So far, the two-way sensation is living up to Ruthian expectations. But how will he possibly keep this up? We trace his journey back to Japan in search of the surprising answer.
Between Shohei Ohtani‘s strong six-inning start against the A’s on Sunday and home runs in back-to-back games against the Indians on Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s fair to say that the 23-year-old phenom’s major league career is off to an impressive and unprecedented start. Obviously, it will take much longer before Ohtani’s attempt to star as both a hitter and pitcher can be judged a true success, but as Travis Sawchik pointed out, he has, at the very least, already shown off the tools that created all the hype in the first place– namely the triple-digit heat/nasty splitter/slider combo as a pitcher, as well as the raw power as a hitter.
Ohtani is doing things that haven’t been done at the major league level in nearly a century. Not since June 13-14, 1921 has a player followed up a win as a starting pitcher with a home run as a position player in his next game, and not since 1919 has a player served as both a starting pitcher and position player with any kind of regularity. Both of those feats were accomplished by Babe Ruth, of course.
… Hall’s makeup — more likely to hang back at first than thrust himself into a social mix, but also confident in a way some misinterpret as arrogant — leaves him vulnerable to being misunderstood. Those who forge bonds off a single backslap will always be more natural and immediate candidates for the “good guy” label. Some people, though, take more time to warm up. But no matter how long it took or the path needed to get there, Hall is hot as they come now. And if this season started with more positive vibes than last, just imagine how the ultra-competitive left winger and seriously-in-the-mix Hart Trophy candidate will feel when, in a matter of days, he plays his first Stanley Cup Playoffs contest.
Few, if any, observers had the rebuilding Devils pegged for a post-season spot eight months ago, but a confluence of factors has resulted in happy times in the Garden State. As it stands, Hall is leading a Devils revitalization that has legs as strong as his own. New Jersey is a well-coached, fast club that has likely been as good for Hall as he’s been for it. The only remaining question is, exactly how far can the two go together?
The most accurate shooter in the N.B.A. began his career by missing his first field-goal attempt, and his second, and his third — all of them in a span of four seconds after he collected his own rebounds against the Memphis Grizzlies.
It was the start of an unfortunate trend for Clint Capela, then a first-year center for the Houston Rockets. He wound up spending most of the season with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers of the N.B.A. Development League in between sporadic appearances for the Rockets. It would be four months before he finally made his first shot in the N.B.A., capping a sad string of 11 straight misses in all.
… Chest straps, nasal probes and head electrodes are among the traditional sensors routinely attached to patients needing their sleep patterns monitored. These uncomfortable methods can themselves cause sleeplessness, rendering data collected unrepresentative.
Hoping to provide a better night’s sleep for these patients, researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital are studying the use of AI and a Wi-Fi-like signal that monitors a person without any sensors attached.
“We don’t really know enough about sleep because we aren’t able to continuously monitor sleep,” said Dina Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and the director of the institute’s wireless center.
Harvard Business Review, Carmen Sanchez and David Dunning from
… Our research focuses on overconfidence as people tackle new challenges and learn. To be a beginner is to be susceptible to undue optimism and confidence. Our work is devoted to exploring the exact shape and timeline of that overconfidence.
One common theory is that beginners start off overconfident. They start a new task or job as “unconscious incompetents,” not knowing what they don’t know. Their inevitable early mistakes and miscues prompt them to become conscious of their shortcomings.
Our work, however, suggests the opposite. Absolute beginners can be perfectly conscious and cautious about what they don’t know; the unconscious incompetence is instead something they grow into. A little experience replaces their caution with a false sense of competence.
… No American family has ever had three players taken in the first round of the NHL draft, but in the next few years, the Hughes brothers have a shot. In fact, the 2019 draft is already being referred to as the “Jack Hughes draft.” In early March, Jack broke the National Team Development Program’s season scoring record for a player in his under-17 season: 87 points in 46 games. Through 51 games, he averaged 1.92 points, dwarfing the ppg marks of Auston Matthews (1.13) and Patrick Kane (1.11), the last two Americans who went No. 1 overall at the same age Hughes will be.
“Jack is the most naturally gifted player I’ve seen for 2019,” one NHL scout says. “He’s got vision, hockey sense-just pure talent. It’s like he can do whatever he wants to do out there.”
Quinn, a freshman on Michigan’s first defense pairing, is expected to be a top-10 pick this year-if not top five-and he is Central Scouting’s No. 1-rated North American defenseman. He had 28 points in 34 games, helping lead the Wolverines to the Frozen Four for the first time since 2011.
To achieve optimal athletic performance and competition readiness, it is crucial to balance the highest appropriate training stimulus with sufficient recovery. Excessive and/or progressive increases in training load are integral to improving athletic performance (Halson, 2014). However, increased training loads and/or inadequate recovery can result in maladaptation to training, and if continued, can lead to the development of overreaching/overtraining (Meeusen et al., 2013; Cadegiani and Kater, 2017). In terms of recovery, sleep is an essential component of an athlete’s recuperation due to its physiological and psychological restorative effects (Dinges et al., 1997; Pejovic et al., 2013). Sleep quantity and quality declines following augmented increases (+30%) in training load (Hausswirth et al., 2014), and poor sleep is a common complaint among overreached and/or overtrained athletes (Wall et al., 2003). Regardless of whether reduced sleep is a cause or effect of overreaching and/or overtraining, it is possible that measures of sleep could serve as an indicator of the presence of overreaching and/or overtraining. This opinion article will examine the current research underpinning the relationship between insufficient sleep and the development of overreaching/overtraining, describe the implications for practitioners (e.g., sport and exercise scientists, coaches), and identify areas for future research. [full text]
… Grant: A huge theme in [The Culture Code] is trust. I’ve always thought about trust as the willingness to be vulnerable and take a risk together, but you convinced me that I had it backward. I always thought, “Once we trust each other, then I can go out on a limb, because I don’t have to worry about you harming me or taking advantage of me or letting me down.” You said, “Actually, you take risks together first, and that’s how you build trust.” How does that work?
Coyle: It goes back to how we’re wired. There’s something called “the vulnerability loop” that happens when two people are vulnerable together. I started to see this at the places I was visiting.
One of the places I saw it first was with Ed Catmull, the president and cofounder of Pixar. We’re walking around Pixar’s new Brooklyn Studio, and it’s a $20 million building, the coolest building I’ve ever been in. I say to Ed, “This building is really cool!” He goes, “Actually, this building was a huge mistake—the hallways are too narrow, the atrium is too small, the cafeteria is in the wrong place. But the real mistake we made was that we didn’t realize we were making a mistake.” [There was] this moment of total candor and openness, and he does this all the time.
While video has become a widely adopted medium for online education, existing interface and interaction designs provide limited support for content navigation and learning. To support concept-driven navigation and comprehension of lecture videos, we present ConceptScape, a system that uses interactive concept maps to enable concept-oriented learning with lecture videos for learners. Initial results from our evaluation of a prototype show that watching a lecture video with an interactive concept map can support comprehension in learning process, prompt more reflection afterward and provide a shortcut to refer back to a specific section.
But how do we generate interactive concept maps for numerous online lecture videos at scale? We designed a crowdsourcing workflow to capture multiple workers’ common understanding of a lecture video and represent workers’ understandings as an interactive concept map for future learners. The main challenge we are tackling here is to elicit workers’ individual reflections while guiding them to reach consensus on components of a concept map.
When we think about smart clothing – the types you can buy and wear today – it’s ok to feel torn. Smart bikinis and jackets for controlling our music can seem superfluous at best, and while there is a health and fitness thread running though some of these garments, they’re rarely more insightful than any other wearable.
For Venk Varadan, the approach is all wrong. His company Nanowear has invented a medical-grade textile that can capture millions of signals on the skin, with the potential to unlock the types of biometric insights that would make your Fitbit green with envy. But it’s probably not for you. At least not yet.
Throughout March Madness, staying injury-free was likely on the minds of many of the players and coaches as their teams moved closer to championship games. Teams capitalize on peak performance during the postseason, but unfortunately, injuries, especially those to the knee, can be devastating.
The knee is the most commonly injured joint in sports, and the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of the most frequently injured knee ligaments. Damage to the ACL can happen to athletes in any sport, but basketball, soccer and football players are particularly susceptible. The injury can occur when an athlete suddenly pivots or stops, quickly changes direction or lands after jumping. Half of ACL injuries are accompanied by damage to other ligaments or cartilage in the knee, and surgery is generally recommended when dealing with a combination of knee injuries.
Researchers have found differences in the brains of athletes who participate in contact sports compared to those who participate in noncontact sports.
Researchers observed the differences as both groups were given a simple visual task. The results could suggest that a history of minor but repeated blows to the head can result in compensatory changes to the brain as it relates to eye movement function. Or it could show how the hundreds of hours that contact sport players spend on eye-hand coordination skills leads to a reorganization of the brain in the areas dedicated to eye movements.
While more research is needed, senior author Nicholas Port says the findings contribute important information to research on subconcussive blows—or “microconcussions”—that are common in sports such as football, soccer, ice hockey, snowboarding, and skiing.
Animated transitions are a popular and powerful feature of digital data visualization. They can make a visualization more fun, engaging, and memorable. By revealing information in stages rather than all at once, transitions make visualizations less overwhelming and more informative.
This visual essay is inspired by the question: What is happening conceptually between the start and end of a transition? I look at reasons for using animated transitions (besides “it looks cool”) and at the kinds of variables that can be transitioned. I conclude that we can think of animated transitions in two categories: those where the space between the start and end states consists of real/realistic data and grammatically valid states for that visualization, and those where it does not.
George Parros has an Ivy League degree in economics, but he made a living for nine years as an N.H.L. enforcer, protecting his teammates by being willing to drop his gloves.
Parros, at 6 feet 5 inches and 220 pounds with a Fu Manchu mustache, was an intimidating player. He retired from the N.H.L. in December 2014 after amassing 1,092 penalty minutes.
Now he has a corner office at N.H.L. headquarters in Manhattan, where he is completing his first season as senior vice president for player safety.
While he might seem like an unusual choice for the position, Parros said the two jobs are more similar than they might seem.