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This file was dowloaded from the institutional repository Brage NIH -brage.bibsys.no/nih Houlihan, B., Zheng, J. (2013 The aim of the paper is to explore the consequences of the intensification of competition among the most successful countries at the Olympic Games -the sports powers -for participating countries, potential host countries and the IOC. The paper begins by tracing briefly the emergence of increasingly sophisticated and expensive elite sports systems and then examines some of the characteristics of these systems paying particular attention to the extent to which selected major sports powers and medium powers have developed a competitive advantage in a relatively narrow range of sports. Data for the paper was collected through the analysis of a range of financial and sport performance data and the analysis of political indices of democracy. The main findings of the paper are 1) identifying sports in which a country has a relative competitive advantage remains crucial for the continuing success of major sports powers and is becoming increasingly important for medium sports powers; 2) the cost of maintaining a country's relative position in the medals table is considerable and arguably locks countries on to a path from which it is difficult for them to deviate; 3) the increasing concern with providing security for the Games may have a deterrent effect on the willingness of more open democratic countries to bid to host the Games; and 4) the IOC faces a potential challenge in providing the majority of countries that attend the Games, but which do not win a medal, with a return on their investment in Olympic sport.

Coniothyrium minitans is a potential biological control agent of the plant pathogenic fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. In this research, T-DNA insertional transformation of strain ZS-1 of C. minitans mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens was obtained, with optimization of spore maturity for transformation. After confirmation by PCR, transformants were subjected to Southern blot analysis, and results showed that more than 82.7% of transformants had single T-DNA insertions, and 12.1% of transformants had two copies T-DNA insertions. The genomic DNA segments of transformants flanking the T-DNA could be amplified from both borders with TAIL-PCR. Four types of mutants were screened and identified from the T-DNA insertional library, which comprised sporulation deficient mutants, pathogenicity deficient mutants, pigment change mutants and antibiotic deficient mutant, and some of the mutants were described; the number and frequency of each type of mutant from the library were calculated, and the frequency of each type is 3.27 x 10(-3), 1.0 x 10(-4), 1.4 x 10(-4), 2.5 x 10(-4), respectively. The successful creation of the T-DNA insertional transformation library may help us to unravel the interaction between a parasite and its host at a molecular level, to clarify the differentiation and development of this fungus, and to analyze and clone functional genes from the biocontrol microorganism in tripartite associations.

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