Search Results (8)

Currently, medical imaging has largely supplanted traditional methods in the realm of diagnosis and treatment planning. This shift is primarily attributable to the non-invasive nature, rapidity, and user-friendliness of medical-imaging techniques. The widespread adoption of medical imaging, however, has shifted the bottleneck to healthcare professionals who must analyze each case post-image acquisition. This process is characterized by its sluggishness and subjectivity, making it susceptible to errors. The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), a frequently injured knee ligament, predominantly affects a youthful and sports-active demographic. ACL injuries often leave patients with substantial disabilities and alter knee mechanics. Since some of these cases necessitate surgery, it is crucial to accurately classify and detect ACL injury. This paper investigates the utilization of pre-trained convolutional neural networks featuring residual connections (ResNet) along with image-processing methods to identify ACL injury and differentiate between various tear levels. The ResNet employed in this study is not the standard ResNet but rather an adapted version capable of processing 3D volumes constructed from 2D image slices. Achieving a peak accuracy of 97.15% with a custom split, 96.32% through Monte-Carlo cross-validation, and 93.22% via five-fold cross-validation, our approach enhances the performance of three-class classifiers by over 7% in terms of raw accuracy. Moreover, we achieved an improvement of more than 1% across all types of evaluation. It is quite clear that the model’s output can effectively serve as an initial diagnostic baseline for radiologists with minimal effort and nearly instantaneous results. This advancement underscores the paper’s focus on harnessing deep learning for the nuanced detection and classification of ACL tears, demonstrating a significant leap toward automating and refining diagnostic accuracy in sports medicine and orthopedics. Full article

There has been a growing interest around the broader effects of psychopathic traits, particularly in relation to deviant behaviors and the notion of so-called “successful psychopathy”. As significant sociocultural touchstones, sporting events are often characterized by competitiveness and a sense of prestige. However, there has been limited attention towards psychopathic traits across recreational, amateur, and elite sports. Accordingly, we conducted a narrative review synthesizing primary observations on this topic, searching keywords in Scopus, APA PsychNet, and PubMed. Twenty-four academic papers were included in our results, which we thematized around demographic groups, namely: athletes and sport-adjacent non-athletes (i.e., coaches and spectators). Based on empirical findings from the reviewed papers, psychopathic traits could have medicolegal and forensic implications in relation to substance use, aggression, and violence. These could intersect with wider issues around doping, cheating, foul play, and have adverse outcomes for fellow participants, team dynamics, and spectators. Interestingly, our review also indicates that psychopathic traits may have correlations with determination and achievement in sport, echoing developing ideas around “successful psychopathy” in other domains. As such, increased awareness from all stakeholders and further multidisciplinary exchanges are vital to better understand the effects of psychopathic traits in sporting frameworks and their wider consequences. Full article

The advancement in battery manufacturing has played a significant role in the use of batteries as a cost-effective energy storage system. This paper proposes an optimal charging and discharging strategy for the battery energy storage system deployed for economic dispatch and supply/demand balancing services in the presence of intermittent renewables such as solar photovoltaic systems. A decision-making strategy for battery charge/discharge operations in a discrete-time rolling horizon framework is developed as a finite-input set non-linear model predictive control instances and a dynamic programming procedure is proposed for its real-time implementation. The proposed scheme is tested on controllable loads and a photovoltaic generation scenario in the premises of a sports centre, as a part of a pilot demonstration of the inteGRIDy EU-funded project. The test results confirm that the implemented stacking of the battery and optimal decision-making algorithm can enhance net saving in the electricity bill of the sports centre, and lead to corresponding CO₂ reductions. Full article

Sporting events are a stimulant for the economy and for improving social benefits. This paper aims to estimate a sporting event’s economic and social impact through input–output tables and cost-benefit analysis methodologies. Tangible and non-tangible impacts, such as health benefits and the value of the host city’s tourism image are investigated. Using data collected from the MedSailing event in 2019, the results show a positive return from every euro invested in the sporting event both economically and socially. Additionally, the results related to the media impact of the sporting event are shown. A single figure of net returns to society enables policymakers to assess the social value of the investment itself and make decisions that improve the economic development of the territory. Full article

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate whether neurocognitive evaluation can confirm the association between neurocognitive level and postural control and to analyze the relationship between neurocognitive level and acute musculoskeletal injury in male non-net sports athletes. Seventy-seven male non-net sports athletes participated in this study. The Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC), Landing Error Scoring System (LESS), Balance Error Scoring System (BESS), and Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) were used for testing; we collected data related to injury history for six months after testing. Pearson’s correlation analysis, logistic regression, and the independent sample t-test were used for statistical analysis. The correlation between SAC and SEBT results was weak to moderate (p < 0.05). Eleven of the seventy-seven participants experienced acute lower limb injuries. SAC, LESS, BESS, and SEBT results have no effect on the occurrence of acute lower extremity injuries (p > 0.05) and were not statistically different between the injured and non-injured groups (p > 0.05). Therefore, using the SAC score alone to determine the risk factor of lower extremity injuries, except in the use of assessment after a concussion, should be cautioned against. Full article

Hosting sport events is costly, but the positive impact of hosting sport events has not been studied well. We consider the promotion of physical activity, known as the trickle-down effect, to be a new dimension of this kind of impact. Using exogenous variations in promotion and relegation in the Bundesliga 1, we test the effect of the presence of a Bundesliga 1 club on local non-profit football club membership. Using German city-level annual non-profit sport club membership data from the metropolitan Rhine-Ruhr, we group cities with experience of either promotion or relegation as treatment cities and other cities as the comparison group. Difference-in-difference analyses show that promotion (using a strict definition of promotion) of local professional football clubs increases non-profit football club membership by 14% while relegation does not affect membership. The presence of Bundesliga 1 clubs in a city increases non-profit football club membership by 11%. Falsification tests support the idea that the impact of promotion on membership results in a net increase in membership. Full article

Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) have reduced drastically in size, cost, and power consumption, while improving accuracy. The combination of different sensor technologies is considered a promising step in the monitoring of athletes. Those “wearables” enable the capturing of relevant physiological and tactical information in individual and team sports and thus replacing subjective, time-consuming and qualitative methods with objective, quantitative ones. Prior studies mainly comprised sports categories such as: targeting sports, batting and fielding games as well as net and wall games, focusing on the detection of individual, non-locomotive movements. The increasing capabilities of wearables allow for more complex and integrative analysis expanding research into the last category: invasion sports. Such holistic approaches allow the derivation of metrics, estimation of physical conditions and the analysis of team strategic behavior, accompanied by integrative knowledge gains in technical, tactical, physical, and mental aspects of a sport. However, prior and current researchers find the precise measurement of the actual movement within highly dynamic and non-linear movement difficult. Thus, the present article showcases an overview of the environments in which the wearables are employed. It elaborates their use in individual as well as team-related performance analyses with a special focus on reliability and validity, challenges, and future directions. Full article

Complex human behavior, including interlimb and interpersonal coordination, has been studied from a dynamical system perspective. We review the applications of a dynamical system approach to a sporting activity, which includes continuous, discrete, and switching dynamics. Continuous dynamics identified switching between in- and anti-phase synchronization, controlled by an interpersonal distance of 0.1 m during expert kendo matches, using a relative phase analysis. In the discrete dynamical system, return map analysis was applied to the time series of movements during kendo matches. Offensive and defensive maneuvers were classified as six coordination patterns, that is, attractors and repellers. Furthermore, these attractors and repellers exhibited two discrete states. Then, state transition probabilities were calculated based on the two states, which clarified the coordination patterns and switching behavior. We introduced switching dynamics with temporal inputs to clarify the simple rules underlying the complex behavior corresponding to switching inputs in a striking action as a non-autonomous system. As a result, we determined that the time evolution of the striking action was characterized as fractal-like movement patterns generated by a simple Cantor set rule with rotation. Finally, we propose a switching hybrid dynamics to understand both court-net sports, as strongly coupled interpersonal competition, and weakly coupled sports, such as martial arts. Full article