Does short termism affect the quality of urban design in the UK?

This paper follows the report on the “Quality of Urban Design: Study of the Influence of Private Property Decision Maker in Urban Design” (RICS 1996). It focuses on one of the findings in the report, namely that decisions made in development, investment and occupation seemed overly influenced by short term considerations. In this paper, the authors review the Report and examine the concept of short termism as it affects urban design decisions. The paper concludes that although it is difficult to establish whether or not short termism exists in many decisions, there are grounds for believing that a priori short termism might particularly influence property orientated decisions. The paper ends with some implications for policy both at the economy and local level

Workflow Partitioning and Deployment on the Cloud using Orchestra

Orchestrating service-oriented workflows is typically based on a design model that routes both data and control through a single point - the centralised workflow engine. This causes scalability problems that include the unnecessary consumption of the network bandwidth, high latency in transmitting data between the services, and performance bottlenecks. These problems are highly prominent when orchestrating workflows that are composed from services dispersed across distant geographical locations. This paper presents a novel workflow partitioning approach, which attempts to improve the scalability of orchestrating large-scale workflows. It permits the workflow computation to be moved towards the services providing the data in order to garner optimal performance results. This is achieved by decomposing the workflow into smaller sub workflows for parallel execution, and determining the most appropriate network locations to which these sub workflows are transmitted and subsequently executed. This paper demonstrates the efficiency of our approach using a set of experimental workflows that are orchestrated over Amazon EC2 and across several geographic network regions.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2014

A Dataflow Language for Decentralised Orchestration of Web Service Workflows

Orchestrating centralised service-oriented workflows presents significant scalability challenges that include: the consumption of network bandwidth, degradation of performance, and single points of failure. This paper presents a high-level dataflow specification language that attempts to address these scalability challenges. This language provides simple abstractions for orchestrating large-scale web service workflows, and separates between the workflow logic and its execution. It is based on a data-driven model that permits parallelism to improve the workflow performance. We provide a decentralised architecture that allows the computation logic to be moved "closer" to services involved in the workflow. This is achieved through partitioning the workflow specification into smaller fragments that may be sent to remote orchestration services for execution. The orchestration services rely on proxies that exploit connectivity to services in the workflow. These proxies perform service invocations and compositions on behalf of the orchestration services, and carry out data collection, retrieval, and mediation tasks. The evaluation of our architecture implementation concludes that our decentralised approach reduces the execution time of workflows, and scales accordingly with the increasing size of data sets.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the IEEE 2013 7th International Workshop on Scientific Workflows, in conjunction with IEEE SERVICES 201

An Unsettled History

Stout Annual Lecture, Victoria University of Wellington, 24 May 199

Frontier Problems in New Mexico Preceding the Mexican War, 1840-1846

The original intent of this paper was to examine some phase of the interrelationship of the Mexican, Indian, and United States\u27 cultures in New Mexico during the two decades of Mexico administration. Research soon revealed that cultural conflicts only contributed their share to the problems which existed on this frontier. Identification of the problem areas narrowed the period of interest of the few years preceding the bloodless conquest of New Mexico by the United States. These years, roughly from 1840 to 1846, saw the culmination of a combination of circumstances over which New Mexican officials had little or no control. National policies were designed to benefit the more civilized areas of Mexico, and along with extending certain privileges to the inhabitants of a frontier, failed too long to recognize the reality of the situation which faced authorities in New Mexico. At length, when increasing Indian depredations and both real and continuing threats from Texas and the United States emphasized Mexico\u27s vulnerability to invasion from the north, constant political upheavals wasted her strength. Four major frontier problems are evident in the documentary materials consulted about the Department of New Mexico during this period: (1) the ever present threat of Indian rampage; (2) the increasingly menacing claim of Texas, and finally, the United States; (3) the constant difficulty of maintaining adequate defenses; and (4) the various internal predicaments created by, or contributing to, the previous problems. These are considered in chronological order: first in Part I as they concerned Armijo; again, in Part II, as they were assumed by Governor Martínez; and finally, in Part II, as they continued in the months when invasion from the United States seemed certain. Domestic problems are described more or less as they occurred, particularly when relative to other problems

Synthesis and Characterization of Fullerene-based Hydrogen Storage Materials

Storing hydrogen safely and efficiently is an area of great interest for the utilization of hydrogen as an energy carrier in transportation applications. The feasibility of using fullerenes in hydrogen storage materials was investigated. Alkali decorated fullerenes LixC60 [LixC60] and NaxC60 [NaxC60] were found to enhance the hydrogen chemisorption and physisorption properties of fullerenes. Although the overall hydrogen physisorption uptake in these materials is low due to the crystalline nature of the material, the isosteric heats of adsorption of fullerenes were increased by lithium doping. C60 [C60] is also capable of acting as a catalyst in the dehydrogenation and rehydrogenation of lithium borohydride. Evidence for hydrogenated fullerenes (fulleranes) in the LiBH4:C60 [LiBH4:C60] nanocomposite gives evidence for the catalyzation mechanism of LiBH4 [LiBH4] to involve the surface of the fullerene. This effect is unlike other carbon materials used for kinetic enhancement in that it does not solely rely on nanoconfinement and particle size reduction to enhance the hydrogen storage properties of complex metal hydrides. The addition of C60 [C60] to lithium borohydride resulted in a reduced dehydrogenation temperature, increased hydrogen desorption kinetics, and reversibility of hydrogen adsorption under much milder conditions than pure LiBH4 [LiBH4]. Characterization of hydrogenated fullerenes by various mass spectrometric techniques (LDI-TOF-MS, SPALDI-TOF-MS, MALDI-TOF-MS, and APPI-MS) and the advantages of each technique is reviewed. Furthermore, initial findings on the catalyzation of lithium amide and hydrogenated lithium nitride with iridium, in which the dehydrogenation temperatures and ammonia emission are reduced, is discussed

THE EVIDENCE OF ANONYMOUS WITNESSES IN CRIMINAL COURTS: NOW AND INTO THE FUTURE

Anonymous witness evidence, the use of which had quietly expanded in the early part of the twenty-first century in criminal courts in England and Wales, was significantly curtailed by the House of Lords in the case of R v Davis. Little over a month later the government had enacted legislation to minimise the impact of their Lordships’ ruling, yet the long-term future of this area of the criminal law of evidence remains undetermined. This article seeks to assess what impact the Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Act 2008 has had on the right to a fair trial in England and Wales and, subsequently, to weigh up the options for long-term reform in this area of the law. It will be submitted that the stated policy aim of the government, the protection of witnesses, can be achieved for the long-term without impeding or undermining the absolute right of the defendant to a fair trial

Development of a powertrain control algorithm for a compound-split diesel hybrid-electric vehicle

The goal of this research was to develop a unique powertrain control algorithm for a diesel-powered compound-split hybrid crossover utility vehicle (CUV) and evaluate the fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions benefits that can be realized compared to existing non-hybrid, gasoline-powered CUVs. This was achieved through the implementation of engine on/off functionality, regenerative braking, and electric-only drive. The research was conducted in conjunction with the university\u27s participation in EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge, an inter-collegiate advanced vehicle engineering competition focused on developing alternatively powered vehicles in the interest of providing improved fuel efficiency and reduced tailpipe emissions while maintaining useful vehicle functionality. Prior to construction, the proposed vehicle was simulated for fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions using the Powertrain System Analysis Toolkit. Initial simulation results indicated that the proposed compound-split hybrid vehicle would achieve 35 mpgge combined fuel economy and produce carbon dioxide at a rate of 242 g/mi. A 2009 Saturn Vue was modified to accept the proposed hybrid powertrain consisting of a 1.3 liter diesel engine, 2-mode compound-split transaxle, and lithium-ion high-voltage battery system. This vehicle served as the platform for the development and validation of the powertrain control algorithm. Using the vehicle\u27s CAN communication capabilities, auxiliary control units were integrated to manage the new powertrain components and implement the control strategy. The project vehicle and control algorithm were validated and tested on-road for fuel efficiency and performance. The final powertrain control algorithm developed through this research included automatic engine start/stop, regenerative braking, and full-electric driving capability at speeds up to 25 mph. In its final configuration, the WVU 2-mode hybrid-electric vehicle achieved city/highway fuel economy of 24.5/31.5 mpgge. Compared to the base vehicle, the project vehicle achieved a 28.9% improvement in city fuel economy, a 21.2% improvement in highway fuel economy, and a 20% reduction of in-use CO2 emissions