Street-level concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) and particulate matter (PM) exceed public health standards in many cities, causing increased mortality and morbidity. Concentrations can be reduced by controlling emissions, increasing dispersion, or increasing deposition rates, but little attention has been paid to the latter as a pollution control method. Both NO(2) and PM are deposited onto surfaces at rates that vary according to the nature of the surface; deposition rates to vegetation are much higher than those to hard, built surfaces. Previously, city-scale studies have suggested that deposition to vegetation can make a very modest improvement (<5%) to urban air quality. However, few studies take full account of the interplay between urban form and vegetation, specifically the enhanced residence time of air in street canyons. This study shows that increasing deposition by the planting of vegetation in street canyons can reduce street-level concentrations in those canyons by as much as 40% for NO(2) and 60% for PM. Substantial street-level air quality improvements can be gained through action at the scale of a single street canyon or across city-sized areas of canyons. Moreover, vegetation will continue to offer benefits in the reduction of pollution even if the traffic source is removed from city centers. Thus, judicious use of vegetation can create an efficient urban pollutant filter, yielding rapid and sustained improvements in street-level air quality in dense urban areas.

Students' experience of higher education comprises not only their academic studies but also their extracurricular activities. This article reports on the findings from a mixed-methods research project, exploring in detail the nature and value of extracurricular activity engagement and the significance of institutional schemes encouraging extracurricular activity engagement, from a UK student perspective. Our findings reveal that many students are actively engaged in a variety of extracurricular activities and recognise their value for employability. However, fewer students are strategic in their patterns of involvement, which may be hindered by a lack of career planning. Furthermore, extracurricular activity engagement can be detrimental to academic study, and engagement alone does not assure employability benefits. However, structured institutional schemes encouraging extracurricular activity engagement may facilitate reflection, enabling students to make best use of their experiences for their future careers. Our research contributes to a growing body of research evidence on 'life-wide learning'.

Future scenarios provide challenging, plausible and relevant stories about how the future could unfold. Urban Futures (UF) research has identified a substantial set (>450) of seemingly disparate scenarios published over the period 1997-2011 and within this research, a sub-set of >160 scenarios has been identified (and categorized) based on their narratives according to the structure first proposed by the Global Scenario Group (GSG) in 1997; three world types (Business as Usual, Barbarization, and Great Transitions) and six scenarios, two for each world type (Policy Reform-PR, Market Forces-MF, Breakdown-B, Fortress World-FW, Eco-Communalism-EC and New Sustainability Paradigm-NSP). It is suggested that four of these scenario archetypes (MF, PR, NSP and FW) are sufficiently distinct to facilitate active stakeholder engagement in futures thinking. Moreover they are accompanied by a well-established, internally consistent set of narratives that provide a deeper understanding of the key fundamental drivers (e.g., STEEP-Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental and Political) that could bring about realistic world changes through a push or a pull effect. This is testament to the original concept of the GSG scenarios and their development and refinement over a 16 year period.

This paper presents a new approach to line generalisation which uses the concept of 'effective area' for progressive simplification of a line by point elimination. Two coastlines are used to compare the performance of this, with that of the widely used Douglas-Peucker, algorithm. The results from the area-based algorithm compare favourably with manual generalisation of the same lines. It is capable of achieving both imperceptible minimal simplifications and caricatural generalisations. By careful selection of cutoff values, it is possible to use the same algorithm for scale-dependent and scale-independent generalisations. More importantly, it offers scope for modelling cartographic lines as consisting of features within features so that their geometric manipulation may be modified by application-and/or user-defined rules and weights. The paper examines the merits and limitations of the algorithm and the opportunities it offers for further research and progress in the field of line generalisation.

Although intergroup contact can reduce prejudice, opportunities to experience such contact are often constrained by systems of segregation. Work on this problem has focused on divisions entrenched within institutions of residence, education and employment. Our research employed a complementary approach, which treated segregation as the outcome of individuals' movements over time within everyday life spaces. Taking as a case study Catholics' and Protestants' use of public environments in north Belfast, we used GPS tracking technology, combined with GIS analytics, to explore the time geography of residents' activity space use over a two-week period (Study 1). We also conducted a field survey to explore how psychological factors shaped their willingness to use activity spaces beyond their own communities (Study 2). Analysis based on around 1000 hours of raw movement data revealed that north Belfast is marked by high levels of segregation, expressed via residents' limited use of public spaces, facilities and pathways located in outgroup areas. However, use of shared spaces is also common, with Catholics spending more time in such spaces than Protestants. Structural equation modelling suggested that residents' self-reported willingness to use activity spaces outside their own communities was associated with both negative and positive intergroup contact-relationships partially mediated by realistic threat, symbolic threat, and anxiety over interaction across sectarian lines. Both kinds of contact and realistic threat were also associated with the time residents actually spent in spaces beyond their own communities. Opportunities for integrating psychological and geographic research on contact and segregation are highlighted.