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Many cities have abandoned plans for hosting the Olympics due to crises of high costs, unnecessary infrastructures, and a range of socio-spatial exclusions. These problems stem from conflicts between the short-term needs of the event and the long-term needs of the city. In response, Olympic organizers launched a series of reforms to improve alignment between the Games and the host city. This paper examines these reforms, identifies urban development agendas in preparation for Paris 2024, and explores their implications on selected spaces of urban intervention within Paris. Thinking through rhizomatic philosophy, the paper advocates for a more nuanced approach to exploring the problems and potential of mega-event-led urban development. In so doing, the paper maps organizer and activist assemblages, and posits that efforts at reform are stymied by a too-narrow interpretation of who counts as a stakeholder. Subsequently, the spatial articulations of the mega-event risk perpetuating the exclusions that reform intended to resolve. Ensuring a wider representation of resident voices could help minimize the distance between word and deed in the latest rounds of Olympic reform.

Background Degenerative structural changes and functional deficits of the lumbar multifidus (LM) muscle were observed in athletes with low back pain. While spinal injuries are common in circus artists, there is no information on LM characteristics in this population. The aims of this study were to investigate LM morphology and function and explore the relationship between LM characteristics and low back pain in male and female circus artists. Methods 31 college circus students were recruited. Participants completed an online survey to acquire demographic data and low back pain history. Body composition was measured using multi-frequency bio-impedance analysis. Ultrasound examinations at the fifth lumbar vertebrae in prone and standing positions were performed to assess LM cross-sectional area, echo-intensity, thickness. Independent and dependent t-test assessed the difference between sex and side, respectively. The relationships between measures were assessed with Pearson’s correlations. The LM characteristics’ difference between artists with and without low back pain (group binary variable) was assessed with Analysis of covariance using lean body mass, height and % body fat as continuous covariates. Results Males had significantly larger LM cross-sectional area, lower echo-intensity and greater thickness change from rest to contracted than females. LM cross-sectional area asymmetry in prone was greater in artists reporting low back pain in the previous 4-weeks (p = 0.029) and 3-months (p = 0.009). LM measures were correlated with lean body mass, height, and weight (r = 0.40–0.77, p ≤ 0.05). Conclusion This study provided novel insights into LM characteristics in circus artists. Greater LM asymmetry was observed in artists with a history of low back pain. In accordance with previous studies in athletes, LM morphology and function were highly correlated with body composition measurements.

Mega-events are global affairs with profound effects across a variety of scales, and are the focus of a large and growing body of academic inquiry. This special section in Sports in Society centers on the urban and economic impacts of mega-events on the societies that host them, offering an examination of individual cases and emerging patterns. The authors explore different dimensions of the recent mega-event expe- rience from around the world, proposing novel ways of theorizing these outsized expressions of transnational sport, politics, commerce, and culture. Combined, these contributions unpack how socio-economic and cultural contexts shape the organization of events and impact hosts in variegated and contingent ways in the Global North, South, and East. This introduction offers a brief overview of the landscape of the existing research before summarizing each contribution and placing them in context within the broader literature. All told, the articles in this special section explore how the Olympics, the FIFA Men’s World Cup and the Commonwealth Games deploy different mechanisms to transform urban space, and offer innovative means of understanding what mega- events can do to the people and places that host them.

Although events such as the Olympic Games and World���s Fairs are among the largest of mega-projects, there is little systematic data to evaluate their outcomes over a longer period of time and across multiple sites. This research note describes the first longitudinal database on mega-event outcomes. It lays out the rationale and major goals of the database, its methodological approach and content, and its challenges and limitations. The database allows analysing larger patterns of mega-event contexts and outcomes, and helps evaluating mega-events as public policies.

The future of treatment-including addiction treatment-is biotechnological. Depot injections, agonist/antagonist implants, deep brain stimulation, and hapten conjugate vaccines are hailed by researchers and pharmaceutical manufacturers as medicine's best hope to minimize illicit use, to decrease risk of overdose and painful withdrawal, and to prevent diversion of medicines to illicit markets. Marketing and use of new technologies reveal old tensions framing concepts of addiction and its treatment: between medical condition and disorder of the will, between criminal justice and health, and between patient choice and system control. Using the examples of depot naltrexone and implantable and injectable buprenorphine in the U.S., this essay considers the arc of long-acting opioid treatment and implications for the future. These include the rise of Vivitrol courts and "carceral prescription"-where criminal justice systems mandate medicine to lock up brain receptors much as they might lock up people themselves-as well as use of buprenorphine formulations positioned as increasing both patient benefit and provider control. We also consider lessons from debates on long-acting contraceptive technologies such as Norplant and Depo-Provera. While multiple new long-acting formulations are under development, success will be determined less by characteristics of particular formulations and more by whether or not the new technologies are accompanied by a new ethics of addiction treatment that emphasizes therapeutic alliance, concordance over compliance, and a genuine commitment to allowing patients the ability to narrate and be believed in their descriptions of their treatment experiences.

Russia’s accelerating authoritarian turn has not ignored the internet, and in recent years, the Russian state has clamped down on internet activities that diverge from the statist line, employing a variety of strategies to dominate online spaces. Nevertheless, oppositional voices flourish on the Russian internet, taking shape in independent blogs and videos. This paper explores three political bloggers through surveillant and resistance assemblages, making sense of this contestation through an interpretation of the Deleuzian virtual that underscores the emancipatory potential of online activities for producing more egalitarian configurations, but also taking stock of the ways that these technologies have increased domination. Encompassing the blurriness between digital and corporeal spaces, the paper contributes by revealing new geographies of contestation against state strategies to dominate the Russian internet. Overlapping with but not corresponding to Russian territorial boundaries, these dynamics highlight shifting spaces of power and resistance in the increasingly illiberal world.

The Olympic Games claim to be exemplars of sustainability, aiming to inspire sustainable futures around the world. Yet no systematic evaluation of their sustainability exists. We develop and apply a model with nine indicators to evaluate the sustainability of the 16 editions of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games between 1992 and 2020, representing a total cost of more than US$70 billion. Our model shows that the overall sustainability of the Olympic Games is medium and that it has declined over time. Salt Lake City 2002 was the most sustainable Olympic Games in this period, whereas Sochi 2014 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 were the least sustainable. No Olympics, however, score in the top category of our model. Three actions should make Olympic hosting more sustainable: first, greatly reducing the size of the event; second, rotating the Olympics among the same cities; third, enforcing independent sustainability standards. Sustainability has been added as a ‘pillar’ of the Olympic movement, but this analysis examines each Summer and Winter Games since 1992 to find that the performance of host cities across a range of indicators has been declining over time.

This paper tracks the growth, and recent crisis, of two of the largest tourist events on earth: the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup. It draws on a unique longitudinal dataset that contains 43 events since 1960, with a total cost exceeding USD 120 billion. Overall, the size of the three events has grown about 60-fold over the past 50 years reflecting its ballooned urban, sporting and tourism impact. We identify four different growth periods and show an emergent crisis phase in the late 2010s that likely has brought us to ‘peak event’ – the point at which the size of mega-events starts to decline. Outlining three different scenarios, we conclude that mega-events must transform along with modernity if they want to avoid a terminal decline and maintain its appeal as urban development and place marketing tools.

Situated at the intersection of the literatures on soft power and mega- events, this paper explains the production and evolution of the dominant narratives behind the 2018 Men’s Football World Cup in Russia. It begins from the premise that there are multiple unexplored dimensions to the concept of soft power and proposes three advancements: the existence of multiple audiences for soft power narratives, the necessity of examining soft power aspirations in the context of hard power constraints, and the investigation of both of these dimensions with a view that acknowledges the role of time. Exploring both externally and internally targeted narra- tives, this paper demonstrates not only the attempts by Russian autho- rities to construct hegemonic ideology among the domestic population, but also reveals how the interplay of hard power and soft power concerns changed these narratives over time.

As Europe and the wider world struggles with the COVID-19 crisis, I unpack the impacts of the pandemic on the small, wealthy, and diverse nation of Switzerland. Though deeply intertwined with capit...

The future of treatment-including addiction treatment-is biotechnological. Depot injections, agonist/antagonist implants, deep brain stimulation, and hapten conjugate vaccines are hailed by researchers and pharmaceutical manufacturers as medicine's best hope to minimize illicit use, to decrease risk of overdose and painful withdrawal, and to prevent diversion of medicines to illicit markets. Marketing and use of new technologies reveal old tensions framing concepts of addiction and its treatment: between medical condition and disorder of the will, between criminal justice and health, and between patient choice and system control. Using the examples of depot naltrexone and implantable and injectable buprenorphine in the U.S., this essay considers the arc of long-acting opioid treatment and implications for the future. These include the rise of Vivitrol courts and "carceral prescription"-where criminal justice systems mandate medicine to lock up brain receptors much as they might lock up people themselves-as well as use of buprenorphine formulations positioned as increasing both patient benefit and provider control. We also consider lessons from debates on long-acting contraceptive technologies such as Norplant and Depo-Provera. While multiple new long-acting formulations are under development, success will be determined less by characteristics of particular formulations and more by whether or not the new technologies are accompanied by a new ethics of addiction treatment that emphasizes therapeutic alliance, concordance over compliance, and a genuine commitment to allowing patients the ability to narrate and be believed in their descriptions of their treatment experiences.

This chapter discusses the state’s role and the politics of space in a comparative analysis of the 2018 World Cup and 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian Federation. Critiquing the hegemonic use of ‘the Putin factor’ as an all-explanatory epistemological narrative in understanding developments in the new Russia, the authors argue that the two sports mega events have been critical for Russia’s internal spatial restructuring, even though they may still be entangled, like the case of any games of this sort, with soft power and soft nationalism. While Sochi was more place-centric, the FIFA World Cup is allocated to 11 different cities primarily across the European part of Russia. What is emerging in many of the host cities is mixed and spatially variegated: some significant and welcome material investments (such as new airports and improved central roads) but also contested developments, neglected areas, and poor planning (like oversized infrastructure aimed at satisfying the short-term needs of the event rather than the longer term needs of residents). Overall, both events represent shifts in Russia’s regional policies and a return of the federal state to urban development after years of neglect of this domain, but also highlight the contradictions of the new politics of space. Hence, this chapter examines such developments and the geo-political dimension of sport in Russia.

In deliberations on drug policy in United Nations fora, a consensus has emerged that drug use and drug dependence should be treated primarily as public health concerns rather than as crimes. But what some member states mean by "public health approach" merits scrutiny. Some governments that espouse treating people who use drugs as "patients, not criminals" still subject them to prison-like detention in the name of drug-dependence treatment or otherwise do not take measures to provide scientifically sound treatment and humane social support to those who need them. Even drug treatment courts, which the U.S. and other countries hold up as examples of a public health approach to drug dependence, can serve rather to tighten the hold of the criminal justice sector on concerns that should be addressed in the health sector. The political popularity of demonisation of drugs and visibly repressive approaches is an obvious challenge to leadership for truly health-oriented drug control. This commentary offers some thoughts for judging whether a public health approach is worthy of the name and cautions drug policy reformers not to rely on facile commitments to health approaches that are largely rhetorical or that mask policies and activities not in keeping with good public health practise.

International audience; In France, two opioid substitution treatments have been available since the mid-1990s: buprenorphine through primary care and specialized clinics, and methadone only through specialized clinics.

The economic crisis since 2010 has affected Russia’s political economy by reducing the income available to fund political loyalty—the key mechanism of neopatrimonialism. Through an investigation of key infrastructure development projects, we examine how this crisis has affected the preparations for the 2018 Football World Cup. In so doing we introduce the concept of crisis neopatrimonialism, referring to the political and economic adaptations of a neopatrimonial system in response to economic crisis. Our research uncovered three major adaptations of neopatrimonialism in the context of World Cup preparations: a retreat of private money and concomitant rise in public funding, a reordering of favored elites, and higher costs of loyalty. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. FIGURE 1 Russian GDP and GNI/PPP, 2010 – 2015, with predictions through 2017 (indicated by the letter "e"). Adjusted for inflation. Sources: World Bank, Russian Ministry of Economic Development, Vedomosti, Russian Federal State Statistics Service, International Monetary Fund. This work was supported by a Swiss National Science Professorship under grant number PP00P1_144699.

ABSTRACT A major UN summit on the world drug problem in 2016 is an opportunity to rethink punitive drug policies that have not succeeded in stemming drug demand or supply and have undermined HIV and HCV responses in many countries. Experiences of some countries demonstrate that treating drug use and minor drug possession in the health rather than the law enforcement sector can dramatically improve access to HIV and HCV services. Alternatives to incarceration for minor drug infractions are particularly important in this regard. The voices of health professionals in national and international debates leading up to this important summit are crucial to making the case for public health-based and human rights-oriented drug policy reform.

Objective In 2010 the international HIV/AIDS community called on countries to take action to prevent HIV transmission among people who inject drugs (PWID). To set a baseline we proposed an "accountability matrix", focusing upon six countries accounting for half of the global population of PWID: China, Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam and the USA. Two years on, we review progress. Design We searched peer-reviewed literature, conducted online searches, and contacted experts for ‘grey' literature. We limited searches to documents published since December 2009 and used decision rules endorsed in earlier reviews. Results Policy shifts are increasing coverage of key interventions for PWID in China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Ukraine. Increases in PWID receiving antiretroviral treatment (ART) and opioid substitution treatment (OST) in both Vietnam and China, and a shift in Malaysia from a punitive law enforcement approach to evidence-based treatment are promising developments. The USA and Russia have had no advances on PWID access to needle and syringe programmes (NSP), OST or ART. There have also been policy setbacks in these countries, with Russia reaffirming its stance against OST and closing down access to information on methadone, and the USA reinstituting its Congressional ban on Federal funding for NSPs. Conclusions Prevention of HIV infection and access to HIV treatment for PWID is possible. Whether countries with concentrated epidemics among PWID will meet goals of achieving universal access and eliminating new HIV infections remains unknown. As long as law enforcement responses counter public health responses, health-seeking behaviour and health service delivery will be limited.

This paper examines the effects of major infrastructure development for an international mega event on two villages in rural Russia. The focus is on the experiences of people witnessing these changes firsthand, as Russia prepares to host the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. The work is grounded in field research, 19 ethnographic interviews, and government documents. Extensive interviews were conducted with Sochi locals living in two villages on opposite sides of the Mzymta River, between the Coastal Cluster of Olympic venues on the Black Sea coast and the Mountain Cluster of venues in Krasnaya Polyana. These villages have undergone radically divergent changes since Olympic development began, and contrasting the personal experiences of their inhabitants shines a light on the human element of the massive construction involved in hosting the world’s most prestigious mega-event. It is concluded that, while much of the infrastructure development is needed and welcomed, many locals nonetheless feel significantly marginalized, excluded from the discussion, and not benefiting from their region’s development.

Accurate three-dimensional information of wind flow fields can be an important tool in not only visualizing complex flow, but also understanding the underlying physical processes and improving flow modeling. However, a thorough analysis of the measurement uncertainties is required to properly interpret results. The XPIA (eXperimental Planetary boundary layer Instrumentation Assessment) field campaign conducted at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory (BAO) in Erie, CO from 2 March–31 May 2015 brought together a large suite of in-situ and remote sensing measurement platforms to evaluate complex flow measurement strategies. In this paper, measurement uncertainties for different single and multi-Doppler strategies are investigated. The tradeoffs (such as time/space resolution vs. spatial coverage) among the different measurement techniques are evaluated using co-located measurements made near the BAO tower. Sensitivity of the single/multi Doppler measurement uncertainties to averaging period are investigated using the sonic anemometers installed on the BAO tower as the standard reference. Finally, the radiometer measurements are used to partition the measurement periods as a function of atmospheric stability to determine their effect on measurement uncertainty. It was found that with increase in spatial coverage and measurement complexity, the uncertainty in the wind measurement also increased. For multi-Doppler techniques, the increase in uncertainty for temporally uncoordinated measurements is possibly due to requiring additional assumptions of stationarity and/or horizontal homogeneity. It was also found that wind speed measurement uncertainty was lower during stable conditions compared to unstable conditions.

Background Harm reduction is an evidence-based, effective response to HIV transmission and other harms faced by people who inject drugs, and is explicitly supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In spite of this, people who inject drugs continue to have poor and inequitable access to these services and face widespread stigma and discrimination. In 2013, the Global Fund launched a new funding model-signalling the end of the previous rounds-based model that had operated since its founding in 2002. This study updates previous analyses to assess Global Fund investments in harm reduction interventions for the duration of the rounds-based model, from 2002 to 2014. Methods Global Fund HIV and TB/HIV grant documents from 2002 to 2014 were reviewed to identify grants that contained activities for people who inject drugs. Data were collected from detailed grant budgets, and relevant budget lines were recorded and analysed to determine the resources allocated to different interventions that were specifically targeted at people who inject drugs. Results 151 grants for 58 countries, plus one regional proposal, contained activities targeting people who inject drugs–for a total investment of US$ 620million. Two-thirds of this budgeted amount was for interventions in the "comprehensive package" defined by the United Nations. 91% of the identified amount was for Eastern Europe and Asia. Conclusion This study represents an updated, comprehensive assessment of Global Fund investments in harm reduction from its founding (2002) until the start of the new funding model (2014). It also highlights the overall shortfall of harm reduction funding, with the estimated global need being US$ 2.3billion for harm reduction in 2015 alone. Using this baseline, the Global Fund must carefully monitor its new funding model and ensure that investments in harm reduction are maintained or scaled-up. There are widespread concerns regarding the withdrawal from middle-income countries where harm reduction remains essential and unfunded through other sources: for example, 15% of the identified investments were for countries which are now ineligible for Global Fund support.

Efforts to provide HIV prevention, treatment, and care to injecting drug users (IDU) are shaped by tensions between approaches that regard IDU as criminals and those regarding drug-dependent individuals as patients deserving treatment and human rights. Advocates for IDU health and human rights find common cause in urging greater attention to legal frameworks, the effects of police abuses, and the need for protections for particularly vulnerable populations including women and those in state custody. Arbitrary detention of drug users, and conditions of pretrial detention, offer examples of how HIV prevention and treatment are adversely impacted by human rights abuse. National commitments to universal access to prevention and treatment for injecting drug users, and the recognition that users of illicit substances do not forfeit their entitlement to health services or human dignity, offer a clear point of convergence for advocates for health and rights, and suggest directions for reform to increase availability of sterile injection equipment, opiate substitution treatment, and antiretroviral therapy. For IDU, protection of rights has particular urgency if universal access to HIV prevention and treatment is to become an achievable reality.

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To create and evaluate a pilot bioterrorism defense training environment using virtual reality technology.The present pilot project used Second Life, an internet-based virtual world system, to construct a virtual reality environment to mimic an actual setting that might be used as a Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) distribution site for northern California in the event of a bioterrorist attack. Scripted characters were integrated into the system as mock patients to analyze various clinic workflow scenarios. Users tested the virtual environment over two sessions.Thirteen users who toured the environment were asked to complete an evaluation survey. Respondents reported that the virtual reality system was relevant to their practice and had potential as a method of bioterrorism defense training.Computer simulations of bioterrorism defense training scenarios are feasible with existing personal computer technology. The use of internet-connected virtual environments holds promise for bioterrorism defense training. Recommendations are made for public health agencies regarding the implementation and benefits of using virtual reality for mass prophylaxis clinic training.

OBJECTIVE: To compare neglectful and non-neglectful mothers on information processing tasks related to child emotions, behaviors, the caregiving relationship, and recall of child-related information. METHOD: A natural group design was used. Neglectful mothers (N=34) were chosen from active, chronic caseloads; non-neglectful comparison mothers (N=33) were obtained from community agencies serving families. Participants were administered the IFEEL Picture task to assess maternal perceptions of infant emotions, eight vignettes of young children's behavior to assess attributions for child behavior across different scenarios, and a passage recall task to assess information processing problems. A measure of depression was used as a covariate to control for this variable. RESULTS: Neglectful mothers were significantly less likely to recognize infants' feelings of interest, more likely to see sadness and shame, more inaccurate at labeling infants' emotions, and had a more limited emotion vocabulary. They also made more internal and stable attributions for children's behaviors in situations where it was not clear whether a child was at risk of harm, and had poor recall of information. Depressive symptoms had little effect on these findings with the exception of information recall. CONCLUSIONS: Neglectful mothers show significant problems in information processing concerning their child's emotions and behaviors, which may affect their childrearing behavior. Cognitive-behavioral interventions to improve parents' abilities to recognize their child's emotions and to address maladaptive attributions may be of value. Language: en

Offered proper support, injection drug users (IDUs) can achieve the same levels of adherence to and clinical benefit from antiretroviral treatment (ARV) as other patients with HIV. Nonetheless, in countries of Asia and the former Soviet Union where IDUs represent the largest share of HIV cases, IDUs have been disproportionately less likely to receive ARV. While analysis of adherence amongst IDUs has focused on individual patient ability to adhere to medical regimens, HIV treatment systems themselves are in need of examination. Structural impediments to provision of ARV for IDUs include competing, vertical systems of care; compulsory drug treatment and rehabilitation services that often offer neither ARV nor effective treatment for chemical dependence; lack of opiate substitution treatments demonstrated to increase adherence to ARV; and policies that explicitly or implicitly discourage ARV delivery to active IDUs. Labeling active drug users as socially untrustworthy or unproductive, health systems can create a series of paradoxes that ensure confirmation of these stereotypes. Needed reforms include professional education and public campaigns that emphasize IDU capacity for health protection and responsible choice; recognition that the chronic nature of injecting drug use and its links to HIV infection require development of ARV treatment delivery that includes active drug users; and integrated treatment that strengthens links between health providers and builds on, rather than seeks to bypass, IDU social networks and organizations.

Western sanctions have isolated Russia from key international systems. Putting aside controversial questions about Russia's motivations for retaking Crimea, their involvement in the Donbas region, or even the potential for sanctions to bring peace, the west faces unexpected health-related dangers in its pursuit of the politics of isolation.