Search

The 18th century tax rolls of Dijon, France offer insight into the status of widows. The rolls generally list widows under the 'none' category of employment but evidence shows that they took menial jobs. With little earning power, the widows of Dijon took to living in groups and pooling their meager resources.

Council for National Parks president Brian Blessed in interviewed about his career move from acting to politics and about his opinions in the achievements of national parks in the world. Particular attention is given to his plans of reviving decaying parts of the countryside.

Issues concerning problems related to housing in London, United Kingdom, are discussed. Particular attention is given to difficulties encountered by London's mayor Ken Livingstone in implementing his project of building more homes in London.

Issues relating to policy for rural areas in Britain are examined in detail. The need for planners to adopt an approach that is more strategic is stressed.

The United Kingdom labour government has promised to set up a South Downs national park, but the local councils are not keen to have power taken away from them. The area covered by this national park is quite populated and planning decisions could be affected.

There should be closer connections between planners and business leaders, according to the British Chambers of Commerce Director-General David Lennan. He believes that, if the government is to make wide-reaching changes to the planning system, they must have the support of planners.

Business leaders in the UK, represented by the Confederation of British Industry, are calling for the planning system to be made more efficient. It has made a number of proposals, including improving the salaries of planning officers. It shares some views with the Royal Town Planning Institute, which believes that the government should establish national policies on a wide range of issues.

In this paper, we describe the development of a new digital phantom designed for Monte Carlo simulations of breast cancer and particularly positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of the axillary lymph nodes. The phantom was based on data from the Visible Human Project female data set. The phantom covers the head-to-diaphragm regions; 17 major tissue types were segmented and 66 individual lymph nodes were identified. We have used the phantom in Monte Carlo simulations to model a reduced field-of-view PET imager based on two flat plate arrays placed on either side of the shoulder. Images used a simple single angle set of projections. We have conducted two preliminary studies: one modeling a single-frame PET acquisition 60 min after FDG injection and the other modeling a dynamic PET acquisition simulating four time frames after FDG injection. The dynamic results were processed into parametric images using the Patlak method and show the advantage to be gained by including the temporal information for legion detection. Our preliminary results indicate that the performance of such an imager forming projection images is not sufficient for axillary node PET imaging. Index Terms--Biomedical imaging, cancer, Monte Carlo techniques, positron emission tomography (PET), simulation.

An interview with the director of planning for the seaside town of Hastings, UK, is presented. The proposed plans for the regeneration of the town are presented.

Issues concerning the decision by Transport Secretary Stephen Byers not to build a road by-pass for Hastings are discussed. The competing views of environmentalists, residents, local authorities and planners are examined.

The understaffing of the planning system in Ireland is discussed. Planners face a steep rise in planning applications due to the upsurge in building but their professional bodies stress the importance of strategic planning.

The background and planning career of Wyndham Thomas are discussed. His interest in the new towns movement, the benefits of new settlements over expanding existing ones and the plans for new towns in Cambridgeshire are explored.

Issues concerning the positions taken by the Conservative and the Labour political parties in the United Kingdom regarding planning permissions and building projects carried out on the green bent areas of cities are discussed. It is stressed that neither of the parties is better than the other.

Green Party member Victor Anderson is interviewed about his position on his opponents's environmental stand. Particular attention is given to the issues of housing and projects aimed at using certain types of land for house building in order to promote conservation.

Damian Green, the UK Conservative Party's spokesman for the environment, claims that the party is the saviour of the environment. The party are against the overdevelopment of land and loss of green spaces and feel that applications for mobile phone masts should be thrown out.

The Campaign for English Regions has received strong signs that the Labour party will introduce legislation paving the way for elected assemblies at the beginning of its anticipated second term in office. This would lead to cities such as Nottingham and Leeds becoming regional political centres.

Issues are presented concerning the attempts being made by the government to increase the availability of public playing fields and open spaces. The lack of clarity in the government's policy is discussed.

The planning and environment director of Cambridge City Council says that the city is facing mounting pressures with the need for new homes. The feeling is that the city should expand onto green belt land, but this is causing much criticism.

Issues concerning the views of the public and government bodies to the proposed by-pass of Hastings are discussed. The method of assessing the environmental impact of the proposed road is examined and the views of local lobbyists are explored.

Issues concerning government proposals on restricting building on sites at risk of flooding are discussed. The provisions of the draft guidance on development and flood risk and their possible impact on regeneration projects are examined.

Issues are presented concerning the shortage of town planners in the Republic of Ireland caused by the rapid expansion of the country's economy. The increased workload due to The Planning and Development Act 2000 is discussed.

Phillipa Silcock and Alice Lester, the managers of the development control department of the Islington Borough of London, are interviewed about their job-sharing arrangements. The methods used to ensure the continuity and efficiency of shared work are described.

An interview with chairman of the Environment Agency, Sir John Harman, discusses plans for the agency, including its commitment to achieving environmental improvements.

The revised lower government targets for housing for southeast England are discussed. The views of planning officers and campaigners on the target of 39,000 new homes per annum until 2006, and their distribution, are examined.

The study being carried out to determine the location of a new settlement near Cambridge, England, is discussed. The criteria for site location include existing schools, transportation systems, land values and sustainability.

An interview with the Assistant Planning Director for Manchester City Council Peter Babb is presented. He discusses his achievements in regenerating the north of the city and his plans for the east of the city.

The United Kingdom's Countryside Agency has proposed making two areas of the South East of England national parks. The designation team's head Marian Spain feels the tranquillity of these parks could be an antidote to the stresses of twenty-first century life.

Issues are presented concerning the plans of a consortium to build a new town on the site of a former air base in Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire consisting of 1,000 new homes. The site consists of 500 hectares.

Issues are presented concerning the accusations which have been made concerning the impartiality of the Planning Inspectorate. The large number of High Court cases which have been brought under the Human Rights Act is discussed.

More renewable energy sources could be developed in England in the first ten years of the twenty-first century, including wind energy in the north west of England and biomass power derived from the woodlands in the south east.

Local authorities and city planners have a duty to encourage people to take up working from home by promoting the live-work environment in city locations.

Robert Adam, an architect and chair of an RIBA working party, has called for development plans to outline design restraints.

The importance of integrating the planning of transport and land use in the UK is discussed, with focus on a new database being prepared by transport researchers at the University of Newcastle, England.

Alan Stones, senior direct at Melville Dunbar Associates, urban design consultancy, based in Coggeshall, wants to create more appealing urban areas, drawing inspiration from towns such as Coggeshall.

Software to predict the amount of human movement on a street, analyses the way it is integrated with the surrounding streets.

Stuart Fraser, chair of the planning committee of the Corporation of London, England, feels that the city can cope with a few more tall buildings. Fraser believes that economic influences are important and that a wealth creating area will benefit others in the country.

Draft planning guidelines for Humberside and Yorkshire, England, are examined in detail.

There has been a decline in applications for places on undergraduate planning courses at United Kingdom universities. The prospect of a shortage of trained planners in the future is considered.

Panel secretaries play an important role in ensuring the smooth running of public examinations of local authority development plans. They require many years of planning experience and have to be good project managers.

The environmental charity Sustrans Director John Grimshaw points out planners usually favour cars over pedestrians. He calls for greater use of the bicycle to help improve the environment.

The key to reaching planning goals is to discuss with developers from the very beginning, according to Dartford Borough Council Deputy Director of Planning and Development Rob Scott. He emphasizes that developers' aims must be included in planning briefs.

Prospective London assembly candidate Nicky Gavron believes the best way to ensure high quality planning strategies for the capital is to involve the public at all levels of discussion.

A lack of knowledge and money are holding back many UK local authorities from providing more information about planning applications and planning regulations on the Internet. Websites would be an ideal location for planning application information but a lack of funding for webservers, and the overriding costs of developing ever more complex web sites, has deterred many local authorities from expanding their services. Online services should be encouraged at local government level.

The Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology at Manchester University, England, is designing Atlas NW, a software program capable of graphically displaying the outcomes of alternative planning strategies in the North-West. This program reveals the impact of different sets of policies, and thus has the potential to make the process of development more coherent. Digital maps of the area are used to indicate potential repercussions of a number of different detailed policy choices.