Weather sensitivity for zoo visitation in Toronto, Canada: a quantitative analysis of historical data.

Based on a case study of the Toronto Zoo (Canada), multivariate regression analysis, involving both climatic and social variables, was employed to assess the relationship between daily weather and visitation. Zoo visitation was most sensitive to weather variability during the shoulder season, followed by the off-season and, then, the peak season. Temperature was the most influential weather variable in relation to zoo visitation, followed by precipitation and, then, wind speed. The intensity and direction of the social and climatic variables varied between seasons. Temperatures exceeding 26 °C during the shoulder season and 28 °C during the peak season suggested a behavioural threshold associated with zoo visitation, with conditions becoming too warm for certain segments of the zoo visitor market, causing visitor numbers to decline. Even light amounts of precipitation caused average visitor numbers to decline by nearly 50 %. Increasing wind speeds also demonstrated a negative influence on zoo visitation.

Footprints of climate change in US national park visitation.

Climate change has driven many organisms to shift their seasonal timing. Are humans also shifting their weather-related behaviors such as outdoor recreation? Here we show that peak attendance in US national parks experiencing climate change has shifted 4 days earlier since 1979. Of the nine parks experiencing significant increases in mean spring temperatures, seven also exhibit shifts in the timing of peak attendance. Of the 18 parks without significant temperature changes, only 3 exhibit attendance shifts. Our analysis suggests that humans are among the organisms shifting behavior in response to climate change.

Physical activity patterns by campus housing status among African American female college students.

Physical activity protects against heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and cancer. Fewer than 40% of African American women obtain recommended amounts of physical activity. Healthy Campus 2010 identifies physical activity as a top priority for improving the health of college students. However, during college, women tend to reduce their levels of physical activity. This study examines the relationship between campus housing and physical activity behaviors in a sample of African American female college students (N = 138). Participants who lived on campus were significantly more likely to meet the recommended amounts of both moderate and vigorous physical activity than students who lived off campus (44% vs. 19%). The results demonstrate the importance of campus fitness resources in explaining the role that the built environment can play in increased physical activity among this population. Recommendations for the use of the campus's built environment and fitness resources are provided.

Sauvons le Luxembourg: urban greenspace as private domain and public battleground, 1865-1867.

This article examines the way in which public response to a municipal proposal concerning greenspace reduction in Paris during the Second Empire reflected not only political antipathy but also an ever-increasing understanding of public urban greenspace as part of the private domain. By examining archival records concerning the proposal, essays, newspaper accounts, and memoirs, this article argues that a particular proprietary sensibility, fomented by expansive public greenspace development in Paris, intersected with extant social constructs and political tensions to create a public, coordinated, and sustained challenge to the authoritarian regime. Thus, the battle over the Luxembourg Garden became more than just a fight to prevent a reduction in size of a particular public urban greenspace. Rather, public debate surrounding alteration of this garden underscores the extent to which public greenspace, in general, was urban space that blurred the public­private boundary and presented unique opportunities for community formation, social integration, and political action.

Abner Doubleday, Marc Bloch, and the cultural significance of baseball in rural America.

In 1907 baseball's promoters decreed that Civil War hero Abner Doubleday created the game in the village of Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. Baseball thus acquired a distinctly rural American origin and a romantic pastoral appeal. Skeptics have since presented irrefutable evidence that America's pastime was neither born in the United States nor was a product of rural life. But in their zeal to debunk the myth of baseball's rural beginnings, historians have fallen prey to what Annales School founder Marc Bloch famously called the "idol of origins," and all but neglected the very real phenomenon of rural baseball itself. The claim that baseball has always been "a city game for city men" does not stand up to empirical scrutiny anymore than the Doubleday myth itself, as this address demonstrates with three case studies -- Cooperstown in the 1830s, Davisville, California, in the 1880s, and Milroy, Minnesota, in the 1950s. Baseball may have been a source of rural nostalgia for city people, but it was the sport of choice for farmers and a powerful cultural agent.

Abandoning nature: swimming pools and clean, healthy recreation in Hamilton, Ontario, c. 1930s-1950s.

Municipal swimming pools arose as a technological fix for an urban public health and recreation crisis in Hamilton when its bay became a polluted sink for residential and industrial wastes. Until World War II, city leaders and medical authorities believed that they could identify, delineate, and construct safe natural swimming areas along the bay's shore, supplemented by a few public artificial swimming pools. After the war, the pollution situation worsened. For those who couldn't travel to cleaner lakeshores elsewhere, local authorities created swimming pools, thus abandoning the natural waters of the bay to the "constructive power of the profit motive".

A SHORT HISTORY OF OCCUPATIONAL DISEASE: 3. LEISURE CAN MAKE YOU SICK.

The risk of infection associated with occupations can, and does, extend to certain leisure and sports activities. Generally, such pastimes are regarded as important for human health and mental wellbeing. However, infections may, rarely, be acquired during leisure activities that include water sports and water-related relaxation, and certain sports.

Planning ideology and geographic thought in the early twentieth century: Charles Whitnall's progressive era park designs for socialist Milwaukee.

As Milwaukee's chief park planner in the early to mid-twentieth century, Charles Whitnall responded to the various underlying ideologies of the period within which he worked. His preference for parks was a political and physical response to and remedy for the industrialized and heavily congested city he called home. By examining the Progressive Era discourse associated with planning, this article situates Whitnall's work within the political, aesthetic, and environmental contexts of geographic thought that influenced his plans for Milwaukee. In promoting a physical awareness associated with the natural features of the region and responding to the sociopolitical framework of contemporaries such as Ebenezer Howard, Whitnall incorporated a sense of compassion within his planning. He responded to the preexisting beer gardens of Pabst and Schlitz, as well as Olmsted-designed park spaces, by advocating for decentralization as part of a broader socialist agenda that had swept through Milwaukee during the early 1900s.

Adaptive Sports, Arts, Recreation, and Community Engagement.

Adaptive sports and recreation have an important role in the lifestyle of individuals with cerebral palsy (CP). This article discusses the history of adaptive sports and the benefits of adaptive sports and recreation. Barriers and medical challenges are also thoroughly discussed, including common musculoskeletal issues, methods to prevent musculoskeletal injury, pain, fatigue, maximal exertion, and other medical comorbidities and illness. The role of health care providers such as physiatrists is emphasized to provide support to individuals with CP who either are interested in starting exercise or a sport or are already an athlete.

Cheerful prospects and tranquil restoration: the visual experience of landscape as part of the therapeutic regime of the British asylum, 1800-60.

The early nineteenth-century asylum in Britain was generally sited upon a hill with wide-ranging rural views, surrounded by agricultural land, gardens and landscaped grounds. A number of historians have discussed the role of these features as places for patients to partake in recreation, exercise and work. This paper will add to this literature by exploring the possibility that, alongside this active participation and interaction, the passive experience of viewing the landscape and the location of the asylum within a rural setting were also expected to have a therapeutic role.

Mushroom hunting and consumption in twenty-first century post-industrial Sweden.

BACKGROUND: The pre-industrial diet of the Swedish peasantry did not include mushrooms. In the 1830s, some academic mycologists started information campaigns to teach people about edible mushrooms. This propaganda met with sturdy resistance from rural people. Even at the beginning of the last century, mushrooms were still only being occasionally eaten, and mostly by the gentry. During the twentieth century, the Swedish urban middle class accepted mushrooms as food and were closely followed by the working-class people. A few individuals became connoisseurs, but most people limited themselves to one or two taxa. The chanterelle, Cantharellus cibarius Fr., was (and still is) the most popular species. It was easy to recognize, and if it was a good mushroom season and the mushroomer was industrious, considerable amounts could be harvested and preserved or, from the late 1950s, put in the freezer. The aim of this study is to review the historical background of the changes in attitude towards edible mushrooms and to record today's thriving interest in mushrooming in Sweden. METHODS: A questionnaire was sent in October and November 2017 to record contemporary interest in and consumption of mushrooms in Sweden. In total, 100 questionnaires were returned. The qualitative analysis includes data extracted from participant and non-participant observations, including observations on activities related to mushroom foraging posted on social media platforms, revealed through open-ended interviews and in written sources. With the help of historical sources, including earlier studies and ethnographical data collections, a diachronic analysis is given to describe the changes over time. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: During the last 100 to 140 years, Sweden has changed from a mycophobic to a mycophilic society with a passionate interest in the utilization of wild mushrooms. In the late twentieth century, various social institutions connected with mushroom hunting evolved. Evening classes, study circles, clubs, exhibitions, consultants, and a wide array of handbooks promoted this interest. In the early twenty-first century, mushrooming has become widely accepted, especially among the middle class, but also among Swedes in general. The so-called hipster-generation, born in the 1990s, harvests mushrooms due to their interest in producing their own food. This group often uses social media to identify edible species. Most people who go mushrooming gather only a few species. There are, however, some dedicated individuals who have become hobby specialists and who know a wide diversity of taxa. A few study participants reported that they were afraid of not being able to distinguish between poisonous fungi species and edible ones and therefore refrain from picking any wild mushrooms at all. However, they still consume cultivated mushrooms, such as Agaricus bisporus (J.E. Lange) Imbach, bought in grocery stores or served in cafes and restaurants. CONCLUSION: Swedish society has changed rapidly during the last decades and so has the interest in mushrooming among its members. Throughout the second part of the twentieth century, the flow of information about mushrooms has continued through lecturers, courses, media, exhibitions, and even associations. Walking in forestland is also an important leisure activity for many urban Swedes, and in the early twenty-first century, mushrooming has also become a thriving pastime among people with an urban lifestyle.

Historical trends in Hawaiian game harvest and hunter participation in Hawai'i from 1946-2008.

At present, 21 game species have been successfully established in Hawai'i for the purpose of recreational and subsistence hunting. However, it is unknown how these management efforts have affected hunting and recreation trends in Hawai'i and how the patterns may parallel national data. Consequently, managers and biologists in Hawai'i have little reliable harvest and hunting participation information on which to base current and future management goals. This study provides the first ever analysis of public hunting data in the state of Hawai'i, and is one of only a handful nationally to investigate long-term hunting dynamics in the United States. Our goal was to understand historical hunting trends in the state of Hawai'i in order to provide baseline information to assist in current and future management efforts. Based upon this goal, our objectives were to investigate the influence that time, location, and species have had on both game harvest and hunter participation from 1946 to 2008 across the inhabited islands of Hawai'i. We used 62 years of data from Pittman-Robertson reports to evaluate temporal trends in game harvest and hunter participation for all species, individual species, and taxonomic groups (mammals and birds) at both state and island levels. Since 1946, trends in game harvest and hunter participation in Hawai'i have varied widely by island and species, suggesting that game management may be most effective when approached at the island or species level. Across the state the overall harvest has declined, with only a handful of species being harvested in greater numbers over time on several islands. However, our findings do highlight inconsistencies and potential biases in harvest collection data that are critical for science-based management. In particular, because every game species in Hawai'i has been introduced, there is a critical need to improve harvest data collection and couple it with monitoring data in order to provide management and policy recommendations and develop better conservation planning guidelines.

A Foucaultian approach to menstrual practices in the Dehcho Region, Northwest Territories, Canada.

In this paper, I explore the benefits of using a Foucaultian approach to examine research questions related to Dene women, menstrual traditions, and physical practices (the term physical practices is here used to encompass the contested terms sport, recreation, traditional games, and physical activity) in the Dehcho region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. While it is clear that Indigenous research frameworks have been marginalized in past research projects, this paper argues that the current approach of using almost exclusively Indigenous frameworks when conducting research with Indigenous communities has several drawbacks and relies on some troubling assumptions. After outlining the strengths of a Foucaultian approach, examples derived from fieldwork in the Dehcho region are used to illustrate the ways in which a Foucaultian approach can be operationalized, while also demonstrating the ways in which such an approach to research can complement Indigenous research frameworks and agendas.

Trouble at the National Trust: Post-war Recreation, the Benson Report and the Rebuilding of a Conservation Organization in the 1960s.

The growth of conservation organizations like the National Trust for England, Wales and Northern Ireland (NT), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the county wildlife trusts was one of the more striking features of post-war social change. With their roots in late Victorian and Edwardian ideas of preservation and conservation, the membership of these organizations expanded sharply from the 1960s. The success of these groups, however, also brought its own problems. In particular the practical issues associated with their growth forced them to ask what kind of organizations they were and what kind of organizations they might become. The article focuses on the NT and the soul searching that it undertook in the late 1960s. It draws on but partly seeks to revise recent research on environmental and conservation organizations. In doing so, it documents how the transformation of the NT fits the professionalization thesis proposed within the existing historiographical literature, whilst seeking to draw attention to the influence of broader sociological changes associated with mass affluence and the growth of popular recreation. Given its patrician leadership, the NT was challenged by the democratizing effects of affluence and by the wider climate of cultural modernization. It was this set of cultural and social developments, rather than simply the inevitable logic of professionalization, which provided the conditions in which the Trust was impelled to reinvent itself and modernize its ways of working.

Medical politician and man of Olympian vision and energy: Dr William Penny Brookes (1809-95) of Much Wenlock.

William Penny Brookes lived all his life in Much Wenlock in Shropshire where he worked as a general practitioner for 60 years. He is now best remembered as the founder of the Wenlock Olympian Society, as a founding member of the first national Olympian association and for his influence on Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic movement. He was a tireless campaigner for the introduction of physical education and a lessening of the academic workload in elementary schools. He was also an important figure in the medical reform movement of the mid-19th century. In Much Wenlock he was a much respected philanthropist and was involved in many civic activities. He was also a notable botanist and antiquarian.

Social individualism: Walter Gropius and his appropriation of Franz Müller-Lyer's idea of a new man.

In 1929, Walter Gropius developed the "High-Rise Steel Frame Apartment Building" that was based on theories about the emergence of a New Man put forward by sociologist Franz Müller-Lyer. In his lecture at the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne conference in 1929, Gropius appropriated Müller-Lyer's sociology in order to promote and prompt the re-development of high-rise tenements and master households. Gropius' 1931 contribution to the Deutsche Bauausstellung in Berlin incorporated a full-scale community lounge and a recreation area with sporting equipment, as well as a model and plans for a "High-Rise Steel Frame Apartment Building" that were designed in accordance with Müller-Lyer's theories. While it shows Müller-Lyer's influence, the boxing equipment found in the recreation area reflects the importance that sport, and boxing in particular, had gained after 1900. Boxing was perceived as a sport that would not only further fitness but also raise the spirits and help the inhabitant to succeed in the modern urban environment. By providing boxing equipment, Müller-Lyer's vision, which envisaged master households as furthering a community of peaceful individuals living in a condition of mutual trust, is weakened. In 1923, the sociologist Helmuth Plessner had regarded utopian visions of ideal communities as antithesis to actual events in the Weimar Republic. The embracing of theories that promised an evolutionary and linear development towards peaceful communities can be regarded as a counterreaction to a present that was perceived as an imperfect and temporary condition. Furthermore, Gropius' appropriation of Müller-Lyer's sociology not only helped to distinguish his position from Marxist and socialist theories but also illustrated the contemporary tendency to accept utopian ideas while simultaneously doubting the practicality of some.

Reading photographic portraits of Australian women cyclists in the 1890s: from costume and cycle choices to constructions of feminine identity.

During the 1890s, in Australia and around the world, there was a convergence of the cycle, the camera and women. With the advent of the revolutionary safety bicycle, cycling had become a craze. At the same time, photographic technology had undergone changes that meant photographs were cheaper and more accessible. Women became avid consumers of both these new technologies; they became cyclists in unprecedented numbers for the first time, and they also became the popular subjects, and proud owners, of photographic portraits. These two trends converged, resulting in a proliferation of photographic portraits of women cyclists, many of which were published in newspapers and magazines. These bicycle portraits have now become a rich source for historians. More than just visually interesting artefacts, these photographic depictions of the Australian woman cyclist are important windows into the history of Australian women's cycling in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Bicycle portraits provide significant insights into the study of Australian women cyclists, from historical detail ranging from costume, bicycle and cycling activity choices to more complex understandings of the expression of feminine identity among Australian women cyclists in the 1890s.

"We make a big effort to bring out the ladies": visual representations of women in the modern American stadium.

Modern stadiums were constructed across the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, usually to replace old baseball parks that were run-down, inaccessible by automobile, and located near African American neighbourhoods. Sports promoters coveted affluent, white, consumption-oriented customers who had recently moved to the suburbs. To attract these customers, promoters attempted to imaginatively reconstitute stadium space - from urban, old, dirty, rambunctious, masculine places to suburban, new, clean, orderly, female-friendly spaces. The attraction of women - as signifiers of an affluent and domesticated postwar social order - was central to this strategy. Visual representations of women in new stadium spaces were essential to the imaginative reconfiguration and modernisation of stadium space. This essay examines their use, particularly in the Houston Astrodome. Stadium publications and local newspapers used photographs and illustrations of women to conceptually reinvent the stadium, extending a distinctively post-war, modern ideology privileging comfort, consumption and respectable behaviour into stadium space.

Sport in the trenches: the new deal for masculinity in France.

During the First World War, the life of a soldier was not just reduced to the trenches. In daily military life behind the lines, soldiers had recreational activities, some of which were seen as a test of virility, such as visiting brothels, and also, as we want to show in this paper, sport practices. For most of the French citizen-soldiers, who were working class and mainly from the countryside, the contact with allied soldiers has to be understood as a significant step in the social construction of gender. Educated in gymnastics, shooting and military exercises, French infantrymen (Poilus) and civilians saw allied sports and soldier-sportsmen as models of a modern masculinity. In a descriptive study of the development of football in the French army, our article tries to demonstrate firstly, that football learnt in the army by workers and the French rural society extended the influence of sport and its part in the construction of masculinity in France. Secondly, we show that the official recognition of sport in 1917 by the French army led to the definition of a modern French masculinity and to the recognition of the sportsmen-soldier as the model of hegemonic masculinity.

Vauxhall's post-industrial pleasure gardens: "death wish" and hedonism in 21st-century London.

In recent years Vauxhall in south London has been transformed and rebranded as an urban leisure zone for gay men. Disused railway arches and warehouses have been converted into nightclubs and a significant night-time economy has developed rivalling Soho's existing gay village. However, with its commodified forms of public sex and high levels of recreational drug use, Vauxhall's club scene looks rather different from the British gay villages of the 1990s. This article examines how the area's nightlife entrepreneurs have capitalised on the recent liberalisation of licensing laws while drawing on the historical associations with the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (1660-1859) in attempts to market the area as a site of embedded hedonism. Overall, the aesthetic and cultural themes of Vauxhall's club scene seem to contradict earlier assumptions about the desexualisation and sanitisation of contemporary gay culture.