John Berkeley James Wells—An appreciation of his contributions to harpacticoid diversity and systematics

John Wells was born in Hammersmith, a district in west London, where he spent most of his childhood and teenage life. It was a surprise to find out only recently that he had received a scholarship to Latymer Upper School on King Street which is literally one block away from where I used to live when I started working at the Natural History Museum in the early 1990s. The site has a long history and can be traced to a charity school founded in 1624 by the English merchant Edward Latymer, a wealthy lawyer and puritan, who left part of his wealth for the clothing and education of “eight poore boyes” from Hammersmith.

Afterword

I was first ‘introduced’ to Stevan Pavlowitch thanks to Hurst sometime in 1993. A freshly arrived refugee from the former-Yugoslavia, unsure what to do with life and yet to begin my university studies in history, I was wandering the streets of Covent Garden when the Africa Centre bookshop on King Street caught my attention. Among the various books on African topics stood a biography of Tito, written by someone obviously of Yugoslav origin, but the spelling of whose surname suggested he had lived outside Yugoslavia for considerably longer than me. It was a Sunday afternoon, the only time I was off work (as a busboy and a barman in London clubs and pubs), and the bookshop was closed, to my disappointment. I stared at the book display for what seemed like a long time, excited and emotional, probably wondering who was Stevan K. Pavlowitch, what did he write about Tito, my (our?) former president, and why would an African cultural centre sell a biography of Yugoslavia’s late leader....

Urban Air Quality: Assessing Traffiffic and Building Architecture Impacts using Portable Measuring Devices in Toronto, Ontario

Vehicle emissions are one of the largest local contributors to poor urban air quality. High emissions are often associated with traffic congestion, and pollution may also become trapped between tall buildings creating a street canyon effect. The spatial variability of traffic-related air pollutants in microenvironments should be considered in evaluating changes in urban planning. This study focuses on assessing the air quality and commuter exposure in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, specifically focusing on the effect of the King Street Pilot Project on local urban air quality by reducing traffic. Increased vehicular density is expected to contribute to higher urban pollution levels and tall buildings may trap these contaminants. Field measurements were made within the King Street Pilot area during weekday rush hours to capture the best representation of peak activity and pollutant levels when there were similar average wind speeds and directions for the sampling dates. A suite of portable devices was carried along predesigned and timed routes through traffic dense areas to measure vehicle-related air pollutants including black carbon (BC), ultrafine particles (UFP, particles smaller than 0.1 μm), and particulate matter (PM2.5, particles smaller than 2.5 μm). Data was normalized, corrected and analyzed using centralized pollutant while considering meteorological site measurements located about 1.5 km away from the study area. Results indicated higher BC and UFP levels during peak commuting times between 8 am to 10 am and relatively increased pollution levels within the area of tall buildings versus the area with shorter buildings. Strong spatial variations of BC and UFP were found, while PM2.5 levels remained relatively constant in the downtown area. Elevated levels of BC and UFP were observed around nearby construction sites. This study contributes to establishing a baseline to evaluate the King Street Pilot Project’s air quality impact as well as proposing potential methods of detailed data collection within microenvironments to observe the air quality of urban centres.