Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 18, 2018

At this point, there isn’t much left to accomplish in the basketball career of Sue Bird. Yet here she is in her 16th WNBA season, still lacing up Nikes and pointedly ignoring questions about when she plans to call it quits. Instead, the 37-year-old point guard will tell you that she’s never been in better shape, and with the way she orchestrates the attack for her Seattle Storm each night, it’s hard to argue otherwise. We recently caught up with the league’s all-time assists leader to learn how her diet and preparation have allowed her to play at such a high level for 15 professional seasons—and counting.

… [Dion] Lewis’ path to productivity begins even before the ball is snapped, according to Titans running backs coach Tony Dews.

“He’s very smart,” Dews said. “I think Dion dissects things pre-snap. I think he sees things pre-snap and then he reacts. He’s also been in the league going on seven years and he’s seen a lot of different things, been in different systems. That helps.”

Lewis’ preparation helps him get to where he’s going – and beyond – very quickly.

According to the NFL’s Next Gen stats, Lewis spent an average of just 2.7 seconds per carry behind the line of scrimmage last season, the 12th-best figure in the league. He also recorded the league’s second-best efficiency number (3.3), a stat that measures how well a back travels North/South – as opposed to dancing toward the hole.

Egypt’s 45-year-old goalkeeper Essam El Hadary says he feels like he’s 20 again.

“I have dealt with three generations of players, each one of them was different,” El Hadary said in a television interview ahead of the World Cup. “But this generation is just great. People go on about me being 45, but I feel I am like my teammates — like I am 20.”

El Hadary isn’t assured of getting any game time for Egypt in the World Cup in Russia, but will create history if he does.

… He sold many of his belongings to travel to Liverpool to study ­football and science at John Moores University and it was here that, ­after asking to borrow a ladder from a family who lived adjacent to Liverpool’s Melwood training ground, he would secretly watch Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier at work.

Jobs in sports science followed at Major League Soccer and then with Manchester City, but he never stopped pushing to learn and ­persuaded just about all the biggest managerial names in Europe to let him study them at work. The ring-binders were growing ever thicker and opportunities to put his ­theories in practice would follow in Colombia, the United States and Brazil, before taking the Mexico job in 2015.

His tactical methods, which ­centre largely on creating ­unpredictable patterns of movement among his strikers through repetitive practice, have been ­described by Mexico’s record ­goalscorer Javier Hernández as ­bordering on “genius”.

Long-course triathletes have all kinds of strategies for gutting through the tough times. And like practicing your nutrition or your transitions, training your brain “should be something you’re actively trying out during training rides and runs,” says Chelsi Day, the director of counseling and sports psychology at Indiana University. In fact, Cory Nyamora, a USAT-certified coach and a Berkley, California-based therapist, recommends doing your longest workouts alone so you can figure out exactly what works for you. Here are Nyamora and Day’s best strategies and how to implement them.

A new study shows that mice have to remember their phobias if they are to lose them effectively.

When we’re put under pressure, our brains can suddenly process information much faster – but only in certain situations, says neuroscientist Tali Sharot.

… The fancy term used by the DFB and its American partner, the San Jose Earthquakes, is “hybrid resource model.” But you can call him Nicolas. He was raised outside Heidelberg, Germany, but came to the U.S. to attend the University of Florida, where he played tennis. A job at software company SAP led to a lot of transatlantic travel, time spent in Silicon Valley, and an externship at the DFB, which is an SAP partner. In 2016 he joined the federation full-time, and this year, he became the DFB’s managing director for the Americas. Jungkind lives outside Philadelphia. It’s a geographic compromise between Frankfurt and San Jose, which is at the heart of Silicon Valley and the home of the DFB’s primary U.S. partner, the Earthquakes.

Why is one of the most successful and ambitious soccer organizations in the world partnering with a middling club, in a modest league, in a country that still has a lukewarm relationship with the game?

“We had the feeling that sports technology is more advanced in the U.S. in general, so there was a motivation for the DFB to focus on the North American market,” Jungkind explained. “The Earthquakes have an understanding of what the future should look like and what they want their team to be made up of—what values the team has. … Given the fact that they’re in the center of Silicon Valley, that also means something. The fact that the Quakes have that ecosystem, all those thought leaders around them, means they’re continuously inspired by new ideas, new technology. That leads to the fact that Jesse can say with good conscience that they are provoking thought, because of exactly that scenario. That’s a situation the DFB admires.”

Biometric sensor technology company Valencell announced this week that it has raised $10.5 million in Series E, bringing the company’s total funding to $35 million. The new backing primarily comes as the result of a strategic investment by hearing instrument and specialty earphone company Sonion a/s, with additional participation from prior investors including TDF Ventures, GII LLC, and WSJ Joshua Fund.

According to a statement, the new funding will be used to further improve the technology behind Valencell’s biometric sensors while expanding sales growth.

The non-toxic material features globs of gallium and indium that sit within a silicon-based polymer substrate, the liquid metal acting as a fluid conductive medium that allows electricity to flow. According to the researchers, the structure resembles round liquid metal islands floating in a sea of polymer, supported by a liquid metal base to ensure full conductivity.

The material is produced using a combination of screen printing and microfluidic patterning, resulting in a pliable and resilient liquid-plastic hybrid that can take on a range of two-dimensional shapes. Described in new journal iScience, the MPC could facilitate advances in wearable electronics and durable biomedical implants.

“These are the first flexible electronics that are at once highly conductive and stretchable, fully biocompatible, and able to be fabricated conveniently across size scales with micro-feature precision,” said senior author Xingyu Jiang, a professor at China’s National Centre for Nanoscience and Technology. “We believe that they will have broad applications for both wearable electronics and implantable devices.”

… Plant protein has more nutrients and fiber (though not all of the amino acids)

Animal meat is known for its many nutrients. If you eat a variety of animal meats (light and dark, not just beef, as well as various organs), you can take in all the amino acids you need to manufacture your own bodily proteins plus vitamins like B12, niacin, thiamine, B5, B6, B7, and vitamins A and K.

But here’s the thing: If you swap all that animal protein for an equally diverse diet of plant-based proteins like nuts, seeds, and beans, you are no worse off. That’s because these foods are also packed full of a similar spectrum of nutrients. The biggest difference is vitamin B12, which most plants cannot produce on their own. You can get B12 from edible seaweed and in fortified cereals, though the easiest way is through supplementation or by eating animal products.

This study systematically examined the influence of carbohydrate (sucrose), sodium and caffeine on the fluid retention potential of beverages under euhydrated conditions, using the beverage hydration index (BHI) method. Three cohorts, each of 12 young, healthy, active men, ingested 1L of beverages containing four different concentrations of a single component (sucrose, sodium or caffeine) in a double blind, crossover manner. Urine output was collected for the subsequent 4-h. Cumulative urine output was lower and net fluid balance were higher after 10% and 20% sucrose beverages than 0% and 5% sucrose beverages (P<0.05), and after 27mmol/L and 52mmol/L sodium beverages than 7mmol/L and 15mmol/L sodium beverages (P<0.05). No difference in urine output or net fluid balance was apparent following ingestion of caffeine at concentrations of 0 - 400 mg/l (P=0.83). Consequently, the calculated BHI was greater in beverages with higher sucrose or sodium content, but caffeine had no effect. No difference was observed in arginine vasopressin or aldosterone between any trials. These data highlight that the key drivers promoting differences in the fluid retention potential of beverages when euhydrated are energy density, likely through slowed fluid delivery to the circulation (carbohydrate content effect), or electrolyte content through improved fluid retention (sodium content effect). These data demonstrate that beverage carbohydrate and sodium content influence fluid delivery and retention in the 4-h after ingestion, but caffeine up to 400mg/L does not. Athletes and others can use this information to guide their daily hydration practices.

Students with a background in artificial intelligence, or AI, could be on the chart for a job in one of Limerick’s newest companies.

Pioneering data firm Stats Insights officially opened ​its new city centre offices this week, a move which will the firm ramping up its headcount here to 150 – and eventually over 200, if Chicago man Carl Mergele, the company’s chief executive, gets his way.

In that number could be graduates of a new AI masters course at the University of Limerick, with Stats’ European manager Grainne Barry saying this is a key reason why the firm has chosen Limerick to locate its continental centre.

A poll taken after the 2016 presidential election found, for instance, that more than half of people who voted for Donald Trump incorrectly believed that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Ten years earlier, a Scripps Howard/Ohio University survey found that just over half of Democrats wouldn’t rule out the possibility that “people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted [the] United States to go to war in the Middle East.”

How do you combat misperceptions like these? That’s the subject of a new paper published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties by Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter.

Through survey experiments, Nyhan and Reifler arrived at a surprising answer: charts. “We find that providing participants with graphical information significantly decreases false and unsupported factual beliefs.” Crucially, they show that data presented in graphs and illustrations does a better job of fighting misperceptions than the same information presented in text form.

… “Everything that happens on the field, terabytes of data per game, is being collected, so this is where it’s really getting exciting now,” says Ari Kaplan, a major league scout and baseball data analyst who has consulted for multiple Major League Baseball teams. “In some cases it gives you insights you would never think of, and those instances can be game-changers.”

It’s a similar story in the NBA. Every pro team now has computer vision systems that track how the ball and players move around the court.

Some teams analyze this wealth of data using machine learning to identify things like how effectively players execute pick and rolls and other plays, says Dean Oliver, a basketball statistician who has consulted with NBA teams. And some are using the data to model how teammates interact to determine which players were key to successful plays. “That is the far envelope of what’s being done right now,” Oliver says.