Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 22, 2015

Before Mark Kelly appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy! in May, his twin brother, Scott, compiled a scouting report for him. From space. As in, low-earth orbit. As in, aboard NASA’s International Space Station. It didn’t take Scott long to conclude that his brother faced a formidable opponent. So he called Mark from about 250 miles above the earth and said, “Aaron Rodgers did better on his SATs than you did.”

Mark Kelly—astronaut, engineer, author and Navy captain—just laughed. He held no pretense about Rodgers, whose girlfriend, the actress Olivia Munn, had introduced the two men over drinks. At that point Kelly knew Rodgers only as the Packers’ quarterback, Brett Favre’s successor, Super Bowl champion and star of those Discount Double Check commercials. Then, Mark Kelly says, “he asked me about astrophysics.”

One off-season, for fun, Rodgers—thrower of touchdowns, seeker of truths—read Earthing, a book that explains how the physical disconnect between human beings and nature (mainly because of things like shoes and beds) contributes to inflammation, pain, fatigue, stress and poor sleep.

The Bruins reported to TD Garden for the first day of training camp and their off-ice testing Thursday.

After their testing they took the usual song and dance about everyone being in the “best shape of their careers” (see how many times that term is used around the NHL over the next couple of days) to newer heights of absurdity.

“Maybe this is the most fit team and group of guys that I’ve been part of since I’ve been here,” captain Zdeno Chara said.

… The calls and texts come in, “Coach, I feel horrible. What do I do? Should I lower my mileage, take an ice bath, cut my legs off?” They’re pleading for answers on how to fix the problem.

My reply is almost always the same, “Just keep running. I don’t care if you have to run incredibly slow, just get the mileage in…” You can hear the frustration over the phone as they come to the sinking realization that you are offering no magical cure. But then you get to the fun part, “If you keep grinding through, you’re going to feel like absolute crap, but then wake up the one morning with your legs magically feeling great. It just happens.”

Modern digital cameras are equipped with an impressive array of functions – from autofocus and image stabilization to panoramas and high-definition video. Recently a team of engineers from Duke University has unlocked a previously unrecognized 3D imaging capability of modern cameras by simply repurposing its existing components.

This new capability was successfully demonstrated in a proof-of-concept laboratory experiment using a small deformable mirror —a reflective surface that can direct and focus light. The research demonstrates how the equivalent technology in modern digital cameras, the image stabilization and focus modules, could be harnessed to achieve the same results without additional hardware.

A little-known German start-up may have just made it a lot easier to search for photos online.

EyeEm, a photo-sharing service started in 2011 that has drawn parallels to Instagram, announced new technology in Brooklyn on Friday that uses a sophisticated algorithm and machine learning to analyze the details of online photos.

The technology, called EyeVision, automatically scans images and tags them with certain keywords, from “landscape” and “New York” to the perceived emotions of people in each photo, which makes them easier to find through web searches.

A national team of researchers has developed a first-of-its-kind, 3D-printed guide that helps regrow both the sensory and motor functions of complex nerves after injury. The groundbreaking research has the potential to help more than 200,000 people annually who experience nerve injuries or disease.

An international scientific team says it has identified a protein that helps heart muscle cells regenerate after a heart attack. The researchers also showed that a patch loaded with the protein and placed inside the heart improved cardiac function and survival rates after a heart attack in mice and pigs.

Animal hearts regained close to normal function within four to eight weeks after treatment with the protein patch. It might be possible to test the patch in human clinical trials as early as 2017 said Pilar Ruiz-Lozano, Ph.D., at Stanford University. The study (“Epicardial FSTL1 reconstitution regenerates the adult mammalian heart”), which also involved investigators from the UC-San Diego and Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), was published in Nature.

Carrie Partch was at the tail end of her postdoc when she made the first discovery. The structural biologist was looking at a database of human proteins, noting those that shared a piece with the ones she’d been studying. “I was just sort of flipping through it thinking, ‘I should know all of these,’” she recalls. “Then this one came up, and it had a different domain architecture than I’d ever seen.” She looked further into the protein, called PASD1, whose function was unknown. She found that among the few proteins it resembled was one called CLOCK. And that made her sit up straighter — because CLOCK is at the heart of a very large, mysterious process.

Not that long ago, as Partch knew, it had become clear that nearly every cell in nearly every tissue in the body keeps time. Every 24 hours, responding to a biochemical bugle call, a handful of proteins assembles in the cell’s nucleus. When they bind to each other on the genome, they become a team of unrivaled impact: Under their influence, thousands of genes are transcribed into proteins. The gears of the cell jolt into motion, the tissue comes alive, and on the level of the organism, you open your eyes and feel a little hungry for breakfast.

James Collins, Head Nutrition at Arsenal, is ‘In the Hot Seat’ on SuperSport’s Monday Night Football to take us behind the scenes on all things nutrition related at Arsenal FC.

Four facts you should consider when planning for the future:

1. The league table often lies: because football is such a low scoring sport, teams don’t always get the results they deserve.

In professional sports, data analytics can give organizations a critical competitive edge—on the field, off the field, and in the stands. But with the sheer volume of data being generated, where do sports executives even begin? Booz Allen has identified the five most critical considerations for leaders to start to put their data on the offensive.

Traditionally, the definition of sports has also included certain non-physical activities, such as chess — in other words, games. Especially in the last decade, so-called e-sports, based on a number of computer games, have become very relevant commercially. Professional teams have been formed for games such as Starcraft 2, Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) 2, or League of Legends, and tournaments offer large amounts of prize money and are important broadcast events. Given that topics such as strategy analysis and match forecasting apply in equal measure to these new sports (and other topics might apply as well but are not very well explored so far), and data collection is in fact somewhat easier than for off-line sports. We have therefore chosen to broaden the scope of the workshop this year and solicit e-sports submissions as well.

The majority of techniques used in the field so far are statistical. While there has been some interest in the Machine Learning and Data Mining community, it has been somewhat muted so far. Building off our successful workshop on Sports Analytics at ECML/PKDD 2013, which was attended by about 50 people, we intend to change this by hosting a second edition at ECML/PKDD 2015. We think that the setting is interesting and challenging, and can potentially be a source of new data. Furthermore, we believe that this offers a great opportunity to bring people from outside of the Machine Learning community into contact with typical ECML/PKDD contributors as well as to highlight what the community has done and can do in the field of Sports Analytics.

When Dublin and Kerry clash in tomorrow’s All-Ireland Final it could well be technology rather than stamina and skill that separates the two sides. They will most likely be the best-drilled teams ever to go head-to-head in Croke Park. Not in terms of training sessions and fitness levels, but rather the statistics and data used to prepare individual players and fine-tune each strategic element of the team’s performance.

Purpose

We examined effects of a three-game, 1-week microcycle (G1, G2, G3) on recovery of performance and inflammatory responses in professional male footballers.
Methods

Players were randomized into an experimental (EXP; N = 20) and a control group (CON; N = 20). Blood was drawn and repeated sprint ability (RSA), muscle soreness and knee range of motion (KJRM) were determined pre- and post-games and during recovery.
Results

High-intensity running during G2 was 7–14 % less compared to G1 and G3. RSA declined in EXP by 2–9 % 3 days post-game with G2 causing the greatest performance impairment. In EXP, game play increased muscle soreness (~sevenfold) compared to CON with G2 inducing the greatest rise, while KJRM was attenuated post-game in EXP compared to CON (5–7 %) and recovered slower post G2 and G3 than G1. CK, CRP, sVCAM-1, sP-Selectin and cortisol peaked 48 h post-games with G2 eliciting the greatest increase. Leukocyte count, testosterone, IL-1? and IL6 responses, although altered 24 h post each game, were comparable among games. Plasma TBARS and protein carbonyls rose by ~50 % post-games with G2 eliciting the greatest increase 48 h of recovery. Reduced to oxidized glutathione ratio declined for 24 h post all games with G2 displaying the slowest recovery. Total antioxidant capacity and glutathione peroxidase activity increased (9–56 %) for 48 h in response to game play.
Conclusion

In summary, post-game performance recovery and inflammatory adaptations in response to a three-game weekly microcycle displayed a different response pattern, with strong indications of a largest physiological stress and fatigue after the middle game that was preceded by only a 3-day recovery.