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This article examines the history of synchronized swimming in Ontario, with a specific focus on Peterborough, between the 1920s and the 1950s. Two factors explain the rise and consolidation of “synchro” as a women’s sport in the period. The first factor relates to earlier changes in women’s sport in the interwar period, alongside the rise of modern hegemonic beauty culture. As synchro struggled for official recognition, coaches and swimmers embraced feminine beauty constructs to generate popularity for their sport. The second factor relates to the nationalistic approach to sport development in the 1940s and 1950s. Financial and ideological investment in sport as important for national health and physical fitness allowed synchro to grow and flourish. As exemplified by the Peterborough club, these two factors allowed Canadian women to play a formative role in the national and international development of synchro as a sport to produce fit and beautiful bodies.

In this article we draw together the histories of rejuvenation and cosmetic use in order to examine discourses of “soft rejuvenation” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While rejuvenation has typically been considered in relation to transnational medicalized attempts to restore youthful vitality and virility, we suggest that the logic of rejuvenation was feminized through the promotion of cosmetic and daily self-care regimens in this period. Drawing on material from British, American, and Canadian contexts relating to beauty and hygiene, we suggest that daily practices of caring for and disciplining the white female body, especially through cosmetic use, were legitimated, in part, using the rhetoric of rejuvenation. The article considers how the transnational, the modern, and the propagation of whiteness in the early twentieth century were mobilized in these ideas of how daily bodily work could preserve the (white) youthful face and body, which was understood to embody health and vigor. This discourse was significant for young women, who were subject to male control over their bodies as they began to be employed in nontraditional workplaces; however, we also argue that these cosmetic practices can be understood as a component of girls’ and women’s own self-fashioning of modern identities.

In 2013, in the face of concern about low literacy standards, standardised reading tests for 7–14-year-olds became statutory in Wales. International research literature shows polarised views about the effect of high stakes tests on education standards, while suggesting that a combination of teaching reading strategies, offering feedback on performance and the promotion of reading, increases pupils' self-efficacy and confidence levels. By means of a case study, this paper considers the influence of the tests on the teaching and learning of reading strategies and on pupils' attitudes towards reading. A sample of 302 of Year 7 and Year 9 pupils was surveyed, together with focus groups with a sub-sample and interviews with key staff. While pupils showed awareness of a variety of reading strategies, and reported high levels of confidence in preparation for the tests, there were mixed reactions towards specific whole-school literacy sessions. Generally, older pupils' attitudes to reading were more negative. Furthermore, an emphasis on accountability had led the school to focus on test preparation at the expense of using the results diagnostically.

An exciting, expanding palette of hybrid materials is emerging that can be programmed to actuate by a range of external and internal stimuli. However, there exists a dichotomy between the physicality of the actuators and the intangible computational signal that is used to program them. For material practitioners, this lack of physical cues limits their ability to engage in a "conversation with materials" (CwM). This paper presents a creative workstation for supporting this epistemological style by bringing a stronger physicality to the computational signal and balance the conversation between physical and digital actors. The station utilizes a streaming architecture to distribute control across multiple devices and leverage the rich spatial cognition that a physical space affords. Through a formal user study, we characterize the actuation design practice supported by the CwM workstation and discuss opportunities for tangible interfaces to hybrid materials.

Failure, whether it be "complete-and-utter" or "a minor setback", occurs in a variety of different creative practices, yet how it is perceived, handled, and recovered from is a lesser explored design space. Failing to address these perceptions of failure can have psychological repercussions, discourage users from continuing a practice, and form cultural stigma such as those associated with STEM fields. However, mediating practices to develop a culture of resiliency and perseverance is key to sustaining a (lifelong) practice and reshaping pedagogical strategies. In this work, we outline the design space of "guardians", or elements of a creative practice that mitigate the psychological effects of failure. Through contextual inquiry, we contribute an inventory of failure-mitigation strategies from a variety of creative disciplines. We synthesize guidelines for the design of new guardians and present a preliminary exploration of guardians for the lasercutting practice -- effigies and test tags.

© 2017 ACM. Recent digital fabrication tools have enabled new form-giving using a wide range of physical materials. However, light as a first class creative material has been largely ignored within the design of our electronic objects. Our work expands the illumination design space by treating light as a physical material. We introduce a digital design tool that simulates and visualizes physical light interactions with a variety of materials for creating custom luminaires. We further develop a computational design and fabrication process for creating custom secondary optics elements (SOEs), which provides additional handles for users to physically shape and redirect light to compose, fill, and evenly diffuse planar and volumetric geometries. Through a workshop study with novice electronic designers, we show how incorporating physical techniques to shape light alters how users view the role and function of LEDs and electronics. We produce example pieces that showcase how our approach expands the electronics aesthetic and discuss how viewing light as material can engender novel, expressive artifacts. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Do historians have an ethical duty to the dead? Using the context of the history of North American freak shows in the twentieth century in general and a photograph of “the Elephant Skinned Boys” in particular, this article explores the knot of historical practice, ethics, and the politics of archiving and publishing to question whether or not historical practice may perpetuate vulnerabilities and inequities. The fragments of archival documents can raise important ethical questions of vulnerability, reproduction, and historians’ complicity in the legacies of vulnerability and unequal power relations. Les historiens ont-ils des regles de deontologie a respecter a l’egard des morts? Se placant de maniere generale dans le contexte de l’histoire des spectacles nord-americains ou l’on montrait des phenomenes au cours du XXe siecle et utilisant en particulier une photographie des « Elephant Skinned Boys » (garcons a la peau d’elephant), l’auteure se penche sur les liens entre la pratique historienne, la deontologie et la politique d’archivage et de publication pour se demander si la pratique historienne ne perpetuerait pas des vulnerabilites et des inegalites. Les fragments de documents d’archives soulevent parfois d’importantes questions de deontologie concernant la vulnerabilite, la reproduction et la complicite des historiens dans la perpetuation de la vulnerabilite et de l’inegalite des relations de pouvoir.

Scatter hoarders must allocate time to assess items for caching, and to carry and bury each cache. Such decisions should be driven by economic variables, such as the value of the individual food items, the scarcity of these items, competition for food items and risk of pilferage by conspecifics. The fox squirrel, an obligate scatter-hoarder, assesses cacheable food items using two overt movements, head flicks and paw manipulations. These behaviors allow an examination of squirrel decision processes when storing food for winter survival. We measured wild squirrels' time allocations and frequencies of assessment and investment behaviors during periods of food scarcity (summer) and abundance (fall), giving the squirrels a series of 15 items (alternating five hazelnuts and five peanuts). Assessment and investment per cache increased when resource value was higher (hazelnuts) or resources were scarcer (summer), but decreased as scarcity declined (end of sessions). This is the first study to show that assessment behaviors change in response to factors that indicate daily and seasonal resource abundance, and that these factors may interact in complex ways to affect food storing decisions. Food-storing tree squirrels may be a useful and important model species to understand the complex economic decisions made under natural conditions.

This paper analyses former sideshow performer Celesta Geyer’s autobiography Diet or Die (1968). Despite her unusual employment in a freak show, Geyer’s autobiography fits the standard popular narrative of the disciplining of the fat body in order to achieve an idealized thin body. On the surface, the text reads as an absolute rejection of fat identity — a word that Geyer often associates with freakery. Yet, Geyer’s autobiography also shows how she became a subject through enfreakment, and it subtly reveals deep ambivalences regarding weight, sexuality and freakery. Part autobiography, part self-help manual, and part dieting advice manual, the text is a remarkably complex reflection of aspects of American culture and society in the early to mid twentieth century that has deep resonances in today’s fat phobic, dieting obsessed culture. Geyer’s autobiography also highlights the difficulties of reading and interpreting autobiographies as self-evident presentations of personal history and raises questions of how individuals tell their own stories., Cet article analyse l’autobiographie d’une ancienne vedette d’exposition de curiosités vivantes (freak show), Celesta Geyer, intitulée Diet or Die (1968). Malgré son emploi inusité, Geyer a rédigé une autobiographie correspondant aux normes des récits populaires à propos des personnes en état de surcharge pondérale qui désirent perdre du poids afin d’avoir un corps mince idéalisé. De prime abord, le texte se lit comme un rejet absolu de l’identité d’obèse — un mot qu’elle associe fréquemment à une curiosité. L’autobiographie de Geyer démontre également comment son auteur est devenu un sujet à travers sa transformation en un phénomène de foire et révèle subtilement une profonde ambivalence concernant le poids, la sexualité et les phénomènes bizarres. À la fois autobiographie, ouvrage de croissance personnelle et manuel de régime alimentaire, le texte constitue une réflexion remarquablement complexe concernant plusieurs aspects de la société et de la culture américaine dans la première moitié du XXe siècle ayant encore une grande résonnance dans la culture actuelle obsédée par la minceur. L’autobiographie de Geyer démontre enfin les difficultés de lire et d’interpréter des autobiographies comme s’il s’agissait de la présentation d’une histoire personnelle évidente et soulève des questions quant à la manière dont les individus racontent leur propre histoire.

The Art Gallery of the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto included in its display in 1927 three paintings of nudes. The ensuing debate carried out in newspaper editorials and letters to the editor extended beyond discussion of the paintings themselves to reveal concerns about being modern and negotiating cultural change in the 1920s. Perceived shifts in moral standards, popular culture, and women's bodies were key areas of unease. Issues pertaining to the challenge to established hierarchies and ways of ordering space and identity also became apparent in the discussions of class, gender, and age. Trois peintures de nus etaient exposees dans la galerie d’arts de l’Exposition nationale canadienne de 1927 a Toronto. Leur presence a suscite dans les editoriaux et les lettres a la redaction des journaux un debat qui transcendait les peintures proprement dites pour reveler des preoccupations sur la modernite et la negociation du tournant culturel dans les annees 1920. L’evolution percue des moeurs, la culture populaire et le corps de la femme etaient des sujets de malaise. Les questions entourant les defis a l’ordre etabli de meme qu’aux modes d’amenagement de l’espace et de faconnement de l’identite ont egalement emerge dans les debats sur la classe, le sexe et l’âge.

Immature, 32-day-old rats were treated with PMSG. Stress consisting of 180 min immobilization administered during the period of the preovulatory LH surge resulted in the blockage of ovulation. The anti-ovulatory action of stress was effectively antagonized by the administration of naloxone hydrochloride shortly before the application of the stress, suggesting that the ovulation block by stress is mediated by endogenous opioids known to be elevated during stress. Blockage of ovulation by 180 min immobilization stress occurred only in rats from one of the two laboratory strains tested, suggesting that stress resistance is, at least in part, genetically determined.

In this article, we examine the brief exhibition of and public debate over “The Monkey Girl” exhibit at the intersection of the freak show, disability, and child welfare in the 1960s and 1970s. The critical moment was triggered by the limited but powerful outcry against the exhibition of a five-year-old girl (identified only as Pookie) as The Monkey Girl at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) in 1973. We argue that wider shifts in understandings of child welfare—particularly, the notion of the best interests of the child, a standard for the determination of child custody in divorce cases, which places emphasis on the well-being of children, not the rights of parents—as well as the emergence of poverty and disability rights movements provided the impetus to end the freak show at Canada’s largest exhibition. By the time of Pookie’s display in the early 1970s, calls for inclusion of people with what was then known as mental retardation had hit the national agenda, along with issues of poverty and child abuse.