Sprinting with prosthetic versus biological legs: insight from experimental data

Running-prostheses have enabled exceptional athletes with bilateral leg amputations to surpass Olympic 400 m athletics qualifying standards. Due to the world-class performances and relatively fast race finishes of these athletes, many people assume that running-prostheses provide users an unfair advantage over biologically legged competitors during long sprint races. These assumptions have led athletics governing bodies to prohibit the use of running-prostheses in sanctioned non-amputee (NA) competitions, such as at the Olympics. However, here we show that no athlete with bilateral leg amputations using running-prostheses, including the fastest such athlete, exhibits a single 400 m running performance metric that is better than those achieved by NA athletes. Specifically, the best experimentally measured maximum running velocity and sprint endurance profile of athletes with prosthetic legs are similar to, but not better than those of NA athletes. Further, the best experimentally measured initial race acceleration (from 0 to 20 m), maximum velocity around curves, and velocity at aerobic capacity of athletes with prosthetic legs were 40%, 1–3% and 19% slower compared to NA athletes, respectively. Therefore, based on these 400 m performance metrics, use of prosthetic legs during 400 m running races is not unequivocally advantageous compared to the use of biological legs.

Doping as a barrier in universal acceptance of esports

PurposeEsports has been emerging as a multi-billion dollar industry by attracting players, viewers, advertisers and investors across the globe. Even though there are plenty of professional titles present, only a few have been considered mainstream due to lack of formal governance mechanisms, presence of corruption and cheating mechanisms. “Doping” is one such practice where the players try to gain unfair advantage over their competitors, causing major hindrance in esports development. This qualitative study would draw insights from their perceptions about different doping mechanisms and possible recommendations to curb them.Design/methodology/approachThis study has analyzed the semi-structured interviews of selected esports professionals to draw insights from their perceptions about different doping mechanisms and possible recommendations to curb them. This qualitative study would explore the content of their interviews for extracting relevant themes and subthemes.FindingsThe findings of this study have made significant contributions to deeply lacking literature about the esports industry and barriers it faces in order to be considered as a legitimate sport. The study has extracted contemporary and new emerging themes about the rising trends in the industry and their impact on society and the way we see sports as a whole. Moreover, this study dwells upon the rampant drug abuse persisting in this industry and how it offers itself as a barrier to the legitimization of esports as a viable global industry.Originality/valueThis study provides an on-ground reality reports on esports and various malpractices rampant in the industry by conducting interviews with various industry professionals and analyzing them through a thematic analysis method using an inductive approach.

Dilution Versus Unfair Advantage: Myths and Realities

Recent developments in the commercial marketplace have rendered the classification of trademarks as mere tools for remedying information asymmetry and assuring quality inaccurate. The value of trademarks as communicative tools has increased, and they are now being used by their owners to transmit images, value propositions and associations to consumers in order to drive purchases. However, while this new function of trademarks is a reality that can hardly be ignored, finding a convincing normative justification to legally support its integration into the trademark system remains problematic. Thus, building on the normative justifications advanced by the European Union (EU) to justify extended trademark protection, this paper evaluates the dilutive harm theory, including blurring and tarnishment, in addition to the misappropriation rationale. The paper reviews EU case law in this respect and sheds light on the current muddled state of law in dealing with extended trademark protection. Based on this analysis, the paper offers a workable framework which can be utilized by courts to address cases related to modern trademark functions. The paper concludes that the misappropriation rationale should be the principal ground for extending trademark protection, and that harm resulting from blurring and tarnishment should act as an ancillary for misappropriation claims.

Shapes Determine Elections

When we elect representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives (or to state legislative bodies, or even the school board), we do so by dividing people into districts, and having each district elect one representative. The districts we draw as shapes on maps can affect the outcome of the elections. As a result, the process of creating or changing districts and the shapes we draw to create them are important. After every census, each state must construct a new district map. When they do that unfairly, it can give an unfair advantage to one of the political parties. This is called gerrymandering. By looking at the shapes of districts and examining their compactness, we can start to detect fair and unfair district maps.

For Honor, for Toxicity

Is it possible to detect toxicity in games just by observing in-game behavior? If so, what are the behavioral factors that will help machine learning to discover the unknown relationship between gameplay and toxic behavior? In this initial study, we examine whether it is possible to predict toxicity in the MOBA gameFor Honor by observing in-game behavior for players that have been labeled as toxic (i.e. players that have been sanctioned by Ubisoft community managers). We test our hypothesis of detecting toxicity through gameplay with a dataset of almost 1,800 sanctioned players, and comparing these sanctioned players with unsanctioned players. Sanctioned players are defined by their toxic action type (offensive behavior vs. unfair advantage) and degree of severity (warned vs. banned). Our findings, based on supervised learning with random forests, suggest that it is not only possible to behaviorally distinguish sanctioned from unsanctioned players based on selected features of gameplay; it is also possible to predict both the sanction severity (warned vs. banned) and the sanction type (offensive behavior vs. unfair advantage). In particular, all random forest models predict toxicity, its severity, and type, with an accuracy of at least 82%, on average, on unseen players. This research shows that observing in-game behavior can support the work of community managers in moderating and possibly containing the burden of toxic behavior.

The David-And-Goliath-esque Problematic of “Unfair Advantage” in Trade Mark Law: Is the EU Moving Towards a Categorical Protection of Famous Brands?

The extended protection of trade marks with a reputation is losing its “exceptional” character, making way for an almost categorical bar to the registration of any competing sign; indeed, the “unfair advantage” requirement appears to have been confounded with that of similarity. Certainly, trade marks are recognized as a legitimate restriction of the freedom of commerce and, arguably, in principle, competitors can and should invest their own efforts into conceiving and promoting an original sign under which they can market their goods and services. Nevertheless, trade mark law, insofar as it protects the investment function of a reputed mark, does not for as much shield the proprietor from all competition, even if this means that he must work harder in order to preserve this reputation. Indeed, the use of a similar sign is sometimes deemed to be ineluctable, where the applicant demonstrates that he cannot reasonably be required to abstain from using such a sign as, for example, it would be made necessary for the marketing of his products. This is especially true where the sign makes use of descriptive terms or elements in order to indicate the type of goods or services offered by the applicant under the mark applied for. This paper aims to critically discuss the most recent EU and UK jurisprudence on “unfair advantage” in the context of trade mark registration and infringement, focussing primarily on the components of this EU creation and how they are interpreted by courts on both a national and EU level.

On the Rules of Fair Play and Legal Conflicts in High Performance Sports

At the present stage of medical technologies development, high-performance sports have faced serious difficulties. Its rules and fundamental principles not only fail to keep pace with changes in law and society, but also sometimes contradict themselves. High-performance sports is a balance between the basic rights to selfdetermination as a person of a certain gender and the rules of fair play. The reality is that in order to win sports competitions, people go to extreme measures, for example, changing their biological gender. In this situation, determining the persons (men, women) with whom an athlete should compete becomes not such a simple task, there is legal uncertainty, which sometimes does not provide an opportunity to clearly determine what gender a particular athlete is. The unequal struggle or “death of women’s sports” as such, as well as concerns that men who become women gain an unfair advantage in women’s competitions and the increasing number of cases of participation of transgender athletes in international competitions, prompted the authors of the article to analyze the foreign experience of legal regulation of the participation of such persons in high-performance sports. What is more important: the right to self-determination and self-acceptance as a person of the opposite sex or the rules of fair play? If there are special and general rules of legal regulation, a normative act of a private nature is applied, defining the “self-determination of a person” as a dominant in sports matters. But is everything so clear in high-performance sports? Legal conflicts and ambiguous legal situations (legally significant circumstances) are considered within the framework of this article.

Prevalence and Determinants of "String-Pulling" Behaviour in the Croatian Healthcare System

In spite of frequent allegations about the Croatian healthcare system being susceptible to various illegitimate practices, research on this matter has been scarce so far. To start filling the gap, this paper investigates how often and why Croatians rely on friends, relatives and acquaintances in order to achieve an unfair advantage over other users of the healthcare system. As revealed by the representative survey of 2000 individuals, which was conducted in 2015, almost every fifth citizen employed this dishonest strategy during the 12-month period preceding the survey. Although half of the respondents justified their wrongdoings with extremely long waiting lists, logistic regression analysis offered a different conclusion. Explicitly, the study results indicate that citizens exert this misbehaviour more often by automatism than out of real need. Due to a strong embeddedness of this detrimental economic and social practice in Croatian society, it would be more beneficial if combating endeavours were focused on providers of illicit help.

Unilateral Modification of Long Term Contracts: American Change of Terms Clauses and Italian Ius Variandi from a ‘Relational’ Point of View

This article analyses the compromise required between certainty and flexibility in long-term contracts, which would appear to be intrinsically linked to the adoption of adjustment tools. The allocation of rights and risks at the beginning of a contract may include the enforceability of clauses which empowers one party to unilaterally amend the original terms of the contract. On the one hand, a right granted by a change of terms clause, if properly exercised, may allow both parties to obtain the most from a long-term contract. On the other, it is essential to provide limitations so as to avoid the result that this contractual dexterity gives an unfair advantage to one party to the detriment of the weaker party.

Artificial Intelligence and Trademark Assessment

Artificial intelligence (AI) has an unparalleled potential for facilitating intellectual property (IP) administration processes, in particular in the context of examining trademark applications and assessing prior marks in opposition and infringement proceedings. Several stakeholders have developed AI-based algorithms that are claimed to enhance the productivity of trademark professionals by carrying out, without human input, (parts of) the legal tests required to register a trademark, oppose it, or claim an infringement thereof. The goal of this chapter is to assess the functionality of the AI tools currently used and to highlight the possible limitations of AI tools to carry out autonomously the legal tests enshrined in trademark law. In fact, many of these tests are rather subjective and highly depend on the facts of the case, such as an assessment of the distinctive character of a mark, whether the relevant public is likely to be confused or whether a third party has taken unfair advantage of a mark. The chapter uses doctrinal research methods and interview data with fourteen stakeholders in the field. It finds that AI tools are so far unable to reflect the nuances of the subjective legal tests in trademark law and, it is argued, even in the near future, AI tools are likely to carry out merely parts of the legal tests and present information that a human will have to assess, taking prior doctrine and the circumstances of the case into account.