Archaeological evaluation report : Cuerden Strategic Site, South Ribble, Lancashire

Lancashire County Council and Maple Grove Development Limited have obtained planning consent for a major mixed-use development at Cuerden, in the Central Lancashire borough of South Ribble. The study area extends to 65 hectares and comprises land to the south of the M65, to the west of A49 Wigan Road, and east of Stanifield Lane, near Cuerden in Lancashire (centred on NGR SD 55526 24603). The hybrid planning application (Planning Ref: 07/2017/0211/ORM) comprises a wide range of residential and commercial premises, car parks and roads, the construction of which is likely to cause damage to any surviving archaeological remains. The potential for archaeological remains to survive across the development site was highlighted in an archaeological assessment that was prepared to support the planning application. This concluded that intrusive site investigation to establish the presence or absence of archaeological remains was merited. In the light of this conclusion, Lancashire County Council commissioned Salford Archaeology to devise an execute an appropriate programme of archaeological investigation which, in the first instance, comprised the excavation of 15 evaluation trenches that aimed to establish the presence, extent and nature or any below-ground remains, to enable informed recommendations to be made for the future of any surviving features. The trenches were targeted on a medieval/post-medieval farmstead, and a range of cropmarks indicative of earlier field-systems and occupation, perhaps of prehistoric origin. In addition, the two putative routes of a Roman road between the fort at Wigan and the industrial settlement at Walton-le-Dale are projected along the western and eastern edges of the site, and these courses were targeted by evaluation trenches. The results obtained from the evaluation have demonstrated the survival of a suite of structural remains relating to the medieval/post-medieval farmstead, together with several negative features of post-medieval date. The trenching of known or suspected cropmarks also produced positive results. The presence of ditches and gullies attest to ancient field systems, which diverge from the existing pattern of field boundaries. Such features appear on the basis of their typology and stratigraphy to pre-date the medieval/post-medieval enclosures and, significantly, may potentially represent prehistoric activity or settlement in the area. It is not considered that any of these remains are of national importance that would necessitate preservation in-situ, although the features encountered during the evaluation are considered to be of high local/borough or regional significance, particularly those features of potential prehistoric origin. In order to offset the harm of development on the archaeological resource of the site, it would be appropriate to implement a further stage of intrusive archaeological excavation in advance of development

Archaeological evaluation : Oldfield Road, Salford

Salford Archaeology was commissioned by Muse Developments to undertake an archaeological evaluation of land on Oldfield Rd (centred on NGR: SJ82573 98439), currently being developed as part of Salford’s regeneration scheme. This report consists of the results of three evaluation trenches excavated in December 2016. An archaeological assessment completed earlier in the year demonstrated the study area had potential for late 18th - 19th buildings, including housing, a public house and the western end of an industrial complex: Islington Mill. No earlier archaeological remains were anticipated given the later development of the site, particularly in the southern part of the site, which was recently occupied by a hostel and leisure complex with deep footings. The accidental loss of a large portion of the cellared housing in the northern part of the site through groundwork restricted potential to a narrow strip, in the middle of the study area. The trenches in the study area confirmed the western limit of the southern wall of late 18th - 19th century mill, which was located to the east of the study area. The trench closest to Oldfield Rd, revealed a series of walls of a cellared building with a partially surviving flagstone floor. This was likely part of the public house, the Jollies. The trench located in the middle part of the site revealed a single brick pad and linear gulley feature, cut into the natural clay. Together these archaeological remains confirm 19th century domestic and industrial activity. The natural clay was observed at approximately 1.5m below the existing ground levels at the south-east side of the site and at 1.9m depth towards the north-west. No earlier archaeological remains were encountered. The results obtained from the evaluation trenches have indicated that no remains of archaeological significance survive within the study area and that no further archaeological work is required

Likelihood inference for exponential-trawl processes

Integer-valued trawl processes are a class of serially correlated, stationary and infinitely divisible processes that Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen has been working on in recent years. In this Chapter, we provide the first analysis of likelihood inference for trawl processes by focusing on the so-called exponential-trawl process, which is also a continuous time hidden Markov process with countable state space. The core ideas include prediction decomposition, filtering and smoothing, complete-data analysis and EM algorithm. These can be easily scaled up to adapt to more general trawl processes but with increasing computation efforts.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures, forthcoming in: "A Fascinating Journey through Probability, Statistics and Applications: In Honour of Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen's 80th Birthday", Springer, New Yor

Buckling of a growing tissue and the emergence of two-dimensional patterns

The process of biological growth and the associated generation of residual stress has previously been considered as a driving mechanism for tissue buckling and pattern selection in numerous areas of biology. Here, we develop a two-dimensional thin plate theory to simulate the growth of cultured intestinal epithelial cells on a deformable substrate, with the goal of elucidating how a tissue engineer might best recreate the regular array of invaginations (crypts of Lieberkühn) found in the wall of the mammalian intestine. We extend the standard von Kármán equations to incorporate inhomogeneity in the plate’s mechanical properties and surface stresses applied to the substrate by cell proliferation. We determine numerically the configurations of a homogeneous plate under uniform cell growth, and show how tethering to an underlying elastic foundation can be used to promote higher-order buckled configurations. We then examine the independent effects of localised softening of the substrate and spatial patterning of cellular growth, demonstrating that (within a two-dimensional framework, and contrary to the predictions of one-dimensional models) growth patterning constitutes a more viable mechanism for control of crypt distribution than does material inhomogeneity

The CASE Programme Implemented Across the Primary and Secondary School Transition in Ireland

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.In the Irish education system, there is little continuity between the primary and secondary education systems. The transfer between these systems is particularly problematic in the area of science. In order to alleviate some of these problems, as well as to enhance the cognitive development of students, the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education programme was adapted for use and implemented across the primary–secondary school transition in Ireland. The programme was delivered in a variety of ways across the two levels, including the teacher and researcher teaching the programmes individually and team-teaching arrangements. The results on cognitive development measures showed that the students who were taught the programme in primary and secondary school made significant gains, when compared to the non-intervention group. There were also gains evident for students who only received one part of the programme (i.e. in either primary or secondary school). The greater gains, in terms of effect size, were evident at secondary school. The rationale, methodology and results are detailed in this paper

Determination of heat transfer coefficient for hot stamping process

© 2015 The Authors.The selection of the heat transfer coefficient is one of the most important factors that determine the reliability of FE simulation results of a hot stamping process, in which the formed component is held within cold dies until fully quenched. The quenching process could take up to 10. seconds. In order to maximise the production rate, the optimised quenching parameters should be identified to achieve the highest possible quenching rate and to reduce the quenching time. For this purpose, a novel-testing rig for the Gleeble 3800 thermo- mechanical simulator was designed and manufactured, with an advanced control system for temperature and contact pressure. The effect of contact pressure on the heat transfer coefficient was studied. The findings of this research will provide useful guidelines for the selection of the heat transfer coefficient in simulations of hot stamping processes and useful information for the design of hot stamping processes

Determinants affecting privatisation of local government services in Britain

The aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of CCC (Compulsory Competitive Tendering) policy outputs at the local government level in Britain and to examine how the outputs have been made, relating the CCT implementation process to the main factors affecting its outputs. Specifically, this study is based on the assumption that policy output as a general phenomenon can not be seperated from the process of formulating and implementing the policy. I shall argue that many of the major determinants underlying the CCT process remain unexplored and must be examined in order for us to understand more fully CCT policy as a service provision policy in local government. It is hoped that, in view of the characteristics and implications of the process of privatisation,this research will prove timely. Although the phenomenon of privatisation has spawned a huge literature in 1980s and 1990s, much of it has been guided by public choice theory, which argues the superior cost-efficiency of private over public service delivery. Although policy output studies have not been entirely neglected in these studies, they have generally been a secondary consideration to economic analysis. An examination of CCT policy output which associates the output with the dynamics of the policy implementation process is particularly important. It is no my intention to analyse whether CCT is a desirable policy or not. Rather, my more limited purpose is to identify the main factors which explain local variation in the output of CCT process, and to explain the way in which the contested privatisation process is related to the its output.