Banach spaces which are \(r\)-uniformly noncreasy. (Q1395837)

In 1996, \textit{S. Prus} [Nonlinear Anal., Theory Methods Appl. 30, 2317--2324 (1997; Zbl 0899.46007)] introduced the class of uniformly noncreasy (UNC) spaces, a class of superreflexive Banach spaces that may or may not have normal structure, and proved that UNC-spaces have the fixed point property. In this article, the authors define a larger class of superreflexive spaces called the \(r\)-UNC Banach spaces. A Banach space \(X\) is \(r\)-UNC where \(r\in (0,2]\), if there exists \(\varepsilon \in (0,r)\) and \(\delta >0\) such that if \(x^*\) and \(y^*\) are norm-one elements in \(X^*\) with \(\| x^*-y^*\| \geq \varepsilon\), then the diameter of the subset \(\{x\in B_X:x^*(x)\geq 1-\delta,\, y^*(x)\geq 1-\delta\}\) of the unit ball \(B_X\) is less than or equal to \(\varepsilon\). The authors prove that uniformly nonsquare spaces are \(2\)-UNC spaces and that \(1\)-UNC spaces have the fixed point property. The authors also show that \(2\)-UNC spaces that have WORTH, a weak orthogonality property, have the fixed point property. It is still an open question whether all uniformly nonsquare Banach spaces have the fixed point property.