Academic commentary from Jill Jameson

Invited academic commentary on leadership case study for South East England Development Agency (SEEDA): case study of Advanced Resources Management Ltd

Devolving the heartland: making up a new social policy for the 'South East'

Devolution appears to challenge the traditional regional and national hierarchies of the UK, but in practice the dominance of the South East of England has been maintained through active state intervention. As social welfare has increasingly been redefined through economic success and access to the labour market, the focus of social policy has shifted accordingly. In this context the South East has been re-imagined not as a symbol of inequality and a potential source of redistribution, but rather as driver of economic prosperity and 'national' (UK) well-being

Housing supply and brownfield regeneration in a post-Barker review world: A comparison of policy and practice in England and Scotland

The findings of the Barker review, which examined the reasons for the undersupply of UK housing, have important implications for the devolved constituents of the UK, including Scotland. This paper traces the emergence of the brownfield regeneration policy agenda across the UK and examines how the Barker review connects with this brownfield policy focus. The paper compares housing and brownfield policies and practices in England and Scotland, places them in an international context and elicits wider lessons for devolved governance in relation to housing policy, in terms of `centrist—local' tensions. Estimates based on published data suggest that Barker's emphasis on increased housing supply cannot easily be reconciled with the current emphasis on brownfield development and is likely to require a return to greenfield development in both countries

Ground-Based Observations on TESS Exoplanet 5691.01

Our study aimed to study and characterize data on Object of Interest 5691.01, an exoplanet detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). We remotely obtained pre-reduced ground-based data of TOI 5691.01 from the George Mason University Observatory in Fairfax, Virginia. Using AstroImageJ software and Python collaboratories, we compiled a group of photos of our target exoplanet and detected its light pattern by creating charts that detail the exoplanet’s journey through its orbit. There is a certain period when the exoplanet passes in front of its star, allowing George Mason’s Observatory Telescope to intake light rays from the star that reflected off the exoplanet. The colors of these rays are altered by the biological makeup of the exoplanet and thus give us researchers an insight into the materials and makeover of the exoplanet. This is what we attempted to discover through our research

Nonlinear seismic response of dams using a coupled boundary element - finite element formulation

A study of the effects of dam-foundation interaction on the response of earth, rockfill and concrete-faced rockfill dams to obliquely incident P, SV and Rayleigh waves is presented. Emphasis is placed on the effects of the foundation flexibility, the spatial variability of the ground motion and the material nonlinearity. The study is based on a rigorous hybrid numerical formulation that combines the efficiency and versatility of the Finite Element Method (FEM) and the ability of Boundary Element Method (BEM) to account for the radiation conditions at the far field. The developed hybrid method is very powerful, and can be used efficiently to obtain accurate solutions of problems of complex geometry, material heterogeneity and, for time-domain analysis, material nonlinearity. The 2-D frequency-domain formulation is used at first to investigate the linear response of earth and rockfill dams to incident P, SV and Rayleigh waves and the response of concrete-faced rockfill dams to incident Rayleigh waves. Furthermore, the nonlinear time-domain coupled BE-FE formulation is used to investigate the response of earth and rockfill dams to vertically incident SV waves. By accounting rigorously for the energy radiated back into the halfspace, the study demonstrates the dramatic effect of the flexibility of the foundation rock in reducing the overall response of the dam. The effects of the spatial variability of the ground motion across the width of the dam are also shown to be important, but less dramatic than those of the foundation flexibility. Finally, the results from the nonlinear analysis of two different dams, each experiencing various degrees of nonlinearity, have demonstrated the great importance of the material nonlinear behavior on the response of dams subjected to strong ground motion