North Carolina Courage forward Lynn Williams is blazingly fast—faster than some of the top men in soccer, and she has the data to prove it. A Bleacher Report post on Instagram shared the fastest sprints recorded by men’s players in the Champions League season, headlined by Paris Saint-Germain striker Kylian Mbappé’s 33.98 km/h (21.11 mph).
Williams posted a rebuttal, sharing STATSports GPS data that showed her reaching 34.24 km/h (21.28 mph) in a recent match. To that, she added, “Pick up the pace, boys,” and “I’ll just be over here running like a girl.”
… LeBron has largely declined to follow other stars’ strategy of strategic absences from games in recent years: He played in all 82 games for Cleveland in 2017-18, and after an injury-plagued 2018-19 in LA, he only missed four games last season.
Still, James has played 1,265 career regular-season games — already the 33rd-most in league history — and an NBA-record 260 playoff contests as he heads toward his 36th birthday later this month.
James and the Lakers haven’t decided on their plans for the regular season, with James saying there’s “a fine line” between strategic rest and unnecessary inactivity. He does sound amenable to limited action in the preseason, which begins Friday.
“We’re going to be as smart as I can be in making sure that my body and making sure that I’m ready to go,” James said.
Gareth Southgate says he is worried about the condition that his England players will be in for the European Championship next summer as he opened up on how the power of the Premier League could affect his prospects of success.
The England manager next sees his squad in March when they will play their opening three qualifying ties for the 2022 World Cup, the draw for which was made on Monday. England have been put in a group with Poland, Hungary, Albania, Andorra and San Marino and the order of the fixtures will be announced on Tuesday.
It is unusual to play World Cup qualifiers before a summer European tournament but this is an unusual season in terms of the rejigged schedule. Southgate, who will name his Euro squad in the weeks after the opening World Cup ties, says he shares the concerns of the top Premier League managers, including Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp. They have been frustrated by the demands placed on the players and how the league has as yet not permitted use of five substitutes in matches.
University of Gotheburg (Sweden), News and Events from
The Gothenburg Athletics Club has produced several world champions over the years. But there is also a murky side to elite sport, with problems such as burnout and injuries. To encourage elite trainers to find new innovative working methods that improve the mental and physical health of elite athletes as well as producing top performances over time, the Gothenburg Athletics Club launched a development project in partnership with the University of Gothenburg.
“Elite trainers need to be capable of navigating between a short-term focus on results and long-term development. To attain top results, athletes need to push themselves to their ultimate limit. This risks leading to burnout and injury. Besides personal suffering, it also means lost time. And athletes need to be healthy in order to perform anyway. It isn’t a choice. The focus on results and long-term development have to both be there every step of the way,” says John Dohlsten, lecturer and external PhD student in sports science at the Department of Food and Nutrition and Sport Science.
John Dohlsten has spent four years working with elite athletics trainers. They started with a “blank page” and together explored how trainers can develop and which skills they need.
PLOS One; Eliane Stephanie Engels and Philipp Alexander Freund from
Enjoyment is one of the most important factors for the maintenance of regular physical activity. The present study investigated if cooperative games in physical education classes (grades 6–9) can increase students’ enjoyment of physical activity. Data were collected in a quasi-experimental study employing a two-group design with repeated measures and randomization of classes to conditions. The total sample consisted of N = 285 students from regular schools in Germany aged 10 to 16 years (Mage = 12.67 years, SD = 1.10; 48.4% female). We found that cooperative games led to a higher perceived enjoyment in physical education classes (F(1) = 3.49, p = .063, ηp2 = .012), increased the feeling of how strong students felt related to each other (F(1) = 4.38, p = .037, ηp2 = .016), and facilitated feelings of perceived competence in physical education class (F(1) = 6.31, p = .013, ηp2 = .022). In addition, social relatedness and perceived competence partly mediated the effect of cooperative games on enjoyment. The findings indicate that systematically designed cooperative games can help foster enjoyment in physical education classes. [full text]
PLOS One; Ariel Starr, Mahesh Srinivasan, Silvia A. Bunge from
We can retain only a portion of the visual information that we encounter within our visual working memory. Which factors influence how much information we can remember? Recent studies have demonstrated that the capacity of visual working memory is influenced by the type of information to be remembered and is greater for real-world objects than for abstract stimuli. One explanation for this effect is that the semantic knowledge associated with real-world objects makes them easier to maintain in working memory. Previous studies have indirectly tested this proposal and led to inconsistent conclusions. Here, we directly tested whether semantic knowledge confers a benefit for visual working memory by using familiar and unfamiliar real-world objects. We found a mnemonic benefit for familiar objects in adults and children between the ages of 4 and 9 years. Control conditions ruled out alternative explanations, namely the possibility that the familiar objects could be more easily labeled or that there were differences in low-level visual features between the two types of objects. Together, these findings demonstrate that semantic knowledge influences visual working memory, which suggests that the capacity of visual working memory is not fixed but instead fluctuates depending on what has to be remembered. [full text]
… So far, the amount of sleep people are losing to hotter temperatures remains minimal. But it’s a problem some experts predict will likely get worse in the years to come — and warrants attention sooner rather than later.
“Climate change was not on the list of things on our radar,” said Rafael Pelayo, a sleep specialist at the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center and president of the California Sleep Society. “I think it should be now.”
A wearable noninvasive biosensor for in situ urea detection and quantification was developed using a urease-immobilized photonic interpenetrating polymer network (IPNurease) film. The photonic IPN film was intertwined with solid-state cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCsolid) and a poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) network on a flexible poly(ethylene terephthalate) substrate adhered to a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) chip that was fabricated using an aluminum mold. The presence of urea in the chemical matrix of human sweat red-shifted the reflected color of the photonic IPNurease film, and quantification was achieved by observing the wavelength at the photonic band gap (λPBG) with a limit of detection of 0.4 mM and a linear range of 0.9–50 mM. The color changes observed in the photonic IPN film were digitalized using the CIE 1931 xy coordinates on a cell phone image, thereby enabling fast, direct diagnosis via a downloadable app. This novel PDMS chip can be expanded for use with other biosensors.
… Smartwatches and other wearable devices are traditionally used to track fitness but scientists at Stanford University found they may have a higher purpose in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
Years ago, Dr. Michael P. Snyder detected he had Lyme disease because his smartwatch alerted him to an unusual resting heart rate.
Now, he along with his team are using that same model for early coronavirus detection, even as far in advance as four days before any symptoms may appear.
“What’s powerful about them is they’re measuring you all the time, so when you get ill it turns out your heart rate jumps up usually for regular illness about a day and a half before symptoms appear but for COVID-19 it turns out the median time is four days before symptoms appear,” Dr. Michael P. Snyder said.
… For some time we have worked towards upgrading RunScribe from a 2 pod system to include a sacral pod capable of directly measuring hip-pelvic movement. Confident that we are now at a level of accuracy and reliability that meets our expectations, we’re now launching the new 3 pod system that we call RunScribe Gait Lab.
Running injuries resulting from movement dysfunction can be driven by issues around the foot-ankle either in isolation or in combination with issues around the hip-pelvis area. And vice-versa. Whether you lean more towards the importance of the foot-ankle or more towards the hip-pelvis, both areas have the capacity to be highly influential. Collecting synchronized data from both areas simultaneously during running is therefore highly beneficial to a comprehensive assessment.
A game-changing lawsuit is being prepared in what may be the most significant development of rugby’s concussion battle, according to reports.
Up to 70 players are said to be gearing up for a legal battle against several national rugby bodies.
The New Zealand Herald have reported a growing list made up of players from all over the world have asked a British law firm to start legal action against unions who they believe are responsible for their cognitive issues ranging from post-concussion syndrome to suspected chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease with no cure that can only be diagnosed after death.
While the 70 players are unknown at this stage, two former All Blacks – Carl Hayman and Geoff Old – did confirm to the Herald that they have been in contact with British-based lawyers about their post-playing medical conditions.
The NBA has warned teams that protocol violations that lead to coronavirus spread impacting opposing teams and causing schedule derailments could result in “fines, suspensions, adjustment or loss of draft choices and game forfeitures,” according to a memo obtained by ESPN.
For players violating safety protocols this season, the league warns that the possibility of in-season quarantine and reduced paychecks loom as possibilities. While the memo doesn’t outline the length of quarantines, it says that any such player “may be subject to a proportionate adjustment to pay for any games missed during the period that the player is in quarantine and undergoing testing due to engaging in such activities and/or conduct.”
As other professional sports leagues planned to tiptoe ahead with quarantined lockdowns, the NFL went boldly and cleverly ahead with a virtual draft so innovative and well received that even strident critics reluctantly applauded it.
The basement of commissioner Roger Goodell’s New York home served as the nerve center for the April event, projecting a sense of calm and confidence as if the world briefly had tilted back onto its axis.
Goodell’s increasingly casual attire over the three days reflected that — from sports coat to sweater to quarter-zip to T-shirt — until he finally plopped into his favorite leather recliner and ate fistfuls of M&Ms. Everything was going to be OK.
The NFL feels very different now. As the country faces a dangerous surge in coronavirus cases, the league is being challenged to duplicate that April success — to keep moving forward, to be innovative and to project that determined assuredness.
There are some kinds of work that you can’t do well without thinking differently from your peers. To be a successful scientist, for example, it’s not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You can’t publish papers saying things other people already know. You need to say things no one else has realized yet.
The same is true for investors. It’s not enough for a public market investor to predict correctly how a company will do. If a lot of other people make the same prediction, the stock price will already reflect it, and there’s no room to make money. The only valuable insights are the ones most other investors don’t share.
You see this pattern with startup founders too. You don’t want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it.