Children’s Independent Mobility: an international comparison and recommendations for action

This report is the latest in a series looking at the personal mobility and travel patterns of children. The first was published in 1971, looking at children’s mobility in England. A follow-up study, published in 1990, expanded the survey to look at children in what was then West Germany. A third study looking at childhood mobility was published in 2010, providing a unique set of longitudinal data, stretching over four decades. The changes in children’s independent mobility have been striking. For example, in 1971 in England, 55 per cent of children under 10 were allowed to travel alone to places other than school that were within walking distance; by 2010, almost no children under 10 were allowed to do so. This report expands the available data geographically, covering 16 countries: Australia, Brazil, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Sweden. The children involved were aged from seven to 15

Silicon and III-V compound nanotubes: structural and electronic properties

Unusual physical properties of single-wall carbon nanotubes have started a search for similar tubular structures of other elements. In this paper, we present a theoretical analysis of single-wall nanotubes of silicon and group III-V compounds. Starting from precursor graphene-like structures we investigated the stability, energetics and electronic structure of zigzag and armchair tubes using first-principles pseudopotential plane wave method and finite temperature ab-initio molecular dynamics calculations. We showed that (n,0) zigzag and (n,n) armchair nanotubes of silicon having n > 6 are stable but those with n < 6 can be stabilized by internal or external adsorption of transition metal elements. Some of these tubes have magnetic ground state leading to spintronic properties. We also examined the stability of nanotubes under radial and axial deformation. Owing to the weakness of radial restoring force, stable Si nanotubes are radially soft. Undeformed zigzag nanotubes are found to be metallic for 6 < n < 11 due to curvature effect; but a gap starts to open for n > 12. Furthermore, we identified stable tubular structures formed by stacking of Si polygons. We found AlP, GaAs, and GaN (8,0) single-wall nanotubes stable and semiconducting. Our results are compared with those of single-wall carbon nanotubes.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

What does community resilience look like in practice? How institutions see the role of communities in responding to heatwaves in the UK

The concept of resilience is well-established in policy, as well as popular and professional discourse. The notion of community resilience, though, is relatively new, and has only recently been taken up in policy (Cabinet Office 2011b; Defra 2012; 2013). Twigger-Ross et al (2011) define community resilience as an ongoing process of communities working with local resources – alongside local expertise – to help themselves and others to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies. However, when regional and national policy documents mention community and voluntary groups – and local residents – the roles of these actors in developing and implementing resilience are not clearly explained. The documents tend to focus on infrastructure development and institutional emergency responses (Greater London Authority 2011; Defra 2013; UK Government 2013; Public Health England 2014b). In this context, community resilience seems to be something that is bestowed on passive communities by active local institutions; all of the local agency of Twigger-Ross’s definition is lost or missing. The challenge that policymakers face in trying to define the roles of communities in resilience raises various problems. Research and practice in a range of domains (and over a long period) highlights the limits of institutional responses, and emphasises that community-led action and other forms of public participation and engagement can effectively complement institutional responses (Arnstein 1969; INVOLVE 2005; Twigger Ross et al 2011; Cinderby et al 2014; DECC 2014). An active community with local agency could play a key role in preparing for, responding to and recovering from emergencies

Lobbying by Trade Associations on EU Climate Policy

Climate change has been recognised as one of the greatest challenges of the 21st Century. Its impacts, and they way that we choose to deal with them will profoundly affect how business and society operates. This report focuses on European Union (EU) climate policy – the governance structures, rules and regulations that have been put in place at the EU level to attempt to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Specifically, it focuses on how trade associations representing industrial sectors or broader business interest have lobbied on EU climate policy, and the impact that they have had on the policymaking process. The report then goes on to discuss whether the impacts of this lobbying align with the stated policies of the companies that are members of these trade associations

Lobbying by Trade Associations on EU Climate Policy

Climate change has been recognised as one of the greatest challenges of the 21st Century. Its impacts, and they way that we choose to deal with them will profoundly affect how business and society operates. This report focuses on European Union (EU) climate policy – the governance structures, rules and regulations that have been put in place at the EU level to attempt to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Specifically, it focuses on how trade associations representing industrial sectors or broader business interest have lobbied on EU climate policy, and the impact that they have had on the policymaking process. The report then goes on to discuss whether the impacts of this lobbying align with the stated policies of the companies that are members of these trade associations

Tailoring Graphene with Metals on Top

We study the effects of metallic doping on the electronic properties of graphene using density functional theory in the local density approximation in the presence of a local charging energy (LDA+U). The electronic properties are sensitive to whether graphene is doped with alkali or transition metals. We estimate the the charge transfer from a single layer of Potassium on top of graphene in terms of the local charging energy of the graphene sheet. The coating of graphene with a non-magnetic layer of Palladium, on the other hand, can lead to a magnetic instability in coated graphene due to the hybridization between the transition-metal and the carbon orbitals.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

In vivo cranial bone strain and bite force in the agamid lizard Uromastyx geyri

In vivo bone strain data are the most direct evidence of deformation and strain regimes in the vertebrate cranium during feeding and can provide important insights into skull morphology. Strain data have been collected during feeding across a wide range of mammals; in contrast, in vivo cranial bone strain data have been collected from few sauropsid taxa. Here we present bone strain data recorded from the jugal of the herbivorous agamid lizard Uromastyx geyri along with simultaneously recorded bite force. Principal and shear strain magnitudes in Uromastyx geyri were lower than cranial bone strains recorded in Alligator mississippiensis, but higher than those reported from herbivorous mammals. Our results suggest that variations in principal strain orientations in the facial skeleton are largely due to differences in feeding behavior and bite location, whereas food type has little impact on strain orientations. Furthermore, mean principal strain orientations differ between male and female Uromastyx during feeding, potentially because of sexual dimorphism in skull morphology