Search

There is a close link between urbanisation and the rise of sports. However, one usually does not associate winter sports with cities. By the late 1880s winter sports, especially skiing, had become popular in European and American mountain regions. During that time some winter sports activities were introduced, mainly for entertainment, to urban areas. The big ice palaces in Russia and North America, where ice skating events were the main focus, are amongst the best examples. It was some decades later that even skiing and other winter sports were transferred to various metropolises of the world. Sources show that in 1927 a first indoor ski palace on artificial snow was opened in Vienna; a few years later similar winter sport spectacles took place in Paris and London; Boston and New York followed shortly after. Parallel to this phenomenon the film industry, which developed at about the same time, also helped spread the white sport to urban consciousness. This paper focuses on the establishment of urban winter sports events. The German sociologist Gerhard Schulze's theory on the Erlebnisgesellschaft shall be the theoretical frame. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 1920 and 1940, fertility dropped below replacement level in many Western countries. In today's scholarly literature, the drop is usually explained as a temporary reaction to the exceptional conditions of the inter-war period. This paper confronts that interpretation with the interpretations offered by scholars writing between the wars. According to leading demographers of the time, low fertility was due not to war or economic crisis, but rather to processes that now tend to be associated with the Second Demographic Transition, including secularization, individualization, rising consumerism, and women's emancipation. Since these were seen as structural features of modernization, most inter-war scholars argued that subreplacement fertility would remain an obstinate feature of modern society for an extended period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author proposes an alternative formulation of Ryder's equations of demographic translation by constructing a filter which relates period and cohort-based parametric fertility schedules. The resulting filter is used to study fertility data from eight countries in Europe and North America. The author concludes that although a cohort-based model can explain all but the short-run variations in period fertility, the resulting model would have to be quite complex. In particular, it would need to explain the observed tendency for changes in the tempo and spread of cohort fertility to lead changes in the quantum of cohort fertility by several years. An analysis of the spectral properties of the translation filter indicates that a period-based model could easily produce this pattern. The fact that the period-based model provides a more parsimonious description of the observed patterns sheds doubts on the predictive value of cohort-based models of fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Synurophyceae is a well-supported clade of ecologically important heterokont algae found largely in freshwater planktonic habitats worldwide, whose members have cell coverings consisting of species-specific siliceous scales overlapped in a highly organized manner. Many synurophytes have been described as endemic and are found only in specific regions of the world. A thriving population of the European endemic, Mallomonas intermedia, was discovered in a remote desert pond situated in the Virgin Valley, Nevada, USA and in a stratigraphic sequence from the middle Eocene fossil locality known as Horsefly in British Columbia, Canada. Both North American finds were closely compared with populations from Europe, confirming the identifications. Before these discoveries, this species was recorded from numerous waterbodies exclusively in Europe, but was lacking from hundreds of sites examined from other continents. Its presence in western North America during the warm middle Eocene confirms that historically this species had a significantly wider distribution and may be best classified as a palaeoendemic. Additional species uncovered from a second fossil locality that are closely related to M. intermedia further support the presence of this lineage in North America during the Eocene. The living population in northern Nevada presents an enigma. Does this remote desert population represent a remnant population that has gone undetected until now, or is it a recent arrival from an unknown region by an unknown vector? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, there has been much confusion surrounding the identity and separation of European and North American species of Glossiphonia (Annelida: Clitellata: Glossiphoniidae). Using cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequences from newly collected specimens of Glossiphonia complanata and Glossiphonia elegans from a broad geographic range covering southern Canada, parts of the US, Slovenia and Croatia, we confirm that G. complanata is likely confined to Europe. The species is phylogenetically distinct from G. elegans, which seems to exclusively inhabit North America. Parsimony and maximum likelihood of the COI locus show the European samples placing as the sister group to an unidentified species of Glossiphonia from Russia, while the North American samples are the sister group to all other Glossiphonia species. We also investigate the consistency of number of crop cecae for separating these species and contrary to previous reports, this character shows no differences between our specimens of the two species. Additionally, the trees show evidence of subdivisions within both G. complanata and G. elegans, with some sequences separated by high 'intraspecific' distances. Forces might be shaping population structure and/or potential incipient speciation within these species, emphasizing the need for future research into the biogeography and population genetics of Glossiphonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxonomy of some European species of Ephemerum is reviewed. As in several other recent studies, E. minutissimum Lindb. is regarded as a distinct species from E. serratum (Hedw.) Hampe; it is recorded from N. America (by the newly designated lectotype and other specimens) and Turkey, in addition to Europe. E. serratum var. angustifolium Bruch & Schimp. may be a synonym of E. minutissimum; the costate forms E. serratum var. praecox A.W.H.Walther & Molendo and E. intermedium Mitt. in Braithw. are treated as synonyms of E. serratum s.str. Type specimens of E. stellatum H.Philib. are described, a lectotype is designated and it is placed as a synonym of E. serratum s.str. E. hibernicum Holyoak & V.S.Bryan is regarded as a synonym of E. rutheanum Schimp. in Ruthe. The latter is shown to be a rare, European endemic taxon with modern records from Ireland, S. Wales, Germany and The Netherlands, and old records from France and W. Poland; a lectotype is designated. Forms intermediate between E. sessile (Bruch.) Müll.Hal. and the N. American E. crassinervium (Schwägr.) Hampe occur in several countries in W. Europe, some of them indistinguishable from some of the American plants; forms intermediate between E. sessile and E. rutheanum are recorded from S. Portugal and (rarely) Ireland. Differences between E. crassinervium, E. sessile and E. rutheanum in characters of leaves, tubers and capsules are shown to be slight, with considerable overlap. Hence all three taxa are treated as subspecies of E. crassinervium. A revised key to European Ephemerum and Micromitrium is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]