Regent's Park Research Articles

Urban organic aerosols measured by single particle mass spectrometry in the megacity of London

Abstract. During the month of October 2006, as part of the REPARTEE-I experiment (Regent's Park and Tower Environmental Experiment) an Aerosol Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (ATOFMS) was deployed at an urban background location in the city of London, UK. Fifteen particle types were classified, some of which were already discussed (Dall'Osto et al., 2009a,b; Harrison et al., 2012). In this manuscript the origins and properties of four unreported particle types postulated to be due to locally generated aerosols, independent of the air mass type advected into London, are examined. One particle type, originating from lubricating oil (referred to as Ca-EC), was associated with morning rush hour traffic emissions. A second particle type, composed of both inorganic and organic species (called Na-EC-OC), was found enhanced in particle number concentration during evening time periods, and is likely to originate from a source operating at this time of day, or more probably from condensation of semi-volatile species. A third class, internally mixed with organic carbon and sulphate (called OC), was found to spike both in the morning and evenings although it could not unambiguously associated with a specific source or atmospheric process. The fourth class (Secondary Organic Aerosols – Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon; SOA-PAH) exhibited maximum frequency during the warmest part of the day, and a number of factors point towards secondary aerosol production from traffic-related volatile aromatic compounds. Single particle mass spectra of this particle type showed an oxidized polycyclic aromatic compound signature. A comparison of ATOFMS particle class data is then made with factors obtained by Positive Matrix Factorization and PAH signatures obtained from Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS) data (Allan et al., 2010). Both the Ca-EC and OC particle types correlate with primary Hydrocarbon-like Organic Aerosol (HOA, R2 = 0.65 and 0.50 respectively), and Na-EC-OC correlates weakly with the AMS secondary Oxygenated Organic Aerosol (OOA), (R2 = 0.35). Cluster SOA-PAH was found not to correlate with any AMS signal. A detailed analysis was conducted to identify ATOFMS particle type(s) representative of the AMS cooking aerosol factor (COA), but no convincing associations were found. The combined ATOFMS and AMS results of this REPARTEE study do not always provide an entirely coherent interpretation.

Atmospheric chemistry and physics in the atmosphere of a developed megacity (London): an overview of the REPARTEE experiment and its conclusions

Abstract. The REgents PARk and Tower Environmental Experiment (REPARTEE) comprised two campaigns in London in October 2006 and October/November 2007. The experiment design involved measurements at a heavily trafficked roadside site, two urban background sites and an elevated site at 160–190 m above ground on the BT Tower, supplemented in the second campaign by Doppler lidar measurements of atmospheric vertical structure. A wide range of measurements of airborne particle physical metrics and chemical composition were made as well as measurements of a considerable range of gas phase species and the fluxes of both particulate and gas phase substances. Significant findings include (a) demonstration of the evaporation of traffic-generated nanoparticles during both horizontal and vertical atmospheric transport; (b) generation of a large base of information on the fluxes of nanoparticles, accumulation mode particles and specific chemical components of the aerosol and a range of gas phase species, as well as the elucidation of key processes and comparison with emissions inventories; (c) quantification of vertical gradients in selected aerosol and trace gas species which has demonstrated the important role of regional transport in influencing concentrations of sulphate, nitrate and secondary organic compounds within the atmosphere of London; (d) generation of new data on the atmospheric structure and turbulence above London, including the estimation of mixed layer depths; (e) provision of new data on trace gas dispersion in the urban atmosphere through the release of purposeful tracers; (f) the determination of spatial differences in aerosol particle size distributions and their interpretation in terms of sources and physico-chemical transformations; (g) studies of the nocturnal oxidation of nitrogen oxides and of the diurnal behaviour of nitrate aerosol in the urban atmosphere, and (h) new information on the chemical composition and source apportionment of particulate matter size fractions in the atmosphere of London derived both from bulk chemical analysis and aerosol mass spectrometry with two instrument types.

Jacob Lockhart Clarke's and John Hughlings Jackson's first description of syringomyelia

Jacob Lockhart Clarke's and John Hughlings Jackson's first description of syringomyelia

Life at the Institute of Archaeology, 1952-54

My years at the Institute were split into four often strongly contrasting parts. Primarily, there were the terms at St John's Lodge, the quietly decaying Regency mansion that fitted so appropriately, in its atmosphere, with the evidence of bomb damage still evident elsewhere in London. Secondly, there was the home life my wife Falmai and I had in our one room in Hackney, made exciting and consistently demanding following the birth of our son Jonathan in November 1953. Falmai had taken a degree in English at Bedford College, close to the Institute in Regent's Park, from whose hall of residence I had sometimes left by a back door late on a Sunday night to race for the bus back to Cambridge, to get into college before midnight.

Life at and before the Institute of Archaeology: a personal retrospect

When Ken Thomas kindly invited me to contribute to this issue of Archaeology International, my first thought was what a pleasure it would be just to write an article rather than edit the whole issue. Having retired from the job only last year, I well knew the magnitude of the task facing the new editor: one that is challenging and onerous but also intellectually rewarding. So I welcomed the opportunity to add my mite to the sequence of retrospective articles that have been a feature of AI since it was launched nine years ago. But, unlike the former students and staff who have recalled in previous issues the early years in St John's Lodge in Regent's Park, my association with the Institute is much more recent. So rather than write only about the 1980s and 1990s, I have (with Ken's encouragement) taken a longer retrospective view, recalling how I followed a path from geography into archaeology, which led eventually to my joining the staff of the Institute in January 1980.

Analysis of the touristic valorization of Maksimir Park in Zagreb (Croatia)

The modern pace of life imposes new needs and demands of the tourist market as well as the need for rest and recreation in areas of preserved nature. Maksimir Park dates from the 19th century, and since 1964, it has been protected as a monument of park architecture. Today, the park is the space for recrea­tion and relaxation with cultural monuments and natural heritage. They make a strong and attractive potential factor that has been underused in the tourist offer of the City of Zagreb. The paper examines the attractiveness of the park for visitors, whilst also making the comparison with some of the parks of London (Hyde Park, Regent's Park, Kew Gardens). The main goal of this paper is to analyze the exist­ing resources of the park and to identify their weaknesses in order to complement and enhance the offer of the park as a tourist attraction. The methodology is based on the analysis of material of the origin and the development of Maksimir Park, the evaluation survey conducted in 2009 and 2010 in the park area (case study) and SWOT analysis of the significant resource for tourism development of the park. The results show that Maksimir Park contains many resources, but they are not recognized as a tourist attraction of Zagreb. Tourist services in the park are not harmonized with visitors' needs and should be complemented with traditional and cultural events, better cuisine, education about resources of the park and improved range of activities throughout the year. .

Remembering Frederick Zeuner and others at the Institute of Archaeology, 1945-48

Grace Simpson (Fig. 1) was one of the small group of students who enrolled at the Institute, which was then housed in St John's Lodge in Regent's Park, when teaching re-started after the Second World War. She fondly recalls those days, when she was taught by Kathleen Kenyon, Gordon Childe, Stuart Piggott and, most memorably, Frederick Zeuner.

“SOCIALLY MIXED” PUBLIC HOUSING REDEVELOPMENT AS A DESTIGMATIZATION STRATEGY IN TORONTO'S REGENT PARK

AbstractOver the last two decades decision makers have sought to address problems with large concentrations of poverty and minority ethnoracial groups in the cities of Western Europe and the Anglo-American world that are the direct result of the manner in which public housing was built in the early postwar era. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia have developed programs that introduce “social mix” into such public housing developments. These initiatives are designed to alter the social dynamics of places with high levels of concentrated poverty and ethnoracial minority groups that are believed to magnify the disadvantages of poverty and marginalization. In this paper, I argue that this is a destigmatization strategy, but not the same kind of destigmatization strategy that has been described in the literature. Using the example of Toronto's Regent Park, a large public housing development near downtown, I develop a research agenda for understanding the gap between a quasi-state agency's efforts to destigmatize public housing sites (“place destigmatization”) and the everyday destigmatization practices and experiences of residents (“personal destigmatization”). The paper begins with a review of the putative mechanisms linking socially mixed public housing redevelopment and outcomes for residents, including social capital, social control, role modelling, and changes to the political economy of place. This review finds little evidence of these effects in the literature. Consequently, I argue for an inductive approach to the study of the outcomes of social mix, rather than the common practice of judging such outcomes against the benchmark of close, intimate relationships between new, middle-class residents and existing public housing residents. I further argue that the “normalization” of the built form that is a major part of socially mixed redevelopment is a form of place destigmatization, and may alter both material practices and representational practices related to stigma, which have very real effects on the everyday experience of residents.

Defining and exploring public space: perspectives of young people from Regent Park, Toronto

Inner city public housing figures prominently on the urban regeneration agenda. Regent Park, Toronto, Canada's largest and oldest public housing development, is in the midst of a 15-year, billion dollar revitalisation plan involving extensive physical and social changes. This paper explores how Regent Park's young people define and value public space and compares this with the revitalisation plan. Findings reveal that contemporary principles guiding public housing renewal do not match how young people interpret public space. The qualities blamed for public housing failure, like physical and social isolation, are identified as valuable attributes of local public spaces.

Remarkable dynamics of nanoparticles in the urban atmosphere

Abstract. Nanoparticles emitted from road traffic are the largest source of respiratory exposure for the general public living in urban areas. It has been suggested that adverse health effects of airborne particles may scale with airborne particle number, which if correct, focuses attention on the nanoparticle (less than 100 nm) size range which dominates the number count in urban areas. Urban measurements of particle size distributions have tended to show a broadly similar pattern dominated by a mode centred on 20–30 nm diameter emitted by diesel engine exhaust. In this paper we report the results of measurements of particle number concentration and size distribution made in a major London park as well as on the BT Tower, 160 m aloft. These measurements taken during the REPARTEE project (Regents Park and BT Tower experiment) show a remarkable shift in particle size distributions with major losses of the smallest particle class as particles are advected away from the traffic source. In the Park, the traffic related mode at 20–30 nm diameter is much reduced with a new mode at <10 nm. Size distribution measurements also revealed higher number concentrations of sub-50 nm particles at the BT Tower during days affected by higher turbulence as determined by Doppler Lidar measurements and are indicative of loss of nanoparticles from air aged during less turbulent conditions. These results are suggestive of nanoparticle loss by evaporation, rather than coagulation processes. The results have major implications for understanding the impacts of traffic-generated particulate matter on human health.

International Zoo Yearbook No 44 Edited by FA Fisken (2010). Published by The Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London NW1 4RY, UK. 464 pp Softback. Price £127.00.

International Zoo Yearbook No 44 Edited by FA Fisken (2010). Published by The Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London NW1 4RY, UK. 464 pp Softback. Price £127.00.

Tracer concentration profiles measured in central London as part of the REPARTEE campaign

Abstract. There have been relatively few tracer experiments carried out that have looked at vertical plume spread in urban areas. In this paper we present results from two tracer (cyclic perfluorocarbon) experiments carried out in 2006 and 2007 in central London centred on the BT Tower as part of the REPARTEE (Regent's Park and Tower Environmental Experiment) campaign. The height of the tower gives a unique opportunity to study vertical dispersion profiles and transport times in central London. Vertical gradients are contrasted with the relevant Pasquill stability classes. Estimation of lateral advection and vertical mixing times are made and compared with previous measurements. Data are then compared with a simple operational dispersion model and contrasted with data taken in central London as part of the DAPPLE campaign. This correlates dosage with non-dimensionalised distance from source. Such analyses illustrate the feasibility of the use of these empirical correlations over these prescribed distances in central London.

About Authors

About Authors

Sweet Charity (review)

Reviewed by: Sweet Charity Laura MacDonald Sweet Charity. Book by Neil Simon. Music by Cy Coleman. Lyrics by Dorothy Fields. Directed by Matthew White. Choreographed by Stephen Mear. Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre, London. 19 February 2010. Sweet Charity was a major turning point in Bob Fosse's career as a director-choreographer, and as an exemplar of his legacy, this 1966 musical presents any director and choreographer who wish to revive it with very specific challenges. Fosse crafted the musical as a valentine for his wife Gwen Verdon, tailoring the title character to Verdon's strengths as a performer. He consolidated his choreographic style, and in so finely integrating dance as a means of expression, created showcase opportunities for women in supporting roles and the ensemble. Sweet Charity requires detailed choreography to allow for heightened expression by characters who were originally created and developed primarily through movement rather than words or music. Despite its success with re-conceptions (and re-orchestrations) of Broadway musicals on a small scale (for example, a chamber production of La Cage aux Folles), the 150-seat Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre seems an unlikely venue for the expansive dances required by Sweet Charity. Further, through the 1990s and 2000s, the pool of dance talent in London's West End has not continued to grow and develop at a rate comparable to Broadway; British ensembles frequently lack the speed, precision, and energy of Broadway dancers. Excepting Peter Darling's work on Billy Elliot (2005), most modern musical theatre choreography seen in London during the past decade has been in re-mountings of Broadway productions or in original work by Americans such as Susan Stroman and Rob Ashford. Without consistent, original British musical theatre choreography setting a high standard for musical theatre dance, any revival of a dance musical in London faces casting challenges. [End Page 464] Click for larger view View full resolution Tamzin Outhwaite (Charity Hope Valentine) in Sweet Charity. (Photo: Catherine Ashmore.) [End Page 465] Director Matthew White is a veteran of the Menier, having successfully staged Little Shop of Horrors and The Last Five Years. Choreographer Stephen Mear (Mary Poppins [with Matthew Bourne] and The Little Mermaid) makes his Menier debut with Sweet Charity. Casting long, lean dancers and framing them in a flocked, red velvet, triple proscenium designed by Tim Shortall, White and Mear cleverly caged the women who are yearning to break free from their oppressive careers as dancers for hire in a Forty-Second Street tango palace. In emphasizing the literal and metaphorical cage in which the women live, White and Mear focused attention on the female body in relation to its environment and social conditions, turning the physical limitations of the Menier into an advantage. Rather than opening with a solo dance for the show's leading lady accompanied by the overture, White and Mear instead introduced the ensemble of dancers in their dressing room, before they are summoned to display themselves on the dance floor. Opening in the dingy ballroom effectively established a physical contrast between the dark and cramped interior quarters and the expanded, more open space of Central Park, where Charity is introduced and marked as a woman who thinks outside the ballroom. Featuring the ensemble before the leading lady foregrounds a reading of Sweet Charity as a musical about a collective women's experience, rather than as a star vehicle. In "Big Spender," the most iconic number in Sweet Charity, the leggy dancers balanced themselves on stools while a single customer circulated among them. Their seated position caused their posture to slump, contorting their limbs and emphasizing the availability of their bodies for hire. The physical limitations of the set design seemed to impose further restrictions on the dancers' movement. Josefina Gabrielle, previously seen as Laurey in the Stroman revival of Oklahoma! and more recently as Irene Molloy in the Mear-choreographed Hello, Dolly! in Regent's Park, was outstanding as Charity's worldly friend Nickie. Tiffany Graves ably accompanied her as the wisecracking Helene. Their carefully wrought performances beautifully evoked the time and place their characters inhabited, and as performers, they made the most of the musical's many showcase opportunities. When they leapt across...

Cosmopolitan "Flânerie": Leigh Hunt as Literary Cartographer

Imagination enriches everything. ... Even brick and mortar are vivified, as of old at harp of Orpheus. A metropolis becomes no longer a mere collection of houses and trades. It puts on all grandeur of its history and its literature. (On Realities of Imagination) A map of fictitious, literary, and historical London, would, of itself, constitute a great curiosity. (The World of Books) Leigh Hunt's career was as long as his personae were various. Child prodigy, theatrical critic, editor of Examiner, the wit in dungeon, poet of Rimini, head of Cockney School, Hampstead host, friend of Shelley and Keats, expatriate liberal, friendly essayist, the Companion, avuncular man-of-letters, model for Dickens's Skimpole, Victorian autobiographer ... list goes on and on. Nowhere, however, is he cast as a flaneur. Or as a cartographer. Yet it is in these two related guises--principled idler of and literary map-maker--that he did some of his most sustained, most characteristic, and most important work. Without Hunt's literary rambles, that is to say, maps of both British literature and British literary history would be significantly different. Throughout latter half of his long career, Hunt can often be found at work surveying expanding territory covered by his maps of metropolis as well as of world of books. From 1820s through 1850s, Hunt wrote over 100 essays, under such headings as Townsman and Streets of Metropolis, in which he chronicled his musings on a London at once urban (the contemporary signs of steam omnibuses, gas illuminations, and waterworks) and pastoral (an idealized realm of literary associations, allusions, and memories). Whether walking in City, strolling through Chelsea, or lounging in Kensington, Hunt increasingly styled himself as sole cicerone to a London no one other than he seemed to have charted. Ultimately, this literary cartography yielded two distinctive results: most concretely, it produced three-volume atlas or physiology of London comprised of The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events (1848); The Old Court Suburb; or, Memorials of Kensington, Regal, Critical, and Anecdotal (1855); and A Saunter Through the. West End (1861). More pervasively, Hunt's promenades created him as English literature's most convivial flaneur. Hunt's idiosyncratic map consists of a seemingly inexhaustible collection of cultural, topographical, architectural, historical, and literary anecdotes, all conversationally related to reader along course of a promenade through a London which is equal parts evidence and evocation. Read individually or collectively, these musings inspired by of London present Hunt's readers with a singular brand of British panoramic literature as well as of British literary history. Oddly enough, they have received next to no critical attention. Though these writings are amongst Hunt's least well-known, they exemplify his greatest strengths as an amateur belletrist and a professional man-of-letters. As Hunt meanders from, say, Regent's Park to Finchley or rambles through Chelsea--musing on how ought to have been named, or what sort of books night-watchmen favor, or why it was that Johnson was so fond of Fleet Street--the man-of-letters effortlessly metamorphoses into man-about-town, an unrivaled literary flaneur who assures his readers that streets shall bud with pleasant memories, like old walls with ballads (The Townsman 251). His persona in these writings is both recognizably romantic and conspicuously modern: he reads London both as an elysian fairyland, populated by spirits of departed writers, and as a modern metropolis, punctuated by its bustling crowds and industrial innovations. Hunt's highly literary flanerie conjures two writers in particular: his attention to material details of and phenomenality of walking echoes Gay's instructions along same lines in Trivia, or The Art of Walking Streets of London (1716), while his cultivation of persona of one who abandons himself to impressions of moment resembles Baudelaire's idler in arcades in The Paris of Second Empire in Baudelaire (1938). …

Medical Liability Reform

Corresponding author: Julian Woolfson, OBE, LLM, FRCOG, 27 Sussex Place, Regents Park, London NW1 4 RG; e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]. Financial Disclosure The author acts as an expert witness in medicolegal cases for a large number of instructing solicitors (attorneys) and law firms in the United Kingdom. He takes instructions from both plaintiff and defendant. In the United Kingdom, experts owe a duty to the court irrespective of which side they are on, whether in preparing expert reports or giving oral evidence. This is so as to avoid conflicts of interest such as no-win-no-fee arrangements, which are prohibited for experts in the United Kingdom.

Contributions from transport, solid fuel burning and cooking to primary organic aerosols in two UK cities

Abstract. Organic matter frequently represents the single largest fraction of fine particulates in urban environments and yet the exact contributions from different sources and processes remain uncertain, owing in part to its substantial chemical complexity. Positive Matrix Factorisation (PMF) has recently proved to be a powerful tool for the purposes of source attribution and profiling when applied to ambient organic aerosol data from the Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS). Here we present PMF analysis applied to AMS data from UK cities for the first time. Three datasets are analysed, with the focus on objectivity and consistency. The data were collected in London during the Regent's Park and Tower Environmental Experiment (REPARTEE) intensives and Manchester. These occurred during the autumn and wintertime, such that the primary fraction would be prominent. Ambiguities associated with rotationality within sets of potential solutions are explored and the most appropriate solution sets selected based on comparisons with external data. In addition to secondary organic aerosols, three candidate sources of primary organic aerosol (POA) were identified according to mass spectral and diurnal profiles; traffic emissions, cooking and solid fuel burning (for space heating). Traffic represented, on average, 40% of POA during colder conditions and exhibited a hydrocarbon-like mass spectrum similar to those previously reported. Cooking aerosols represented 34% of POA and through laboratory work, their profile was matched with that sampled from the heating of seed oils, rather than previously-published spectra derived from charbroiling. This suggests that in these locations, oil from frying may have contributed more to the particulate than the meat itself. Solid fuel aerosols represented 26% of POA during cold weather conditions but were not discernable during the first REPARTEE campaign, when conditions were warmer than the other campaigns. This factor showed features associated with biomass burning and occurred mainly at night. Grid-scale emission factors of the combustion aerosols suitable for use in chemical transport models were derived relative to CO and NOx. The traffic aerosols were found to be 20.5 μg m−3 ppm−1 relative to CO for Manchester and 31.6 μg m−3 ppm−1 relative to NOx for London. Solid fuel emissions were derived as 24.7 μg m−3 ppm−1 relative to CO for Manchester. These correspond to mass emission ratios of 0.018, 0.026 (as NO) and 0.021 respectively and are of a similar order to previously published estimates, derived from other regions or using other approaches.

From ‘slum clearance’ to ‘revitalisation’: planning, expertise and moral regulation in Toronto’s Regent Park

This paper addresses the planning and re‐planning of Regent Park, Canada’s first large‐scale public housing development. Located just outside the commercial and tourist core of Toronto, Regent Park was planned and built in the 1940s and 1950s through a ‘slum clearance’ initiative aimed at safeguarding the morality of its residents. Though it was widely celebrated at first, the project – like many similar developments across North America – was soon deemed a complete failure, and its image as a dilapidated and criminogenic anachronism has intensified over the past six decades. In 2002, the City of Toronto established a ‘participatory planning’ process to elicit the input of Regent Park residents in a plan to radically transform the neighbourhood – the result is a five‐step ‘revitalisation’ effort through which Regent Park is being bulldozed and replaced with a mixed‐use, mixed income community of public housing, market housing, retail space and amenities. The revitalisation plan is touted as a just, democratic and inclusionary solution to the many problems of Regent Park; this paper critically evaluates these claims by putting them in historical context. By comparing the thinking behind the original planning of Regent Park and the thinking behind the current attempt to ‘revitalise’ it, I aim to illustrate how the revitalisation is guided, to a significant extent, by a concern with the moral regulation of poor and working‐class city‐dwellers (particularly those who are new Canadians and/or racialised minorities) by altering the built environment in which they live. I aim to illustrate how this concern has been modified and reconfigured from the 1940s to the present alongside the transition to a neoliberal economy in Canada, and through the partial incorporation of postmodernist urbanism within official planning policy.

The Regent Park's three royal medical colleges

The Regent's Park is the home of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCOph). Thomas Linacre (1460–1524) and a group of physicians petitioned King Henry VIII and were granted a charter on 23 September 1518 to found a College of Physicians. Henry VIII was the nominal founder and Linacre the first President. Until 1835, only Oxford or Cambridge doctors of medicine could become Fellows of the College. The original College was Linacre's own home near St Paul's from 1518 to 1614, the second at nearby Paternoster Row and Amen Corner (1614–72), then Warwick Lane (1672–1825), the fourth in Pall Mall East (1825–1964) and the present College from 1964 onwards in The Regent's Park. President Lord Platt was instrumental in choosing …

A history of the gardens of the Royal College of Physicians of London

The Royal College of Physicians of London (RCP) was founded in the City of London in 1518 and at that time many of the royal, religious and lay residences had gardens. The gardens were used, among other things, to grow fruit trees, herbs for the kitchen and for strewing on the floor, and for leisure, with lawns, bowling and flowers. So it would have been natural for the RCP Fellows to wish to have a garden of their own. This was not possible until the College moved into its second and third homes in the City in 1614 and 1674 and good street plans of these sites, and of their gardens, have now become available, though we lack any details of the planting. The fourth home in Pall Mall East in 1815 was landlocked. Therefore when the fifth (and current) home in Regent's Park was opened in 1964 it was splendid to have a large garden, carefully designed, planted and recorded. In 2004 a wonderful transformation took place when the College created a modern physic garden showing the development of medicinal plants through the ages and in many parts of the world.