Martin Müller

• Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus - Senftenberg

Sustainability has become a key concern of major sports events. Yet, the field lacks both a consistent definition and a conceptual model for sustainable major events. This hampers the emergence of a shared theoretical understanding of sustainability as an analytical object and the building of a practical framework to guide the sector towards greate...

Culture has become a major component of policies to put cities on the global map. This article traces the shifting geographies of urban cultural capital using the lens of major cultural buildings, such as the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which cities often mobilise to compete for attention, reputation, tourists and investment....

Mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cups pose major financial and management risks to the public sector. To better understand and anticipate these risks, this paper examines the determinants of revenues, costs, and profitability of these events. In a longitudinal analysis of 43 events between 1964 and 2018, our study found a po...

This paper examines the growth of the Olympic Games against that of former host cities to understand whether this mega-event may have ‘outgrown’ its hosts. The increasing hosting requirements and governments’ expansive use of mega-events as tools for urban development would suggest that the ‘Olympic city’ – a term we use for describing the size of...

This paper tracks the growth of two of the largest tourist events: the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup, drawing on a dataset containing all events between 1964 and 2018. Overall, the size of the three events has grown about 60-fold over the past 50 years, thirteen times faster than world GDP. We identify an S-shaped growth curve and four d...

The Olympic Games and the Football World Cups are among the most expensive projects in the world. While available theoretical explanations suggest that the revenues of mega-events are overestimated and the costs underestimated, there is no comprehensive empirical study on whether costs exceed revenues. Based on a custom-built database from public s...

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 d...

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...

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...

This paper examines the role of paradoxes in research and proposes strategies of engaging with them. For this purpose, it analyses the ways in which six paradoxes are constitutive of sports mega-events such as the Olympic Games: the universalism paradox, the compliance paradox, the winner's paradox, the participation paradox, the uniqueness paradox...

This paper shows that assemblage thinking and actor-network theory (ANT) have much more to gain from each other than debate has so far conceded. Exploring the conjunctions and disjunctions between the two approaches, it proposes three cross-fertilisations that have implications for understanding three key processes in our socio-material world: stab...

This paper develops the notion of “event seizure” to better understand how mega-events, and the elites associated with them, take possession of host cities and societies—of development plans, funds and legislation—and impose their priorities on cities and citizens. It illustrates how event seizure plays out in the preparations for the Football Worl...

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup have become complex and transformative undertakings over the last 30 years, with costs often exceeding USD $10 billion. These events are currently planned and governed in ways that produce adverse effects for cities, regions, and residents. Th...

This paper examines the relationship of actor-network theory (ANT) and economic geography, arguing that there has been a rather restrictive, sometimes ambiguous reading of ANT literature. It reviews three major lines of reception in economic geography around the themes of topological space, translation and performativity. Subsequently, the paper pr...

Assemblage thinking and actor-network theory (ANT) have been at the forefront of a paradigm shift that sees space and agency as the result of associating humans and non-humans to form precarious wholes. This shift offers ways of rethinking the relations between power, politics and space from a more processual, socio-material perspective. After sket...

There is considerable ambiguity about what makes an event a mega-event. Intervening in this debate, this paper develops a definition and classification scheme for mega-events. On the basis of a review of existing definitions, it proposes four constitutive dimensions of mega-events: visitor attractiveness, mediated reach, costs and transformative im...

Müller M. and Stewart A. Does temporary geographical proximity predict learning? Knowledge dynamics in the Olympic Games, Regional Studies. Temporary geographical proximity in the form of face-to-face contact is commonly thought to enhance learning. In a sample of individuals (n = 294) involved in knowledge transfer in the Olympic Games, temporary...

How have political and economic processes in Russia impacted protected areas? When first conceived in 1916, protected areas in Russia were considered as sancta of nature. In post-Soviet times, however, the fortunes of protected areas have undergone swift change: from a period of liberalisation and a conservation bonanza in the 1990s to increasing e...

This article proposes that economic geography would benefit from a closer consideration of the topological multiplicities of power, that is, the multiple contending configurations of networks that make power a precarious accomplishment through creating constant overflows. It develops this argument by tracing how the circulation of knowledge in the...

Interest in the lived mundane practices and embodied experience of subjects has seen a tremendous upsurge in human geography in the past years. With its focus on social interaction and concern with subjects' lifeworlds, ethnography suggests itself as a suitable methodological approach to match this interest. Against the lack of a sustained debate i...

This article shows how hegemonic discourses are sustained through the play of lack and jouissance. Lack refers to the symbolic limits of discourse and is both the condition of possibility and of impossibility of hegemony: while it vitiates the realization of a full identity, it at the same time keeps spurring the search for it. Jouissance describes...

Despite their implication in almost all aspects of the field, organizations remain a black box within critical geopolitics. The majority of the literature looks at organizations from the outside, either treating them as producers of geopolitical representations or as geopolitical actors. An explicit engagement with what organizations are, what make...

Recent studies have suggested that temporary geographical proximity in the form of face-to-face contact enhances learning. On the basis of a sample of individuals (n= 294) involved in knowledge transfer activities in the Olympic Games, this paper specifies regression models to predict learning. It finds that temporary geographical proximity acts as...

With the increasing number and impact of events hosted by cities, understanding the nature of popular support for them and the resulting urban transformations is a crucial task. This paper examines residents’ perceptions of the preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, asking how support differs across social groups and what factors...

This contribution examines the rise of the BRICs (Brazil-Russia-India-China) through the lens of central socio-economic indicators, including the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators and the World Values Survey. It charts the shift in economic weight and emerging reconfiguration of economic ties as evidenced in foreign direct investment (FDI)...

This paper examines the preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, and links it to debates on state rescaling and urban entrepreneurialism in megaprojects. It is argued that the Olympic megaproject in Sochi follows a model of state dirigisme which accords a salient role to the national state. Although private sector companies a...

The incidence of natural disturbance in forests is increasing globally as a consequence of global warming. The concomitant large-scale transformation of landscapes can have profound social impacts and trigger political conflict that hampers resource management. This paper explores the link between landscape transformations and political conflict us...

This paper argues that nationalism and neoliberalism should not be considered as conflicting ideologies, but can enter into a productive association. This association creates an entrepreneurial nationalism that people can actively embrace as self-governing subjects in pursuit of a good life and successful career, rather than as subjects governed th...

Tourism in protected areas can create considerable income for adjacent communities. Based on face-to-face visitor surveys, the present study measures the structure, size and economic impact of tourist expenditure in the six German national parks Niedersächsisches Wattenmeer, Bayerischer Wald, Eifel, Müritz, Hainich and Kellerwald-Edersee. We find t...

Tourists represent important stakeholders in the management of natural disturbance in protected areas. This study examines tourists’ attitude towards large-scale bark beetle infestation in the case of Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany. Three alternative conceptual models for predicting attitude are specified and compared using structural equat...

The economic benefits of mega-events such as the Olympic Games are much touted but little quantified. This paper first presents a systematisation of the money streams associated with hosting the Olympic Games and then introduces basic concepts from regional economics. On this basis it outlines a general model that could be employed to estimate the...

Management authorities of protected areas have recently been faced with a considerable rise of natural disturbance such as fire or insect pests in ecosystems. Incorporating visitor experience of natural disturbance into management strategies is a crucial task. The present study uses multivariate statistical analysis to examine visitors' attitudes t...

When critical geopolitics entered German political geography, its empirical verve helped crank up a discipline which had diminished into an academic backwater. Soon, however, conceptual doubts began to supersede the initial enthusiasm with which critical geopolitics had been welcomed into political geography. Critical voices in German geography hig...

This paper seeks to advance the theoretical discussion on the concept of discourse in the field of critical geopolitics and address the growing dissatisfaction with its value as an instrument of social inquiry. It does so in a two-fold manner: first, it aims to contribute to conceptual clarity, particularly concerning the different applications of...

Der Nationalpark Bayerischer Wald weist eine hohe Bedeutung als touristische Destination auf. Er stellt die am häufigsten besuchte Attraktion der Region dar. Die Nationalparkaffinität der Besucher liegt im Bayerischen Wald höher als in anderen deutschen Nationalparken. Für beinahe jeden zweiten Besucher spielt die Präsenz des Nationalparks eine gro...

An increasing number of geographers conduct research in foreign languages. Since the representation of research still largely takes place in English, we are inevitably confronted with the challenge of translation. All too often, however, translation is treated as a fait accompli and conceptual black box without problematizing the very act of transl...

While housing issues in urban agglomerations of sub-Saharan Africa have attracted considerable scholarly attention, comparatively little is known about housing problems in rural areas. Taking issue with this shortcoming in our contribution, we first replicate a survey of housing conditions in a rural district of Western Kenya dating back to 1980. A...

Herpesvirus envelopment is assumed to follow an uneconomical pathway including primary envelopment at the inner nuclear membrane, de-envelopment at the outer nuclear membrane, and reenvelopment at the trans-Golgi network. In contrast to the hypothesis of de-envelopment by fusion of the primary envelope with the outer nuclear membrane, virions were...

Herpesvirus capsids originating in the nucleus overcome the nucleocytoplasmic barrier by budding at the inner nuclear membrane. The fate of the resulting virions is still under debate. The fact that capsids approach Golgi membranes from the cytoplasmic side led to the theory of fusion between the viral envelope and the outer nuclear membrane, resul...

Oz is a recent high-level programming language, based on an extension of the concurrent constraint model by higher-order procedures and state. Oz is a dynamically typed language like Prolog, Scheme, or Smalltalk. We investigate two approaches of making static type analysis available for Oz: Set-based failure diagnosis and strong typing. We define a...

We present a new constraint system called Ines. Its constraints are conjunctions of inclusions t1 subset t2 between first-order terms (without set operators) which are interpreted over non-empty sets of trees. The existing systems of set constraints can express Ines constraints only if they include negation. Their satisfiability problem is NEXPTIME...

Origin Of Cytoplasmic Nucleocapsids In Mdbk-Cells Infected With Bovine Herpesvirus 1 (Bhv-1) - Volume 8 Issue S02 - P. Wild, E.M. Schraner, E. Loepfe, P. Walther, M. Müller, M. Engels

Nucleocapsids of herpesviruses originate in the nucleus of host cells and bud through the inner nuclear membrane acquiring tegument and envelope. The release of the enveloped virus particle from the perinuclear space is unknown. Cryobased electron microscopic imaging revealed enveloped virus particles within cisterns associated with the perinuclear...

International audience The system FT< of ordering constraints over feature trees has been introduced as an extension of the system FT of equality constraints over feature trees. We investigate the first-order theory of FT< and its fragments in detail, both over finite trees and over possibly infinite trees. We prove that the first-order theory of F...

Yeast vacuoles are highly dynamic and flexible organelles. In a previous paper, we have shown that subtle, often unrecognised amino acid limitations lead to much lower final cell densities in cultures of different commonly used auxotrophic Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains (Cakar et al., Biotechnol. Lett. 21 (1999) 611). Here, we demonstrate for two...

Hyaluronan (HA), an extracellular matrix component, is involved mainly in the control of cell proliferation, neural crest and tumor cell migration, and wound repair. We investigated the effect of hyaluronan on neural crest (NC) cell migration and its ultrastructural localization in dark (wild-type) and white mutant embryos of the Mexican axolotl (A...

The system FT< of ordering constraints over feature trees has been introduced as an extension of the system FT of equality constraints over feature trees. We investigate decidability and complexity questions for fragments of the first-order theory of FT<. It is well-known that the first-order theory of FT< is decidable and that several of its fragm...

We present a constraint system, OF, of feature trees that is appropriate to specify and implementtype inference for first-class messages. OF extends traditional systems of feature constraints by aselection constraint xhyiz, "by first-class feature tree" y, which is in contrast to the standard selectionconstraint x[ f ]y, "by fixed feature" f . We i...

Feature trees have been used to accommodate records in constraint programming and record like structures in computational linguistics. Feature trees model records, and feature constraints yield extensible and modular record descriptions. We introduce the constraint system fFT ≤of ordering constraints interpreted over feature trees. Under the view t...

This paper presents the first approximation method of the finite-failure set of a logic program by set-based analysis. In a dual view, the method yields a type analysis for programs with ongoing behaviors (perpetual processes). Our technical contributions are (1)~the semantical characterization of finite failure of logic programs over infinite tree...

We present a constraint system OF of feature trees that is appropriate to specify and implement type inference for first-class messages. OF extends traditional systems of feature constraints by a selection constraint x[y]z “by first-class feature tree” y, in contrast to the standard selection constraint x[f]y “by fixed feature” f. We investigate th...

This note makes available some observations on the HM(X) scheme.

We present a constraint system OF of feature trees that is appropriate to specify and implement type inference for first-class messages. OF extends traditional systems of feature constraints by a selection constraint x(y)z "by first-class feature tree" y, in contrast to the standard selection constraint x[f]y "by fixed feature" f. We investigate th...

Mitochondrial inclusion bodies are often described in skeletal muscle of patients suffering diseases termed mitochondrial myopathies. A major component of these structures was discovered as being mitochondrial creatine kinase. Similar creatine kinase enriched inclusion bodies in the mitochondria of creatine depleted adult rat cardiomyocytes have be...

The purpose of this metholdological survey was to find optimal methods for the fixation and demonstration of glycosaminoglycans, mainly hyaluronan, and proteoglycans, in subepidermal extracellular matrix (ECM) regions of axolotl embryos. We compared living ECM in the laser-scanning microscope (LSM) with chemically fixed or cryoimmobilized extracell...

We investigate concurrency as unifying computational paradigm which integrates functional, constraint, and object-oriented programming. We propose the Rho-calculus as a uniform foundation of concurrent computation and formally relate it to other models: The Rho-calculus with equational constraints provides for logic variables and is bisimilar to th...

We introduce constraints necessary for type checking a higher-order concurrent constraint language, and solve them with an incremental algorithm. Our constraint system extends rational unification by constraints x$\subseteq$ y saying that ``$x$ has at least the structure of $y$'', modelled by a weak instance relation between trees. This notion of i...

The human calcitonin (hCT) peptide hormone has a marked tendency to aggregate in aqueous solutions and to form long, thin fibrillar aggregates resulting in viscous and turbid dispersions. In this study, the in vitro aggregation products of hCT were systematically investigated using conventional transmission electron microscopy (CTEM) and in-lens fi...

There is no doubt that STABLE and WFS are among the dominant semantics for logic programs. While WFS has many nice structural properties, it is very weak. STABLE allows to derive more atoms, but may become inconsistent and it is not relevant, i.e. the truth value of an atom does not only depend on the call-graph below it. In this paper we consider...

The stable and the well-founded semantics are among the leading semantics for logic programs. While stable models do not always exist (and therefore no meaningful inferences can be drawn), the (three-valued) well-founded model is always defined. A weakness of WFS on the other hand is its inability to allow for reasoning-by-cases. We claim that — be...

The major task of biological high resolution SEM and TEM is to provide structural information for correlating structure and function. It is the only methodology with the inherent power needed to observe structures down to molecular dimensions within the context of complex biological systems. Specimen preparation and imaging techniques should theref...

Ultra-small colloidal gold (less than 1 nm), bound to Fab fragments provides the shortest practical specific marker system to date and can be used in concert with field emission scanning electron microscopes to precisely locate antigenic sites. An "in-lens" FE-SEM equipped with a highly sensitive single crystal YAG-detector for backscattered electr...

Electron microscopy is currently the only methodology with the inherent potential to observe structures down to molecular dimensions within the context of complex biological systems. Specimen preparation and imaging techniques should be directed towards preservation and imaging of the smallest significant details in order to fully exploit this uniq...