Dropping the Amateur: The International Association of Athletics Federations and the Turn Toward Professionalism

When the International Association of Amateur Athletics (IAAF) changed its name to International Association of Athletics Federations in 2001, it was more than an acknowledgment of the organization's acceptance of professional athletes. Rather, this change symbolized a shift in thinking about the nature of athletics, what athletics competitions represented, and the commercialization of the sport that had been decades in the making. This article will consider the IAAF's pursuit to maintain control over global athletics through its transition from an amateur sport federation to a professional sport governing body. Drawing on official documents and personal archives of IAAF officials, we trace the internal views and debates beginning with the IAAF's fight to maintain amateurism against collective pushback over issues of athlete pay, to the full acceptance of professionalism. Our main focus lies on the transition period in the 1980s and 1990s. We show how dropping the amateur from the name reflected not only the new embrace of professional athletes, but also the organizational turn away from amateur athletics. We will identify the processes that finally forced the breakdown of amateurism and ushered in a new era of professional athletics

Something\u27s Gotta Give: Bent Rules, Breached Bottom Line, and the International Amateur Athletics Federations\u27 Handling of the China Question

International Sport Federations (IFs), as part of the Olympic network, have different organisational structures and decision-making mechanisms from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The authors, in examining the history of the International Amateur Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) handling of the “China question” in international sport, probe how these differences translated into the IAAF’s organisational politics and power dynamics in face of governmental interference. Primarily examining archival documents obtained from the IAAF Archive and the IOC Historical Archives, the authors particularly follow how the self-governing IAAF upheld, bent, and modified its statutes during its engagement with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from the 1950s to the 1970s and around its eventual admission of the PRC’s Athletics Association in 1978. It is also argued that the IAAF’s engagement and inclusion of the PRC allowed the consolidation of its monopolising power in global athletics governance

Insect Pheromone Receptors – Key Elements in Sensing Intraspecific Chemical Signals

Pheromones are chemicals that serve intraspecific communication. In animals, the ability to detect and discriminate pheromones in a complex chemical environment substantially contributes to the survival of the species. Insects widely use pheromones to attract mating partners, to alarm conspecifics or to mark paths to rich food sources. The various functional roles of pheromones for insects are reflected by the chemical diversity of pheromonal compounds. The precise detection of the relevant intraspecific signals is accomplished by specialized chemosensory neurons housed in hair-like sensilla located on the surface of body appendages. Current data indicate that the extraordinary sensitivity and selectivity of the pheromone-responsive neurons (PRNs) is largely based on specific pheromone receptors (PRs) residing in their ciliary membrane. Besides these key elements, proper ligand-induced responses of PR-expressing neurons appear to generally require a putative co-receptor, the so-called “sensory neuron membrane protein 1” (SNMP1). Regarding the PR-mediated chemo-electrical signal transduction processes in insect PRNs, ionotropic as well as metabotropic mechanisms may be involved. In this review, we summarize and discuss current knowledge on the peripheral detection of pheromones in the olfactory system of insects with a focus on PRs and their specific role in the recognition and transduction of volatile intraspecific chemical signals

Who Governs a Movement? The IAAF and Road Running - Historical and Contemporary Considerations

During the 1970s and the 1980s, road running experienced an extraordinary growth in terms of participants and running events. Even though the runners mainly participated for reasons of wellbeing and fitness, and less for competition, the world governing body of athletics, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), attempted to govern and profit of the running movement from the end of the 1970s onwards. This paper utilizes previously unexamined historical sources such as IAAF Council and Commission minutes to analyze the IAAF´s approach to road running movement against the background of elite sport’s increasing commercialization and professionalization at the end of the amateur era. It will be demonstrated that the Federation did not understand road running on its own terms as a mass health and fitness movement but approached it as if it was a track and field discipline. These misunderstandings led to friction with many road running stakeholder groups

Nuclear Charge Radius of 12^{12}Be

The nuclear charge radius of $^{12}$Be was precisely determined using the technique of collinear laser spectroscopy on the $2s_{1/2}\rightarrow 2p_{1/2, 3/2}$ transition in the Be$^{+}$ ion. The mean square charge radius increases from $^{10}$Be to $^{12}$Be by \delta ^{10,12} = 0.69(5) \fm^{2} compared to \delta ^{10,11} = 0.49(5) \fm^{2} for the one-neutron halo isotope $^{11}$Be. Calculations in the fermionic molecular dynamics approach show a strong sensitivity of the charge radius to the structure of $^{12}$Be. The experimental charge radius is consistent with a breakdown of the N=8 shell closure.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Ligand binding shifts highly mobile RXR to chromatin-bound state in a coactivator-dependent manner as revealed by single cell imaging.

Retinoid X Receptor (RXR) is a promiscuous nuclear receptor forming heterodimers with several other receptors, which activate different sets of genes. Upon agonist treatment the occupancy of its genomic binding regions increased, but only a modest change in the number of sites was revealed by ChIP-Seq, suggesting a rather static behavior. However, such genome-wide and biochemical approaches do not take into account the dynamic behavior of a transcription factor. Therefore we characterized the nuclear dynamics of RXR during activation in single cells on the sub-second scale using live-cell imaging. By applying FRAP and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), techniques with different temporal and spatial resolution, a highly dynamic behavior could be uncovered, which is best described by a two-state model of receptor mobility. In the unliganded state most RXRs belonged to the fast population, leaving approximately 15% for the slow, chromatin bound fraction. Upon agonist treatment, this ratio increased to approximately 43% as a result of an immediate and reversible redistribution. Coactivator binding appears to be indispensable for redistribution and has a major contribution to chromatin association. A nuclear mobility map recorded by light sheet microscopy-FCS shows that the ligand-induced transition from the fast to the slow population occurs throughout the nucleus. Our results support a model in which RXR has a distinct, highly dynamic nuclear behavior and follows hit-and-run kinetics upon activation