… Mbappe has an array of talents, but, arguably, his most potent gift is his raw, latent speed. And speed kills. Athletes are obsessed with it. Fans are enthralled by it.
The 38kmph max speed the striker clocked up against Monaco last season was simply breath-taking. One of the fastest recorded times in European football that season. And it far surpassed the 32kmph max speed he managed against Liverpool in the Champions League group stages.
DeMarcus Cousins’ apparent ACL injury put a halt to the Los Angeles Lakers’ plans to re-emerge as the preeminent power in the NBA, a revenge tour of sorts we hadn’t seen since the start of the decade with the Miami Heat.
But it’s a bigger loss for Cousins himself, a man who’s had to remake his image and recalibrate his goals in the last 19 months. Instead of the villainous character he was purported to be — and sometimes played into — in Sacramento, he’s now the unwilling face of resilience.
Jameson Taillon has suffered another major setback.
The Pirates’ ace underwent flexor tendon repair surgery on Tuesday, and during the procedure, it was determined Taillon also needed Tommy John surgery. Dr. David Altchek performed both surgeries in New York City.
Taillon is not projected to return to full competition until the 2021 season. Taillon, the No. 2 pick in the 2010 draft, also had Tommy John surgery in 2014.
… During the no-expense spared build up to this month’s All-Star match against Atlético Madrid in Orlando, a ‘Homegrown’ team consisting of MLS academy products took on a youth side from Chivas de Guadalajara. This showcase to help find the next Christian Pulisic or Alphonso Davies is a product of the rule brought in by MLS in 2007, one which ensured the clubs have exclusive rights to sign their best prospects on pro-deals rather than lose them to others offering bigger money and grander dreams.
On the field were some true success stories – Gianluca Busio has been a breakout star for Sporting Kansas and last season, at the age of 16, became the third-youngest player in MLS history to start a game.
“When I was 14-years-old it wasn’t that known to see homegrown players make it all the way through but now you look at some of the teams and half the players are younger guys so that proves the quality is improving,” said Busio. “They are investing in youth more now and they are paying more attention to it, mainly because they see the success the younger guys are having in MLS. The pathway is pretty clear now.”
Science Advances, Marco Smolla and Erol Akçay from
Cultural evolution relies on the social transmission of cultural traits along a population’s social network. Research indicates that network structure affects information spread and thus the capacity for cumulative culture. However, how network structure itself is driven by population-culture co-evolution remains largely unclear. We use a simple model to investigate how populations negotiate the trade-off between acquiring new skills and getting better at existing skills and how this trade-off shapes social networks. We find unexpected eco-evolutionary feedbacks from culture onto social networks and vice versa. We show that selecting for skill generalists results in sparse networks with diverse skill sets, whereas selecting for skill specialists results in dense networks and a population that specializes on the same few skills on which everyone is an expert. Our model advances our understanding of the complex feedbacks in cultural evolution and demonstrates how individual-level behavior can lead to the emergence of population-level structure.
This year’s Rugby World Cup, the first to be held in Asia, will produce many unique challenges for the world’s top players but one of the biggest might be Japan’s varied climate.
With the Sept. 20-Nov. 2 tournament being held during Japan’s typhoon season and high humidity still a factor in the Japanese autumn, team are preparing for stifling, sweaty conditions.
While this might mean a first World Cup where the Pacific island nations enjoy any advantage, some northern European teams have been taking measures to mitigate the impact.
England have been in Italy to prepare in similar conditions, while Ireland have been training wearing plastic vests to increase the amount they sweat.
Baze, provider of a blood-based, at-home nutritional testing kit, has raised $6 million in Series A funding, according to a press release. Supplement manufacturer Nature’s Way was the lead investor.
The Baze Starter Kit contains a blood collection device designed at MIT. Based on the results of the blood test, Baze will recommend and provide specific supplements, ensuring customers get the nutrients they need. Baze’s internal research has found that two-thirds of nutrient deficiencies were eliminated within the first three months of the program, and users have reported extra benefits, including increased energy, reduced stress, and improved sleep.
Located in the heart of the University of Maryland, directly on Campus Drive, Cole Field House represents something new in how sports and education intertwine on campuses across the country.
Not only does the complete remaking of the structure include all the amenities a school now a member of the football-rich Big 10 Conference need to compete in recruitment and training from an athletics point of view, but the fresh face of the Cole Field House, designed by Cannon Design, does something additional by merging sport, health, science, wellness and entrepreneurial education into one facility.
Part sports and part education, the new Cole Field House blurs that line. As intended.
“I think we are at the beginning of this new trend with the combination of athletics, sports medicine and the introduction of more sports science and technology into the training of athletes,” says Eric Einhorn, Cannon Design’s Washington, D.C., sports market leader. “This facility is one of the few trendsetters out there, but we will see a lot of other athletic departments want to have this in the near future.”
In the 17 months since the death of his son, Mark Hilinski has visited enough college athletic departments to see the same things over and over, a pattern repeated: the renovated facilities, the expansive weight rooms, the well-accoutered players’ lounges. Shiny perks, all, of a major college athletics enterprise that continues to generate ever-increasing revenue.
And yet, Hilinski said not long ago, referencing the athletes at the center of it all, “We can’t fund a staff for their mental health?”
It was a May Tuesday at a Durham hotel, and he and his wife, Kym, had delivered the keynote address at the ACC’s inaugural mental-health summit. For more than a year, the Hilinskis had been giving these kinds of talks, sharing the story of their son, Tyler, the former Washington State quarterback.
Emphysema is considered a smoker’s disease. But it turns out, exposure to air pollution may lead to the same changes in the lung that give rise to emphysema.
A new study published Tuesday in JAMA finds that long-term exposure to slightly elevated levels of air pollution can be linked to accelerated development of lung damage, even among people who have never smoked. [audio, 3:21]
There is currently no consensus among orthopaedic surgeons as to when patients with anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction are ready to return to sport or whether or not patients should wear a functional knee brace during athletic activity. The purpose of the present study was to determine the effects of time since return to sport and of a functional knee brace on hop distance and loading symmetry during hop testing in patients with anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. Methods
Twenty-eight patients with anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction completed hop testing after being released to return to sport and again 3 months later, both with and without wearing a custom fit extension constraint functional knee brace. The loadsol® captured plantar loading data (100 Hz) to quantify peak impact force, loading rate, and impulse during the final landing of every hop test. A limb symmetry index was calculated between surgical and non-surgical limbs for hop distance and loading measures. Findings
Wearing a knee brace increased hop distance symmetry during the single and crossover hop tests and peak impact force symmetry on each test (all p < 0.05). While single (p = 0.022) and triple (p = 0.002) hop distance symmetry increased with time, there was no effect of time on any loading symmetry outcomes.
Interpretation
These results support using a functional knee brace during athletic activities for improving symmetry in the early return to sport period. These results also support previous findings that while hop distance symmetry improves with time, asymmetrical landing mechanics do not and should be addressed clinically. [full text]
The soccer news starts with the latest rumors linking Neymar with a return to Barcelona. As always at this level, financing a move for one of the most expensive players in the world is at issue. ESPN’s Moises Llorens and Sam Marsden are reporting that Barca’s pitch includes players along with €100m. They’re not the only ones interested, with Real Madrid also reportedly trying to work a deal with PSG.
It’s worth looking at this from both directions. The La Liga duo are doing what they do. Buy the world’s best players and expect to compete against each other for the Spanish and Champions League trophies. How this works in reality is a different question, but the theory remains the same. Both want a world all-star eleven and will figure out a way to pay for it.
Then there’s PSG. What they’ve done in recent years is show that same willingness to spend as the rest of the top-tier teams in Europe. The problem is that they’re doing it in isolation in Ligue 1.
Reducing transfer risk is a big part of any player recruitment strategy, and one of the biggest risk factors is the uncertainty about players transferring skills from one league to another. We can never say for certain how well a player on team X will perform for team Y. This makes fair comparisons of players in different environments difficult. But what if we could use data to build a framework to assess these on-pitch effects and allow clubs to project how players transferred from one league will perform in another?
This week, we integrated a new development into TransferLab’s “Exchange Rate” functionality. The tool already adjusted player output based on the quality of competition that they are playing in, calculating how that output would translate to the Premier League. Now, the user can further select what ‘tier’ of competitions they would like to compare the player to.
To explain our methodology, it’s probably a good idea to recap the underlying algorithm which powers our TransferLab platform.
“Last night is an image of where the WNBA is headed if you all don’t fix it.”
Liz Cambage’s words after the fight that broke out between the Dallas Wings and the Phoenix Mercury at Talking Stick Resort Arena on Saturday night echo a growing sentiment among WNBA circles. Players and coaches have been bemoaning the dearth of foul calls for several weeks, and broadcasters are joining in as well.
