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Daring to prefix a company or even a pop group’s name with “easy” could land you with legal action, as the founder of British airline easyJet relentlessly tackles alleged trademark breaches.

Greek-Cypriot tycoon Stelios Haji-Ioannou, whose easyGroup still has links with the carrier, has set out to protect the “easy” brand by threatening court action against anyone deemed to be profiting from the name.

A formal complaint made by the man simply known as Stelios recently forced British indie pop band Easy Life, which also adorned posters with an aircraft showing a likeness to an easyJet plane, into changing its name. It chose Hard Life.

‘Easy come, easy go’

“The problem with small brand thieves if they are left unchecked is that they become profitable and they grow,” an easyGroup spokesman told AFP in relation to numerous ongoing lawsuits.

“Most of these cases never come to open court as the brand thieves realize that they are in the wrong and make changes to the satisfaction of easyGroup,” he added.

Hard Life still gives a nod to its past, with the band’s account on X carrying the title message “easy come, easy go”.

Ahead of releasing a new song in June it wrote on the social platform: “Safe to say the last nine months haven’t been easy.”

EasyGroup and Stelios, who lives in Monaco, insist that their actions are in the interest of the consumer, to avoid confusion and preserve the company’s image.

The spokesman added that “most of easyGroup’s profits” go into the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation.

The easyGroup model sees it receive royalties from licensing its brand to third parties. It receives, for example, 0.25 percent of easyJet’s revenue, while the Haji-Ioannou family still owns 15 percent of the carrier.

Around 1,200 official “easy” brands exist, from gambling business easyBet to easyGym, easyHotel and dating site easyWoo—many of which exhibit the same typeface and orange/white color scheme.

‘David and Goliath’

Unofficial “easy” companies contacted by AFP cited colossal legal fees as the reason for backing down and changing their names when pursued by easyGroup.

“As a small business it was incredibly hard to keep up financially with solicitor fees so for me I am happy to leave this behind me,” said Jozsef Spekker, owner of Stoke Jetwash.

The driveway-cleaning business was known as Easy Jetwash until August.

The new name takes the name of the city where his small business is based in central England.

An intellectual property law specialist at the London School of Economics, Luke McDonagh, described such cases as “David and Goliath battles”.

“Some people call this trademark bullying, where essentially Goliath takes a case against a David, a small company that really has no resources and cannot fight back,” he told AFP.

“It’s not just easyGroup, it would be wrong to single them out, a lot of big companies do this,” he added, citing Apple, L’Oreal and television broadcaster Sky as prime examples.

McDonagh believes easyGroup, whose branding extends to cruise company easyBoat and household-products firm easyCleaning, “has been going too far in taking so many cases against these small entities”.

“The purpose of trademark law is not to give an unlimited monopoly on a word. It might be different if it was an entirely made-up word, but ‘easy’ is such a common word in the English language that other companies need to be able to use it in a reasonable way.”

‘War of attrition’

EasyGroup has enjoyed “many legal (trademark) victories over the years”, the spokesman said, but setbacks have arisen, including one this month.

The High Court in London ruled in favor of online platform easyfundraising, which is hoping to recover around £1.0 million ($1.3 million) in legal fees, despite an appeal hanging over the company.

“It’s like a war of attrition, and they just hope that ultimately companies give in, because it’s too long, it’s too much hassle, it’s too expensive,” easyfundraising chief executive James Moir told AFP.

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EasyJet founder makes life hard for ‘brand thieves’ (2024, September 27)
retrieved 27 September 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-easyjet-founder-life-hard-brand.html

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Orbital angular momentum monopoles discovery propels orbitronics forward in energy-efficient tech

September 27, 2024

Orbitronics: New material property advances energy-efficient tech — Monopoles of orbital angular momentum (OAM) are a tantalizing prospect for orbitronics because OAM is uniform in all directions. This would mean that information flows could be generated in any direction. Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute / Monika Bletry

Orbital angular momentum monopoles have been the subject of great theoretical interest as they offer major practical advantages for the emerging field of orbitronics, a potential energy-efficient alternative to traditional electronics. Now, through a combination of robust theory and experiments at the Swiss Light Source SLS at Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, their existence has been demonstrated. The discovery is published in the journal Nature Physics.

Whereas electronics uses the charge of the electron to transfer information, technology of the future with less environmental impact might use a different property of electrons to process information. Until recently, the main contender for a different type of ‘tronics’ has been spintronics. Here, the property used to transfer information is the spin of the electron.

Researchers are also exploring the possibility of using the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of electrons orbiting their atomic nucleus: an emerging field known as orbitronics. This field holds great promise for memory devices, particularly because a large magnetization could potentially be generated with relatively small charge currents, leading to energy-efficient devices. The million-dollar question now is identifying the right materials to generate flows of OAMs, a prerequisite for orbitronics.

Now an international research team led by scientists from Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and Max Planck Institutes in Halle and Dresden in Germany have shown that chiral topological semi-metals, a new class of materials discovered at PSI in 2019, possess properties that make them a highly practical choice for generating currents of OAMs.

Chiral topological semi-metals: a straightforward solution for orbitronics

In the search for suitable materials for orbitronics, steps forward have already been made using conventional materials such as titanium. Yet since their discovery five years ago, chiral topological semi-metals have become an intriguing contender. These materials possess a helical atomic structure, which gives a natural ‘handedness’ like the DNA double helix and could naturally endow them with patterns or textures of OAM that enable its flow.

“This offers a significant advantage to other materials because you don’t need to apply external stimuli to get OAM textures—they’re an intrinsic property of the material,” explains Michael Schüler, group leader in the Center for Scientific Computing, Theory and Data at PSI, and assistant professor of physics at the University of Fribourg, who co-led the recent study. “This could make it easier to create stable and efficient currents of OAM without needing special conditions.”

The attractive but elusive prospect of orbital angular momentum monopoles

There is one particular OAM texture, hypothesized in chiral topological semi-metals, that has captivated researchers: OAM monopoles. At these monopoles, OAM radiates outwards from a center point like the spikes of a scared hedgehog curled into a ball.

Why these monopoles are so tantalizing is that OAM is uniform in all directions: i.e. it is isotropic. “This is a very useful property as it means flows of OAMs could be generated in any direction,” says Schüler.

Yet despite the attraction of OAM monopoles for orbitronics, until this latest study, they have remained a theoretical dream.

Hedgehogs hide between theory and experiment

To observe them experimentally, hope has lain with a technique known as Circular Dichroism in Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy, or CD-ARPES, using circularly polarized X-rays from a synchrotron light source. Yet a gap between theory and experiment has in the past hindered researchers from interpreting the data. “Researchers may have had the data, but the evidence for OAM monopoles was buried in it,” says Schüler.

In ARPES, light shines on a material, ejecting electrons. The angles and energies of these ejected electrons reveal information on the electronic structure of the material. In CD-ARPES, the incident light is circularly polarized.

“A natural assumption is that if you use circularly polarized light, you are measuring something that is directly proportional to the OAMs,” explains Schüler. “The problem is, as we show in our study, this turns out to be a somewhat naïve assumption. In reality, it’s rather more complex.”

Rigor plugs the gap

In their study, Schüler and colleagues examined two types of chiral topological semi-metals at the Swiss Light Source SLS: those made of palladium and gallium or platinum and gallium. Determined to reveal the OAM textures hidden within the complex web of CD-ARPES data, the team challenged every assumption with rigorous theory.

Then they took an unusual, and crucial, extra experimental step of varying the photon energies. “At first, the data didn’t make sense. The signal seemed to be changing all over the place,” says Schüler.

Meticulously unpicking how different contributions complicated calculations of OAM from CD-ARPES data, they revealed that the CD-ARPES signal was not directly proportional to the OAMs, as previously believed, but rotated around the monopoles as the photon energy was changed. In this way, they bridged the gap between theory and experiment and proved the presence of OAM monopoles.

Doors open to exploring orbital angular momentum textures in new materials

Armed with the ability to accurately visualize OAM monopoles, Schüler and colleagues went on to show that the polarity of the monopole—whether the spikes of OAMs point inwards or outwards—could be reversed by using a crystal with a mirror image chirality. “This is a very useful property, as orbitronics devices could potentially be created with different directionality,” says Schüler.

Now, with theory and experiment finally united, the wider research community are equipped with the means to explore OAM textures across a variety of materials and optimize their applications for orbitronics.

More information:
Controllable orbital angular momentum monopoles in chiral topological semimetals, Nature Physics (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-024-02655-1

Provided by
Paul Scherrer Institute

Citation:
Orbital angular momentum monopoles discovery propels orbitronics forward in energy-efficient tech (2024, September 27)
retrieved 27 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-orbital-angular-momentum-monopoles-discovery.html

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‘Broken’ news industry faces uncertain future

September 27, 2024

Advertising revenue -- the lifeline of news publications -- has dried up in recent years — Advertising revenue — the lifeline of news publications — has dried up in recent years.

From disinformation campaigns to soaring skepticism, plummeting trust and economic slumps, the global media landscape has been hit with blow after blow.

World News Day, taking place on Saturday with the support of hundreds of organizations including AFP, aims to raise awareness about the challenges endangering the hard-pressed industry.

‘Broken business model’

In 2022, UNESCO warned that “the business model of the news media is broken”.

Advertising revenue—the lifeline of news publications—has dried up in recent years, with Internet giants such as Google and Facebook owner Meta soaking up half of that spending, the report said.

Meta, Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet alone account for 44 percent of global ad spend, while only 25 percent goes to traditional media organizations, according to a study by the World Advertising Research Center.

Platforms like Facebook “are now explicitly deprioritising news and political content”, the Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report pointed out.

Traffic from social to news sites has sharply declined as a result, causing a drop in revenue.

Few are keen to pay for news. Only 17 percent of people polled across 20 wealthy countries said they had online news subscriptions in 2023.

Such trends, leading to rising costs, have resulted in “layoffs, closures, and other cuts” in media organizations around the world, the study found.

Eroding trust

Public trust in the media has increasingly eroded in recent years.

Only four in 10 respondents said they trusted news most of the time, the Reuters Institute reported.

Meanwhile, young people are relying more on influencers and content creators than newspapers to stay informed.

For them, video is king, with the study citing the influence of TikTok and YouTube stars such as American Vitus Spehar and Frenchman Hugo Travers, known for his channel HugoDecrypte.

Growing disinformation

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has renewed concerns about disinformation—rife on social platforms—as the tool can generate convincing text and images.

In the United States, partisan websites masquerading as media outlets now outnumber American newspaper sites, the research group NewsGuard, which tracks misinformation, said in June.

“Pink slime” outlets—politically motivated websites that present themselves as independent local news outlets —are largely powered by AI. This appears to be an effort to sway political beliefs ahead of the US election.

As part of a national crackdown on disinformation, Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended access to Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter.

The court accused the social media platform of refusing to remove accounts charged with spreading fake news, and flouting other judicial rulings.

“Eradicating disinformation seems impossible, but things can be implemented,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) editorial director Anne Bocande told AFP.

Platforms can bolster regulation and create news reliability indicators, like RSF’s Journalism Trust Initiative, Bocande said.

Alarming new player

AI has pushed news media into unchartered territory.

US streaming platform Peacock introduced AI-generated custom match reports during the Paris Olympics this year, read with the voice of sports commentator Al Michaels—fueling fears AI could replace journalists.

Despite these concerns, German media giant Axel Springer has decided to bet on AI while refocusing on its core news activities.

At its roster, which includes Politico, the Bild tabloid, Business Insider and Die Welt daily, AI will focus on menial production tasks so journalists can dedicate their time to reporting and securing scoops.

In a bid to profit from the technology’s rise, the German publisher as well as The Associated Press and The Financial Times signed content partnerships with start-up OpenAI.

But the Microsoft-backed firm is also caught in a major lawsuit with The New York Times over copyright violations.

‘Quiet repression’

With journalists frequently jailed, killed and attacked worldwide, “repression is a major issue,” said RSF’s Bocande.

A total of 584 journalists are languishing behind bars because of their work—with China, Belarus and Myanmar the world’s most prolific jailers of reporters.

The war in Gaza sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel has already left a “terrible” mark on press freedom, Bocande added.

More than 130 journalists have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since October 7, 2023, including 32 while “in the exercise of their duties”.

She said a “quiet repression” campaign is underway in countries around the world, including in democracies—with investigative journalism hampered by fresh laws on national security.

Citation:
‘Broken’ news industry faces uncertain future (2024, September 27)
retrieved 27 September 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-broken-news-industry-uncertain-future.html

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Bird study shows that grounded running styles conserve energy

September 27, 2024

Bird study shows grounded running styles conserve energy — Features of walking and running in birds and humans focused on in this study. (D) In the emu (D. novaehollandiae), as in most birds, the hip and knee joints are enveloped in feathers, obscuring the fact that (E) most birds habitually keep their three functional leg segments in crouched postures because their muscles are strongest near these postures. A fully extended posture is impossible for birds due to the forward placement of the COM (checkered circle). (F) Our musculoskeletal model of the emu enabled us to decouple the effects of posture and tendon elastic storage on running gaits. Credit: *Science Advances* (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado0936

A small team of biologists and animal movement specialists in the Netherlands and the U.K. has found that birds such as the emu have a grounded running style at medium speeds, allowing them to conserve energy compared to the ungrounded running style of other animals such as humans.

In their study published in the journal Science Advances, the group simulated the running style of emus to better understand it.

When a bird such as an emu runs at medium speed, it never becomes airborne—it always has one foot firmly planted on the ground. This grounded running style, the researchers found, uses less energy than one in which a runner leaps into the air with each stride—again, at medium speed.

In this new study, the researchers investigated why birds have adopted such a running style when most other bipedal animals have an ungrounded style regardless of speed.

To simulate the running style of an emu, the research team created what they describe as a digital marionette made of just muscle, bone and tendons. It also had modifiable rigidity of the tendons to change its running style. They then taught their model to walk, and after that, to run.

Muscle-controlled physics simulations of bird locomotion resolve the grounded running paradox. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado0936

Next, the team prompted the model to run using as little energy as possible—it responded by running at medium speed with a grounded style. The researchers noted that the simulated running looked remarkably like the real thing.

The researchers also found that emu anatomy, because it has evolved with the need for crouching, prevents the bird from fully straightening its legs, likely contributing to its running style. With this type of muscle, they note, it would take more energy to use an ungrounded style at intermediate speeds. They suggest the running style of birds likely first evolved with non-avian dinosaurs due to their similar anatomy.

More information:
Pasha A. van Bijlert et al, Muscle-controlled physics simulations of bird locomotion resolve the grounded running paradox, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado0936

Citation:
Bird study shows that grounded running styles conserve energy (2024, September 26)
retrieved 27 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-bird-grounded-styles-energy.html

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Even as urban foxes get bolder, people appreciate rather than persecute them, say psychologists

September 27, 2024

urban fox — Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

For many, urban red foxes are a familiar sight in back gardens or city streets. Often, people delight in seeing them and the connection to wildlife they bring. Others find them a nuisance, whether because of their smell, poo or loud screaming noises during the breeding season. Some anecdotal reports indicate that foxes could be becoming bolder within cities—even riding on buses, stealing shoes or taking naps on someone’s garden shed.

Our study for the British carnivore project shows for the first time that foxes within the UK are indeed behaving more boldly within cities compared to rural populations—but that most people remain tolerant of them anyway.

Foxes are vital to ecosystem health and represent an important “flagship” species for urban residents’ connection to the natural world. However, bolder fox behavior could, in theory, lead to more conflict with humans, particularly as people encroach more on green space through increasing urbanization. It is therefore crucial to understand how to avoid conflict with these animals and explore positive ways to coexist.

Stories and imagery can play an important role in shaping our attitudes about wildlife. However, although foxes are often portrayed as “sly” and “cunning” in popular culture, it remains unclear how this might affect public perceptions. Identifying factors that influence people’s feelings and attitudes towards foxes is important for understanding how we can coexist amicably alongside them.

Communicating information about bolder urban foxes through press releases and YouTube videos, for instance, runs the risk of people creating false impressions or sensationalized beliefs about fox behavior. This could undermine important conservation initiatives to protect the welfare of urban foxes, including efforts to avoid unethical treatment or persecution of these animals.

Foxy behavior

Our recent study tested whether messages about bolder urban foxes are biasing how people feel about them. To do this, 1,364 British people were randomly selected to take part in an online experiment.

Participants were not told what the study was about. Half were given stories depicting bold and cunning fox behavior and shown a short video of foxes exploring and solving food puzzles that we had left overnight in people’s back gardens.

Half the study participants were shown this three-minute video of foxes solving food puzzles.

Other participants were shown relatively neutral content, including a video of foxes walking through different landscapes.

Afterwards, all participants answered 24 questions that enabled us to evaluate their perceptions of foxes, including whether they felt fox behavior negatively impacted their everyday lives.

Half the study participants were shown this short video of foxes walking through various habitats.

The study revealed that content about bold and cunning fox behavior did not have a significant effect on participants’ tolerance of foxes, compared to people in the control group. In fact, across both the experimental and control groups, 83% of people displayed feelings about foxes that were more positive than negative. This suggests that participants from the experimental group remained positive despite being made aware that bold and intelligent behavior from foxes probably explains their “pesky” interactions with people.

Previous studies have found that foxes are a very well-liked species throughout much of the UK, despite other studies suggesting that attitudes are more mixed in urban areas like London. Our latest study provides the most up-to-date evidence showing that this remains the case. However, as foxes continue to become bolder within cities, which our previous work suggests, it will become very important to continue to monitor whether (or how) attitudes change towards these animals throughout the country.

Our results illustrate that the likability factor of foxes is deeply rooted and difficult to change just by discussing their nuisance behavior in a single setting. Although foxes are often perceived to be bold and crafty, our online experiments showed that most people remained generally tolerant of them anyway.

By giving residents more of a voice in urban planning, solutions can be designed to encourage people to coexist with foxes without persecuting these animals, such as how to dispose of our waste properly to deter bin-raiding. This, in our view, is great news for foxes and people.

Provided by
The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Citation:
Even as urban foxes get bolder, people appreciate rather than persecute them, say psychologists (2024, September 26)
retrieved 26 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-urban-foxes-bolder-people-persecute.html

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‘Easy come, easy go’

‘David and Goliath’

‘War of attrition’

Chiral topological semi-metals: a straightforward solution for orbitronics

The attractive but elusive prospect of orbital angular momentum monopoles

Hedgehogs hide between theory and experiment

Rigor plugs the gap

Doors open to exploring orbital angular momentum textures in new materials

‘Broken business model’

Eroding trust

Growing disinformation

Alarming new player

‘Quiet repression’

Foxy behavior

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