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International audience; cinematic studies support that the fiction film, though distorted by a socially constructed point of view, can be used to extract the salient elements circulating in the collective imaginary. if analyses on sports movies have been prolific these last years, ping-pong has often been left out, considered in collective representations as a pleasant form of entertainment rather than a real sport. Based on a representative sample of twenty nine international films in which the ping-pong ball plays a key narrative role, this article aims to go beyond the common interpretation of ping-pong which is based on its asian background and comical nature, and to establish a more comprehensive cinematic cartography. We conclude that directors interested in social values often take ping-pong as a suggestive metaphor to illustrate life, particularly love in all its forms, humanity in relation to history, education and cultural diversity.

This article examines a singular yet overlooked facet of the Indigenous reality evoked in film: the figure of the Native American athlete. The cinematic portrayal defined here as Sporting Indiannes...

Peter Yates’ Breaking Away (1979) is a riveting example of sport biopic. Indeed, Yates’ film focuses on the story of Dave Blase, a Hoosier who competed in the Little 500 cycling race during his tim...

According to Patrick Diquet and Christophe Meunier, sports have not only constituted a focal point of cinema’s interest but also contributed to its rich history and its evolution for more than a ce...

Jim Thorpe – All American by Michael Curtiz (1951), with Burt Lancaster as main actor, is an interesting example of a sports biopic for all historians seeking both to build ties between reality and...

Antarctica emerged as a tourism destination only some 50 years ago, the annual number of visitors has increased and the nationalities of visitors have shifted over the years with an increasing numb...

While comic books have today become a commonplace subject of study that no longer requires justification, the issue of sports representation in the ninth art remains a relatively new one. In the ca...

In the first half of the 1950s, the history of running was marked by the overwhelming dominance of Czechoslovakian runner Emil Zatopek. As a three-time gold medallist at the Helsinki Olympic Games, his achievements were vastly instrumentalized by the communist regime to make him a hero of the people. For over sixty years now, the life and performances of Emil Zatopek have continued to be the regular focus of an array of cultural forms (advertisements, novels, films, comic books, etc.), contributing to building the myth. With Running, the French novelist Jean Echenoz plays his part in this process and raises a decisive question of interest to the sports historian: can a myth be created from a sportsman? By adopting the principles pertaining to the social history of representations, as well as those of romantic transposition, the investigation method chosen here aims to understand how a novelist succeeds in challenging a sporting myth and turning it into a bookstore success, translated into twenty l...

This paper studies the impact of personal and corporate income taxation on capital charge rates in a delegation setting with a risk-averse manager. If the investment level influences the riskiness of the investment project, the capital charge rate deviates from the firm's cost of capital and depends crucially on the manager's personal income tax rate. Contradicting conventional wisdom, we find that a higher personal income tax rate induces higher investment expenditures and, surprisingly, increases the capital charge rate. The countervailing effect that a higher capital charge rate induces higher and not lower investment expenditures persists for pre-tax and after-tax performance measures as well as when the tax deductibility of managerial compensation is limited. Corporate income tax causes a similar effect only in the case of limited tax deductibility of compensation. Our insights remain valid regardless of the financing structure and the risk attitude of the investors.

The history of sports literature has enjoyed renewed interest over the last few years, with a noticeable increase in the number of Anglo-Saxon works and the revival of French research. Through fiction, it is possible to understand the processes whereby ideas spread and collective imaginaries are constructed. In this regard, this article revisits the history of rugby union through the prism of a cine-novel, Le P’tit Parigot (1926), which was presented in serialised form via the newspaper L’Intransigeant and as a six-episode film in cinemas. It depicts the misfortunes of Georges Grigny-Latour, also known as the ‘P’tit Parigot’, son of an academic and captain of the French rugby union football team. This sport serial is a historical source of precious and useful information enabling us to address the representations of rugby at the time. The article aims to characterise the ambiguous identity of the sport during the Roaring Twenties, an identity that was torn between a Parisian spirit cultivating the idea of rugby as the inheritance of Anglo-Saxon values, and a provincial vision using it as a means of territorial expression.

In adopting principles related to the social history of representations, the method of investigation favoured here aims at understanding discourse production and phenomena linked to the mediation, circulation and reception of a cultural object. Indeed, 9 October 1925 marked the beginning of the diffusion in France of Le Roi de la pedale, a cultural product on Tour de France cycling featuring as a series in the newspaper L’Auto, co-written by Paul Cartoux and Henry Decoin, and produced as a silent multi-episode film by the French filmmaker Maurice Champreux. Considered here as an historical object, the film adaptation of Le Roi de la pedale would appear a particularly interesting subject for analysis, making it possible to show the economic reality of sport, in other words to identify the origins, workings and crossed strategies of various partners (scriptwriters, filmmakers, advertisers and producers), while aiming to find the right balance between fiction and reality, narrative and economy.

Five patients received a bilateral hand (n = 3), a bilateral forearm (n = 1) and a unilateral hand transplant (n = 1) between 03/2000 and 03/2014. We herein describe the long-term outcome with emphasis on function, immunosuppression (IS), histomorphology and graft vascular changes.Induction therapy with antithymocyte globulin or alemtuzumab was followed by tacrolimus, prednisolone ± mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) or tacrolimus and MMF maintenance IS. Later, an mTOR-Inhibitor was added under simultaneous withdrawal or dose reduction of tacrolimus or MMF. Steroids were avoided in one and withdrawn in 2 patients.Range of motion reached up to 70% of normal with a grip strength up to 10kg. Hand function correlated with time after transplantation and amputation level and remained stable after year 5 in all cases. Intrinsic hand muscle function recovery, discriminative sensation and temperature sensation were observed after hand transplantation. Three, 7, 6, 3 and one rejection episodes were successfully treated wi...

Although the historiography of the First World War has, on numerous occasions, examined deaths and injuries, and their causes and social impacts, only a small number of historians have studied the physical and mental consequences among athletes. While literature offers a way to portray a world that is devoid of substance, where characters are searching for escape, war writing raises the question of human beings' vulnerability. Based on the story of a rugby man with a ‘broken face', the article will consider how a former international rugby champion was unable to reintegrate back into himself into civilian life after losing his sight during the fighting. Henri Decoin was therefore an unusual witness to the First World War, who raised the existential issue faced by all ‘broken faces’, that is to say how to learn to live in society again with faces that bore the marks of war? With the literary character of ‘blind soldier’ deserving greater attention, that of the blind soldier-cum-sports champion has been giv...

As a major stake-holder, government plays an important role in mega events development. Studies on government's motivations for staging mega events are noticeably lacking and this paper attempts to address this gap by examining the Chinese governments' motivations for hosting the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Such a study can enhance our understanding of governments' events strategy and policies, as well as provide insights on mega event policy making. It is identified that the Chinese government's primary motivations to host the Olympics were to showcase its reform achievements, unify its citizenry, and boost national pride. Other motivations of a developmental nature are also identified and examined.

The article analyses the role of a writer committed to spreading moral and religious values and who, through popular sports novels, deciphers the signs concerning the spreading of ideological messages by Catholic intellectuals or those in charge of charity work. Following the trend of Catholic writers who wished to re-establish religion in France through complementary intellectual actions alongside social Catholicism, the author of the novel Jacques Morneve, Jean Lestrac, showed his originality by writing sports novels between 1925 and 1928 for a working-class readership. Structured around the conflict between clergy and the secular world, and situated within the patronages, his work was of interest to those in charge of Catholic sport, who offered him space in the patronages' mouthpiece, Les Jeunes, to deliver an apostolic message. After being censored, Lestrac provided a toned-down, neutral text that was more in line with the aims of Catholic sport. His novels focused on the theme of religious conversio...

China's exhibition industry has experienced rapid growth for the past two decades, and it is now entering a period of consolidation and restructuring. This article provides a critical assessment of Asia's largest exhibition market. It considers its current problems and potential prospects by analyzing and synthesizing extant literature in both Chinese and English from a wide variety of sources, including print and online media, personal accounts, and interviews. Furthermore, the effect of the pending market consolidation on exhibition operation, venue management, and destination development is examined. China is still regarded as a key emerging market internationally. Thus, experiences and lessons learned from its exhibition development can serve as a useful reference to other emerging markets and should be of interest to both academics and practitioners.

Since the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) first opened its doors to foreign tourists in the early 1990s, the number of tourists to the country has increased significantly. However, the Lao PDR remains one of the poorest countries in the world and tourism is seen by the Laotian government and by non-governmental organizations active in the country as a tool to alleviate poverty. Nonetheless, the Laotian government has until now lacked the financial means and know-how to enact a concerted and effective plan to use tourism to promote poverty alleviation in the country. The paper investigates the current state of pro-poor tourism development in Viengxay and aims to gain an impression of the actual and potential roles and motivations of various stakeholders within the endeavour of tourism for poverty alleviation. The paper concludes with an analysis of the opportunities and barriers to pro-poor tourism in Viengxay, in which the improvement of linkages between the private sector and local development...

The larva of Siagona europaea Dejean, 1826 collected in the field with a new type of trap, the bait trap, is described. As an adult, this is a myrmecophagous beetle; however, until 2003, in ten years of research no larvae had been found in the field when excavating deep holes around Messor nests in clay soils, in which to place the usually employed pit fall traps. Therefore, a new type of trap was adopted, i.e. a subterranean trap positioned where the main soil crevices intersect. One larva of second instar and one of third one were studied. Most larval features are atypical of carabid beetle larvae and, in particular, the form and structure of the head appendages and the form and insertion of the urogomphi are of interest. Moreover, the larva of S. europaea is completely blind, no trace of stemmata being present in either instar. Its morphology, as well as the recording of its behaviour in the lab, point to it being a ‘runner’, exploring the subterranean crack system of clay vertisols.

Due to its rich stock of heritage assets, extraordinary pace of market liberalisation, and its political administration, the People’s Republic of China is at a crossroads in terms of the management of its heritage assets. In order to better understand the threats and opportunities that market liberalisation may pose for cultural heritage assets as future tourism products, this study examines two examples in the Beijing municipality; the Hutongs and the section of the Great Wall at Huanghua. These case studies are used to investigate the coordination of policy to balance modernisation and conservation of heritage assets in Beijing, and place it against a general model of stakeholder roles that can drive the sustainable use of heritage assets. Teasing out the nature of these roles has identified where tourism development aids or detracts from existing heritage conservation policies. Without better coordination of roles in policy implementation, the sustainability of many heritage assets as future tourism pr...

In southern Italy, Siagona europaea is common on clay soils and occurs up to the 38th parallel. Activity recordings have revealed that the beetles are strictly nocturnal. They are resistant to desiccation and prefer temperatures above 30 °C. Their flat body indicates adaptation to life in clay soils, which, in southern Italy, are deeply fissured from April to September. The behaviour of the beetles was observed in a transparent system of cavities consisting of plastic boxes connected by tubes. The beetles feed exclusively on ants that are caught by surprise attack outside their nests. Ants perceive the beetles as being hostile via chemical cues. Single ants then normally retreat, whereas groups of ants attack immediately. The beetles behave unaggressively against cospecifics and rest in groups of various numbers in flat soil crevices. Copulation takes place from the end of April onwards, whereas egg laying occurs from the end of May onwards. The females produce only a few eggs, which are unusuall...

The discovery of a lowland Amazonian wing‐dimorphic carabid species, Colliuris batesi Chaudoir, prompted a complete study of its biology and behaviour over a period of more than 4 years. Studies were made on development, fecundity, gonad development, life span and habitat shifts. Survival strategies and possible adaptations are examined with respect to seasonal flooding of their habitat. It is proposed that evolution of brachyptery in this species is rather recent in origin because macropterous specimens are widespread across the upper Amazon Basin, and because the only body change associated with short wings has been narrowing of the humeri.