From hegemonic to inclusive masculinities in English professional football: marking a cultural shift

Abstract

In this article, we conduct a generational study of measuring progress towards the inclusion of homosexuality in professional sport. We accomplish this by interviewing an openly gay football player, Anton Hysén, in the year 2017, using the precise same questions about the relationship between his homosexuality and sport that were asked of the first openly gay professional footballer in 1992, Justin Fashanu. We thus measure difference in attitude according to the 25 years that have elapsed between the interviews. Our results emphasize two themes: First, the near-total acceptance of being gay within professional football today, compared to 25 years ago; and second, the social praise that is levied upon today’s openly gay sportsmen, compared to the social stigma placed upon Fashanu.     

Portable high‐resolution automated 3D imaging for footwear and tire impression capture

The forensic science community raised the need for improved evidence recognition, collection, and visualization analytical instrumentation for field and laboratory use. While the 3D optical techniques for imaging static objects have been extensively studied, there is still a major gap between current knowledge and collecting high‐quality footwear and tire impression evidence. Among optical means for 3D imaging, digital fringe projection (DFP) techniques reconstruct 3D shape from phase information, achieving camera‐pixel spatial resolution. This paper presents a high‐resolution 3D imaging technology using DFP techniques dedicated to footwear and tire impression capture. We developed fully automated software algorithms and a graphical user interface (GUI) that allow anyone without training to operate for high‐quality 3D data capture. We performed accuracy evaluations and comparisons comparing with the commercial high‐end 3D scanner and carried out qualitative tests for various impressions comparing with the current practices. Overall, our technology achieves similar levels of accuracy and resolution with a high‐end commercially available 3D scanner, while having the merits of being (1) more affordable; (2) much easier to operate; and (3) more robust. Compared with the current practice of casting, our technology demonstrates its superiority because it (1) is non‐destructive; (2) collects more evidence detail than casts, especially when an impression is fragile; (3) requires less time and money to collect each piece of evidence; and (4) results in a digital file that can easily be shared with other examiners.     

Estimating Individual Contributions to Complex DNA SNP Mixtures.,

High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) of large panels of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) provides an alternative or complimentary approach to short tandem repeats (STRs) panels for the analysis of complex DNA mixture forensic samples. For STRs, methods to estimate individual contribution concentrations compare capillary electrophoresis peak heights, peak areas, or HTS allele read counts within a mixture. This article introduces three approaches (mean, median, and slope methods) for estimating individual DNA contributions to forensic mixtures for HTS/massively parallel sequencing (MPS) SNP panels. For SNPs, the major:minor allele ratios or counts, unique to each contributor, were compared to estimate contributor proportion within the mixture using the mean, median, and slope intercept for these alleles. The estimates for these three methods were typically within 5% of planned experimental contributions for defined mixtures.     

Why electoral reform might improve representation and why it might make it worse

The debate over electoral reform has largely focused on representation in Parliament. However, the government largely controls policy‐making in parliamentary systems like Canada. This article shows that a more proportional system would increase the likelihood of coalitions. Because the dominant approach to studying representation in government, ideological congruence, suggests that reforming the electoral system would make no change to the level of representation, this article focuses instead on the representation of party preferences. It shows that multi‐party cabinets, common under proportional systems, involve a trade‐off between including more citizens’ preferred parties in government, while reducing the overall level of party preference representation.     

Hearts of Darkness: white women write race

Abstract

In an effort to popularise the gas stove, boost sales and minimize the genuine and perceived dangers of using this volatile domestic appliance, late Victorian gas managers and stove manufacturers employed female cookery teachers to perform public demonstrations at trade exhibitions throughout the country. Eventually, these women comprised a special department of gas sales, calling directly on customers in their homes to offer personal instruction in the proper use and care of gas stoves. Part social workers, part salesgirls, the ‘lady demons’, short for lady demonstrators, moved between the traditionally gendered separate spheres of work and home, consciously constructing a professional image that reconciled the social tensions of this new occupation. They offer an early example of women's entrance into the corporate business world, the feminisation of consumption, and the combination of customer service with social welfare.