female mating patterns have broad implications for sexual selection, speciation and conflicts of interest between the sexes, and yet they are poorly understood. Matings inevitably have costs, and for females, the benefits of taking more than one mate are rarely obvious. One possible explanation is that females gain benefits because they can avoid using sperm from genetically incompatible males, or invest less in the offspring of such males. It has been shown that mating with more than one male can increase offspring viability, but we present the first clear demonstration that this occurs because females with several mates avoid the negative effects of genetic incompatibility. We show that in crickets, the eggs of females that mate only with siblings have decreased hatching success. However, if females mate with both a sibling and a non-sibling they avoid altogether the low egg viability associated with sibling matings. If similar effects occur in other species, inbreeding avoidance may be important in understanding the prevalence of multiple mating