Top Players Research Articles

From Fashion Brand to Artwork: Divergent Thinking, Copyright Law, and Branding

The purpose of this study is to explore the interaction between copyright, branding, marketing, and heritage protection with regard to a fashion brand. The authors use analytical-critical and legal-dogmatic methods, supplemented with desk research, a case study approach, and a review of the marketing literature. This paper argues that the top-tier fashion brands use the concept of artification in order to build their brands, mesmerize clientele, and increase revenues. Although design and reference to the arts play a major role in the luxurious and premium end of the fashion business, this analysis proves that the top players do not necessarily observe the appropriate laws in these areas. The reader will see examples of the flouting of basic legal constraints by big players, e.g., copyrights or property rights, including the monetisation of the creativity of others with the expectation of no legal challenge. Offenders capitalise on the likelihood that a legal suit is too demanding for smaller players, such as foundations or museums.

Non-Profit Organizations as Facilitators of the Sustainable Social Innovation of Firms: An Italian Case Study

Non-profit organizations (NPOs) are becoming top players in the business arena and can significantly contribute to socially sustainable development by leading several open innovation (OI) processes. The present study investigated the functioning of an NPO (ELIS, based in Rome, Italy), that acts as an open innovation intermediary in a large consortium of enterprises. By adopting a mixed-method approach, key aspects related to the NPO’s organizational culture, the OI management process within the consortium, as well as leadership skills and values were investigated among 77 employees and 8 managers of the NPO. Results showed that the managers’ approach to OI, teamwork, and market challenges significantly affected the NPO’s ability to produce OI among the consortium members. Moreover, empowering leadership, and a culture of trust and mistake acceptance were highly valued by the NPO in view of an effective OI performance. The study contributes to the current literature by highlighting the conditional factors of the NPO’s capability to create open innovation with enterprises, and push them toward societal change. Implications for OI development have been discussed.

Maturity Level and Motor Coordination Performance of Teenage Badminton Players in Malaysia

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of maturity and motor coordination performance of teenage badminton players in Malaysia. Researchers conducted this cross-sectional study, which involved 102 study samples (male=53, female=49) divided into four age groups (13 years, 14 years, and 15 years). The researcher used a purposive sampling method where the selected sample consisted of the top badminton players from all over Malaysia. The player's maturity level is determined by the method proposed by (Khamis and Roche) to predict adult height using the age of their mother and father. There are six motor coordination performance tests used in this study, namely KTK 'balance beam', KTK 'eye-hand coordination' (EHC), KTK 'jumping sideways' (JS), KTK 'shifting platform' (SP), 'shuttlecock throw' ( ST) and "plate tapping (PT). The findings of this study explain the pattern of increasing maturity levels among male and female badminton players with increasing age. The player's peak maturity level was detected at the age of 15 for boys at a rate of 98.9% or 2.34 cm difference between the mean height of the current and the predicted peak height, while for female players at a rate of 97.79 % or 3.83 cm. Overall, the maturity level of male and female players does not have a significant difference. The KTK test "shifting platform" detected a decrease in performance as the player's age increased. Male players were found to decline by 26 repetitions at the age of 13 to 15 years, while female players by 30 repetitions. The study found that changes in motor coordination performance occurred at different ages for male and female players. In conclusion, the researchers suggest that the management and coaches consider the players' maturity level and motor coordination performance in the player selection process. Coaches are encouraged to include elements of players' maturity levels in the process of designing their training programs. Motor coordination in badminton is seen as important and can be trained to improve game performance.

Age of top european football players when they started organized training and their value in the transfer market

There are a few schools of thought about when kids should start playing sports. This study set out to find out when the football players performing at EURO 2020 began trainings in an organized way – on average they were just over 8 years old. The second research issue addressed in this article is the financial value of the players. Football experts, with the support of scientists, do their best to determine the appropriate value of players, and it's still not easy. The proper valuation of players is an important issue because it influences the management process of football clubs. The study also set out to see if there is a relation between the age of starting to practice in organized way and the subsequent value of the athlete? A univariate regression analysis was performed, in which the dependent variable was player value, and the independent variable was the age of the athlete when he started to play football in organized way. Based on the regression coefficients, it can be concluded that players who started at younger ages now show a higher level of value. In conclusion, the results show how demanding professional sport is and at what age a person needs to make the right decisions to be able to think about being a professional footballer.

The Effect of COVID-19 on Female and Male Chess Improvement

The COVID-19 pandemic had a severe impact on the chess community since all the in-person tournaments had to be cancelled, but on the other hand, chess streamers and online chess websites gained much popularity due to the fact that people had more leisure time indoors. This research project is designed to examine gender differences in fluctuation of chess rating through the pandemic. A dataframe in Python was set up and filled up with data of top chess players’ information published on USCF website, followed by exportation of the data to an Excel document where analysis was performed in order to extract the results of monthly rating improvements, and the reasons behind them. In addition, surveys were conducted and responses were collected then coded into graphable data. Findings are showing that while male players outperformed female players in general during pandemic, the opposite took place in terms of the top 5% of chess players. In terms of practice during the pandemic, overall all chess players demonstrated a drastic increase in practice, with female players showing less practice than their male counterparts. This research project shows that chess participation increased significantly both during and after the pandemic. Furthermore, this study provides insights as to the gender imbalance, i.e., female players in the top 5% made more progress than male counterparts. Hopefully the findings of this project become valuable to future research, for example innovating coaching styles tailored to female chess players as compared to male chess players.

Real-Time and Automatic System for Performance Evaluation of Karate Skills Using Motion Capture Sensors and Continuous Wavelet Transform

In sports science, the automation of performance analysis and assessment is urgently required to increase the evaluation accuracy and decrease the performance analysis time of a subject. Existing methods of performance analysis and assessment are either performed manually based on human experts’ opinions or using motion analysis software, i.e., biomechanical analysis software, to assess only one side of a subject. Therefore, we propose an automated system for performance analysis and assessment that can be used for any human movement. The performance of any skill can be described by a curve depicting the joint angle over the time required to perform a skill. In this study, we focus on only 14 body joints, and each joint comprises three angles. The proposed system comprises three main stages. In the first stage, data are obtained using motion capture inertial measurement unit sensors from top professional fighters/players while they are performing a certain skill. In the second stage, the collected sensor data obtained are input to the biomechanical software to extract the player’s joint angle curve. Finally, each joint angle curve is processed using a continuous wavelet transform to extract the main curve points (i.e., peaks and valleys). Finally, after extracting the joint curves from several top players, we summarize the players’ curves based on five statistical indicators, i.e., the minimum, maximum, mean, and mean ± standard deviation. These five summarized curves are regarded as standard performance curves for the joint angle. When a player’s joint curve is surrounded by the five summarized curves, the performance is considered acceptable. Otherwise, the performance is considered unsatisfactory. The proposed system is evaluated based on four different karate skills. The results of the proposed system are identical to the decisions of the expert panels and are thus suitable for real-time decisions.

The effect of high temperature climate on the hydration status of the Sudanese top league football players

The study aimed at identifying the effect of high temperature climate on the hydration status of the Sudanese top league football players. A descriptive approach was used , and the study sample included 50 of the Sudanese top league football players who were randomly selected. Questionnaires were used for data collection. Important results were that 60% of the players didn’t drink plenty of fluids one day ahead of the match, and 46% didn’t drink during exercise, and also 54% didn’t have instructions to drink plenty of fluids before the exercise, and also only 20% of the players were weighed by the coach before and after exercises. Moreover it was also found that only 10% of the players used rehydrating fluids during exercise. And finally reduced urine volume was the most common symptom of dehydration, since 92% of the players had it.
 Important recommendations were: To raise awareness about the importance of proper hydration among the players, the staff, and others who are responsible for them, To implement the FIFA instructions regarding playing in hot climates, that is to pause a match allowing time for fluid replacement and rehydration, and finally to use this study for future visions along with other studies concerning hydrations and hot climates, with special regards that the football world cup 2022 is going to be in Qatar.

Research on Influencing Factors and Coping Strategies of NBA All-Star Game Ratings

The theme of this research is the reasons and trends for declining the ratings of the NBA all-star game. This paper included research on the NBA All-Star Game. This paper also put forward some methods to solve the reasons for the decline in ratings. We hope to find the reasons through the data of the past and this year. At the same time, we also mentioned the major factor and strategies of the epidemic in the discussion. The league can regard the NBA All-star game as an important component trend for the future development of the league. Adding a 4-point line is a win-win choice for the league. This can increase the audience rating and improve the enthusiasm of the audience. The league also needs to improve players’ attention to the all-star game. Let several top players from all leagues in the world join the NBA all-star game not only can enhance the game’s brilliance, improve the audience rating. In addition, it facilitates all players to know each other better, which is conducive to the development of world basketball.

Research on the Developing Trend and Strategies of the NBA Games and NBA Players

Since the birth of the professional league, players have become entertainment products for the public. From Paul Arizin, the inventor of the jump shot who also earned part-time money, to LeBron James, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, this entertainment maximizes the value of players and promotes the game of basketball to the world. The National Basketball Association is arguably the world’s most competitive professional basketball league. It features all the top players, coaching staff, and trainers. It has been established for 75 years. However, each period of the league has some special trends of it. As the league is stepping into the 2020s era, it’s quite significant that people can observe new trends involving playing styles and players. This paper discusses and investigates the trend of the NBA playing style and player builds using static and situational analysis. This paper also made predictions about the NBA Draft prospects. Then, this paper will present the methods and data, followed by the results and discussions to improve the NBA’s development. Such as the periphery taking IP as the core and spreading it to the periphery; the Industrial chain Logic of IP Event tourism development, and adhering to the “star” strategy to create idols and aggregate the flow of fans.

채점규칙 변경 후 기계체조 마루운동의 기술 동향 분석

The purpose of this study analyzed the contents of the performance of eight people in each of the middle, high, university, and general divisions who participated in the final match of the floor exercise at the 77th National Classification Championships in 2022. First, Korean players prefer lower D difficulty, but in order to compete with the top players, they need to acquire E difficulty and F difficulty skills, and all players have enough potential with 2.0 EG scores, but they need to adapt physical preparation and lower difficulty skills to develop them. Second, EGI is considered to be a basic and stable element. Since it must be performed, it is judged that it would be good to select a non-acrobatic element that can be performed stably or can reduce the deduction. Third, it is judged that it is necessary to carefully select a skill that can be performed with connection skill and a single skill as a skill that can satisfy essential elements while increasing the difficulty score in EGII by deleting the limit on connection addition. Fourth, EG III has relatively stable skills as it can land while looking at the mat, and it is judged that practice is necessary to select a skill that can develop to a high level even if a low level of difficulty is acquired. Fifth, the limit on connection points is deleted, so all connection points can be obtained within 10 skills, and it is considered advantageous to connect as many high-level skills as possible, and it is considered that better performance can be expected only when connecting skills with D difficulty or higher with 0.2 points.

Unnao Tanneries Limited: Post COVID Business Strategy

Unnao Tanneries Limited (UTL), formerly known as Monir Leather Works, was set up in the 1980s and has been a family-owned business for over four decades. The primary activity of UTL in the initial years was leather jackets and purses. It sold its products under the brand name Brown Cliff. It shifted its manufacturing units from Kanpur to the nearby town of Unnao to cut costs and increase capacity in 1990. It later expanded its product range to primarily include leather footwear, targeting the menswear market. It became one of the top players in the northern part of the country with a proper business strategy. The footwear segment was growing rapidly and profitably for UTL. The business was smooth for almost four decades with minor hiccups until the government imposed a ban on its functioning due to a sparse wastewater disposal system in May 2019. The initial ban was prolonged further due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country in March 2020. As a result, UTL suffered a significant loss in sales and clients. Reviving demand for the products after the easing of partial lockdown in the country was a daunting task. UTL became a contractual manufacturer for CONTE to utilize its idle resources and reduce its financial burden. Later, UTL got an offer from Batla Leather Products Limited (BLPL) to become its contract manufacturer. BLPL was one of the top players in the national and international market and it was looked for facilities to quickly scale up its operations. This case allows the readers to put themselves in Mr Sadiq Monir’s shoes and analyse an unforeseen business situation. The choice between short-term profits and sustainability versus long-term growth of the family brand Brown Cliff had to be made. The case gives several macro and micro factors supporting the choices and the decision to be made. The decision dilemma has two facets—to gain expertise in improving operations and to have a steady flow of income for the next 2–3 years versus risking the loss of independence and dilution of the family brand Brown Cliff.

An empirical study of parameters in different distance standing shots

In order to reveal the characteristics of shooting techniques, this study, on the basis of bio-mechanical theory, analyzes the theoretical parameters of shot with the help of high-speed camera system. The parameters involving three different distances standing shot are obtained by testing 12 target objects who were U16 top male basketball players from China national team. The present work has carried out the theoretical analysis and the empirical research. The results show that the shooting distance, shooting height and shooting angle can be acquired by calculating the flight speed and flight trajectory of basketball. Under the condition of shooting at the same shooting height at a distance, the shooting angle is the key factor affecting the shooting rate.

Features and Effects of Athlete Burnout Among Top Amateur Female Rugby Union Players

This paper addresses the contributing factors and effects of athlete burnout in women’s rugby. Current and former top amateur female rugby union players (N = 10, age 19–21 yr) were interviewed regarding their experiences of high-performance rugby and of athlete burnout. Thematic analysis was applied to analyze the data. The findings show that seven players exhibited the three dimensions of burnout: emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation. Significant antecedents included role conflict, high physical demands, and coaching behaviors that resulted in maladaptive outcomes. The findings were in line with self-determination theory and showed consistencies with previous literature regarding athlete burnout. Meaningful and original findings related to the female rugby setting were also presented and discussed. Therefore, the study provides new insights into female rugby players’ experience of athlete burnout and contributes to the understanding of athlete burnout in the context of women’s rugby, which has been underresearched.

Constructing a Gaming Model for Professional Tennis Players Using the C5.0 Algorithm

Professional tennis players have their own habits of tactics and play. However, players’ shortcomings can be corrected by constantly practicing professional techniques and by tactical analysis. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a two-stage, expert decision-making system for tennis matches. The first stage consisted in dividing the court area and defining the technical classification of the net. Tennis coaches were invited to assess tennis players’ skills on the competition court, dividing it into 48 areas on both sides of the court centerline and identifying the skills used by the players. In the second stage, a classification model was developed, and the score, hitting habits, and tennis skills of the players, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, over 10 matches, played from 2007 to 2019, were analyzed and classified using notational analysis and the C5.0 decision tree algorithm. The results show that the two players’ highest scored techniques were the forehand stroke in the backcourt and the backhand stroke in the half court. Thus, using this expert decision-making system, our data can provide other players with imaginary training objects from two of the top players in the world to be used during training and can allow the accumulation of experience for players through continuous simulation and training analysis.

Bilateral differences in handgrip strength in Czech female tennis players aged 11–12 years and injury prevention

The term laterality refers to the preference or dominance of the lateral asymmetry of the human body. The prevalence of left-handedness is reported to be 10–13%, but in some sports (e.g. boxing, ice hockey, tennis), the proportion of left-handers is higher. The left-handedness is considered an advantage in tennis; however, the one-sided load can cause muscular dysbalances leading to injuries. The research aim was to assess bilateral differences in handgrip strength in top Czech female tennis players U12 as to injury prevention. The participants were tennis players (n = 165) aged 11.0–12.9 years taking part in the regular testing by the Czech Tennis Association using the TENDIAG1 test battery between 2000 and 2018. 87.3% of all players were right-handed (RH) and only 12.7% left-handed (LH). Bilateral differences between the right- and left-hand strength of all players were medium significant in favor of the right hand. The assessment of differences between RH and LH players showed only small differences in favor of LH players. There was a medium significant difference between RH and LH players in favor of the dominant hand (DH) over the non-dominant one (NDH). As to injury prevention, it is surprising that a difference between DH and NDH strength >15% was found in 40.91% of RH players and even in 40.06% of LH players. This predicts an increased risk of injury, so it is desirable to pay attention to both sides of the training load and to include compensatory or strengthening exercises.

FAAH rs324420 Polymorphism Is Associated with Performance in Elite Rink-Hockey Players.

Simple SummaryGenetic factors play a key role in athletes’ success; therefore, the interest for the study of the genetic profile contributing the most to extraordinary results in sport has been increasing. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of genetic determinants in the athletic performance of the world’s top best rink-hockey players. According to our results, elite rink-hockey players carrying the Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase (FAAH) rs324420 A allele (AA or AC genotype) are three times more likely to be super athletes, which could be attributed to a higher pain tolerance and better stress coping, which may be useful for training and competition strategies. Despite the promising results, as this is a pioneer study, additional studies are needed for further validation of our results in rink-hockey and other sport modalities.Genetic factors are among the major contributors to athletic performance. Although more than 150 genetic variants have been correlated with elite athlete status, genetic foundations of competition-facilitating behavior influencing elite performances are still scarce. This is the first study designed to examine the distribution of genetic determinants in the athletic performance of elite rink-hockey players. A total of 116 of the world’s top best rink-hockey players (28.2 ± 8.7 years old; more than 50% are cumulatively from the best four world teams and the best five Portuguese teams), who participated at the elite level in the National Rink-Hockey Championship in Portugal, were evaluated in anthropometric indicators/measurements, training conditions, sport experience and sport injuries history. Seven genetic polymorphisms were analyzed. Polymorphism genotyping was performed using the TaqMan® Allelic Discrimination Methodology. Rink-hockey players demonstrated significantly different characteristics according to sex, namely anthropometrics, training habits, sports injuries and genetic variants, such as Vitamin D Receptor (VDR) rs731236 (p < 0.05). The Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase (FAAH) rs324420 A allele was significantly associated with improved athletic performance (AA/AC vs. CC, OR = 2.80; 95% Cl, 1.23–6.35; p = 0.014; p = 0.008 after Bootstrap) and confirmed as an independent predictor among elite rink-hockey players (adjusted OR = 2.88; 95% Cl, 1.06–7.80; p = 0.038). Our results open an interesting link from FAAH-related biology to athletic performance.

Is the global supply chain hard to reverse? Understanding manufacturing strategies of Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean Firms

AbstractAs the Covid pandemic underscores global supply chain risks, there is a debate on whether to bring US manufacturing back from overseas. This paper provides insights into the heated debate on the global supply chain by examining the competitive manufacturing environments of China, Japan, and South Korea. More specifically, we conduct a cross‐national survey and empirically investigate the manufacturing strategies employed by manufacturing managers in the top Asian players: China, Japan, and South Korea. We examine four dimensions of the manufacturing strategies: quality, inventory, flexibility, and top management involvement. Our findings indicate that Japanese manufacturers are more committed to the cumulative approach to quality management and see enhanced flexibility as a strategic priority. While Chinese managers are also committed to achieving quality, they are more delivery‐driven and thus are more likely to occasionally accept slightly off‐quality components from suppliers to “save” an order. However, in all three countries, managers with a high focus on quality also focus on just‐in‐time management and in turn, on flexibility. There is significantly less agreement among Chinese managers, compared to their Japanese and Korean counterparts, that the top management should be involved in operational planning, goal setting, and the provision of rewards.

Playing with emotions: emotional complexity in the social world of elite tournament bridge

The concept of emotional complexity is vital to theorising emotions in late modernity. Building from decades of ‘emotion management’ research, it captures how emotions are increasingly an object for individual self-management and reflection. Using Goffman’s dramaturgy as a framing for emotions research in sport and leisure, this article contributes to understanding emotional complexity in practice using the dyadic pursuit of the mind-sport bridge as a case study. The elite social world of bridge is an emotionally charged setting, where top players use emotion management to improve performance over many decades. Through in-depth qualitative interviewing with 52 elite players from the US and Europe, the article outlines contextually specific experiences and performances of emotion. Players engage in processes of reflexive and instrumental self-other relations, which change over time as part of the experience of emotional complexity. Successful emotion management can foster positive relationships between bridge partners, but simultaneously players also regularly fail to manage their own emotions. This suggests that emotions are only ever partially instrumentalised, especially in emotionally complex contexts.

Learning to Identify Top Elo Ratings: A Dueling Bandits Approach

The Elo rating system is widely adopted to evaluate the skills of (chess) game and sports players. Recently it has been also integrated into machine learning algorithms in evaluating the performance of computerised AI agents. However, an accurate estimation of the Elo rating (for the top players) often requires many rounds of competitions, which can be expensive to carry out. In this paper, to minimize the number of comparisons and to improve the sample efficiency of the Elo evaluation (for top players), we propose an efficient online match scheduling algorithm. Specifically, we identify and match the top players through a dueling bandits framework and tailor the bandit algorithm to the gradient-based update of Elo. We show that it reduces the per-step memory and time complexity to constant, compared to the traditional likelihood maximization approaches requiring O(t) time. Our algorithm has a regret guarantee that is sublinear in the number of competition rounds and has been extended to the multidimensional Elo ratings for handling intransitive games. We empirically demonstrate that our method achieves superior convergence speed and time efficiency on a variety of gaming tasks.

Comparison of the distances of the three jumps of the Iraqi champions in the effectiveness of the triple jump with the distances of the international ratios (horizontal – vertical(

The research aims to: 1.Recognizing the distance ratios of the three jumps of the Iraqi champions . 2-Comparing the ratios of distances and jumps for the three Iraqi champions with the ratios of global distances in the two ways (vertical-horizontal). The researchers assumed that there are significant differences between the ratios of distances and jumps for the three Iraqi champions with the ratios of international distances . The study was conducted on a sample of (4) top players in the effectiveness of the triple jump. The researchers used video imaging, the use of a high-speed camera and the analytical program in the kinematic analysis of the performance of the triple jumps for the players. The researchers used statistical means, including the arithmetic mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation and (t) test to obtain on the results . The search results resulted in the following : 1-The differences were significant between the percentages of the three average jumps for the champions with the percentages of the global jump distances by the vertical method. 2-The difference was significant between the percentage of the three average jumps with the ratios of the global jump distances by the horizontal method. 3-The performance of the champions is a normal method in the near jumps in two ways, vertical and horizontal, which affects them in achieving a better achievement . 4-Lack of interest in sensory-motor exercises, as they play an active role in the movements that are carried out in the body as a whole or part of it in particular among the triple jump players and the extent of their contribution to developing the possibility of jumping to achieve the possible spatial limits . 5-Not paying attention to the technical and mechanical aspects, which play a key role in providing the digital achievement of this event (the speed and strength of the upgrade and the method of performance). The researchers reached the following recommendations: 1-Emphasis on the necessity of following the distance of the three jumps in one of the two vertical or horizontal ways. 2-Emphasis on paying attention to sensory-motor exercises, especially the triple jump champions 3-The necessity of performing a kinetic analysis of the triple jump champions using a high-speed camera to detect technical weaknesses. 4-Conducting research and another study of the triple jump of the champions who represent the Iraqi national team.