Building and implementing knowledge: research and innovation inspired by the evolution of modern stadia.

This paper summarises how the evolution and advancement in sports stadia design within Arup, over the last 10 years, has been used as a catalyst for applied research programmes. The North West Structures Group has collaborated with several universities (UK and US based) to advance technical knowledge and understanding, and to ensure on-going innovation. Five doctoral research programmes have been produced focussing on critical issues such as crowd induced vibration, robustness of cable supported structures subjected to high velocity fragment impact, structural and geometrical optimisation and, design management. This paper will highlight some of the results obtained from each of these research programmes and how they have and can be filtered back into design. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate how opportunities can be seized when working on design projects to collaborate with universities and provide a platform for project based innovation in the construction industry

Frenetic: A High-Level Language for OpenFlow Networks

Network administrators must configure network devices to simultaneously provide several interrelated services such as routing, load balancing, traffic monitoring, and access control. Unfortunately, most interfaces for programming networks are defined at the low level of abstraction supported by the underlying hardware, leading to complicated programs with subtle bugs. We present Frenetic, a high-level language for OpenFlow networks that enables writing programs in a declarative and compositional style, with a simple "program like you see every packet" abstraction. Building on ideas from functional programming, Frenetic offers a rich pattern algebra for classifying packets into traffic streams and a suite of operators for transforming streams. The run-time system efficiently manages the low-level details of (un)installing packet-processing rules in the switches. We describe the design of Frenetic, an implementation on top of OpenFlow, and experiments and example programs that validate our design choices.Office of Naval Research grant N00014-09-1-0770 "Networks Opposing Botnets

ImpaCT2: the impact of information and communication technologies on pupil learning and attainment

The report explores the impact of networked technologies on patterns of use of ICT in English, Mathematics and Science at Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 and the relative gain for high ICT users versus low ICT users in each of these subjects. This publication reports primarily on the outcomes of Strand 1, but draws on some material from the other strands of the study. ImpaCT2 was a major longitudinal study (1999-2002) involving 60 schools in England, its aims were to: identify the impact of networked technologies on the school and out-of-school environment; determine whether or not this impact affected the educational attainment of pupils aged 8 - 16 years (at Key Stages 2, 3, and 4); and provide information that would assist in the formation of national, local and school policies on the deployment of ICT

Distance as a barrier to child and adolescent mental health service access in post-Katrina Orleans Parish

Socially vulnerable populations are more susceptible to the impacts of natural disasters than other groups. An aspect of social vulnerability is lack of access to resources following a disaster. Distance is one barrier that prevents socially vulnerable populations from accessing services. Using 2000 U.S. Census Bureau data and current outpatient child and adolescent mental health facilities in post-Katrina Orleans Parish, Louisiana, this thesis seek to understand if those facilities are located farther from block groups with higher percentages of demographically disadvantaged residents than from block groups with lower percentages of demographically disadvantaged residents. Block group demographic disadvantage is defined in terms of the percent of residents who are African American, the percent of individuals living in poverty, and the percent of households headed by females with children under 18 years old. The sample had 483 block groups in Orleans Parish. Pearson’s r and OLS regression were run comparing linear distance (dependent variable) with the independent variables of percent African American, percent poverty, and percent female-headed households with children under 18 years old. In the bivariate analysis, percent African American and female-headed households were not significantly correlated with linear distance. Percent poverty had a significant negative correlation with linear distance. While the negative association between poverty and distance remained in the in the multivariate analysis, percent African American and percent female-headed were positively correlated, as predicted. ArcGIS was used to create maps showing the percent African-American, poor, and female-headed households in Orleans Parish. The location of the outpatient child and adolescent mental health services were mapped out as well. Analyzing the locations of these facilities showed that there is a lack of facilities in the east of Orleans Parish. Policy planners should consider alternative approaches to providing mental health care for children and adolescents that may reside in non-poor areas with large percentages of African American. Current locations should be maintained since they are near the poorest block groups in the parish. More study is needed for understanding why distance becomes significant for block groups with higher percentages African American or female-headed households with children under 18 years old

Participation rates in Aimhigher West: analysis and comparisons

Two linked reports on widening participation in the Aimhigher West partnership area. These conclude, inter alia, that local factors such as school outcomes, labour market conditions and ethnic mix make a significant contribution to defining the higher education participation rate

Belief in a Just World: Consumer Intentions and Behaviors Toward Ethical Products

Although consumers report positive attitudes toward ethical goods, their intentions and behaviors often do not follow suit. Just-world theory highlights the conditions under which consumers are most likely to prefer fair-trade products. This theory proposes that people are motivated to construe the world as a just place where people get what they deserve. In the current research, when people are confronted with high levels of injustice (communicated need is high) and avenues for justice restoration seem uncertain or unavailable, assisting others by supporting fair trade decreases. However, highlighting how injustice can be redressed through purchases enhances fair-trade support under conditions of high need. The effects are moderated by justice sensitivity factors, such as just-world beliefs and whether the product type (indulgence vs. necessity) makes the injustice of consumer privilege salient. The results suggest that communicating high need when requesting consumer prosocial actions can sometimes backfire. Marketers employing high need appeals should heighten perceptions of justice restoration potential and activate fairness-related thoughts through product positioning to encourage fair-trade purchases

Financing SME growth in the UK: meeting the challenges after the global financial crisis

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis new forms of SME finance are emerging in the place of traditional banking and equity finance sources. This Special Issue has its origins in a conference organised in June 2014 by the Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research (CEEDR) at Middlesex University Business School, where all but the final two papers were presented. The Conference was designed to provide a timely forum for leading academics, practitioners and policy makers to disseminate current research and practitioner knowledge exploring finance gaps and how best to address the financing needs of small high growth potential businesses

Adaptive resource allocation for QoE-aware mobile communication networks

A real-time adaptive resource allocation algorithm considering the end user's Quality of Experience (QoE) in the context of video streaming service is presented in this work. An objective no-reference quality metric, namely Pause Intensity (PI), is used to control the priority of resource allocation to users during the scheduling process. An online adjustment has been introduced to adaptively set the scheduler's parameter and maintain a desired trade-off between fairness and efficiency. The correlation between the data rates (i.e. video code rates) demanded by users and the data rates allocated by the scheduler is taken into account as well. The final allocated rates are determined based on the channel status, the distribution of PI values among users, and the scheduling policy adopted. Furthermore, since the user's capability varies as the environment conditions change, the rate adaptation mechanism for video streaming is considered and its interaction with the scheduling process under the same PI metric is studied. The feasibility of implementing this algorithm is examined and the result is compared with the most commonly existing scheduling methods