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Since economic reform in the 1980s, Chinese sport has undergone an extraordinary transformation. The most distinguishing phenomenon is the rapid growth of mass sport at the grassroots level with increasing demands for physical activities in women's daily lives. The rapid growth of women's sports participation at the grassroots is deeply embedded in the process of social stratification as a result of the urbanisation of Chinese society. The purpose of this paper is to use the socialist, feminist and theoretical framework to explore how Chinese women's different economic, educational, domestic and cultural situations shape their sports values and patterns of participation, marking social boundaries in Chinese urban communities. Semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted with 60 female physical exercisers in sports clubs, parks and neighbourhood playgrounds. Documentary research was also applied as a complement method to the interview. The findings indicate that within different classes (middle class, working class and a group who were unemployed), many different opportunities for and limitations on women to participate in sport are noticed. Chinese women have not fully and equally utilised sports opportunities created by urbanisation. Most Chinese women still live within patriarchal arrangements. Consequently, they do not completely fulfil their ambitions in sport.

Recent works suggest a potentially exploitable effect in US markets, the ‘Halloween Indicator’. This suggests that the greater part of changes in equity markets arises over the November–April period, with little change over the summer months, simultaneous with no evident changes in the risk profiles of the two six-month periods. We re-examine this and find contradictory evidence. Over the 1926–2002 period we find rather that the effect demonstrated may well be a reflection of the well-known January anomaly. Our conclusion therefore is that the jury remains out on the existence of a semi-annual seasonality.

The relationship between Britain and Ireland — two islands united in one kingdom and bound — ensured that the British sporting revolution spread immediately to Ireland. On both islands the new spor...

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A general lack of scholarly works on various aspects of the history of the lives of female teaching religious has recently been highlighted by Hellinckx, Depaepe and Simon. This paper, which reports a preliminary study, is offered as one contribution to addressing the deficit identified. The hope is that it will provoke further scholarship in the field. It is based on an oral history project on the perspectives of female religious in Ireland on themselves over time for the period 1950–2008. Three main “frames” were identified in the participants’ testimony in this regard: they saw themselves as emulators of their own teachers; they placed great emphasis on having had to deal with various challenges of a personal and social nature; and they were acutely aware of having been prepared from their early years as full‐professed religious for being required to respond to leadership expectations of their superiors.

Fresh and vibrant flavours in the heart of Cork city. https://arrow.tudublin.ie/menus21c/1207/thumbnail.jpg

Famine, like poverty, has always been with us. No region and no century has been immune. Its scars — economic, psychological and political — can long outlast its immediate impact on mortality and health. Famines are a hallmark of economic backwardness, and were thus more likely to occur in the pre-industrialized past. Yet the twentieth century suffered some of the most devastating ever recorded. That century also saw shifts in both the causes and symptoms of famine. This new century's famines have been "small" by historical standards, and the threat of major ones seemingly confined to ever-smaller pockets of the globe. Are these shifts a sign of hope for the future?