London 2012 and the impact of the UK’s Olympic and Paralympic legislation: protecting commerce or preserving culture?

The general commercial rights associated with the Olympic Movement are protected in the UK by the Olympic Symbols etc (Protection) Act 1995. In addition, the UK Government, in response to a requirement of the Host City Contract with the International Olympic Committee, created the London Olympic Association Right under section 33 and Schedule 4 of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games Act 2006. These provisions enable the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games to exploit, to the fullest extent, the commercial rights associated with the London Olympic Games. This article questions whether the IOC’s requirement for legislative protection and state enforcement of the commercial rights are compatible with the Fundamental Principles of Olympism as defined in the Olympic Charter, and its stated aim of being a celebration of sporting endeavour, culture and education

Consuming the Olympics: the fan, the rights holder and the law

The London Olympic Games and Paralympics Act 2006 (the Act) received its Royal Assent on 30 March 2006, well over six years before the Games themselves are due to begin. The early passing of this Act is partly to ensure that the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has sufficient time to organise the Games, and partly to ensure that Parliament has sufficient legislative time to implement the legal framework necessary to stage a modern Games to the satisfaction of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The Act as a whole covers a variety of issues from the creation of the ODA and the defining of its role and powers in respect of planning and transport to the creation of several new criminal offences. Within the Act are certain key areas worthy of socio-legal investigation. Indeed, many of the provisions are emblematic of how the law maps the cultural and commercial tensions that we have identified elsewhere (James and Osborn, 2009 and Greenfield and Osborn, 2001). These tensions are particularly pronounced with respect to an event such as the Olympics, where the historically entrenched cultural values and identity of the Olympic movement must now be read alongside the commercial imperative of maximising income (Tomlinson, 2005)

Risk and benefits in lifestyle sports: parkour, law and social value

This paper examines the interrelationship between law and lifestyle sports, viewed through the lens of parkour. We argue that the literature relating to legal approaches to lifestyle sport is currently underdeveloped and so seek to partially fill this lacuna. Hitherto, we argue, the law has been viewed as a largely negative presence, seen particularly in terms of the ways in which counter-cultural activities are policed and regulated, and where such activities are viewed as transgressive or undesirable. We argue that this is a somewhat unsophisticated take on how the law can operate, with law constructed as an outcome of constraints to behaviour (where the law authorises or prohibits), distinct from the legal contexts, environments and spaces in which these relationships occur. We argue that the distinctive settings in which lifestyle sports are practiced needs a more fine-grained analysis as they are settings which bear, and bring to life, laws and regulations that shape how space is to be experienced. We examine specifically the interrelationship between risk and benefit and how the law recognises issues of social utility or value, particularly within the context of lifestyle sport. We seek to move from user-centred constructions of law as an imposition, to a more nuanced position that looks at parkour at the intersections of law, space and lifestyle sport, in order to reveal how law can be used to support and extend claims to space

Dancing on the edge of disciplines: law and the interdisciplinary turn

This piece looks critically at the issue of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity within legal study and research. It examines and analyses trends within legal education, before looking at a number of disciplinary approaches within sport. It then considers the interface between law and sport, and argues in particular, and following Bourdieu, that sport is a rare field that allows a number of approaches to be taken, whilst privileging none of them. It argues that rather than seeing law as the focal point of inquiry, sport becomes the focus and that by fostering an approach that allows various disciplinary approaches to be adopted and challenged, sport allows true interdisciplinarity to take place

Unquenched complex Dirac spectra at nonzero chemical potential: Two-colour QCD lattice data versus matrix model

We compare analytic predictions of non-Hermitian chiral random matrix theory with the complex Dirac operator eigenvalue spectrum of two-color lattice gauge theory with dynamical fermions at nonzero chemical potential. The Dirac eigenvalues come in complex conjugate pairs, making the action of this theory real and positive for our choice of two staggered flavors. This enables us to use standard Monte Carlo simulations in testing the influence of the chemical potential and quark mass on complex eigenvalues close to the origin. We find excellent agreement between the analytic predictions and our data for two different volumes over a range of chemical potentials below the chiral phase transition. In particular, we detect the effect of unquenching when going to very small quark masses

Liquid-hydrogen rocket engine development at Aerojet, 1944 - 1950

This program demonstrated the feasibility of virtually all the components in present-day, high-energy, liquid-rocket engines. Transpiration and film-cooled thrust chambers were successfully operated. The first liquid-hydrogen tests of the coaxial injector was conducted and the first pump to successfully produce high pressures in pumping liquid hydrogen was tested. A 1,000-lb-thrust gaseous propellant and a 3,000-lb-thrust liquid-propellant thrust chamber were operated satisfactorily. Also, the first tests were conducted to evaluate the effects of jet overexpansion and separation on performance of rocket thrust chambers with hydrogen-oxygen propellants