Washington Capitals forward Tom Wilson wore the label like a tattoo during his first four N.H.L. seasons: a fourth-line enforcer who often committed bad penalties with devastating hits.
Since selecting him with the 16th overall pick in the 2012 draft, the Capitals had tried on and off to make Wilson, 24, fit on one of their top lines, but the experiment always seemed to fizzle — until this season.
Now, the 6-foot-4, 218-pound Wilson is skating on the Capitals’ top line with Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov, bringing energy, controlling the physical side of his game, scoring and playing a crucial defensive role.
“He is such a dynamic player,” Washington center Jay Beagle said. “There is no slow start for him. He goes all-out.”
The Yankees’ biggest splash at the trade deadline last season was the acquisition of Sonny Gray. The Bronx Bombers thought they had acquired a frontline starting pitcher to pair with homegrown ace Luis Severino and Splitter Aficionado Masahiro Tanaka.
But Sonny Gray, after the trade in 2017, posted a 101 xFIP- and 107 FIP- — this after having produced a 75 xFIP- and also 75 FIP- with Oakland before the deal.
Sonny Gray, since the beginning of 2018, has a 132 xFIP- and 115 FIP-. Sonny Gray, on Wednesday night, gave up three earned runs, a home run, and walked five in 4.2 innings, recording a 6.67 xFIP in the process. Sonny Gray, the Yankees version, has been bad.
… One of the big factors in drafting players is how they fared at the NFL Combine, or their school’s Pro Day. How they do could mean the difference between a career in the NFL, or looking for a desk job. It’s here where tenths of a second, or mere inches, can determine careers — and where players get drafted.
So much comes down to a track meet that involves lot of running and jumping. But it’s an important track meet, and training for that day is serious business. Scouts and coaches use what they see to measure the speed, strength, and agility of the NFL hopefuls.
That’s why a new business has emerged: Professional training programs designed to maximize athlete potential on that day. Recently, CNBC decided to get a first hand look at one training program, and in the process worked out with an athlete from one of the nation’s top-ranked college football teams. The vigorous workout included some agility drills, short sprints, jumps, and hit some bench press.
How does a Central Ohio suburb with a population of 20,000 produce six active NFL players? A look inside a modern-day football factory: Pickerington, Ohio.
LeBron James. Tom Brady. Serena Williams. Shalane Flanagan. You might have noticed that today’s biggest sports stars have something in common: Instead of slowing down once they pass 30–traditionally the age at which elite athletes begin to decline–they, somehow, get better.
There are entire industries behind this longevity revolution. New testing services claim to pinpoint everything from which injuries athletes must guard against to what foods they should avoid. Sophisticated training methods condition muscles more efficiently while avoiding unwanted wear-and-tear. And a slew of new recovery technologies offer the promise of instant rejuvenation for bodies and minds pushed to the breaking point.
Many entrepreneurs are already experimenting with forms of body hacking. Why not take note of what the world’s star athletes are doing? My new book, Play On: The New Science of Elite Performance at Any Age, details just how the pros do it–and what the rest of us can learn from the techniques they’re employing, from the cutting-edge to the just plain out-there.
As a two-time captain under University of Alabama coach Nick Saban, Rashad Johnson had orchestrated every kind of defensive scheme — quarters, cover 2, fire zone blitz, etc. — imaginable. So, when the Arizona Cardinals drafted him in 2009, the rookie’s NFL playbook resembled his college one … almost. “It was actually easier,” says Johnson. “It definitely was a lot simpler, a little bit more straightforward.”
Armed with football tutelage, safeties from Alabama are charting out a unique trajectory straight to the NFL. During Saban’s tenure at Alabama, which has included five national titles, six safeties have been drafted into the NFL. Since 2014 only Louisville has had as many safeties drafted as Alabama, and no school can match its success once they get there.
Minnesota high school pitchers have latched onto the growing popularity of training with heavier balls to improve arm strength and add pitch velocity. Baseball and medical experts stress caution is required as well.
… Given this puzzle, my colleagues and I set out to test whether intellectual humility was empirically associated with learning outcomes.
We started by measuring high school students’ intellectual humility. We had students rate themselves on statements like “I am willing to admit it when I don’t know something” and “I acknowledge when someone knows more than me about a subject.” We wanted to know: Would this self-reported intellectual humility relate to students’ motivation to learn, their learning strategies, and even their grades? What’s more, would teachers observe any differences between students with differing levels of intellectual humility?
We found that the more intellectually humble students were more motivated to learn and more likely to use effective metacognitive strategies, like quizzing themselves to check their own understanding.
We’ve all been told that exercise is good for us. It reduces stress, keeps our muscles and bones healthy, and makes our hearts stronger. But the exact cardiovascular benefits are less clear. A big question has always been whether the heart can generate new cells once it had reached peak maturity. If it can, that could mean that exercise might be crucial for people who have certain cardiac diseases like heart failure.
In a new study out this month in the journal, Nature Communications, researchers found that over a period of eight weeks, healthy mice that ran about three miles a day on a hamster-type running wheel generated four times as much new heart tissue as those that didn’t run. They also did the same running test in groups of mice shortly after inducing a heart attack on the rodents. Even after a heart attack, the ones who ran consistently on the wheel showed signs of developing new heart tissue. The ones that didn’t showed no sign of creating new cells. Because that sounded promising, the researchers wanted to understand the mechanisms at play: What cellular or chemical changes in the body allowed them to regenerate this heart tissue? They identified one possible route by which the body might create these new heart cells, but now they must ask whether they can induce that change without exercise—or amplify its effects.
Researchers from Tomsk Polytechnic University together with their international colleagues have discovered a method to modify and use the one-atom thin conductor of current and heat, graphene without destroying it. Thanks to the novel method, the researchers were able to synthesize on single-layer graphene a well-structured polymer with a strong covalent bond, which they called ‘polymer carpets’. The entire structure is highly stable; it is less prone to degradation over time that makes the study promising for the development of flexible organic electronics. Also, if a layer of molybdenum disulfide is added over the ‘nanocarpet’, the resulting structure generates current under exposure to light. The study results were published in Journal of Materials Chemistry C.
Graphene is simultaneously the most durable, light and an electrically conductive carbon material. It can be used for manufacturing solar batteries, smartphone screens, thin and flexible electronics, and even in water filters since graphene films pass water molecules and stop all other compounds. Graphene should be integrated into complex structures to be used successfully. However, it is a challenge to do that. According to scientists, graphene itself is stable enough and reacts poorly with other compounds. In order to make it react with other elements, i.e. to modify it, graphene is usually at least partially destroyed. This modification degrades the properties of the materials obtained. For more information see the IDTechEx reports on graphene and e-textiles.
A new mathematical model incorporates personalized details to simulate the metabolic effects of exercise. Presented in PLOS Computational Biology by Maria Concetta Palumbo of the National Research Council of Italy, Rome, and colleagues, the model can be adapted to different individual characteristics, such as age and weight, as well as different types and intensities of exercise.
Physical activity can help prevent or treat metabolic diseases, and better understanding of the molecular effects of exercise could aid clinical efforts to address disease. System-level effects of exercise are difficult to monitor in people, so scientists have developed mathematical models to simulate them. However, previously developed models do not account for key details, such as exercise type and personal characteristics.
To address this challenge, Palumbo and colleagues extended an existing model to make it more personalized. The existing model used known properties of different organs and tissues to simulate the effects of exercise on metabolic dynamics of glucose, hormones, and related substances in those tissues. However, the model only addressed one type of exercise (cycling) at a fixed intensity level for one type of person (a 70-kilogram male with no cycling training).
You’ve probably noticed that there are a lot of algorithms about these days, doing everything from recommending a walking route to figuring out how to beat the world’s best players at Go. But what are they, really, how do they work, and how will they change the world?
I’ve read some excellent books recently on the subject and have a few recommendations.
For a fun and memorable discussion of how specific algorithms work (even how you might use them yourself to sort out your sock drawer or find a nice apartment) then try Algorithms to Live By (UK) (US) by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. I enjoyed this book very much, although not quite as much as Brian Christian’s The Most Human Human (UK) (US), which is all about how to have a better conversation, whether you’re a human or a bot. It’s one of my favourite books, ever.
Springer publishing, German Journal of Exercise and Sport Research from
This study examines the impact of chance in football using the case of goal scoring. For this purpose, chance in goal scoring is defined as goals involving uncontrollable or not planned aspects. “Chance variables” were defined according to the principle of downward estimation, i.e. when one of these variables is involved this is an uncontrollable or not planned aspect of scoring a goal, although chance may also have an impact in instances other than those collected. Six “chance variables” were identified: deflection, rebound, goalkeeper involvement, post/bar hits, long distance shots, and defence involvement. In the 2011/2012 season, the 875 goals in German Bundesliga and the 1056 goals in English Premier League were examined for the presence of these variables. Of the goals examined, 47.0% showed at least one chance variable (deflection: 4.8%; rebound: 9.4%, goalkeeper: 2.5%; post/bar: 5.2%; distance: 13.1%, and defence: 22.5%). The two leagues differed significantly only in the sense of more goalkeeper interventions in the Bundesliga and more distance goals in the Premier League. The rate of chance-goals drops significantly with the number of prior goals in a match (χ2 = 17.59; p = 0.004). In both leagues, there is no significant correlation between final ranking and the percentage of chance-goals scored or conceded. If one accepts the selected chance variables as indicators of uncontrollable or not planned aspects of scoring, the results of this study can be taken as empirical proof for the existence and widespread prevalence of chance involvement in goal scoring in football with many interesting consequences. [full text]
Nature, Scientific Reports; Erik Ingelsson et al. from
We performed a large genome-wide association study to discover genetic variation associated with muscular strength, and to evaluate shared genetic aetiology with and causal effects of muscular strength on several health indicators. In our discovery analysis of 223,315 individuals, we identified 101 loci associated with grip strength (P <5 × 10−8). Of these, 64 were associated (P < 0.01 and consistent direction) also in the replication dataset (N = 111,610). eQTL analyses highlighted several genes known to play a role in neuro-developmental disorders or brain function, and the results from meta-analysis showed a significant enrichment of gene expression of brain-related transcripts. Further, we observed inverse genetic correlations of grip strength with cardiometabolic traits, and positive correlation with parents’ age of death and education. We also showed that grip strength had shared biological pathways with indicators of frailty, including cognitive performance scores. By use of Mendelian randomization, we provide evidence that higher grip strength is protective of both coronary heart disease (OR = 0.69, 95% CI 0.60–0.79, P < 0.0001) and atrial fibrillation (OR = 0.75, 95% CI 0.62–0.90, P = 0.003). In conclusion, our results show shared genetic aetiology between grip strength, and cardiometabolic and cognitive health; and suggest that maintaining muscular strength could prevent future cardiovascular events. [full text]