Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 29, 2015

… Physiotherapist Gerard Hartmann, who has worked with 73 Olympic medal winners, says only Keith Wood, the Irish rugby union player, could take more pain on the massage table than Radcliffe. Sports scientist Andrew Jones recalls that Radcliffe would prefer to fall off the back in exhaustion during treadmill tests rather than tell him to stop the machine.

She was also blessed with something every great endurance athlete needs: a huge engine. Tested at 17 by Jones, her VO2 max – the maximum volume of oxygen an athlete can use – was 70, higher than that of any female athlete in the scientific literature.

Earlier this week, Pelicans point guard Jrue Holiday admitted he is still having problems with his lower right leg that forced him to miss 42 games this season because of a stress reaction.

With their season completed, Holiday is considering going through another surgical procedure this offseason to remove a screw that was put in to hold the steel rod in his right leg that was surgically implanted in his tibia to repair a stress fracture last season.

… The core of the team who dismissed Bolton on Monday night have enjoyed elevation through the divisions under Howe’s guidance. He has remained faithful to such as Tommy Elphick and Steve Cook in central defence, Simon Francis and Charlie Daniels at full-back, Marc Pugh and Matt Ritchie on the flanks, the industrious Harry Arter in midfield. Some in their number will thrive at the higher level. The pace of Callum Wilson will be as menacing in the top flight as it is in the Championship. However, the owner, the elusive Russian petrochemical billionaire Maxim Demin, will have to sanction spending in all areas to provide the depth of quality to survive. “Some of the players are ready,” Howe said. “Sometimes others surprise you and step up to the plate. Others will struggle but we were always looking to keep things fresh, regardless of the division we were going to be in. It’s a natural progression.”

Why is Apple controlling the launch so closely? … Apple is watching their sales closely. If more people are buying the Apple Watch Sport in 38mm with the blue band, they will ramp up production on that model. It’s a brilliant strategy. In fact, it’s the most brilliant innovation on the device overall, the one that could change the wearables industry. When you rake in $58B in cash in the fiscal quarter, as reported yesterday, you have the luxury of rolling out your product the way it should be done in a more gradual and methodical fashion.

Oh, alcohol. It can be so much fun, until it makes you do something stupid. But even without doing anything embarrassing, booze makes us blush. Now it turns out those rosy cheeks can be turned against you. Using infrared cameras, scientists have taught a computer algorithm to recognize drunk people by their facial flush.

After a glass of wine or a nice whiskey on the rocks, alcohol makes your blood vessels relax and widen. This expansion brings the blood vessels closer to your skin, making your face hot and red. The blush can deepen if you have a deficiency in the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase, which helps in the metabolism of alcohol. (That’s why people with Asian heritage can tend to “glow” when they’re drinking.)

3-D scanning is widely used to ingest physical objects such as furniture into digital files. As its name suggests, Manhattan-based startup Body Labs wants to do the same with human bodies. But unlike a coffee table, your body changes, and a scan today won’t be exactly the same as a scan made three weeks ago—which is exactly what Body Labs is counting on. By tracking your body’s subtle changes, Body Labs is exploring just one of its technology’s applications to build a happier, healthier you.

The company produces software that builds a digital body model from a 3-D scan taken by 3-D cameras. That can be an expensive proposition: The 3-D scan assembly shown in this video of Body Labs’ operations is an eight-camera model by the U.S. Army that costs upwards of $30,000.

The University of Washington (UW) has developed an app that helps detect sleep apnea, called ApneaApp. App development was funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of Washington.

UW said that usually, to diagnose sleep apnea, providers need to use sensors attached to the user’s body and special equipment, but ApneaApp can detect sleep apnea using inaudible sound waves emanating from the phone’s speakers to track breathing patterns. The app also screens out audible background noise from, for example, people talking, cars honking, or a bedroom fan.

Nova LifeStyle, Inc., designer, manufacturer and distributor of modern LifeStyle furniture, announced the successful development of a new line of furniture that has the ability to monitor, record and deliver user data to key medical care providers.

Called Smart Health Furniture, the new line will be able to automatically examine a person’s blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, weight, body temperature, sleep quality and other physiological indexes. The data obtained by the Smart Health Furniture will be made available to medical professionals to aid in the early detection of possible health issues. Nova is currently in talks with several distributors in the US, China and Europe.

… Eva Kemps, a professor of psychology at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, explains that despite a long folk tradition of trying to link cravings to nutrient deficiencies ? I need this chocolate, for biological reasons! ? that’s not the case. One common justification for chocolate cravings, for instance, is that the cravers are deficient in magnesium, which chocolate can provide. But many, many foods, including spinach, contain more magnesium than chocolate, which is the most commonly craved food in Western societies. “Funnily enough, people don’t crave spinach,” she observes.

The method most commonly used to assess the number of calories in foods is flawed, overestimating the energy provided to the body by proteins, nuts and foods high in fiber by as much as 25 percent, some nutrition experts say.

“The amount of calories a person gets from protein and fiber are overstated,” said Geoffrey Livesey, the head of Independent Nutrition Logic, a nutrition consulting company in Britain, and a nutrition consultant to the United Nations. “This is especially misleading for those on a high-protein, high-fiber diet, or for diabetics” who must limit their intake of carbohydrates.

Who should see a physio for a running gait review?

People most likely to benefit from running gait analysis are those with a running related injury, particularly a persistent one. Of the common running injuries, patellofemoral pain has arguably the most evidence to support gait retraining.

SAP Sports One is a single platform that allows teams to manage their players and staff as well as optimize player performance with analytics. This platform was announced at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena yesterday at the SAP Sports and Entertainment Forum.

“Competition is growing increasingly fierce, while athletic performance is reaching a peak. Our customers are looking for new ways to go beyond these limits,” said Stefan Wagner; general manager of Media, Sports & Entertainment at SAP SE. “We believe that SAP technology can open up such untapped potential, providing entirely new insights for better performance. On a single platform, SAP Sports One helps teams and organizations make better decisions to bring the best out in their players – and win.”

Karen Lefsrud was happily playing hockey, knowing it would take her through university, when rowing coaches attracted by her powerful six-foot-three frame came calling.

A coach passed on her fitness testing data, showing the kind of power she can generate, and the reply from Rowing Canada was immediate: “Do whatever you have to do to get this girl in a boat.”

The latest assessment of sport has predicted the Australian team at next year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio will perform better than it did at the London Games in 2012.

Releasing the AIS Sports Tally 2015 – the annual report card for Australian sports – AIS Director Matt Favier said high performance sport was heading in the right direction.