During the past year the speculation has been widespread. Will Desiree Linden race the Olympic Marathon Trials on February 29? Or will she return to the 2020 Boston Marathon on April 20 instead?
Linden finally has an answer—and it’s not what many had predicted: she’ll race them both.
“Running the Boston Marathon seven weeks after the U.S. Olympic Trials is a plan that has been in the works for roughly a year,” Linden said in a written statement released by John Hancock, which organizes the Boston Marathon elite field. “I crossed the finish line in 2019 and knew if my body was capable, I wanted to return to Boston in 2020.”
… Jumbo-Visma built itself organically, nurturing some talent and buying more. It announced Friday that the culmination of this slow rise will come at the 2020 Tour de France, where it plans to field what is, on paper, a team that can truly rival Ineos. Next July, it will bring Tom Dumoulin, Primoz Roglic, and Steven Kruijswijk to the Tour de France. And the moose strength of Tony Martin. And the experience of Robert Gesink, the raw talent of Wout van Aert, and the climbing skills of Laurens de Plus and Sepp Kuss.
The ridiculously early announcement was clearly intended to put its rivals on notice. This is what we have, Jumbo is saying. Come at us.
… At the Boys event, the DA held a meeting for all the Academy Directors and reviewed the focus player-centric philosophy. The controversial restructuring of the U18/19 regular season format to increase meaningful competition — the Red/Blue split of the age group into two levels — has proven to be successful at creating more competitive games according to the latest research. The average goals scored per U18/19 game decreased from 1.90 in the 2018/19 season to 1.52 this season with the increasingly competitive matches.
… Prior to the season, STACK spoke with Brian Hartline, the former NFL receiver who now serves as the Buckeyes’ receivers coach, to find out what makes Ohio State’s receivers “different” from the competition.
The ultimate goal behind every route a Buckeye receiver runs is to create as much separation between the break point and the catch point as possible. Ankle-breaking releases off the line may go viral on Instagram, but according to Hartline, it’s what you do at the top of the pattern that matters more for getting open.
“To me, too many times, you can have a great release and still not end up being open at the end of the route,” Hartline says.
Born in the former Yugoslavia and growing up in the successor state now known as the Republic of North Macedonia, Vlatko Andonovski could have sensed that soccer would be in his future.
His father and brother played professionally, after all, and the game was the central topic in virtually every meal they ate. For that matter, he gravitated to a broader perspective of the game: Out on the streets, he was that self-proclaimed “pretty annoying” kid who wanted to organize everything and strategize to outsmart opponents.
It was not so much a hobby or a fascination or a profession in the making as it was what he called “a way of life” that would lead to his way in life.
Inside the lobby of Vicis‘ headquarters in Seattle this week, floor-to-ceiling images on the walls showed young football players wearing the company’s high-tech helmet. A portrait of former Seattle Seahawks star Doug Baldwin loomed behind a reception desk. The slogan “Protect the Athlete, Elevate the Game” was stenciled next to a lighted display case with two helmets.
But it was unusually quiet. Not much work was getting done.
That’s because Vicis recently furloughed a majority of its 110-person team, leaving a skeleton crew of 12 employees this week.
Two new footwear advances could help soldiers use their own footsteps to charge devices in the field and enable commanders to track their location.
The Army recently awarded a $16.5 million contract to Robotic Research LLC for a sensor unit that fits on a boot and can be used to track individual soldier locations, even in GPS-denied environments, according to a Robotic Research statement.
The accurate monitoring and control of liquid flow at low flow rates have become increasingly important in contemporary biomedical research and industrial monitoring. Inspired by the drop-counting principle implemented in a clinical gravity drip, we propose a novel microfluidic flowmetry technology for polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based conventional microfluidic devices, known as a microfluidic digital meter-on-chip (DMC), to achieve on-chip and localized microflow measurements with ultrahigh precision and a wide tunable range. The DMC technology primarily relies on capillarity, unlike a gravity drip, to induce a characteristic interfacial droplet pinch-off process, from which digital microflowmetry devices can discretize continuous flow into countable transferred liquid units with consistent quantifiable volumes. Enabled by the passive discretization principle and optical transparency, the DMC device requires no external energy input or bulky control equipment, and a non-contact wireless optical detection scheme using a smartphone can be conveniently used as a readout module. Moreover, the DMC technology achieves an ultrahigh flow-to-frequency sensitivity (6.59 Hz (μL min−1)−1) and resolution (droplet transfer volume down to 2.5 nL, nearly two orders of magnitude smaller than in previously reported work, resulting in ultralow flow rates of 1 μL min−1). In addition, the flow rate measurement range covers up to 80 μL min−1 and down to at least 150 nL min−1 (over 100 times lower than reported similar digital flowmetry on the same time scale) using the current device configuration. Benefiting from its simple device architecture and adaptability, the versatile DMC technology can be seamlessly integrated with various microfluidic and nanofluidic devices for drug delivery and biochemical analysis, serving as a promising technology platform for next-generation highly demanding microflow measurements.
Orthopedic injury, specifically tendon injuries, are extremely prevalent. Depending on the severity of the injury, treatment ranges from rest to surgery. Often, tendon repair is a lengthy process that results in decreased mechanical function and can lead to chronic pain. The cell populations that make up the tendon, and the roles they play in the repair process, remain incompletely understood. Understanding the cellular makeup of tendons and its role in repair could lead to improved treatments for tendon injuries.
In this exclusive SelectScience interview, we discuss this phenomenon with Jacob Swanson, a scientist in the lab of Dr. Christopher Mendias in New York. Here, Swanson discusses the Mendias lab’s extensive research concerning the anatomy and physiology of the Achilles tendon, in both normal health and disease contexts. Swanson highlights how the use of RNAscope technology has helped his work and why he hopes to continue to use this technology in future studies.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Diane Mathis et al. from
Regulatory T cells (Tregs) with a distinctive transcriptome and T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire regulate muscle repair in injury models. Important issues concerning muscle-Treg biology remain unresolved because of their rarity and fragility on isolation. To circumvent these problems, we generated transgenic mice carrying rearranged Tcra and Tcrb genes from a Treg clone expanded within muscle after injury. The TCR transgenic mice had a TCR repertoire skewed for the transgene-encoded specificity and an amplified population of muscle Tregs. The tissue accumulation, phenotype acquisition, and functional activities of muscle Tregs were critically dependent on TCR specificity. Introduction of the TCR transgenes into a model improved muscle regeneration, suggesting a therapeutic potential for muscle Tregs or their TCRs.
The burden of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury in professional soccer players is particularly relevant as it represents a potentially career-threatening injury. Hypothesis:
Our hypotheses were that (1) injury incidence rate would be similar to that reported in the literature, (2) we would identify a uniform distribution of the injuries along the season, and (3) injury incidence rate would be similar in high-ranked and lower ranked teams, based on final placement in the league. Study Design:
Descriptive epidemiological study. Level of Evidence:
Level 4. Methods:
Professional male soccer players participating in the Serie A championship league in 7 consecutive seasons (2011-2012 to 2017-2018) were screened to identify ACL injuries through the online football archive transfermarkt.com. Exposure in matches and training were calculated. Results:
There were 84 ACL injuries found (mean player age, 25.3 ± 4.2 years). Overall, 25% of ACL injuries were reruptures (15%) or contralateral injuries (10%). ACL incidence rate was 0.4215 per 1000 hours of play during Serie A matches, 0.0305 per 1000 hours of training (rate ratio [RR], 13.8; 95% CI, 8.4-22.7; P < 0.0001), and 0.0618 per 1000 hours of total play. Injury distribution had a bimodal peak, with the highest number of events in October and March. Alternatively, training injuries peaked in June and July. A significantly higher incidence rate was found for the teams ranked from 1st to the 4th place compared with those ranked 5th to 20th (0.1256 vs 0.0559 per 1000 hours of play; RR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.4-3.6; P = 0.0003). A similar finding was found for injury incidence proportion (3.76% vs 1.64%; P = 0.0003).
Conclusion:
The overall incidence rate of ACL injuries in Italian Serie A was 0.062 per 1000 hours, with a 14-fold risk in matches compared with training. Relevantly, 25% were second injuries. Most injuries occurred in October and March, and an almost 2-fold incidence rate and incidence proportion were noted in those teams ranked in the first 4 positions of the championship league. Clinical Relevance:
Knowing the precise epidemiology of ACL injury in one of the most competitive professional football championship leagues could help delineate fields of research aimed to investigate its risk factors.
… Chelsea Warr, UK Sport’s performance director, says data from the organisation’s Sports Intelligence team shows “bases are loaded” when it comes to British medal potential – with more sports and athletes making podiums at world championships compared with four years ago.
“What is pleasing is that ahead of Rio we had 15 sports getting medals at world championships, now we’ve 22,” said Warr, who also pointed out that 123 British athletes have won world championship medals over the Tokyo Olympic cycle compared with 115 before Rio.
“We’ve also had more fourth-to-eighth places this year,” she added. “In 2015 we had 188 leading into Rio and we have 218 leading into Tokyo. So the bases are loaded. The medal potential is there. One of the things we need to work on is to optimise that group to move into the medal zone. It’s looking good. We’re quietly confident.”
Consider how much has changed in the NHL since the start of this decade. Back then, there was a different playoff format. There wasn’t a Department of Player Safety. There was still a Southeast Division, and the Atlanta Thrashers were a part of it. There were a lot more fights.
It’s staggering to think about all that’s happened in the game over the last 10 years, just as it’s staggering to think about what it’ll look like by the end of next decade.