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‘Dust off the cobwebs’: Windsurfing, kiteboarding, and the politics of modernising Olympic sailing
Get PDFThe International Olympic Committee's (IOC) attempts to modernise the Olympic programme thought the Agenda 2020 framework, including through the inclusion of newer youth-focused action sports, is well documented. However, research on action sport inclusion has focused on the challenges for the newly incorporated sports, and their governance. The impacts for the traditional International Federations (IFs), and their shifting power and influence in these processes has been less well evidenced. To address this gap we focus on attempts to modernise Olympic Sailing via the integration of two youth-focused action sports windsurfing and kiteboarding. Our research used a multi-method, historical (1980s–2024) and ANT-informed methodology. This directed us to identify the different organisational actors involved in the modernisation of sailing; World Sailing (WS), the IOC, and the action sports organisations, their roles and experiences. Examining significant events and policy shifts from the inclusion of windsurfing in the 1980s, to the substantial changes implemented for Paris 2024, we show the different actants/stakeholders involved in each event, their challenges, and shifting influence. Our findings show that Agenda 2020 has played a critical role in the modernisation of Olympic Sailing. However, while both new sailing sports windsurfing and kiteboarding appeared to have had the IOC's support, Olympic inclusion was a contested process, particularly amongst sailing's traditional stakeholders. Our analysis highlights the economic, cultural, political and technological forces impacting the modernisation process, and contestation within and between these stakeholders. Our research reveals key shifts in the relationship between the IOC and this IF, showing that over the past decade, the IOC had increased its influence on WS's decision-making, and has exerted its authority more evidently. As WS is one of 39 IOC-recognised IFs under pressure from the IOC to modernise, our article raises wider issues about the power, politics and challenges of IF modernisation
‘It's Skin Cancer’… a Rollercoaster of a Journey for Teenagers, Young People and Their Significant Other
Get PDFAim: To explore the lived experience of young people aged 16–24 years diagnosed with melanoma and that of their significant other in England. Design: Interpretive phenomenological analysis.
Methods: Data were collected between August 2023 and January 2024 from one specialist cancer centre in England. Thirteen young people were approached, and 10 took part. Each young person was asked to nominate a significant other. Five nominated a significant other, and five nominated no one. Although interviews were offered face‐to‐face, virtual was the preferred method. In‐depth semi‐structured interviews were audio‐recorded with the participant's consent. Interview data were transcribed verbatim and analysed.
Findings: The core conceptual thread woven throughout the findings was ‘It's like being on a rollercoaster,’ which is representative of the ups and downs of the treatment trajectory, often without the support of age‐appropriate specialist care. Four superordinate themes were identified: ‘Is something wrong?’, ‘Suddenly it's serious’, ‘Out on a limb’ and ‘Finding our place’.
Conclusion: Although most young people were treated in a primary treatment centre for adults with cancer, their experience was challenging from route to diagnosis through their treatment and beyond. Few received age‐appropriate care to support their physical, emotional, and social wellbeing to help them navigate the experience.
Impact: There is limited evidence exploring the experiences of teenagers and young adults living with melanoma or that of their significant other. This enriched understanding supports improvement of the care pathway and service delivery for these young people and their families.
Patient and Public Involvement: One young person with lived experience was paid as a consultant to be part of the research team. He helped develop the grant application and research questions, data analysis, and writing this paper
A light dust shield, including aerogel, for DISC instrument on board ESA's Comet Interceptor mission: numerical simulations and Ballistic Limit Equation
Get PDFThe Dust Impact Sensor and Counter (DISC), part of the payload of Comet Interceptor mission, will determine the coma dust features of the mission target comet. DISC sensing plate will be exposed to cometary dust hypervelocity impacts (HVI), because of the high flyby speed (10– 60 km/s) foreseen for the space probe. For this measurement configuration, an efficient dust shield is mandatory, to protect the electronics of the detector and the housing S/C. Aiming at withstanding the predicted HVI without affecting DISC measurements and significantly increasing the payload mass, we designed a light aerogel-stuffed Whipple shield. In this work, we present an analysis of the dust-shield performances by computing the related Ballistic Limit Equations (BLEs) with the support of laboratory tests and numerical simulations. Our results reveal that the DISC dust shield exhibits resilience against particles up to 7 mm in size impacting DISC at 20 km/s—resulting in a momentum 100 times larger than impact predicted during the Comet Interceptor flyby. In addition, we find that the DISC dust shield withstands, for fixed impact velocity, critical particle diameters about four times larger than those stopped by a classic Whipple shield, with a Bumper and Rear wall configuration of equal areal density
Older adults can re-appraise loneliness using a social connectivity app: a mixed method intervention study
Get PDFObjectives
Older adults face an elevated risk of social isolation, loneliness, and poor psychological health. This mixed methods study evaluates a trial of an intervention app designed to protect against loneliness by raising older adults’ awareness of their social relationships.
Method
A 4-week online mixed methods randomised 2 (condition: app use vs waitlist) x 3 (timepoint: baseline, 2 week, and 4 week wellbeing) trial, with follow up qualitative interviews. Older adults (N = 99, Mean Age = 68) completed a survey at three timepoints (baseline, two, and four weeks) reporting loneliness, depression, and anxiety. Forty-five post-trial interviews were conducted with the app users and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Results
A significant interaction effect was found; participants using the app reported a significant reduction in depression scores between baseline and four-week follow-up. There was no significant effect on loneliness or anxiety scores. Interviews revealed ways app users were (1) Holding up a mirror to feelings about their social groups, (2) Re-appraising loneliness; and (3) Acting as analysts.
Conclusion
The digital intervention reduced reported depression by enhancing positive appraisal of social groups. Further work is required to understand how to overcome risks of reflection-based apps for loneliness
Contraceptive side effects: the case for considering lived experiences in contraceptive consultations
Get PDFBackground: Recent research has shown that women often report that their concerns are not listened to in exchanges with clinicians when accessing reproductive healthcare, including contraceptive consultations. When people do not feel listened to, or have their concerns taken seriously, this can lead to disengagement with contraceptive services, and distrust of healthcare professionals.
Methods: A participatory approach, with 18 volunteer researchers interviewing 52 friends and family members about information seeking and contraceptive methods.
Results: Most participants were not satisfied with contraceptive consultations and felt that healthcare professionals did not give them all the information they wanted. Because of this, they found personal stories about contraception to be very important in their information seeking and decision-making processes. Sharing these stories, both what they heard from others and their own experiences, helped them consider potential side-effects of different methods. Participants thereby drew on vernacular knowledge (unofficial, informal and everyday culture of a group) some of which was accessed through social media. Vernacular knowledge also included experiential knowledge, as provided by friends and family members. This kind of knowledge was not covered in their contraceptive consultations.
Conclusions: Patient understandings of side-effects do not always align with medical evidence. Dismissing reported side-effects can undermine patient experience, leading to disengagement or seeking of counter-expertise. Practitioner knowledge and patient vernacular knowledge should be considered together when counselling about contraceptives. Our research suggests that a more prominent culture of active-listening is required in clinician-patient exchanges which acknowledges and works with patient concerns and lived experiences
[Editorial] ‘Are you a first-time parent?’ Challenges for reproductive and infant researchers in asking about reproductive history and family composition
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‘Hassle, heartache, abuse’: Transgender experiences of sex and sexual violence in one men’s sex offender prison
No full textPublic debates that position trans women as a sexual danger to non-trans women held in women’s prisons has deflected attention away from crucial questions about how and why sex and sexual violence is produced in carceral spaces as well as the sexual harm that trans prisoners face in men’s prisons. This chapter foregrounds empirical evidence on the materialities of trans lives in one men’s sex offender prison, centring the voices of trans, non-binary and intersex prisoners and prison staff responsible for managing them. Through an analysis of semi-structured interviews, the meanings, moralities and management of trans prisoners’ sexual activity and sexual victimisation is discussed. This reveals how a carceral logic of suspicion increased scrutiny, surveillance and punishment of trans prisoners whilst simultaneously obscuring sexual victimisation. This enabled prison interests in order, security and management to be privileged over the safety and protection of trans prisoners from sexual violence
The founding of the <i>Journal of the London Mathematical Society</i> and its first volume
Get PDFThat the Journal of the London Mathematical Society came into existence in 1926 can be ascribed to the efforts of one man: G.H. Hardy. As one of the two Secretaries of the Society, Hardy was aware of the increasing demand for publication space in the Society’s Proceedings, and the need for an outlet for shorter papers. It was evident that these problems could be solved if the Society could publish a second journal. However, to do so required money, money that the Society did not have; funds would have to be raised. Hardy rose to the challenge. Well-connected and international in outlook, he was the right man for the task. Not only did he secure the funds, he ensured that the Journal was no parochial periodical; of the papers in Volume 1, over 25% came from authors based outside Britain
Making geography move: The Royal Geographical Society and the exchange of periodical knowledge, 1830–1900
Get PDFThis paper explores the decisions of the Royal Geographical Society's (RGS) Library and Map Committee in conditioning and constraining the circulation of Britain's first geographical periodical publication. Principally drawing on the committee's minutes in the last half of the nineteenth century, the paper unpicks the unwritten rules that shaped the flow of geographical knowledge to other institutions. As well as documenting the extent and reach of the RGS's periodical, the minutes also reveal the places to which the journal did not travel and the reasons for limiting the movement of geographical ideas and information. Uncovering the journal's travels in this way makes several important contributions to the history of geography and the geographies of knowledge. First, it contributes to new understandings of the RGS and its actors in conditioning the circulation and accumulation of nineteenth-century geographical knowledge. Second, it draws attention to the specificity of the periodical as a printed medium and illustrates its value in understanding the circulation of geography. Third, it makes clear the intricate processes that facilitate or disrupt the flow of geographical knowledge that should demand attention in the context of our modern-day scholarly practice