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Heidi Kaufman's book, "Strangers in the Archive: Literary Evidence and London's East End," explores the life and work of Maria Polack, an openly Jewish Englishwoman who published the first novel by a Jewish woman in 1830. Kaufman's research reveals that Polack's novel, "Fiction without Romance, or The Locket-Watch," targeted a broad Jewish readership across various communities, including readers in British colonies like Jamaica and Barbados. Kaufman expands Polack's archive by consulting the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership website, comparing subscriber data with other publications, and incorporating private papers from the Lyon family, who had connections to the West Indies. Kaufman's work highlights the interconnectedness of East and West End literary culture and challenges stereotypes of urban degeneration. [Extracted from the article]

This paper diachronically analyses code-switching and language maintenance and shift between Latin and French, on the one hand, and English, on the other hand, in the earliest business accounts of the Grocers' livery company during medieval London. Linguistic methods used here have been successfully applied to manuscripts of another company: the Mercers of London. The new findings, first, confirm that the earlier the account was recorded, the more present Latin and French are, whereas the later the account was kept, the more present English is; however, second, they reveal an unnoticed period of code-switching into Latin and French before English monolingualism, whose evolution stages seem to occur in reverse order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As known, the realistic, exponential, fall-off of the rate of production of light mesons in the chromo-electric field of a quark–antiquark string, as a function of the meson mass, can be obtained from the Schwinger-formula Gaussian fall-off within a phenomenological approach which assumes a certain distribution of the string tension. This approach gets a clear meaning in the London limit of the dual superconductor, where the logarithmic increase of the chromo-electric field towards the core of the string leads precisely to the change of the Gaussian fall-off to the exponential one, thus allowing for an identification of the phenomenological distribution of the string tension. In this paper, we demonstrate that, for this distribution of the string tension, the distribution of large-size Yang–Mills instantons, which are interacting with the confining monopole background, becomes O (1 / ρ 3) , where ρ is the size of an instanton. Since such a distribution of large-size instantons is known to yield confinement, we conclude that, in the London limit of the dual-superconductor vacuum, instantons can form a confining medium, and we evaluate their contribution to the total string tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a complex inter-relationship between nutrition and morbidity in human health. Many diseases reduce nutritional status, but on the other hand, having low nutritional status is also known to make individuals more susceptible to certain diseases and to more serious illness. Modern evidence on these relationships, determined after the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines, may not be applicable to historical settings before these medical technologies were available. This paper uses a historical cohort study based on records from the London Foundling Hospital to determine the causal effect of nutritional status of children, proxied by weight- and height-for-age Z-scores, on the odds of contracting five infectious diseases of childhood (measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox and whooping cough) and on sickness duration from these diseases. I identify a causal effect by exploiting the randomisation of environmental conditions as foundling children were removed from their original homes, then fostered with families in counties nearby London and later returned to the Foundling Hospital's main site in London. I find no effect of nutritional status on the odds of contracting the five diseases, but I do find a historically important and statistically significant effect of nutritional status on sickness duration for measles and mumps. These findings have three implications. First, historical incidence of these diseases was unrelated to nutritional status, meaning that poor nutritional status during famines or during the Colombian Exchange did not affect the spread of epidemics. However, undernutrition in these events may have exacerbated measles severity. Second, improving nutritional status in the past 150 years would have reduced the severity of measles and mumps infections but not affect the decline in whooping cough mortality. Finally, selective culling effects from measles would be larger than those from whooping cough since whooping cough severity was not correlated with underlying nutritional status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scope of this paper is to give an insight into one of the main deep-sea ports in the United Kingdom, the London Gateway, which is a part of the Thames Gateway project and to indicate how, through becoming more rail focussed, it is possible for both output and efficiency to increase. The aim of this study is ultimately to highlight how gradually shifting the reliance of moving freight to rail from road can enhance the overall throughput and output of a port, while also improving the nation’s overall carbon emissions. However, as the results from this simulation show, there is not always the option to solely rely upon rail freight, this is because an over dependency upon one form instead of the other can ultimately have detrimental consequences upon both throughput and output, as well as questions over whether the current rail infrastructure of the United Kingdom has the capacity and ability to handle longer freight trains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delineates the resources and strategies that three young black men use to gain status and construct and perform an often-violent street masculinity on a London (UK) housing estate. Ethnographic fieldwork occurred in 2019 during a growing moral panic about youth violence and knife crime. Referring to resources as types of capital, they are categorised under the four headings of economic, social, linguistic, cultural, and physical. Central to the research is the material body, which we view as both an agent and object of the practices through which young black men produce their masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban grass-roots library is an important part of the public cultural service system, and also a place to carry out national reading and lifelong learning, which is of great significance to the construction of a learning society. In this paper, the development and evolution of urban grassroots libraries in China are reviewed, and the current situation and usage issues of grassroots libraries in Beijing are analyzed. Moreover, the development strategy of idea stores in London, UK is studied, and characteristics are summarized, and possible references are sought. In the new era, urban grassroots libraries should integrate into communities with multiple functions and play a more sufficient role in public education, learning and training, and other aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that squatting provides a concrete and theoretical location for dismantling binaries between successful and failed resistance. Focusing on the development of a political and affective consciousness and the inherent antagonism within squatting above the temporality of an individual squat or occupation helps to recentre the 'urban political' and understand the value and power of the urban commons. I combine radical democracy and affect theory to argue for the centrality of squatting in challenging urban capitalist hegemony. Not only does squatting transform consciousness, but the physically and emotionally supportive practices that it engenders helps to return the emotive as well as the political to the urban environment. I support this claim with reference to the successful 2015 Aylesbury occupation in London, which the occupiers approached with affective solidarity and a desire to reclaim space through antagonistic urban insurrection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aviation emissions that are dispersed into the Earth's atmosphere affect the climate and air pollution, with significant spatiotemporal variation owing to heterogeneous aircraft activity. In this paper, we use historical flight trajectories derived from Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) telemetry and reanalysis weather data for 2019–2021 to develop the Global Aviation emissions inventory based on ADS-B (GAIA). In 2019, 40.2 million flights collectively travelled 61 billion kilometres using 283 Tg of fuel, leading to CO2, NOX, non-volatile particulate matter (nvPM) mass and number emissions of 893 Tg, 4.49 Tg, 21.4 Gg, and 2.8×1026, respectively. Global responses to COVID-19 led to reductions in the annual flight distance flown, CO2, and NOX emissions in 2020 (-43 %, -48 % and -50 %, respectively relative to 2019) and 2021 (-31 %, -41 % and -43 %, respectively) with significant regional variability. Short-haul flights with duration < 3 h accounted for 83 % of all flights, yet only for 35 % of the 2019 CO2 emissions, while long-haul flights with duration > 6 h (5 % of all flights) were responsible for t43 % of CO2 and 49 % of NOX emissions. Globally, actual flight trajectories flown are, on average, ~5 % greater than the great-circle path between the origin-destination airport but this varies by region and flight distance. An evaluation of 8,705 unique flights between London and Singapore showed large variabilities in the flight trajectory profile, fuel consumption and emission indices. GAIA captures the spatiotemporal distribution of aviation activity and emissions and is provided for use in future studies to evaluate the negative externalities arising from global aviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to empirically review the process of housing financialisation in London, exploring a time series causal relationship between house prices and financial instruments, using the Granger method and a VAR test. In order to carry out this analysis, we use a vector autoregressive model with a monthly data series that seeks to contribute to exploring this relationship. The results are relevant to the important role that the theory of housing financialisation plays in explaining the crisis of access to secure tenure that can be seen in developed nations. The results also provide an empirical background to pursue this theory more specifically in the context of the vectors that are effectively causal to the financialisation processes that impact everyday life through housing prices. The study is original, given that this type of modelling has not previously been carried out for a major world city such as London, and adds to the findings of similar explorations that have applied other methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK economy is one of the most geographically unequal among OECD countries, with London's lead having increased since the mid-1980s. The UK is also one of the most centralised, in terms of the overwhelming concentration of economic, financial, political and institutional power in the capital, London. A key question, therefore, is whether the latter feature is a cause of the former. This paper focuses on one aspect of this question, namely London's dominating role in the UK's financialised, neoliberal-globalised growth model that has held sway for the past forty years. It is often argued that London's pre-eminence in finance acts as an engine of national growth, delivering benefits to all regions through 'trickle down' effects. We argue that these claims are exaggerated and that much more need to be known about London's negative impacts on other regions and cities, about the geographical dimensions of what some have labelled the 'finance curse'. We argue that such negative effects are integral to the growth of regional inequality in the UK. The Government's new 'Levelling Up' policy, though innovative in some respects, remains subordinate to the promotion of London and finance, and is unlikely to decentre and spatially rebalance the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although public reaction to disaster has been the subject of much research, reactions to acts of terrorism have been studied less, sustaining a common assumption that fear is the generic response. The present paper tests this assumption through a survey of reactions to the Manchester Arena bombing and London Bridge attack of 2017, and the findings suggest that an important likely additional modal citizen reaction to such events is one of anger at the perpetrators, holding important implications for public policy and security practice in the wake of such acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By drawing, among others, on the ideas of the Bakhtin Circle and Judith Butler, this paper explores spatial struggles over the right to free speech at Hyde Park, London, 1861–1962. From the 1860s to the early 20th century, the state gradually constructed a "monologic" discourse about an ideal‐typical "indecent" speaker who would "trespass" on Hyde Park through their "excitable speech" against a legally sanctioned right to give a "public address" in the park. This discourse gave the state some room to evict those it claimed to be transgressing "public address". However, different "heteroglossic coalitions" of regulars ensured that Hyde Park remained not only a "political assembly" to discuss political issues, but also a "social assembly" to exercise free speech on a range of social topics. Indeed, by the 1950s, these coalitions used a nearby road scheme to successfully argue it was the state that was potentially trespassing, or "encroaching", on free speech at Hyde Park. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based upon the searches carried out in London by the Wardens of the Goldsmiths’ Company during the seventeenth century. Rings that were thought to be below the Gold Standard of 22 carats were taken to Goldsmiths’ Hall to be assayed. A description of the rings and the subsequent result of the assay were entered into the Court Books by the Clerk. Some of these descriptions include a note and sometimes a drawing of the maker’s mark. Other entries in the Court Books give the names and details of the careers of certain ringmakers which are entered in the Mitchell Merry Database at Goldsmiths’ Hall. By comparing these records with the marks given for particular rings, it is possible to suggest which ringmaker used the mark. Short biographies are given of possible or probable owners of these marks. An illustrated glossary of seventeenth century terms for the various ring types is provided. These records give an indication of the lives of seventeenth century ringmakers and how they coped with the calamities of the century: war, plague and fire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper investigates the potential of virtual reality (VR) technologies—specifically, building information modeling (BIM) ("Autodesk Revit") and game engines ("Unreal Engine")—to enhance public involvement in the design and execution of architecture and urban projects. The main research question focuses on comparing the effectiveness of these two methods in creating an interactive design model for participatory design in public spaces. Methods: The study employed a VR exploratory experiment with 33 participants, followed by semi-structured interviews to analyze two recent developments in London: the Sky Garden, and Crossrail Place Roof Garden. Participants interacted with the design models and provided feedback on their experiences. Results: The findings demonstrate that integrating VR with BIM software using the Enscape plugin effectively enhances user involvement, enabling real-time generation and testing of design alternatives. While both methods were found to be beneficial, participants reported a preference for the direct implementation of VR in BIM software. Conclusions: This research highlights the potential of VR technologies—specifically, BIM and game engines—as a co-design approach for public and social spaces in urban environments. It also identifies limitations and future research opportunities in adopting these methods for participatory design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit brought an end to the free‐movement rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom, but the rights of the poorest Europeans were being actively curtailed even before that. From 2010, street homeless EU citizens were deported through a series of pilot schemes operating in London. In 2016, their 'administrative removal' was instituted as national policy. Using process‐tracing methodology, we have analysed publicly available documents and others obtained through Freedom of Information requests to assemble an account of how and why a range of 'stakeholders' worked together to deport rough‐sleeping EU citizens. Our paper addresses two research questions: (i) what actors contributed to these deportations and (ii) through the use of which analytic framework(s) can we begin to understand the deportation of street homeless foreigners? As we find, London's deportation apparatus involved national and local‐level state actors, homelessness NGOs and local businesses. The deportation of rough‐sleeping EU citizens was a racist biopolitical practice that reflected a concern for 'hygiene' at local and national scales, as well as the prevention of 'harm' to individual and social bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted people's lifestyles and travel behaviours, which may persist post-pandemic. An effective monitoring tool that allows us to track the level of change is vital for controlling viral transmission, predicting travel and activity demand and, in the long term, for economic recovery. In this paper, we propose a set of Twitter mobility indices to explore and visualise changes in people's travel and activity patterns, demonstrated through a case study of London. We collected over 2.3 million geotagged tweets in the Great London Area (GLA) from Jan 2019 –Feb 2021. From these, we extracted daily trips, origin-destination matrices, and spatial networks. Mobility indices were computed based on these, with the year 2019 as a pre-Covid baseline. We found that in London, (1) People are making fewer but longer trips since March 2020. (2) In 2020, travellers showed comparatively reduced interest in central and sub-central activity locations compared to those in outer areas, whereas, in 2021, there is a sign of a return to the old norm. (3) Contrary to some relevant literature on mobility and virus transmission, we found a poor spatial relationship at the Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA) level between reported COVID-19 cases and Twitter mobility. It indicated that daily trips detected from geotweets and their most likely associated social, exercise and commercial activities are not critical causes for disease transmission in London. Aware of the data limitations, we also discuss the representativeness of Twitter mobility by comparing our proposed measures to more established mobility indices. Overall, we conclude that mobility patterns obtained from geo-tweets are valuable for continuously monitoring urban changes at a fine spatiotemporal scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Faraday Discussion 'From optical to THz control of materials' was held in London, UK, and online on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th May 2022. The meeting brought together established and early-career scientists, postgraduate students, scientific editors, and industrial researchers in the field of spectroscopy and materials science from over ten different countries interested in exploring the physical properties of materials at ultrafast timescales driven by optical and THz excitations. This conference report provides highlights of this meeting and we give summaries of the presentations including the introductory lecture, all the papers discussed, and the concluding remarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine how evolutions related to the fragmentation of labour markets, the flexibilisation of work and employment conditions, and the multiplication of teacher training models and teachers' roles in schools, are contributing to reshaping teachers' careers. Drawing on interviews with teachers and senior leaders from 8 schools in London, our analyses highlight six career patterns and their embeddedness in the changing institutional environment of labour markets for teachers. Our results help renew the dialogue between research on teachers' professional lives and on teachers' labour markets. They have wider implications for knowledge on the fragmentation of the teaching profession, beyond the London case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the challenges entangled with co-curatorial processes developed with highly heterogeneous, minoritised communities? Why do these exhibitions, even when co-created with community members, often emphasize community homogeneity over diversity? I address these questions by focusing on the Science Museum, London. I look back at a past project, What Makes Your Gender? (2014): a pivotal step in the Museum's treatment of gender diversity co-curated with trans young people and activists associated with Gendered Intelligence, a trans-led charity aiming to improve trans people's lives. Drawing on my exhibition analysis and ethnographic research of this co-creation project, I discuss why the heterogeneity and divisions within the curatorial team were overlooked in the co-curatorial process and final display. The discussion then shifts towards more recent debate surrounding the Museum's treatment of trans/gender people in the Who Am I? permanent gallery (2000 to present). The paper shows how inclusive curatorial projects attempting to validate minoritised communities, which are subject to discriminatory discourse in the media and wider public realm, can privilege homogenizing and easily 'consumable' representations of trans people at the expense of more accurate portrayals. It argues for greater attention to intersectionality and community diversity in curatorial projects co-created with heterogenous minoritised groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic activity is highly unevenly distributed within cities, as reflected in the concentration of economic functions in specific locations, such as finance in the Square Mile in London. The extent to which this concentration reflects natural advantages versus agglomeration forces is central to a range of public policy issues, including the impact of local taxation and transport infrastructure improvements. This paper reviews recent quantitative urban models, which incorporate both differences in natural advantages and agglomeration forces, and can be taken directly to observed data on cities. We show that these models can be used to estimate the strength of agglomeration forces and evaluate the impact of transportation infrastructure improvements on welfare and the spatial distribution of economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades policies of renewing social housing in partnership with private developers have become widespread and critics have described such policies as state-led gentrification. Whilst resident participation in such schemes is often viewed as tokenistic, this paper presents a case of estate renewal where a well established residents' association is having some success in influencing the outcomes of redevelopment. The residents' association faces considerable challenges as the local authority has entered a partnership with a major developer and the majority of new homes will be for sale. Nonetheless, the residents' association has influenced the regeneration in terms of the offers of rehousing to existing residents and in terms of maintaining their sense of place. However, many leaseholders have been displaced and there is an ongoing struggle to ensure that there is not a net loss of social rented housing. The paper highlights how sustained organisation by residents can affect the outcomes of redevelopment, but also illustrates the limitations of developer-led regeneration in meeting social objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an account of post-war London from the building site paintings of Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. It approaches these paintings as a visceral and embodied source of data regarding the post-World War Two landscape of bomb damaged London. It contrasts this form of knowledge with the narratives of memorialization, and order and control, which I argue characterize post-war reconstruction. In this context the paintings are read as an ontological statement about the complexity and ambiguity of the urban landscape, one which contrasts with historical and contemporary narratives of the urban built environment. The paper posits that knowledges which preserve the complexities and materialities of urban space have the potential to provide political interventions into both historical and contemporary narratives of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Second World War, artist Peter Laszlo Peri approached the London County Council with the idea of creating sculptural reliefs with a family theme in coloured concrete on two of Lambeth's new housing estates. The results were three reliefs: 'Following the Leader (Memorial to the Children Killed in the Blitz)', 1949, on the Vauxhall Gardens estate and 'Boys Playing Football', 1951–52, and 'Mother with Children Playing', 1951–52, on the nearby South Lambeth estate. After the war, the reconstruction and improvement of housing were crucial. The London County Council planned for large areas of London to be rebuilt: including an ambitious programme of housing. This paper looks at these artworks within the context of the housing they sit amongst. I read these sculptural reliefs, created between 1949 and 1952, within the LCC's post-war housing and community policies and as symbols of Lambeth's renewal. This paper places these reliefs, and their settings, within the wider context of debates surrounding the post-war renewal of London, community participation and placemaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The health effects of urban air pollution are particularly acute for children. This paper details a research project with undergraduates drawing on UPE and children's geography that attempts to address the uneven burdens of air pollution in an east London neighbourhood. Children are uniquely socially and biophysically exposed to the toxic and illegal air pollution plaguing many cities around the world. Scholars working in urban political ecology (UPE) and in children's geographies have a significant opportunity to research these toxic metabolic flows and responses to them, though scholarship at the intersection of UPE and children's geographies is scarce and falls behind the growing social movements involved in activism regarding air pollution in children's urban spaces. Additionally, the intersection of children's geographies and UPE presents a chance for significant pedagogical reflection in UPE, which, to date, has been nearly absent. To address these issues, this paper details a multi‐method and participatory action research project with undergraduates to locate and intervene in uneven and unequal urban metabolism of air pollution near a primary school in east London. It argues for the increasing relevance of air pollution for UPE scholarship, for further interdisciplinary work at the intersection of UPE and children's geographies, and for the greater participation of undergraduates in urban environmental politics beyond the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women played fundamental roles in the establishment of London as a 'science city' in the period 1650-1800.Taking its inspiration from the themes explored in the Science Museum's new permanent gallery, Science City 1550-1800:The Linbury Gallery, this paper explores four broad categories of contribution that women made - as scientific instrument makers or retailers, as teachers, as students or participants, and as authors or correspondents in science - to demonstrate that they played more significant roles than has been fully accounted for previously.To do so, we consider the examples of 25 specific individuals and various other virtually unidentifiable women spanning the period 1650-1800. By bringing together examples of different types of contribution, we show that women did not play a single role; they contributed to the emergence of a scientific culture in London in many different ways. All of the women discussed in this paper were individuals with their own reasons for involvement in science. But several factors such as contemporary perceptions of women, networks in London, and the growing demand for scientific knowledge united them all and influenced their experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper argues that this animal surveillance has the potential for considerable function creep going far outside the scheme's original objectives and acts as a conduit for more problematic surveillance of humans. This results in social sorting of people with subsequent unforeseen consequences leading to discrimination and curtailment of freedoms for both animals and their owners. Ultimately this opens people up to further intrusive targeting by commercial interests and, more alarmingly, scrutiny from law enforcement agencies. Design/methodology/approach: An empirical study examining an initiative involving the collection of canine DNA sources data from publicly available Cabinet, Select Committee and Scrutiny Committee records from the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (LBBD). It also draws on news media sources, publicity material from the company running the scheme and from this and other local authorities. Methods include analysis of documents, semiotic and discourse analysis. Findings: This paper highlights the importance of animals to surveillance studies and examines the extent to which animals are a part of the surveillant assemblage in their own right. It also demonstrates how nonhuman animals extend the reach of the surveillant assemblage. Social implications: The scheme was called a badge of considerate dog ownership, yet it is one that can be franchised to tie up with diverse income streams being described as advantageous in the age of austerity. In 2017, it was reported that this scheme was to be rolled out in other areas and was moving from being voluntary to being mandatory with the enforcement of Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs). These have been described as "geographically defined ASBOS" that have come into force under the Anti-social Behaviour and Policing Act (2014); they often work to criminalise activities that were not previously considered illegal. Originality/value: In the theorising of surveillance, animals have been largely overlooked. Epidemiological studies proliferate, yet the role of animals in many aspects of everyday surveillance has been neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against a backdrop of rising youth violence in the UK, the issue of gang policing has once more risen to prominence. Intense debates surrounding police cuts have led to renewed calls for a 'war on gangs', echoing earlier responses to England's summer of violent disorder in 2011. Drawing on a long-term ethnographic study of policing in the London Borough of Newham, this paper reports on a case-study of gang policing during a similarly fraught political moment. In the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics, a street-based group of minority ethnic youth – the so-called Portuguese Mafia (PGM) – became the primary focus for gang policing in the Borough. Though the group did not self-identify as a gang, their activities were inflated and became the subject of a targeted enforcement initiative. These distortions, we argue, resulted from the influence of political decision-making on the working practices of front-line police officers, amplified in a climate of austerity. Through the reconstruction of this 'natural history', we seek to contribute an empirical account of the ambiguities inherent in police definitions of gangs, and the discriminatory consequences of categorisation. Theoretically, the paper seeks to contribute a critical sociological account of gangs and gang policing that bridges extant objectivist and constructivist readings of gangs through engagement with the Bourdieusian concept of 'field'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes a series of experimental testing on natural stiff London clay samples retrieved from the New Hook Farm in the Isle of Sheppey, UK. The experimental program includes determination of macroscopic and microscopic properties, chemical compositions, Atterberg limits, permeability, and compressibility parameters in both intact and reconstituted states. The paper integrates the earlier studies, the new findings, and the commercial investigation results with the aim to extend the current knowledge of the geological and geotechnical characteristics of this stiff clay from the east of the London basin. Some comparisons are also made with shallow depth London clay from Heathrow Terminal 5 site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, produced by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling, MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and the Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics, Imperial College, London, was presented to the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O), and then to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and considered at its 9th meeting on 20th February 2020. Published on Friday 12 June 2020. This paper demonstrated how little was known abut the effects of the pandemic at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this paper brings into dialogue empirical material from young, highly educated Portuguese migrants in London, theoretical work on desire in migration studies and sociological approaches to theorising aspirations. The paper argues that young migrants' narratives of migration shed important light on the working of aspirations in the processes of becoming through migration. Such orientations towards the future are shaped by young migrants' engagements with doxic and habituated logics producing aspirations. The analytical lens of desire illuminates the role of discursive self-positioning, emotions, and the embodiment of lived experiences of migration in the enacting of particular migrant subjectivities and associated aspirations. In a context in which competing discourses of generation constitute important registers of meaning about migration and aspirations, mobilising generation discourses is a key temporal practice in young migrants' constructions of narratives of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global industrial restructuring is a main reason for the current state and shape of contemporary European cities. A major problem in peripheral regions in Europe is the loss of the process and assembly segment of industrial production. Two approaches, tourism and high-tech innovation, are at the forefront of city transformation in post-industrial Europe. As tourism is a well-established development driver, we analyse whether digital innovation, a subset of high-tech innovation, can be a parallel pathway for peripheral regions to achieve more resilient and balanced development. This paper describes two digital innovation models, one in London and another in Berlin, as city development drivers to speculate on their limits and suitability for developing peripheral regions. As their direct translation is difficult, this paper defines assessment criteria within the triple helix model of innovation and re-casts them through the concept of slow innovation, which is applicable in peripheral regions. We conclude that there are different pathways to achieving suitable digital innovation conditions and that although digital innovation is currently not a major development driver in the periphery, it will be viable if interpreted through peripheral concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influx of Eastern European Jewry into London stirred controversy within British society and within the Anglo-Jewish community. Newly arrived Jews became part of the debate over the "alien problem," which resulted in the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905. This paper will examine the disputes over the poverty and "dirtiness" of Jewish immigrants in the context of the British imperial and racial discourse. The aim is to show how the controversy over the poverty of immigrants and the sanitary conditions of the Jewish quarter exposed deeper social anxiety over the position of the British Empire. The paper will focus on accusations against Jews from Eastern Europe of impoverishing and polluting the "heart of the Empire," thus contributing to the collapse of the ideals of British progress and superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the transformation of la sape, a well-established fashion and lifestyle subculture in Congolese diasporic culture, among the London Congolese group. The focal point of investigation is the distinctive role that the city of London has played in shaping the practice. Following an overview on the body performance of la sape, the paper traces the quite recent establishment and evolution of the trend in the city. Some ambivalent points of view among older generation of London sapeurs are also introduced. Significantly, the article documents several voices of younger London Congolese who are not members of the group and stand firmly against it. Their experiences highlight controversial ways of looking at the lifestyle choices and values promoted by the movement. The paper, therefore, demonstrates how the city of London has forged deep discrepancies within the group and has influenced a generational polarity regarding the subculture among British Congolese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by actual parcel delivery operations in London, this paper describes a two-echelon distribution system that combines the use of driving and walking as part of last-mile deliveries in urban areas for a single driver. The paper presents an optimisation model that explicitly treats and integrates the driving and walking elements, and describes a branch-and-cut algorithm that uses new valid inequalities specifically tailored for the problem at hand. Computational results based on real instances obtained from a courier operating in London are presented to show the performance of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to provide an important perspective to the predictive capacity of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting dates and production announcements for energy futures (crude oil West Texas Intermediate (WTI), gasoline reformulated gasoline blendstock for oxygen blending (RBOB), Brent oil, London gas oil, natural gas and heating oil) market returns and volatilities. Design/methodology/approach - To examine the impact of OPEC news on energy futures market returns and volatilities, the authors use a conditional quantile regression methodology during the period from April 01, 2013 to June 30, 2017. Findings - From the empirical findings, the authors show a conditional dependence between energy futures returns and OPEC-based predictors; hence, the authors can find clear the significance of relationship in the process of financialization of the OPEC announcements and energy futures in the case of this paper. From the quantile-causality test, the authors find that the effect of OPEC news is important to energy futures. Specifically, OPEC announcements dates predict the quantiles of the conditional distribution of energy futures market returns. Originality/value - The authors confirm the presence of unidirectional nexus between OPEC news and energy commodities futures in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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On 14th March 1554 at the Mercers' Hall on Cheapside, London, 'serten velyns [villains] dyd breke the neke of the ymage of sant Thomas of Canturbere, and on of ys arms broke'. This attack followed a previous bout of iconoclasm earlier in the year. Through the biographical study of this statue of St Thomas Becket, this paper provides a fresh insight into the London experience of the Reformation in the first half of the sixteenth century. By drawing on theories of the temporal nature of art, the paper explores how the turbulent history of London, plus royal religious policies, during the English Reformation maps onto the treatment of the statue from the reign of Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. It considers the importance of the statue both to the Mercers' Company and within the City and how the statue reflects the complex religious sentiments felt by contemporaries in London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a decision analysis on product integration of family security services and residential fire insurance in the London and Taiwan markets by using the proposed mathematical models for counting sustainable value. This paper shows the five main different results between London and Taiwan markets with ten different parameters of the family security market, to find out the optimal number of family security integrated services for each security company in London. The improvement of the risk aversion effect based on risk and financial management will enhance the market share of the private security industries in the London and Taiwan markets. The results of this research can serve as a reference for the decision-making of private security industries on product integration under sustainable value consideration. The research findings highlight the potential benefits for both the private security industry and the insurance industry in their design and negotiation for product integration to improve both of business operation and achieve corporate social responsibility goals to match the sustainability in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the recent advances in complex network theory, urban mobility flow patterns, typically encoded as origin-destination (OD) matrices, can be represented as weighted directed graphs, with nodes denoting city locations and weighted edges the number of trips between them. Such a graph can further be augmented by node attributes denoting the various socio-economic characteristics at a particular location in the city. In this paper, we study the spatio-temporal characteristics of "hotspots" of different types of socio-economic activities as characterized by recently developed attribute-augmented network centrality measures within the urban OD network. The workflow of the proposed paper comprises the construction of temporal OD networks using two custom data sets on urban mobility in Rome and London, the addition of socio-economic activity attributes to the OD network nodes, the computation of network centrality measures, the identification of "hotspots" and, finally, the visualization and analysis of measures of their spatio-temporal heterogeneity. Our results show structural similarities and distinctions between the spatial patterns of different types of human activity in the two cities. Our approach produces simple indicators thus opening up opportunities for practitioners to develop tools for real-time monitoring and visualization of interactions between mobility and economic activity in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New analysis of 8 years of data from the London Cycle Hire Scheme (LCHS). • 73.4 million trips analysed, showing spatial pattern of growth. • Expansion of the scheme into lower income areas explored. • Results show high growth rates in comparatively low income areas. • Our finding support further expansion of the LCHS into diverse areas. Pro-cycling interventions, and cycle hire schemes in particular, are often assumed to primarily benefit the privileged. This framing has played-out in academic research, with many papers exploring the relationship between cycling and existing inequalities. A growing body of evidence suggests that cycle hire schemes tend to serve wealthy areas and young, high income groups, mirroring inequalities in other types of cycling uptake, yet there has been little research into the 'direction of travel' and whether such inequalities are growing or 'levelling up' over time. This paper explores the uptake of the London Cycle Hire Scheme (LCHS), a large, early and prominent scheme that had the explicit aim of 'normalising' cycling. The method involved reproducible analysis (with code documented in the GitHub repo Robinlovelace/cycle-hire-inclusive) of 73.4 million cycle high records spanning 8 years from January 2012 to December 2019, using the geographic location of docking stations alongside official statistics to assess social and spatial inequalities in uptake. The method involved analysis of 73.4 million cycle high records spanning 8 years from January 2012 to December 2019, using the geographic location of docking stations alongside official statistics to assess social and spatial inequalities in uptake. We found that, contrary to the trend for increasing segregation and geographic inequalities, the usage of the LCHS have become increasingly geographically distributed across London over time, with AM peak usage in comparatively low-income areas seeing high levels of growth. Our study shows that cycle hire schemes can be designed and expanded in ways that benefit a wide range of people, including those from low income areas, and that new cycle hire docking stations in poorer areas can succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]