Fight Against Doping as a Social Performance: The Case of the 2015–2016 Russian Anti-Doping Crisis

In 2016, the Olympic Movement had to face a major crisis of state sponsored doping in Russia. This crisis raised suspicions about the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-doping Agency’s (WADA) efficiency and integrity. This article focuses on the Russian doping case, as it offers rich and diverse empirical material that helps understand the social context of the production and circulation of performance. To this end, we articulate Bourdieu’s fields theory and Abbott’s linked ecologies as relevant models to analyse and discuss our case study and its implications. We used newspaper articles on the Russian crisis, a content analysis of official WADA and IOC publications, and field notes taken during informal talks with anti-doping stakeholders. In this article, it is argued that IOC and WADA’s social performance was ineffective for three reasons. First, the crisis revealed the gap between the promises of anti-doping and the widespread doping in Russia. Second, it demonstrated the extent to which the Russian crisis fragilised the binding role of the sport doxa, reinforced the role of anti-doping stakeholders’ specific ecologies and belittled cooperation between them to display a shared meaning of the situation. Third, embedded in a complex web of interactions and interdependencies with other actors, WADA and the IOC were unable to perform a convincing ‘social performance’ and both were judged to be ineffective and untrustworthy. The results of the study show (1) the importance of the diachronic dimension of social performance; (2) the relevance of relying on Bourdieu’s field theory to understand the central role of temporality in the production of meanings; (3) the usefulness of Abbott’s perspective to understand that producers do not control the meanings and understand how they were reframed; (4) the relative autonomy of the meanings associated with social performance.

Rare Earth-Doped BiFeO3Thin Films: Relationship between Structural and Magnetic Properties

Rare Earth- (RE-) doped BiFeO3(BFO) thin films were grown on LaAlO3substrates by using pulsed laser deposition technique. All of BFO films doped with 10% of RE show a single phase of rhombohedral structure. The saturated magnetization in the Ho- and Sm-doped films is much larger than those reported in literature and was observed at a quite low field as of 0.2 T. As for Pr- and Nd-doped BFO films, Fe2+amount is not dominant; thus, ferromagnetism is not favored. As the RE concentration goes up to 20%, all compounds have drastically gone through a structural transition. The RE-doped BFO films have changed from rhombohedral to either pure orthorhombic phase (for Ho, Sm), or a mixed phase of orthorhombic and tetragonal (for Pr, Nd), or pure tetragonal (for Eu). We observed magnetic properties of RE-doped BFO films have significantly changed. While 20% Ho/Sm-doped BFO films have ferromagnetism degraded in comparison with the 10% doping case, the 20% Pr/Nd-doped BFO thin films, whose structure is a mixed phase, have magnetic ordering improved due to the fact that the Fe2+amount has become greater. It seems that one can control the magnetic properties of BFO films by using appropriate RE dopants and concentrations.

Reforming Characteristics under Visible Light Response of Cr- or Ag-Doped Prepared by Sol-Gel and Dip-Coating Process

A Cr- or Ag-doped TiO2film was prepared by sol-gel and dip-coating process and used as the photocatalyst for CO2reforming under the visible light. The ratio of amount of Cr or Ag added to amount of Ti in TiO2sol solution (R) varied from 0 to 100 wt% or 0 to 50 wt%, respectively. The total layer number of Cr- or Ag-doped TiO2film (N) coated was changed. The CO2reforming performance with the Cr- or Ag-doped TiO2film was tested under a Xe lamp with or without ultraviolet (UV) light. As a result, whenNequals to 1, the concentration of CO which was a product from CO2reforming was maximized in Cr doping case forR= 70 wt% and in Ag doping case forR= 1 wt%, respectively. The best result of concentration of CO = 8306 ppmV, concentration of CH4= 1367 ppmV, concentration of C2H6= 1712 ppmV is obtained when with Cr doping in this study.