Town and Country Planning in England's Northeast Section

Abstract

A SYMPOSIUM OF CURRENT PLANNING THEORY: Planning for America , By GEORGE B. GALLOWAY AND ASSOCIATES. Henry Holt and Co., New York; 713 pages, price $3.

A TEXTBOOK ON SUBDIVISION: Subdivision Regulations: An Analysis of Land Subdivision Control Practices. By HAROLD W. LAUTNER. Public Administration Service; 346 pages, price $3.75.

EMPLOYMENT IN THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF RESOURCES: Development of Resources and Stabilization of Employment in the United States. By THE NATIONAL RESOURCES PLANNING BOARD; 409 pages, price $1.20.     

Peter Hall's planning history

Sir Peter Hall passed away at the age of 82 in July 2014. As a leading figure in the fields of planning, geography, urban regeneration, regional studies and transportation, numerous tributes and obituaries have already been published. In this memoir, Associate Editor Rob Freestone draws from his essay in the 2014 book which he co-edited with Mark Tewdwr-Jones and Nicholas Phelps, entitled The Planning Imagination: Peter Hall and the Study of Urban and Regional Planning (2014), to reflect on Peter's approach and contributions to the study of planning history.     

A systems theoretic approach to second moment modelling of probabilistic engineering systems∗

A new approach to modelling probabilistic and stochastic engineering systems using graph theory is outlined. This approach emphasizes the introduction of probabilistic and stochastic concepts at the very beginning of the model building process. This is in marked contrast to past tendencies to add probabilistic concepts to the end of an otherwise deterministic model building process. The development of topological models founded on oriented probabilistic measurements is given. which leads to the identification of some useful statistical properties of the’ random interconnection equations’. The development of probabilistic component models is given, where a component can be characterized independently of other components. Methods for automatically building the second moment representation of the Mixed Nodal Tableau are discussed. The application of the above theory to the probabilistic analysis of a pipe network problem is briefly described.     

The Tyranny of Small Decisions. Unsustainable Cities and Local Day-to-Day Transport Planning

Though new goals for sustainable cities and transport systems have been developed, decisions and planning at a local level often fail to achieve these ambitions. The purpose of this article is to analyse the factors in local decision-making and planning practice that conduce to urban sprawl and increased car traffic. The article analyses how the conscious application of so-called “day-to-day decision-making and planning”, results in a diminution of planning's role as a strategic tool, in concealment of the environmental impact of increased traffic, in the deprioritization of environmental goals in favour of growth, and in the “tyranny of small decisions”, where the need to make many individual decisions distracts from the achievement of sustainable city and transport systems. Day-to-day decision-making and planning are analysed and described in a case study centring on retail trade on the outskirts of the Swedish town of Örebro.     

Effectiveness of cationically modified cellulose polymers for dewatering algae

A method to flocculate algal cultures of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii using four different industrially produced polymers is presented. Starting with a 1 wt% stock polymer solution, flocculation times less than 60 min were observed for 0.1 to 0.6 g polymer per L of algae culture, while control samples took greater than 1400 min to flocculate. Cell counts showed that 99% of the cells were flocculated using the polymers compared to 73% for the control. Finally, the flocculation process was successful at both 5 and 40 mL batch sizes for one polymer; therefore, the method is efficient, effective and may be scalable.     

A comparison of partially acetylated nanocellulose,nanocrystalline cellulose,and nanoclay as fillers for high‐performance polylactide nanocomposites

Partially acetylated cellulose nanofibers (CNF) were chemically extracted from sisal fibers and the performance of those CNF as nanofillers for polylactide (PLA) for food packaging applications was evaluated. Three PLA nanocomposites; PLA/CNF (cellulose nanofibers), PLA/CNC (nanocrystalline cellulose), and PLA/C30B (Cloisite^TM 30B, an organically modified montmorillonite clay) were prepared and their properties were evaluated. It was found that CNF reinforced composites showed a larger decrease on oxygen transmission rate (OTR) than the clay‐based composites; (PLA/CNF 1% nanocomposite showed a 63% of reduction at 23°C and 50% RH while PLA/C30B 1% showed a 26% decrease) and similar behavior on terms of water vapor barrier properties with 46 and 43%, respectively of decrease on water vapor transmission rate at 23°C and 50% RH (relative humidity). In terms of mechanical and thermomechanical properties, CNF‐based nanocomposites showed better performance than clay‐based composites without affecting significantly the optical transparency. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 43257.     

Nanocomposites of PBAT and cellulose nanocrystals modified by in situ polymerization and melt extrusion

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) were successfully grafted with a low molecular weight poly(butylene glutarate) through an in situ polymerization procedure. The grafting treatment decreased the CNC hydrophilic character and increased the onset of their thermal degradation by approximately 20°C, thus increasing the possibilities of CNC application. Composites of grafted and nongrafted CNC with a poly(butylene‐adipate‐co‐terephthalate) (PBAT) matrix were prepared by melt extrusion. The CNC addition led to an increase of 50% of the tensile elastic modulus of the PBAT. In addition, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis showed that the composite with CNC retained its high modulus even at temperatures far above the glass transition temperature of PBAT. At 60°C the storage modulus of the composite with CNC was approximately 200% higher than that of the pure PBAT. Thus, in this work, nanocomposites of improved properties were obtained through a combination of in situ polymerization and melt extrusion. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 56:1339–1348, 2016. © 2016 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Effects of ultrahigh speed twin screw extrusion on the thermal and mechanical degradation of polystyrene

This article characterizes a novel twin screw extrusion (TSE) process with the capability of rotating at speeds up to 4500 rpm. The resulting extreme high shear rate is expected to result in molecular weight changes due to thermomechanical degradation of the polymeric materials being extruded, polystyrene (PS) in this case. In order to differentiate between mechanical and thermal factors affecting degradation of PS running at ultrahigh speeds and also to evaluate the relative importance of the two mechanisms, PS has been extruded at different screw speeds and different barrel temperatures with corresponding melt temperatures. Viscosity measurements and size exclusion chromatography measurements show the extent of degradation due to mechanical stress as a result of high screw rotational speeds. Furthermore, through analyzing the kinetics of PS depolymerization, the reaction rate and hypothetical apparent temperatures at each screw speed have been calculated. All results support the idea that the mechanical shear stress can be considered as the controlling factor of polymer degradation in ultrahigh speed TSE. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 56:743–751, 2016. © 2016 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Low temperature cure of epoxy thermosets attaining high Tg using a uniform microwave field

It is demonstrated for the first time that an epoxy thermoset resin can be cured at temperatures well below its T_g∞. This study compared the use of a uniform variable frequency microwave (VFM) field to standard oven curing at temperatures above and below T_g∞. Using T_g, tan δ, modulus, and FTIR measurements, it is shown that the reaction of BFDGE with MDA to attain a product with T_g∞ of 133 °C is achieved by VFM at temperatures from 100 to 140 °C; in contrast, the thermal cure normally requires 170 °C to attain the same T_g∞ and the same extent of cure. By following the pregel cure reaction with ¹³C‐NMR spectroscopy, it was determined that the lower cure temperatures of VFM cure predominately lead to chain extension and smaller amounts of crosslinking compared to the thermal cure. To explain these results, it is suggested that, after gelation, with VFM cure there is higher mobility from dipole rotations that continues the cure to completion without vitrification. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 44222.     

The FKBP5 Gene Affects Alcohol Drinking in Knockout Mice and Is Implicated in Alcohol Drinking in Humans

FKBP5 encodes FK506-binding protein 5, a glucocorticoid receptor (GR)-binding protein implicated in various psychiatric disorders and alcohol withdrawal severity. The purpose of this study is to characterize alcohol preference and related phenotypes in Fkbp5 knockout (KO) mice and to examine the role of FKBP5 in human alcohol consumption. The following experiments were performed to characterize Fkpb5 KO mice. (1) Fkbp5 KO and wild-type (WT) EtOH consumption was tested using a two-bottle choice paradigm; (2) The EtOH elimination rate was measured after intraperitoneal (IP) injection of 2.0 g/kg EtOH; (3) Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was measured after 3 h limited access of alcohol; (4) Brain region expression of Fkbp5 was identified using LacZ staining; (5) Baseline corticosterone (CORT) was assessed. Additionally, two SNPs, rs1360780 (C/T) and rs3800373 (T/G), were selected to study the association of FKBP5 with alcohol consumption in humans. Participants were college students (n = 1162) from 21–26 years of age with Chinese, Korean or Caucasian ethnicity. The results, compared to WT mice, for KO mice exhibited an increase in alcohol consumption that was not due to differences in taste sensitivity or alcohol metabolism. Higher BAC was found in KO mice after 3 h of EtOH access. Fkbp5 was highly expressed in brain regions involved in the regulation of the stress response, such as the hippocampus, amygdala, dorsal raphe and locus coeruleus. Both genotypes exhibited similar basal levels of plasma corticosterone (CORT). Finally, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in FKBP5 were found to be associated with alcohol drinking in humans. These results suggest that the association between FKBP5 and alcohol consumption is conserved in both mice and humans.