Terrorists, rioters and crocodiles: The political symbolism of an Olympic monster

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in British Politics. The definitive publisher-authenticated version - British Politics, 2014, 9(2), pp. 161-181 - is available online at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/bp/journal/v9/n2/full/bp201317a.htmlIn August 2005, just a month after the announcement that London had succeeded in its bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, the UK national press witnessed a brief rash of stories alleging the presence of a crocodile or similar water monster lurking beneath the surface of the River Lea – the river that runs from the town of Luton in Bedfordshire down to join the Thames adjacent to the Olympic site. This story re-emerged in November 2011 when a campaigner against the environmental impact of the Olympics on the river area claimed to have seen further evidence of crocodilian activity. This paper will explore the reasons for the proliferation of this story, in terms both of its function as a metonymic news-hook (it opened up directly related concerns as to the impact, organization and security of the Games) and of its metaphorical significance (its incarnation of a superstructure’s fears of an emerging threat of a monstrous underclass – one which might at once comprise terrorists, rioters and anti-establishment campaigners). It will conclude by suggesting that this monstrous myth might hold within it the possibility of the convergence of populist news media and popular democracy

Ligand-Directed Self-Assembly of Organic-Semiconductor/Quantum-Dot Blend Films Enables Efficient Triplet Exciton-Photon Conversion

Blends comprising organic semiconductors and inorganic quantum dots (QDs) are relevant for many optoelectronic applications and devices. However, the individual components in organic-QD blends have a strong tendency to aggregate and phase-separate during film processing, compromising both their structural and electronic properties. Here, we demonstrate a QD surface engineering approach using electronically active, highly soluble semiconductor ligands that are matched to the organic semiconductor host material to achieve well-dispersed inorganic–organic blend films, as characterized by X-ray and neutron scattering, and electron microscopies. This approach preserves the electronic properties of the organic and QD phases and also creates an optimized interface between them. We exemplify this in two emerging applications, singlet-fission-based photon multiplication (SF-PM) and triplet–triplet annihilation-based photon upconversion (TTA-UC). Steady-state and time-resolved optical spectroscopy shows that triplet excitons can be transferred with near unity efficiently across the organic–inorganic interface, while the organic films maintain efficient SF (190% yield) in the organic phase. By changing the relative energy between organic and inorganic components, yellow upconverted emission is observed upon 790 nm NIR excitation. Overall, we provide a highly versatile approach to overcome longstanding challenges in the blending of organic semiconductors with QDs that have relevance for many optical and optoelectronic applications

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies