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Planning time and performance project - the use and impact of extensions of time (EoTs) in planning practice in England
Get PDFThis report presents the main findings from a Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) early career research grant funded project on the subject of planning time and performance. The research was commissioned and joint funded by the RTPI and RTPI South-East region and conducted independently by the University of Reading. The research focussed on the use and impact of Extensions of Time (EoTs) in the planning determination process in England. The project forms part of a wider research agenda on the role of time in and for planning, being pursued at the University of Reading (see Dobson and Parker, 2024; Parker and Dobson, 2023; 2024; 2025).Extensions of time are typically negotiated to allow more time to determine a planning application beyond the statutory timescales. They have become a frequently used tool available to planners and applicants, but to date there has been limited research on EoTs. EoTs are used here as a lens to evaluate a range of internal and external issues that additional time is trying to bridge and ‘fix’, such as planning resourcing and complexity. This topic provides a window into the operation of the planning system more generally to assist in understanding why and how issues and challenges are produced and managed in practice. Time is the resource that often gets the least attention and, despite serial claims of ‘delay’, there is little detail on what time is being used for and why? This report considers a range of planning symptoms that EoTs are masking in the decision-making process
Influence of potential vorticity generated by diabatic cooling over the Tibetan Plateau on the surface air temperature of Eastern China during Boreal Winter
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Using reanalysis and model data, this study investigates potential vorticity (PV) generated by diabatic cooling over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and its associated climatic effects on adjacent regions. Results suggest that anomalous diabatic cooling over the TP exhibits a bottom-heavy vertical structure, which leads to the generated positive PV anomaly being confined within a shallow near-surface layer. The total PV generation anomaly within this layer is determined by the anomalous surface PV generation flux that is thermally driven by anomalous surface cooling. Further analysis revealed a significant interannual relationship linking stronger near-surface PV generation over the TP with anomalously warm winters in eastern China. The proposed mechanism involves PV generation by surface cooling, PV transport by katabatic flows, and an attendant weakened Siberian High. The surface cooling anomaly over the TP generates a positive PV anomaly within the near-surface layer, while simultaneously induces a form of anomalous katabatic flow down the slopes of the TP. This anomalous katabatic flow transports positive PV within the near-surface layer into the region of the Siberian High, increasing the local positive PV anomaly and weakening the Siberian High. A weaker Siberian High is associated with weaker winter monsoon flow and anomalous southerlies, leading to a warm surface air temperature anomaly over eastern China. The validity of the proposed mechanism was corroborated by numerical modeling. Relative to the well-studied winter blocking effect of the TP, this study offers and emphasizes new aspects of the TP’s climatic effects driven by its wintertime thermal conditions.
Significance Statement
The purpose of this study was to better understand the thermal effects of the Tibetan Plateau on surrounding regions during winter. We found that wintertime surface cooling over the Tibetan Plateau generates positive potential vorticity and induces downslope katabatic flows within the near-surface layer. The generated potential vorticity transported by these katabatic flows exerts substantial climatic impacts on surrounding areas. This result importantly reveals that the wintertime thermal effects of the Tibetan Plateau could be critical in driving the climate of eastern China. In addition to consideration of the blocking effect of the Tibetan Plateau, our results suggest that greater attention should be given to its thermal effects during wintertime
How to secure an innovation grant for firms in new industries? Gender and resource perspectives
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Research on financing for entrepreneurship has consolidated over the last decade. However, one question remains unanswered: how does the combination of external finance, such as equity and debt capital, and internal finance, such as working capital, affect the likelihood of grant funding over time? The purpose of this study is to analyse the relationship between different sources of financing and firms' ability to fundraise via innovation grants and to examine the role of female chief executive officer (CEO) in this relationship. Unlike equity and debt funding, innovation grants manifest a form of innovation acknowledgement and visibility, recognition of potential commercialization of inovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use firm-level financial data for 3,034 high-growth firms observed in 2015, 2017 and 2019 across 35 emerging sectors in the United Kingdom (UK) to test the factors affecting the propensity of high-growth firms to secure an innovation grant as a main source of fundraising for innovation during the early stages of product commercialization.
Findings
The results do not confirm gender bias for innovation fundraising in new industries. This contrasts with prior research in the field which has demonstrated that access to finance is gender-biased. However, the role of CEO gender is important as it moderates the relationship between the sources of funding and the likelihood of accessing the grant funding.
Research limitations/implications
This study does not analyse psychological or neurological factors that could determine the intrinsic qualities of male and female CEOs when making high-risk decisions under conditions of uncertainty related to innovation. Direct gender bias with regards to access to innovation grants could not be assumed. This study offers important policy implications and explains how firms in new industries can increase their likelihood of accessing a grant and how CEO gender can moderate the relationship between availability of internal and external funding and securing a new grant.
Social implications
This study implicates and empirically demonstrates that gender bias does not apply in fundraising for innovation in new industries. As female CEOs represent various firms in different sectors, this may be an important signal for investors in new product development and innovation policies targeting gender bias and inclusion.
Originality/value
The authors draw on female entrepreneurship and feminist literature to demonstrate how various sources of financing and gender change the likelihood of grant funding in both the short and long run. This is the first empirical study which aims to explain how various internal and external sources of finance change the propensity of securing an innovation grant in new industries
All dried up: the materiality of drought in Ladismith, South Africa
Get PDFThis paper conceptualizes droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies and hydroclimatology, this work simultaneously apprehends the role of politics and power in reshaping drought, along with the agency of biophysical processes —soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate— that co-produce droughts and their spatiotemporal patterning. The drought-stricken Ladismith in Western Cape, South Africa, is the instrumental case study and point of departure of our empirical analysis. To advance a materiality of drought that seriously accounts for the coevolution of biophysical and political transformations, we alter the spatiotemporal and empirical foci of drought analyses thereby retracing Ladismith’s socioecological history since colonial times. In turn, such extended framework exposes the agency of soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate and their metabolic exchanges with processes of colonization, apartheid, capitalist and neoliberal transformations of South African economy. We argue that the narrow pursuit of profits and capital accumulation of the few has produced a fundamental disruption between nature and society which contributed to transform Ladismith’s drought into a socioecological crisis. Whilst advancing debates on materiality, we note two fundamental contributions to the study of drought. First, our approach makes hydrological accounts of droughts less politically naive and socially blind. Second, it develops a political ecology of droughts and socioecological crises more attuned to the materiality of drought. We contend that apprehending the materiality of drought and the active role of its non-human processes can further understandings of the workings of power and the production of socioecological injustices
Cashing in on others’ misfortune: institutional investments in China’s commercial property market in times of flooding crisis
Get PDFFlooding disasters have extensively disrupted productive activities, causing market uncertainties. However, how these uncertainties affect institutional investors’ strategies in the commercial property market remains an underexplored question. To address the question, we provide a novel perspective by classifying flooding events into seasonal and climate change-induced (CCI) floods. Specifically, we conduct a spatial quasi-natural experiment to examine the treatment effect of seasonal and CCI floods on the commercial property market in Chinese cities from 2010 to 2018. We find that flooding disasters create a discount effect on property prices, which lures investors to flock into the market. However, institutional investors perform more cautiously in properties within CCI floodplains relative to counterparts within seasonal floodplains. In addition, local institutional investors benefit from higher discount premiums more than non-local institutional investors in floodplain markets, though this advantage diminishes in CCI floodplain markets. Our findings provide valuable implications for investors’ decision-making in flood-prone cities. Policymakers are encouraged to promote market information transparency and resilience-building initiatives to mitigate the adverse effects of flooding events on local economies
Toxicological assessment of benzalkonium chloride using planaria mobility: a comparison of manual and digital tracking methods
Get PDFThe principle of the 3Rs—Reduction, Refinement, and Replacement—encourages minimizing animal use, improving experimental design, and developing alternative models for toxicology testing. Among such models, planaria (aquatic flatworms) have gained increasing attention in pharmacology, regenerative medicine, and toxicology because of their simple anatomy, high environmental sensitivity, exceptional regenerative ability, and ease of laboratory maintenance. In this study, we examined the effects of benzalkonium chloride (BAC)—a commonly used pharmaceutical excipient with antimicrobial and permeability-enhancing properties, as well as a known environmental toxicant—on the locomotor activity of Schmidtea mediterranea using both manual assessment and Lolitrack video-tracking software. Six concentrations of BAC (5–1000 μg/mL) and a negative control were tested. Both approaches showed an overall reduction in locomotor activity over time, though manual analysis indicated a transient stimulation at lower concentrations. The software-based method demonstrated greater reliability, precision, and objectivity, making it preferable for toxicity evaluation in planaria
Extraction of cellobiose from spent coffee grounds and prebiotic potential of commercial cellobiose
No full textValorising abundant agro-industrial waste like spent coffee grounds (SCG) is a key goal of the circular
bioeconomy, but its potential for producing high-value functional food ingredients remains
underexplored compared to its use for biofuels. This thesis developed a novel pathway to produce
cellobiose from SCG and assessed the prebiotic potential of commercial cellobiose.
A laboratory-scale process was first established using an optimised alkaline pretreatment (4 M NaOH,
40 °C, 24 h), which increased glucan content from 11.6% to 18.9%. Targeted enzymatic hydrolysis with
a low-β-glucosidase, endoglucanase-rich cocktail enabled cellobiose accumulation with minimal
glucose by-product. The prebiotic potential of cellobiose was evaluated through in vitro batch
fermentation with human faecal inocula and a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled human
trial (n = 37). Cellobiose was well tolerated up to 10 g/day. Although no statistically significant changes
in microbiota composition were observed, correlation analysis revealed that cellobiose drives tight,
community-level shifts among interconnected butyrate-producing bacteria. This work establishes a
proof-of-concept for producing cellobiose from SCG and provides the first comprehensive analysis of
its effects on the human gut microbiota. The findings establish a strong foundation for developing
cellobiose as a novel prebiotic from a sustainable waste stream
Women’s novels and the style of satire: Inchbald, Wollstonecraft, Hays, Edgeworth, Austen
No full textToward the end of the eighteenth century, the Augustan mode of satire found its way into the novels
of a handful of women writers with ties to radical and Dissenting circles. Historically perceived as a
masculine genre with a conservative or regulatory function, satire’s traditional aims were at odds
with progressive agendas. Its presence in novels by Elizabeth Inchbald, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary
Hays, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen demands attention to that end. This thesis examines how
women writers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reimagined the style of satire
through the emergent form of the novel, approaching satirical heritage in terms of stylistics rather
than direct literary influence. Loosely examining novels of the 1790s, the first four chapters consider
subjects including the reformative capacity of satire versus sensibility in literary fiction (Inchbald);
the limits of satirical style in connection with radical philosophy (Wollstonecraft); satire’s effects on
the form of the novel, and the novel’s effects on satire itself (Hays); and satirical style and public
discourse (Edgeworth). The impact of the stylistic adaptations these four women undertake can be
seen nearly twenty years later, in the two final published novels of Jane Austen, where she borrows
the style of gendered satire to present the novels’ patriarchs in terms of vices typically associated
with women, levelling the gendered moral distinctions that traditional satire—and traditional
novelistic conventions—had cultivated. This thesis positions the style of satire as a lasting literary
intervention in the development of the novel, examining both what it afforded and what it
demanded from women writing fiction at the dawn of the Romantic period
An activity-based lessons learned model to support scheduling decisions in construction
Get PDFThe aim of this study is to develop an activity-based lessons-learned model that allows construction companies to capture, store, classify, and reuse activity-related lessons learned from previous projects, thereby increasing the reliability of time estimates in scheduling. Scheduling is a knowledge-intensive process that requires the utilization of data and expert opinion elicitation from various levels of an organization in construction projects. This research consists of five successive steps: performing a needs analysis, proposing an activity-based lessons-learned process model, validating the proposed process model, developing a tool to apply the proposed model in a computer environment, and testing the applicability of the tool. To implement the proposed model in practice, a web-based tool, namely the Construction Industry Scheduling with Activity-Based Lessons Learned Tool (ConSALL Tool), was developed. Its functionality was evaluated using black-box testing. The tool was then applied in a real construction project.
Results show that ConSALL has the potential to improve scheduling decisions in construction projects by incorporating data and experience from previous projects. Findings from this research can be used to develop similar models and AI tools to foster activity-based learning in other project-based industries as well as the construction industry. This paper presents an innovative approach to enhancing construction project scheduling by leveraging lessons learned from past projects. The development and application of the ConSALL Tool demonstrate a practical implementation of the proposed model, providing a framework that can be adapted to other industries to improve project planning and execution
